Early Saturday morning, at 1:06am according to police, artist Kenny Scharf, 55, was apprehended by the NYPD for graffiti in Brooklyn’s East Williamsburg industrial park.
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When we first heard that artist Kenny Scharf would be teaming up with Doughnut Plant to create a limited-edition line of donuts, we knew we had to have them … and then review them.
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Thirty-two years after being labeled the “first radical art show of the ’80s,” the Times Square Show, a raucous and revolutionary DIY art exhibition held in an abandoned massage parlor on 41st Street and Seventh Avenue in the old dirty and devastated Times Square, has been revived by the Hunter College Art Galleries in the exhibition Times Square Show Revisited.
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MTV is trying to rekindle the “visual playground” of the 1980s and they hope the new art commercials by Rashaad Newsome, Mickalene Thomas, Tala Madani, Jani Ruscica and Mads Lynnerup will help them do it.
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Underground in Kenny Scharf’s Cosmic Cavern, a Williamsburg basement covered from floor to ceiling with neon toys, furniture, disco-balls, and murals where Scharf holds dance parties, last Saturday night, I, along with about 250 attendees, traveled to the place where the wild things are with Michael Alan’s Living Installation.
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Drawn by an over-900 people attending Facebook events page and a plug on GAYLETTER two months ago, I wandered into the opening of :) by FriendsWithYou at The Hole and left feeling a mixture of what Dr. Hunter S. Thompson described as “fear and loathing.” Now, a few days before the exhibition’s closing, I revisited :) to see if my opinion of the art would change without the unseasonable near 100 degree heat, crowded gallery and drunkenness. It didn’t.
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Thirty-five years after the release of The Ramones’ debut album, a punk attitude has erupted on 23rd Street in the heart of Chelsea during the normally bleak and deserted summer gallery months with the Steven Kasher Gallery’s “Rude and Reckless: Punk/Post-Punk Graphics, 1976-1982″ and the I-20 Gallery’s “MAKE Skateboards.”
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I really don’t know what happened to Wynwood Walls, but this year’s event was a major let down after last year’s fun-filled festivities. If last year’s evening bash was an unexpected mix of murals, Sissy Bounce, and bold-faced art names, all organized by Jeffrey Deitch, the current director of LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art, this year’s event is reputedly the work of Deitch’s “ghost” dealer, Kathy Grayson, whose The Hole Gallery has been trying to fill the gap left by Deitch. This was opening night and it felt like a casual block party. Maybe it was the new restaurant that sits on the corner of the property that reigned in the freak antics, but the energy was unfortunately more subdued than I expected.
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There’s no point in giving you a “review” of the mothership of art fairs in Miami, Art Basel Miami Beach, so I thought a photo essay with some observations were more appropriate.
I admit that I got a little bored after three hours of wandering around. I found myself seeing the same thing and getting the same numbness I get during marathon holiday shopping trips or walks through ancient souks … there’s only so much merchandise you can see in one stop.
It was still refreshing to see some galleries display the prices of their wares freely, and examples of excellent abstraction by names mostly absent from the art history survey books, but I was most shocked to discover what must be the most awful Basquiat I have even seen in my life.
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Kenny Scharf, druggy painter of 80s fame, has covered a Bowery wall with his psychedelic blobs. This isn’t just any wall, though. Previously curated by Deitch Gallery, now The Hole NYC, this wall originally played host a Keith Haring mural and has recently been the site of Shepard Fairey, Os Gemeos, and, most recently, Barry McGee projects.
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