“Performance art is human poetry without words,” says Jill McDermid-Hokanson, co-founder and director of Grace Exhibition Space, the Brooklyn loft-turned-gallery devoted exclusively to showcasing visual performance art.
“Some people come to see the work and they don’t know what to expect — there’s a lot of chuckling, people get uncomfortable. They think that the artist in front of them is some sort of freaky weirdo and they’re not sure how to handle it.”
But the experience rarely ends there.
With smoke and fire, blowtorches and red-hot cattle brands, Non Grata has emerged from Estonia as one of the most audacious and evolving performance art groups to regularly come to and perform in the United States. From last month through the end of this one, the group has been guest curating a series of events at Grace Exhibition Space, showing off many talented American performance artists while also giving spectators a view of some of the raw and audacious performance work that Eastern Europe has to offer.
Sandy can’t stop the election! If you haven’t voted yet, you still have a few hours left before the deadline hits, and then it’ll be time for the next democratic sport — waiting for the results. Here are a few ways to experience the returns in an art-friendly way.
Esther Neff has hooks in her conversation that make you want to pull your seat a little bit closer. Her speech is that of a native Hoosier (although without the extra s’s), and it has a nasal tonality, remnants of a speech impediment that has been diminished through voice training. “I needed to learn to speak from the back of my mouth,” Neff said. She talks in a quick-witted, assertive manner that rubs off on the people around her. “I owe everything to her,” said Brian McCorkle, co-director of Panoply Performance Laboratory and Esther’s boyfriend, referring to his own speech.
If you’re hoping to see some art tonight but also don’t want to leave your couch, we have a solution: Beginning at 8:30 pm, the international internet performance art festival Low Lives will begin broadcasting online, with performances from artists around the world, including a number in Brooklyn.
In this year’s Bushwick Open Studios, I trekked across the post-industrial neighborhood in search of art. I found surveillance pets, paperback books, marble sculptures and abstract paintings.
Jason Andrew + Norte Maar bring back the late night with the fifth installment of BEAT NITE: Bushwick Art Spaces Stay Open Late, Friday, February 18, 6-10PM. This bi-annual night is half art stroll, half bar crawl, where selected art spaces from the legit galleries to the DIY apartment spaces stay open late for each other and the public welcoming the public to see real art in real time, one night only. Each of the ten spaces will host new art and offer true neighborhood hospitality in the form of drinks and music in what has become the signature party of all parties with art above all else. This episode of BEAT NITE is sponsored by HYPERALLERGIC.
If Seven art fair has been getting some buzz because of their “original” approach to bypassing the art fair system and creating their own art fair of sorts, then you should know that Fountain Art Fair was the originator of the out-of-the-box approach to the art fair.
Begun by three galleries, McCaig-Welles, Leo Kesting, and The Front Room, this year marks the 5th Anniversary and I asked two of the founders what they thought about Fountain now that’s its half a decade old.
It was Friday, April 2, and my mission was five gallery openings in one night: Postmasters in Chelsea, Flux Factory in Long Island City, Janet Kurnatowski in Greenpoint, and two Bushwick venues, Storefront Gallery and Grace Exhibition Space. It was an ambitious list to accomplish but my goal was set.
