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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
With the news of Jeff Koons new mansion rising on the Upper East Side comes the tantalizing thought of what it would be like to hang out in some other superstar artists’ homes. Studios are cool and all, but the real fun would come with the art-installation living rooms and the nursery that looks more like a biomorphic amusement park. The possibilities are endless, though we wouldn’t want to be stuck at a Richard Serra tea party.
In the world of graffiti, Martha Cooper is a cult figure. She’s an old skool photog who, along with Henry Chalfant, documented the fast-changing world of New York graffiti and unintentionally helped make it sexy and digestible for public consumption. Her book Subway Art, co-authored with Chalfant, kickstarted the graff book genre that has ballooned (for better or worse) into a full-blown field that witnesses hundreds of books published a year.
Since the influence and impact of Subway Art is well-know, I chose to focus this review on two more recent works by the graff photography veteran which were published in that last few years, Tag Town: The Evolution of New York Graffiti Writing and Going Postal.
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