AWP, or the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (that’s actually AWWP, but we’ll let that slide), is billed as an annual celebration of authors, teachers, writing programs, literary centers and small press publishers. Every year these bibliophile masses descend on a North American city (Chicago, this year) to promote, mingle, fraternize, frolic, freak out, fight, deal, dole and drink. The book fair is the centerpiece, the polestar of the conference; a nerve-jouncing nerve center of tables and stalls and booths tucked away in the belly of the Chicago Hilton hotel on South Michigan Ave.
March 2012
Posted inOpinion
Required Reading
This week is an ALL VIDEO Required Reading. From the GIF to Dali, from Cindy Sherman to the anthropology of YouTube, this is the way to spend a leisurely Sunday.
Posted inPerformance
On Black Dance: Shifting Movement, Words, Identities
I am watching a black man gyrate in front of me in a thong over gray briefs. A tuft of synthetic, orange hair peeks out from the front of the triangular fabric. His nearly-shaven head glistens as beads of sweat trickle down his face. His dark eyes stare intensely at us.
Posted inArt
On The Threshold
There are a number of things that distinguish Zak Prekop, who was born in 1979, from other young painters. The most important one is that he hasn’t turned what he does into a style or, in today’s parlance, a brand consisting of signature gestures. For while he has developed a method of making based on collage and optical disturbance, he has kept his options open. He embraces both the literal and the fictive as well as intertwines them in ways that are assured and compelling.
Posted inArt
Poor Forrest, Dead and Gone
To walk into the artist Robert Gober’s installation of paintings, photographs and writings by Forrest Bess — a visionary painter and self-described, self-surgically-altered “pseudo-hermaphrodite” — was to encounter art frontloaded with (as the reader put it) “cultural significance while also being visually intoxicating, or mesmerizing, you can choose a description.”
Posted inArt
Your Essential Maps to Sat Night’s North Brooklyn Gallery Crawl
Saturday, March 10 is Brooklyn Armory Night, but it’s also Beat Nite in Bushwick, Greenpointers’ Greenpoint Gallery Crawl and a great night to check out Williamsburg’s own send up of the art fair itself, Arts Not Fair. And we have some maps that will make it all easier for you!
Posted inArt
New Long Island City Gallery Combines Brooklyn DIY with UES Posh
The Jeffrey Leder Gallery has reopened in Long Island City in a charming two-story brownstone building on a tree-lined street not far away from the Sculpture Center and PS1. The space is a nice alternative to the white cubes of Chelsea and captures a bit of the DIY sensibility of some of the apartment galleries of Brooklyn or the East Village. The third exhibition here utilizes both floors with the work of two strong painters who complement one another; Charles Marburg’s abstractions on the parlor floor and Violet Baxter’s representational work on the top floor.
Posted inArt
Scope Kills With Kindness
After celebrating ten years of contemporary art fairs nationally and abroad, Scope New York has decided to make the move uptown to mingle with the big boys. The fair is enclosed in an enormous white tent on 57th Street at Twelfth Avenue and provides a much-needed respite from the hysteria of the Armory Show. Fifty-seven galleries are represented, approximately half of which are based in New York. The Middle East appears to be the one region noticeably absent from the international pool, but strong entries from Santo Domingo and South Korea show that this fair is still digging deep into underrepresented terrain.
Posted inArt
Curators Take On the Art Fair
If artists knew how to take breaks, they’d probably find different professions. True to their people, art-party company The They Co. has put together an ambitious “break” from the commercial art madness of Armory Week — a colossal, curator-driven, thematic art exhibition on three floors of an old school in Nolita. Spring/Break’s 23 curators, both independent and gallery-affiliated, from boroughs near and far, present a dynamic, thoughtful response to the inaugural show’s theme, “Apocalist: A Brief History of the End.”
Posted inArt
Searching For An Explanation at the Moving Image and Independent Fairs
After attending both the Moving Image Fair at the Waterfront Tunnel and the Independent in the old Dia:Chelsea building, I realized that art fairs and the art contained within them are suffering from the same problem as many recent exhibitions in major museums: It’s nearly impossible to appreciate the art by itself without a detailed explanation of the artist’s background and motivations.
Posted inArt
Flying Solo at Volta
Big art events in New York are often set up in opposition to the “establishment.” In reaction to the Whitney Biennial, there is now the New Museum Triennial and the BHQF Brucennial. The Dependent responds to the Independent. In this sense, I would compare Volta to the Armory — they are sister fairs who share VIP access cards and shuttle vans. Sort of the Lower East Side versus Chelsea. Note, the Armory was the first hotel art fair in the 1990s and, at the time, the upstart, up against the big bad and very establishment ADAA — how times have changed — is Volta an attempt to return to that kind of authenticity?
Posted inArt
The Armory Show 2012: A Foregone Conclusion?
I was reminded yesterday afternoon, while walking through mazes of pop-up galleries, tent-like hallways, magazine stands and oddly placed sculptures just asking to be tripped over, that the contemporary wing of the Armory Show — which runs through Sunday at Piers 92 and 94 — means different things to different people.
