LOS ANGELES — Being different is never easy, more so when you live in an infamously restrictive and conservative Communist Chinese society. Born in a farming village of the Shaanxi province, Xiyadie (a nom de plume meaning “Butterfuly in Siberia”) turns traditional paper-cut art into colorful, risqué pieces dealing with gay love and life.
If there is one constant about Thomas Nozkowski that I would single out, it is his lifelong insistence on subverting conventions. In 1974 he began painting on canvas board measuring 16 by 20 inches. (Let’s be clear here — Bill Jensen never painted on this small a surface because it had no historical precedence). He used an inexpensive, mass-produced product, the same kind that comes in “paint by number” kits and carries associations with “Sunday painters.” No wonder his defiance went largely unnoticed, particularly when the ’80s rolled around.
Dana Schutz, who is in her mid-30s, belongs to the generation of artists who grew up in an epoch where painting was routinely thought of as a dead practice. One couldn’t just be a painter, because doing so would be to enter a dusty domain crammed with empty signifiers. It would mean you were doing something that was obsolete (and reviled) — like speaking Latin to the drugstore cashier. The lines were pretty clear: dumb people became painters; smart people became conceptual artists who painted only when and if the subject called for it. This viewpoint might have started out as speculation, but now it’s a stupid and persistent prejudice.
Jenna Spevack’s current exhibition at Mixed Greens seems take a shot at this popular preoccupation. Eight Extraordinary Greens is part public service announcement, part experiment in farming and part installation.
BravinLee Programs in Chelsea has one of the most eye-popping shows currently on display in the city’s art galleries … and it’s from the man who brought us such cult classics as Blade Runner (1982), Aliens (1986) and Tron (1982).
Davide Quagliola (aka Quayola) an Italian digital artist, loves art. He loves his Roman heritage, brimming with Renaissance and Baroque innuendos. And he loves classical images, and the beauty of the algorithm.
Chuck Webster is in his early 40s. He has been showing regularly in New York for nearly a decade. This is his sixth show at ZieherSmith since 2003.
Upstairs from “Larry,” in the Carlyle Galleries Building at 980 Madison Avenue, Adam Lindemann’s latest art toy, Venus over Manhattan, was unveiled to the press Wednesday morning.
Dirt is getting its moment in the sun. A cluster of recent shows in Chelsea and downtown make the most of soil, making it a good time to think about earth art again.
In unofficial conjunction with the inauguration of Frieze New York on Randall’s Island, the galleries on Chelsea’s 26th Street decided to go big and throw a block party last Saturday. If there is one kind of party that galleries excel at, it’s glamorous and exclusive after-hours functions, on a rooftop suite somewhere far above the streets of Chelsea; if there’s one area where galleries are found unanimously wanting, it’s dealing with the public, with “regular” people, the viewers who venture through their doors simply to look and not to buy. Considering this, it was surprising and encouraging to see high-end Chelsea galleries reaching out, in a coordinated effort, to the art-going public.
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