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Tuesday, February 21st, 2012

Tomokazu Matsuyama Edition Release

Snow Globes by Tomokazu Matsuyama from The Standard Hotel on Vimeo.

This Thursday, The Standard Hotel Shop will release their latest artist edition, this time collaborating with Tomokazu Matsuyama. While no images of the product have surfaced yet (update – we were just sent the above video), we expect to see a snow-globe based on Matzu’s paintings. The release will be in an edition of only 30, so best grab one quick. Those in the NYC area should drop in for the launch event and after party.

Past collaborations have included products by Julia Chiang KAWS, Barbara Kruger, Ryan McGinness, Jose Parla, and Rostarr.

Posted by ATARMS | Filed in Editions, New York City | Comment now »

 

Thursday, February 16th, 2012

Print/Out: MoMA surveys contemporary printing

Martin Kippenberger, Content on Tour (Inhalt auf Reisen), 1992, Screenprint mounted on plywood, with unique alterations by the artist, 70 7/8 x 59" (180 x 150 cm). Publisher and printer: Edition Artelier, Graz, Austria. © Estate Martin Kippenberger, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne. Photograph: Lothar Schnepf, Cologne.

Earlier this week I attended the opening reception for Print/Out, MoMA’s latest exhibit to highlight printing practices, this time, surveying contemporary projects and series of the last two decades. Culled almost exclusively from the museum’s Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, the exhibit is as visually compelling as it is informative. A section devoted to the work of Edition Jacob Samuel, highlighted by a display and video demonstration of his portable aquatint box and Marina Abramovic portfolio, offers a rare glimpse at the technical artistry of the print master and his practice. In Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), Kara Walker’s solid black silhouette figures find new context, silkscreened against reproductions of an 1886 publication of Civil War prints. Selections from Damien Hirst’s 1999 Last Supper portfolio remind me why he was once interesting. Danish collective Superflex (who launch a solo show at Peter Blum next month) have set up a functioning workshop, inviting visitors to create replicas of iconic modern lamp designs by selecting a design and pasting computer print outs onto small wooden box frames. The works will be periodically hung from the gallery’s ceiling, growing an installation of art reproductions over time. The participatory piece in flux may just compel me visit again in a few weeks.


Jacob Samuel’s portable aquatint box.

Posted by ATARMS | Filed in Museums, New York City, Openings, Publications | Comment now »

 

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

Patti Smith’s 9/11 Babelogue


Plane Folded Flight 11, 175, 2002, pencil on handmade paper, folded as schematic.

Fans of New York City icon, Patti Smith will want to check out 9.11 Babelogue, on view now at Hunter College’s Leubsdorf Art Gallery. While best known for her pioneering contributions to NYC’s downtown music and poetry scenes, the exhibit presents Smith’s role as a visual artist. Comprised of 26 works on paper created between 2001 and 2002, the series responds to the destruction of the Twin Towers in 2001, while offering them as symbols of the universal resiliency of the human spirit. Coinciding with the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the exhibit marks the first time these pieces will be shown together in their entirety in NY.


Ground Zero and Gold Poured Forth, 2002, silkscreen, colored pencil, graphite, and acrylic paint on nineteenth- century handmade paper.


South Tower Skyline, 2002, silkscreen on canvas.

Patti Smith: 9/11 Babelogue
Leubsdorf Art Gallery at Hunter College
Sept. 8 – Dec. 3, 2011
68th Street & Lexington Ave., West Lobby
New York, NY 10065

All images © Patti Smith. Courtesy the artist and Robert Miller Gallery.

Posted by ATARMS | Filed in Music, New York City | Comment now »

 

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

TAC Asks for Your Support

It’s been some time since I’ve gotten around to posting here, but this one’s important. This Thursday, July 28 Joshua Liner Gallery will be hosting a silent auction fundraiser for Assistant Gallery Director, Tim Strazza, who was recently diagnosed with MS. Tim cannot work at the moment and all funds generated will help offset his growing medical bills as well as day to day living expenses. Tim is a wonderful guy, and as a testament some great artists and friends have donated art towards the evening, including pieces by Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Ian Francis, Dave Ellis, Ron English, Dave Kinsey, Marc Dean Veca, Mars-1, Greg Lamarche, Tony Curanaj, Tomokazu Matsuyama and Damon Soule. With works ranging from substantial original paintings and drawings to prints and editions, there’s something for everyone. Bids will start low! Every dollar counts! Hope to see you all there.

A blog has been set up and images of the works available are slowly trickling in. Check it here

The Strazza family has also set up an additional donation site here

Joshua Liner MS Fundraiser
Thursday, July 28, 2012
7-10 pm
Joshua Liner Gallery
548 W. 28th St
NY, NY 10001

Posted by ATARMS | Filed in Benefit+Fundraiser, New York City | Comment now »

 

Thursday, March 24th, 2011

Armory NY :: Massimo de Carlo+Carlson


Rashid Johnson, Aaron Young (All images © Jeff Newman/ThArtCollectors)

The joint booth of Massimo de Carlo and Carlson at The Armory Show was a reminder of the galleries’ cornering of several marque names of the New York scene.

A stellar example of one of Arron Young’s frenetic weaves of motorcycle burnouts, looping across a blistering sunset of color on aluminum, was the clear standout. With this continuing series, rooted in live performances whose aftereffects yield tangible works, Young has accomplished a near perfect melding of concept and material creation.

Works by Nate Lowman (who has called himself an image thief) and Rob Pruitt (who has actually been accused of being one) were cleverly hung side by side.  Both are artists of appropriation, as well as recent collaborators.

Lowman’s Axis of Evil reproduces a partially complete newspaper crossword. Taken together with its functional title (a reference to the post 9-11 war jargon of President Bush), the image suggests the degeneration of journalism into an entertainment industry and the quickly dying medium, along with news medias’ capitulation in propagating government rhetoric, with the puzzles’ blacked out areas symbolizing censorship and information control.

Rob Pruitt’s piece also dug up a metaphor for extinction. A pair of his signature glittery Panda Bears are a self portrait for an artist who was once himself an endangered species, and has resurfaced in the last decade with a carefully plotted resurrection that is nothing shy of an allegory for the life and death of careers in the finicky celebrity art world.  Ultimately, these images (which he has reproduced versions of over and over again since launching his comeback) were a reminder that at his best, Pruitt is an artist of ideas. From his now infamous cocaine buffet to the Annual Art Awards concocted with Guggenheim, watching his moves over the last several years has been more stimulating than much of the visual material he has created.

Also on view were works Dan Colen, Rashid Johnson, Christian Holstad, Roberto Cuoghi, Piotr Uklański, Rudolf Stingel, Yan Pei-Ming, Jim Shaw, Roland Flexner, and  John Armleder.

Posted by ATARMS | Filed in Fairs, New York City, Uncategorized | Comment now »

 

Monday, March 21st, 2011

Armory Show :: Hits and Misses


Rosana Ricalde (All images © Jeff Newman/TheArtCollectors)

As is the case with any shopping mall of contemporary art, The Armory Show was a mixed bag of delightful hits and lackluster misses. Here are few memorable standouts on both ends of the spectrum. Read on for TAC’s hits and misses… Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by ATARMS | Filed in Fairs, New York City, Uncategorized | Comment now »

 

Monday, March 21st, 2011

TAC Focus :: Sean Kelly at Armory


(All images © Jeff Newman/TheArtCollectors)

Los Carpinteros installation of recent works was a welcome extension to the Cuban duos’ recent show with Sean Kelly.  Four “architectural” watercolors encircled a melting chrome lantern, some serving as an extension to their new Rumba Muerta sculpture series. These are not merely the artists’ concept sketches, but an integral part of the Carpinteros’ overall message making, creating an extended narrative history to the primary sculptural works that were on view at the gallery’s main space. In Nueve Tabores Cuadrados pristine red congas are illustrated perfectly intact and prior to their meltdown into a bright liquid pool of red. A “blueprint” for Sala de Lectura Ovala shows preliminary plans for a reading room. Taken together with the final gallery construction which is still void of any books, the pieces relate to information control and media suppression of authoritarian political systems and are particularly relevant given the current crackdown on opposition movements in several nations including Egypt, Bahrain and Lybia.

Leandro Elich’s Subway consisted of a metal subway door recessed into the wall, with a video screen serving as its window, part of his video window series. A minute and a half silent loop of commuters Though not as nearly as mesmerizing as his 1999 Swimming Pool, a somewhere between a clever and kitschy take on voyeurism.

Though nothing special, a new study painting on paper by Kehinde Wiley and small scale sculpture were a reminder that  following the shuttering of Deitch, the artist has been snatched up by Kelly and is now in the company of Marnia Abramovic, Antony Gormley and Gavin Turk to name a few.

Posted by ATARMS | Filed in Fairs, New York City, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

 

Monday, March 21st, 2011

Armory NY :: KAWS at Honor Fraser

Love it or hate it, KAWS’ solo Armory exhibit with Honor Fraser drew a ton of reactions. From Artinfo’s Top 5 Worst of Show, to the pre-openign six-figure sale of a single piece installation of 21 circular canvases, there is no ignoring that the once underground artist is on a fast trajectory towards becoming a major pop star, complete with accolades and criticisms the likes of Murakami or Koons.

For the newly initiated, we can see the appeal of such playful  mastery of youth culture appropriation, and likely homages to the abstraction of iconography employed by the likes of John Baldessari and Elsworth Kelley. However, for the longtime admirer, yet another batch of Spongebob paintings, further extrapolating the cartoon character into fragmented abstraction, felt like a rehashing old ideas that lacked the same energy and inventiveness of his similar Michelin Man canvases from a decade ago.  Long story short –  Same idea, new character. Flanked by a massive Accomplice vinyl sculpture, the display left us hoping for something new beyond mere size, and eager to see the day when KAWS combines his new found ability at large scale industrial fabrication with some fresh ideas.

Posted by ATARMS | Filed in Fairs, New York City, Uncategorized | Comment now »

 

Monday, March 21st, 2011

Armory NY :: Turn on the Bright Lights


Ivan Navarro at Paul Kasmin (All images © Jeff Newman/TheArtCollectors)

The halls of The Armory Show were aglow with neon and light last week.  Vapid spectacle or successful minimalism? Here’s the best, and the worst, for your judgement.

Posted by ATARMS | Filed in Fairs, New York City, Uncategorized | Comment now »

 

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

R.I.P. Sure

I arrived home from Basel Miami to some sad news by way of our friend Faust about the loss of his brother in arms, Sure. For the past decade Faust + Sure have arguably been most prolific and recognized names in New York sticker bombing culture. I don’t think I can walk more than a block here without seeing their lettering marking a newspaper box or sign pole. While graf writers take a lot of flack and are up against some of the most stringent anti-vandalism laws here in NYC, behind the scenes Sure, an enlisted Marine, was doing more for his country than most of us would even think about. Here’s Faust:

“It is with my deepest regrets to inform you that this morning I received news of the passing of my close friend Sure. Last night he was killed in Afghanistan where he was stationed as a Intelligence Officer in the United States Marine Corps. Sure was born and bred in Brooklyn and recognized for his exceptional handstyle which brought together elements of classic New York graffiti with ornamental calligraphy. His script signatures could be found throughout the city and were a major influence on myself and countless others.

Sure also received great recognition as one of the most prominent sticker bombers of all time. Of the thousands of stickers he put up, nearly every one of them was individually hand done in an incredible array of styles. This was recently exemplified in Stickers: From Punk Rock to Contemporary Art (Rizzoli) by DB Burkeman and in Martha Cooper’s latest book Name Tagging (Mark Batty Publishing) which features an interview with Sure.

Sure was like a brother to me. He was my partner-in-crime and my best friend. I am grateful for the time we had and that everywhere I go in New York City I see his name and know that his presence will be felt by many long after his passing.”

-Faust


(Bottom image © Jeff Newman/TheArtCollectors)

Posted by ATARMS | Filed in Graffiti, New York City, R.I.P., Uncategorized | 1 Comment »