Occasionally after going to countless gallery openings or museum previews, I get a little sick of the New York art scene — the pretentiousness, the glut of Yale MFA students showing academic and alienating art and the quirky thick-rimmed glasses. Just in time for the September gallery openings, I’m going to list the things I love about art in New York in no particular order.
Emily Colucci
Emily Colucci is a recently graduated NYU interdisciplinary Master's student with a focus on art history and gender/sexuality studies. Her interests lie in graffiti, street art and New York-based art from the 1970's and 1980's.
Posted inArt
Is It Punk To Grow Old Ungracefully?
On a rainy Thursday in Chelsea, I could hear the cast of the Real Housewives screeching in horror and running for their emergency stash of botox as I walked through visual artist and alternative space powerhouse Martha Wilson’s new exhibition I have become my own worst fear at PPOW Gallery. Characteristically bold, Wilson’s exhibition seems to delve into one of the last taboos of our times: women aging.
Posted inArt
Hunter Reynolds Wraps Up The 9/11 Memorials
Living blocks from Ground Zero since 2004, I’ve never been a fan of the September 11 tribute overload with its countless ceremonies, blocked streets, morbidly curious tourists and nutty 9/11 Truthers. This year, I spent 9/11 watching visual and performance artist Hunter Reynolds in a 9/11 tribute Mummification performance, which was an intensely powerful experience.
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Puking at Mike Weiss Gallery
In Gutheil’s second solo show, she has turned the Mike Weiss Gallery into a psychedelic hell with images of laser-eyed cats, masturbating monkeys and puking dogs are presented on wall-sized canvases.
Posted inOpinion
Joseph Beuys Likes New Wave and New Wave Likes Him
When I hear of German performance artist Joseph Beuys, I think of felt, fat and riding in an ambulance to live in a New York apartment with a coyote in “I Like America and America Likes Me.” I certainly don’t think of a hilarious attempt at New Wave pop.
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Worst.Press.Release.Ever: A Plea for Sanity at Marianne Boesky
Walking into the Marianne Boesky Gallery’s summer exhibition I Bleed Black, the first work I saw was a small drawing of actor Michael Urie, best-known for his role in Ugly Betty. I knew I was in trouble. However, the art was not even the most worrisome part of the exhibition. The bizarrely academic language in the gallery press release made me want to tear up the sheet of paper in front of the sweet-looking gallery assistant.
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Who Is The Artist? Thoughts on Anonymous Street Art
Evacuated from my Lower Manhattan apartment and hiding from Hurricane Irene, I find myself thinking about anonymous street art and what it means to art-viewing practices. Different from traditional art and even graffiti, the anonymous works that are found on construction walls, corners of the street and shop grates pose a difficult yet exciting problem for the street art or historian enthusiast that comes across them.
Posted inOpinion
Joining A Contemporary Art Biker Gang With John Waters
Pope of Trash, filmmaker John Waters, who is known for his filthy classics like Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble and Hairspray, has joined a biker gang. Surprisingly, it is a contemporary art biker gang.
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The King of Style Is Dead or Why Aren’t Style Innovators Getting More Respect?
Known as the self-declared King of Style despite losing an arm and a leg in a childhood accident, early graffiti writer KASE 2 passed away last weekend, adding another famous name to the roster of graffiti artists’ deaths that go nearly unnoticed by the art world press.
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Freud to Cher at NARS Foundation: I Got You, Babe
Filled with glitter, hair, shoes and Cher, New York Art Residency & Studios (NARS) Foundation’s exhibition Civilization and its Discontents felt like a trip into a drag queen’s subconscious, which would normally excite me. However, serious ideas behind the show, including its connection to Freud, bogged down what could have been a fun exhibition.
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Office Space: The Conceptual Art Show?
In 2011, the American Dream has deteriorated to looking like an empty office space with abandoned cubicles, lone water fountains and abandoned family photographs of the past employees. On two floors of the midtown Manhattan Lipstick Building, and only an elevator ride away from Bernie Madoff’s old office, a group of artists transformed an empty office into an art exhibition, 14 & 15, by placing conceptual art around the lavish office, playfully moving objects that had been left in the offices and changing how viewers understand office space. However, much like the current economic state with the gap between the wealthy top 1% and everyone else, only the select few seem to be able to experience this exhibition.
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Finding Where the Wild Things Are in a Brooklyn Basement
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.
