navigating the narrative in art and design

New Work by Andrew Robinson (Acrstudio)

2008-06-11T19:35:00.001-05:00

New Work by Andrew Robinson (Arcstudio)
Originally uploaded by hragvartanian.

Hrag Vartanian mentions my work from his visit to the Bushwick Open Studios 2008. Here is a shot of some works hanging on the walls of my studio at that time.
From left to right:
Left: Crime Drama (blue tondo)
Center: (working title: When the gods are at war salvation is in the arts)
Right: Morass

2008-02-15T15:07:00.002-05:00

view my portfolio:
coroflot.com/acrstudio

Open Studios in NYC Fall 07

2007-11-21T22:23:00.000-05:00

Making ones way through the maze of art produced and exhibited in our time and in our city while trying to form an opinion of ones own, can be a challenge to say the least. But I thought this week I would step around the white cubes of NYC and plunge head first into looking, by going straight to the source, the artist and their many open studios, yes my dears I went to Brooklyn and beyond. It's a great way to see art for your self. Mind you it can be a challenge, especially when there are many studios to enter with the occasional brooding artist on the other side of the door awaiting your entry, with cheap wine and old cheese on paper plates. But that is the price to pay to see something new. And in the end there are lots of opportunities to look and talk about art. It's my favorite way of looking at art.

There were over a hundred open studios during the Annual Gowanus Artists' Studio Tour last month, and on that parade were potters, painters, sculptors, stained glass makers, and the like. A high point on this tour was seeing the ceramic sculptures by Pamela Sunday, whose work is reminiscent of Saint Clair Cemin's playful organic plastic and ceramic forms. Sunday's work taps into natural symmetries, and are stunning objects to behold. Also Elinor Dei Tos Pironti's simple and methodical paintings have an alchemist's sensibility to the way that she approaches color layered and drawn out across the canvas. There are also some great art spaces just off the canal. One of my favorites is the Reanimation Library, a small independent library which is building an anachronistic collection of resources made available for creative inspiration. This past weekend there was some great art to be seen at the Crane Street Studios Artists' Community. It is hard to miss this colossal graffiti covered building just opposite from MoMA's PS1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City. This open studio offered a bounty of incredibly talented and ambitious artists. Painter Ben Beshaw had some amusing realist paintings. His paintings often have a male protagonist, (an amusing self-portrait in most cases). In one painting, titled "Rainbow in the Dark" the artist stands with a steely gaze while he cradles a doe eyed rainbow tinted horse. In the background, according to the artist "is a laser light show in the sky, celebrating the rescue of the rainbow horse." It was hard not to laugh at the sheer audacity of the artist whose talent and sense of humor are terrific. Maia Marinelli, a fascinating young Italian artist, has developed some powerful knit and sewn sculptures as well as a series of devastating photographs. In one series titled "Gretta's Journal", closely cropped photos capture the scarred bodies of young girls forced into prostitution. Another series called "Fear of Love" is a meditation on female sexual and emotional identities. Reminiscent of Sophie Calle's enduring social narratives, and David Wojnarowicz's acid poetic imagery, Marinelli's work navigates soulful human commonalities with a sense of engaging mystery. Other artists of note are Cair Crawford's monumental oil paintings which abstract semacodes and labyrinthine patterns. Robert Walden's ontological road maps are a mesmerizing exploration of maps and meditations on the grid. Photographs by Anne-Katrin Grotepass contain compelling created and captured moments, reminiscent of the sculptural orchestrations of Sandy Skoglund, but there is a restraint in Grotepass' work which is more contemplative.

In the idiosyncratic context of the artist's studio, all sorts of wonderful things are available to see and understand. Everything is laid bare. There you can see what led to the decisions before the work of art is wrenched out of the artists' lair and with any luck you can talk to the artist too.

The next big artist run happenings will be the Arts in Bushwick's "Open Spaces" a one day art festival on December 2, 2007. You can find out more online. See website addresses below.

Open Studios and Events

ArtsInBushwick.org "Open Spaces" is a one day art festival on December 2, 2007 12 noon to 8pm in Bushwick Brooklyn. More than thirty spaces will be hosting events and exhibitions featuring over 200 local artists.

The events will be centered in the neighborhoods of the Morgan and Jefferson stops on the L train. Check in at Ad Hoc near the Morgan stop and Wyckoff Starr Coffee near the Jefferson stop to pick up a brochure and map of events. All events are easily accessible by foot.

Here is a link to their press release which I posted on my website. View the press release for the Arts in Bushwick "Open Spaces"

Crane Street Studios 18-19 November cranestreetstudios.blogspot.com

Annual Gowanus Artists' Studio Tour 20-21 October agastbrooklyn.com

Selected Artist Websites

Ben Beshaw benbeshaw.com

Anne-Katrin Grotepass annekatringrotepass.com

Maia Anthea Marinelli maiamarinelli.com

Pamela Sunday pamelasunday.com

Robert Walden robertjwalden.com

John Jurayj - Not Here

2007-11-15T22:11:00.000-05:00

John Jurayj, a talented young painter, plumbs the landscape of memory in his second solo exhibition at Massimo Audiello. This new body of work includes a series of colorful paintings and works on paper that operate in an ambiguous space.

Much like painter Mary Heilman's serious but playful approach to paint and Brendan Cass's infantile palette, Jurayj's abstracted landscapes have rich surfaces. Some sparkle and appear to be on a traditional chalk ground of deep rich flat color that is abruptly interrupted with slashes of bright energetic paint spatter and stroke. Other paintings reveal bold lines that strip away the painted layers to reveal a reflective colored Plexiglas ground in which reflections of the room and the viewer become a part of the work.

In an uneasy manner the artist is taking us away from real world moments through his distant cool focus on color and surface. Yet upon a closer look, below this visual activity are buildings and cities, dwellings bombed and burning. The subject matter of the paintings, central to the artist's personal history, is inspired by the pointless wars of his ancestral Lebanon.

Once a vacation destination for stylish jet setters before war tore the towns and people to shit and continued for a dismal generation. These paintings capture the horror with colorful tricks upon luscious surfaces to put us at ease, as if we might find some calm escape for a moment in gazing upon impotent abstraction.

Amidst the body of robust war-torn canvases are several powerful portraits on paper. The eyes of various men -- Lebanese political leaders -- have been burned away as if with a cigarette in some fetishized moment of punishment or perhaps through a blinding unleashed by national or ethnic pride. These portraits of their blindness exhibited in juxtaposition with the explosive paintings bring down an indictment on the world's deciders.

The spiritual and intellectual comfort I might have wished to find in an exhibition was replaced with a welcome reminder of our own times. The playwright Eugene O'Neill captured the spirit of moments like this rather well in a letter he wrote to his son shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

"It is like acid burning in my brain that the stupid butchering of war has taught men nothing at all, that they sank back listlessly on the warm manure pile of the dead and went to sleep, indifferently bestowing custody of their future, their fate, into the hands of State Departments, whose members are trained to be conspirators, card sharps, double-crossers, and secret betrayers of their own people; into the hands of greedy capitalist ruling classes so stupid they could not even see when their own greed began devouring itself; into the hands of that most debased type of pimp, the politician, and that most craven of all lice and job-worshippers, the bureaucrats."

Artists in a time of war find ways to respond, some turn inward, others outward, radicalized and poetic on a fine line that allows us to turn away from the landscape confronting us, but only for a moment. And when that moment is over we return to the here and now, more energized and clear-headed. Jurayj's personal is political and offers us a succinct response to the blind governors and the sleeping mind in the face of stupid, stupid, stupid war.

By Andrew Cornell Robinson, Artist
Written for the Gay City News

Exhibition Information

John Jurayj "Not Here"
Through 22 December

Massimo Audiello
526 West 26th Street No. 519
New York, NY 10001
www.massimoaudiello.com

DGENERATE NATION - Skate With Me on Vimeo

2007-10-13T20:57:00.000-05:00

DGENERATE NATION - Skate With Me from DGENETICS on Vimeo.

Event at the Rapture Cafe NYC

2007-10-10T20:57:00.000-05:00

Some Very Funny Information Design About Relationships

2007-07-18T15:12:00.000-05:00

Designer Gregory Dizzia has created an information graphic which documents all his significant amorous relationships with the opposite sex. And it is very funny. There are icons representing what they did (eg. Kissing, etc..) positive attributes (nice eyes, lips, good listener) I thought it was telling that there was no attribute for "talking" or "conversation" I guess they didn't talk much. Any way this was hysterically funny. It reminded me of the guy who posted all those audio files of psycho ex-girlfriend voicemails. HAHAHA

You can download a pdf of the poster. to see it in detail.

Jacques Louis Vidal's Wood Woman

2007-07-11T21:26:00.001-05:00

Saw this spastic dancing wood woman at the gallery Sunday on the lower east side last week. I love how incredibly awkward and unapologetic it all is.

dove evolution

2007-07-04T21:29:00.001-05:00

Compelling advertising that tells a story with a point.

Slob Evolution

2007-07-04T21:27:00.001-05:00

Very funny parody of the Dove "Real Beauty" campaign film.

Jim Lee "Altamont"

2007-06-14T19:31:00.000-05:00

Space is a simple thing which can be difficult to comprehend and generations of artists through out history have played with space whether it be the spatial illusions of perspective and Trompe L'oiel or the Gestalt trickery of optical patterns which appear to vibrate between the trick of the eye and mind. And there also continues to be a tradition of artists taking apart space and reconfiguring it, from the cubist fragmentary picture plane to more conceptual approaches of artists like Gordon Matta Clark who famously cut a house in two and Lucio Fontana who pierced and slashed the skin of his canvas to subvert the power of painting and plumb the depths beneath. Material concerns and its relationship to the space a work of art occupies become architectural and emotive when it's working and impotent or even worse, disruptive when it's not. From Joe Fyfe's felt and fabric "paintings" to Phoebe Washburn's cardboard whirlwind constructions there are many artists today who successfully endeavor to push the idea of a painting or the physicality of an sculptural space with the use of raw materials and a deceptively simple visual bravado.

In the case of Jim Lee's exhibition entitled "Altamont" the artist uses the architectural elements of the exhibition space at Freight + Volume gallery to construct a wall that is then cut apart, and constructions are integrated into the space in a playful manner that places the viewer into the figure ground and plays with the lines of perception elusively drawn between his painting/sculpture objects.

Lee employs an eclectic approach to materials and detritus from the street and he creates a variety of compositions some accentuate their flatness, and raw material origins. Other works such as "Half Gassed" use the material of painting (painted canvas and wood stretchers) and yet the "painting" bends and twists out into the space. Its human scale appears to drunkenly falter outwards and into the middle of the room to dance with the viewer. There are several shaped canvases and while these tactics have been employed time and again by artists from Fontana to Elizabeth Murray, Lee manages to make them his own by instilling an awkward playfulness in the manner with which he approaches each construction. In "Untitled (Rust/Slit)" the object first appears as a painted cut and shaped flat surface. There is a rough hewn humanity to the appearance of thr image on the surface that draws the eye in closer. Peering behind the surface there can be seen a hodge-podge scaffolding of sticks propping the false front out into the physical space and away from the flatland of painting's illusion. There are several of these visual fake outs that occur and each is a curious surprise.

Lee's efforts to change the characteristics of the picture plane, twisting his constructions and puncturing the physical space on both a human scale and on a smaller intimate scale manage to disrupt the pristine white space of the gallery and there fore the viewers comfort zone. And in the end the works force us, the viewers, to approach each object in our space and address the emotional physicality of the work as well as pay attention to the materiality, form, and function.

By Andrew Cornell Robinson Written for the Gay City News

Exhibition Information
Jim Lee "Altamont"

May 4 - June 16, 2007
Freight + Volume

542 West 24th StreetNew york, NY 10011

www.freightandvolume.com

Image courtesy of Freight + Volume

Untitled (Rust/Slit) 2007acrylic and flashe paint on linen over wood11.25 x 14.5 x 9.25 in/28.6 x 36.8 x 23.4 cm

Jean-Michel Fauquet - "Kaïros"

2007-05-18T15:36:00.000-05:00

According to Carl Jung, scientific experimental inquiry has often resulted in a psychologically biased view of the natural world, which discounts that which cannot be statistically grasped. The perceptions of unique intangibles may amass a chaotic collection of curiosities, rather like those old natural history cabinets where anatomical monsters are suspended in bottles, and just next to that is the horn of a unicorn, a dried carcass of a mermaid and a stack of 19th century "spirit" photos all presented as "evidence" of the inexplicable anomalies of the physical world. And while each of these things can be easily revealed as a hoax by a thinking person, ephemeral events and manufactured relics are continually rationalized to exist as fragmentary beliefs in a person's mind. A mind where dreams or fantasies are confused with reality

It is humankind's ongoing attempts to fathom the relationship between the corporeal and the spiritual that seem to have led artist Jean-Michel Fauquet to explore his phantasmagorical imaginings through constructed realities, meticulously crafted, photographed, and manipulated into a series of unhinged events and made up relics whose meaning has been lost to the frail memory of history.

While Fauquet's primary medium is photography, his work begins with the construction of settings, objects made of cardboard, dust, dirt, paper clips, glue and the mysteries of the soul. The exhibition consists of two large scale portraits with peculiar implements inserted into the mouth of the subject. There are also a multitude of close-ups of what Fauquet terms "unnamable objects". The artist's initial preparation begins with making sketches of imaginary things which are then constructed and photographed. The negatives are then scratched and drawn upon, and the prints are seeped in oil paint highlights and a residue of wax. The result is more like a drawing than a photograph.

There are images of stairway labyrinths leading no where and yet there is an uncanny paramnesia, a déjà vu which may settle on the mind grasping for some recognition and the comfort of understanding the incomprehensible. These settings where a heap of cloth serves as an understudy for a mountain range allows the artist and the viewers' minds eye to believe that a faux-relic construction when photographed becomes an image of a monumental thing; a theatrical crescendo crafted out of darkness rather than light. These incredible relics thus require a mysterious setting deepened with the patina of a black edge that underlines the opposition to the edge of the image within the image, and the belief or imaginings within the artist and the viewers' mind. The resulting work is an enigma; a created illusion, a mimic which imitates the natural world and implies a divinity where there is none.

By Andrew Cornell Robinson
Written for the Gay City News

Exhibition Information

Jean-Michel Fauquet - "Kaïros"
3 May through 30 June 2007
Haim Chanin Fine Arts
121 West 19th Street 10th Floor
New York, NY 10011
www.haimchanin.com

Dylan Graham, The Stars Never Lie, But The Astrologs Lie About The Stars

2007-04-15T09:26:00.000-05:00

The art of the cut paper has it's roots in many traditions including Chinese and Japanese rice tissue silhouettes, German, Aztec and Mexican papel picado (perforated paper) and most famously the French silhouette named after Etienne de Silhouette, the Controleur-General of France in the eighteenth century who "invented" the leisure folly which was quickly adopted by the upper classes in Europe and the Americas. More interestingly however are the separate and parallel roots in Meso-America. The Aztecs used cut tree bark decorated with colored liquid rubber and hung the cut outs during various seasonal festivities. After the Spanish conquest papel de china (tissue paper) was introduced and became the material of choice for Christian holiday decorations. This tradition still survives today in Mexico. These wide ranging traditions have carried on into contemporary art by the likes of Matisse who created lyrical painted paper cutouts, and more recently the art form has become synonymous with artist Kara Walker who has managed to subvert the medium with her engrossing narratives about the grotesqueries of American slavery and the racist mythology in American culture.

Given the rich history of this art form it is a wonder that any artist can claim this currently loaded medium. But Dylan Graham, a New Zealand-born artist appears to be up to the challenge. He has been working on a series of meticulous, obsessive, even extravagant cut paper silhouettes? His work in the recent past has included large scale installations with physical objects, and dazzling patterns that take over the interior spaces in ambitious ways. The work for his current exhibition at Rare gallery include a variety of cut colored paper pinned to the white walls, like lace. The play of the shadows and the muted colors create welcome complexities in the visual field. His work takes some inspiration from European silhouette figures in anachronistic costume, Mexican papel picado's use of skeletons, and meticulously cut grids overlapping with elaborate embellishments as well as pop iconography used by contemporary graphic designers and artists like Ryan McGinness.

With the choice of this medium and content Graham takes on issues of colonialism, forced migration and servitude. But unlike Kara Walker's interpretation of similar issues, Graham's work maintains a degree of emotional distance. It's less operatic passion and more visual delight. The filigree and decorative excesses of the medium are utilized in the extreme and act as a sort of go-between with the aesthetic pleasure of the line, figure and ground, vs. the distant narrative.

The silhouette lends itself to avoidance of the subject because all interior detail is omitted and yet this abstraction still carries the narrative in unexpected ways. The figure-ground is commonly exemplified by the Face/Vase illusion based on experiments by Edgar Rubin. This visual Gestalt can easily lull the viewer with a sense of aesthetic distance yet there is an opportunity for multiple and simultaneous interpretations of the images.

Graham is in a peculiar position because he is a white male of northern European descent (Dutch) and he is commenting on the injustices of colonialism from the days of the Dutch East India Company to the current situation of privatizing the Global South, through neo-liberal economic wage slavery under the auspices of global corporatism.

There is allot to explore here, and his imagery includes a lot of visual punch. "Rain Follows the Plow" is one of the more stunning examples hung in the center wall of the gallery. Cut ocher colored paper depicts a stylized swooping swirling dust cloud peopled by wind gods, blowing and hovering over the heads of unsuspecting farmers, preachers and pickup trucks. The work is a commentary on misguided theories of climatology and poor agricultural policies in the United States which in part led to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

Dylan Graham's hand-cut paper works are an ambitious and impressive effort of skill and delicate sensibility. At times the narratives in the work feel vague or heavy handed. But the work is still a visual pleasure and is worth spending some time with.

By Andrew Cornell Robinson

Written for the Gay City News

Exhibition Information
Dylan Graham, The Stars Never Lie, But The Astrologs Lie About The Stars
April 7 - May 12, 2007
Rare Gallery 521 West 26th Street New York, NY 10001
www.rare-gallery.com

Bushwick Open Studios

2007-03-27T07:45:00.000-05:00

The 2007 Bushwick Summer Arts Festival and Open Studios will be taking place June 1-3 in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

BOS is a volunteer-run and volunteer-organized event, which will feature the work of hundreds of artists, musicians, performers and community members. It's shaping up to be an amazing event! For more information, check out http://www.artsinbushwick.org/

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¿USTED VIVE O TRABAJO EN BUSHWICK? ¿ES USTED UNA ORGANIZACIÓN DEL ARTISTA, DEL EJECUTANTE, DEL MÚSICO, DE LA COMUNIDAD O DE LOS ARTES, ETC? SI SÍ, ENTONCES USTED DEBE SER PARTE DE B.O.S. 07. http://www.artsinbushwick.org/

High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975

2007-03-24T11:54:00.000-05:00

Entering the National Academy Museum I happened to glance upon an ornate hand written message in the visitor's comment book.

"This is one of my least favorite exhibitions at the Academy…"

I stopped reading because I didn't want to spoil my first impression. However, what with my contrarian nature, I couldn't help but wish to contradict the author of the message. I wanted to find something heroic about the New York painters of the late nineteen sixties and mid seventies who forged ahead when the market and the larger culture had declared painting to be dead. So off I went into the formal Academy galleries.
The exhibition "High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975" promises to shed some light upon a time in the art world when painters were pushing the boundaries of their craft, opening up new ideas about process, and adopting new technologies such as video art and the resulting performance narratives that evolved out of it. The commonalties across most of the artists' center around new materials, techniques and processes all resulting in unlikely outcomes. Since painting at the time was dead and buried these painters through caution to the wind, they had nothing to lose. The resulting creations such as Mary Heilmann's "The Book of Night" extend the role of painting into that of an object. The effect was quiet and less baroque than Anselm Kiefer's later explorations on the same form but still Heilmann's book is a potent object and one of the stand-out works on display. Lynda Benglis's lumpy morass of paint-as-sculpture titled "Blatt" seems comic, strange and an anachronism within the antiquated galleries of the Academy.

In some ways the experimentation and caution thrown to the wind reminds me of the New York art world at another transitional time; namely 1991. It was a time when the market was in a slump, the art world was closing galleries in droves, Soho was dead, neo-expressionism was suspect and yet it was at this same time that many younger artists were pushing the boundaries of what could be art. There was a rapid adoption of new technologies, new MFA Computer art programs were launching, Matthew Barney was breaking new ground with performance and film, identity, and queer politics were raising new questions about representation. Painters were mining graphic design, Japanese animation and a neo-graffiti street culture was beginning to assert it self. Before both of these fertile times the cannon was upheld by heroic and heady ideas about what art was and could be. For the painters in the exhibition their response to their place and time contained an appropriate disdain for the cannon amidst an anarchic counter-cultural revolution. The resulting art seemed to forge ahead tentatively, awkwardly and in spurts of subversion. This generation on the outside looked not for answers but better ways to question. Perhaps that is what we can learn most from them.

Jack Whitten questions what it meant to paint by raking paint across the canvas. The resulting mash up of color is akin to Gerhard Richter's later abstractions. Lawrence Stafford also pushed painting forward with a peculiar process of spray painting canvas which was bound over a turning drum. The resulting effect looks like the static on television channels that have gone off air, an anachronism in itself these days.

Peter Young's odd ball "#13" at first seems out of place in the gallery. It is a simple shaped canvas; awkward in its presence, and yet it has a disconcerting home made quality. A quality that is queer the way Robert Gober fashions a sink out of glue and paint and odd bits of unexpected materials.
The biggest challenge in this exhibition however is not the compelling story of painters pushing boundaries; the real challenge is getting past the distractions of the space itself. Much of the work feels out of place, like a bride at a funeral. The oversized paintings hung haphazardly over grandiose architectural details seems sloppy and takes away from the art works' attempt at boldness. For example an Elizabeth Murray painting while solid on its own merits, looks clunky and awkward hung on a concave wall. And Ron Gorchov's shaped canvas "Cock Robin" seemed to get lost in a crowded parlor gallery. There were many other examples of how the installation and the architecture competed with the overall narrative.

I left the galleries with a sense of frustration because the opportunity to open a dialogue about how these artist's in spite of or in response to the market and the cultural climate moved contemporary art forward, was obscured by the competing visual dialogue between the art work and the stodgy architecture. In the end the art on the walls was compelling but the over all effect was a disappointment. Perhaps the curators will consider expanding upon this exhibition in a space that can accommodate more artists in a more compelling manner.

By Andrew Cornell Robinson Written for the

Gay City News

Exhibition Information
High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975February 15 - April 22, 2007The National Academy Museum1083 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10128Tel: 212.369.4880 www.nationalacademy.org

Womanizer

2007-01-16T00:23:00.000-05:00

The outsider, the queer, the goth rock priestess, the pandrogyne , the side show freak, the trannie and the power of pussy are on parade in the current exhibition "Womanizer" curated by Julie Atlas Muz and Kembra Pfahler at Deitch Projects.

This exhibition takes an up close and personal look at the work of seven wild, irreverent and audacious performers and artists who manage to confront shock and transgress the ultra-commoditized, faux-culture, within which we are usually immersed.

Visitors to the main gallery are greeted with a "welcome" spoken in multiple languages by the ever so talented "Mr. Pussy" aka Julie Atlas Muz's costumed and animated genitalia. The image of Muz's "Mr. Pussy" is featured in a looping welcome video as well as multiple color photographs of "Mr. Pussy" in various poses with props from pipes to a well groomed and waxed mustache and plastic googley eyes. In the far end of the gallery is an installation by Kembra Pfahler of the band "The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black." Kembra has created a bed set tucked into a corner and surrounded by walls plastered and colored with a thick menstrual like red paste. The bed contains a skeleton and several plush dolls in multiple colors. Off to the side a video plays showing Kembra ripping the dolls out of a birthing canal, with thick red blood spurting and an unnerving audio track akin to the tinkle of a small girl's musical jewelry box. Another treat on the opposite wall is the visual variety of surgical and anatomical photography and a horrific gumball machine filled with blood stained dried up tampons and various examples of spinning taxidermy. This wonder cabinet of pandrogyne creations is brought to us by Breyer P-Orridge, the artistic entity and brainchild of Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, the latter of "Throbbing Gristle" fame. These two gender variant activists / performance artists explore and deconstruct a culturally imposed narrative which resides in the environment of the body. According to P-Orridge

"It's not about gender... Some feel like a man trapped in a woman's body, others like a woman trapped in a man's body. The pandrogyne says, I just feel trapped in a body. The body is simply the suitcase that carries us around. Pandrogyny is all about the mind, consciousness."
P-Orridge goes on to say that "...Pandrogeny is not about defining differences, but about creating similarities. Not about separation but about unification and resolution." †

† On the flip side of ambiguity and away from the tumult of the main gallery can be found a queer confessional created by Vaginal Crème Davis. The small pinkish room is plastered with memorabilia, photographs, pornography, and shelves filled with correspondence, and personal artifacts, which visitors were invited to peruse. It looks like the dressing room behind the scenes of a Nan Goldin photograph. In the background is an audio of Davis elaborating of a variety of topics which include sucking on big cock, and ecstatic exclamations such as "Tom Cruise has the cleanest asshole I've ever seen!" This verbal barrage goes on and on, and I found myself laughing guffaws as I riffled through her drawers. Outside of the confessional are a series of side show pin up photographs created by Bambi the Mermaid of Coney Island. She manages to draw out a comic sensibility through her saccharine portrayals of characters such as Bambi the Dog Faced Girl and other hypnotic grotesqueries.

This exhibition illustrates the unique vocabulary of these funny, transgressive and powerful heroines who celebrate and ritualize themselves through their theatrical use of the body and its visceral qualities.

By Andrew Cornell Robinson Written for the Gay City News

"Womanizer"Julie Atlas Muz, Breyer P-Orridge, Liz Renay, Vaginal Crème Davis, Kembra Pfahler, Bambi The Mermaid, E.V. Day
Deitch ProjectsJanuary 06 - January 27, 2007 76 Grand Street, New York http://www.deitch.com/

† The Guardian "Body Politics", by Mark Paytress, Saturday October 7, 2006 http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1888323,00.html

James Hyde, Saint Clair Cemin and Jac Leirner

2006-12-28T22:47:00.000-05:00

A trio of very different approaches to material and meaning merge in the three-person exhibition featuring James Hyde, Saint Clair Cemin and Jac Leirner at Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

The diverse and theatrical endeavors range from Hyde's tilted Wunderkammer like glass boxes to the grand gestures of Cemin's polyester resin objects and surprisingly minimalist patterns of Leirner's raw material compositions.

Cemin has created a number of luscious forms based on a repeated oblong gourd which visually allude to a multi-breasted deity. The "Supercuia" sculptures are scattered around the space and act as bulbous visual asterisks that glimmer with a glossy gooey industrial high polish sheen. A similar material ethos can be observed in Hyde's paintings. In a small gallery near the front desk I watched a man step back and forth and side to side before one of James Hyde's frescoes. A giant green slab of industrial Styrofoam slathered in plaster and covered in a hypnotic green color seem to levitate off wall. Finally the man peered behind this floating green hunk of industrial detritus and expressed a confounded delight to learn the magician's trick to be comprised of common building materials holding up a façade of visual magic. It's fascinating that this combination of raw material is able to produce such a hypnotic illusion. Hyde's work goes on to expose more of this aesthetic trickery in several large scale tilted glass containers. His Petri dish approach to these painted spaces contained and objectified reveals the hand of the artist. By revealing the parts for the whole the gushing paint and crumpled paper in these compositional temper tantrums Hyde moves matter to form an object and exposes the naked process derived from the various stages of its creation. It's ironic that the yoke of art historical precedence in Hyde's joyful approach to materials (see Rauschenberg, De Kooning and abstract expressionism in general) adds a counterpoint to the monotonous drudgery of reconstituted corporate culture. Jac Leirner's peculiar combinations of house hold materials, found objects, and devalued Brazilian money finds a comfortable niche separate from the more muscular works of Hyde and Cemin, even when they compete for attention in the main gallery space. Unlike the facile exhibitionism of Cemin or the material trickery of Hyde, Leirner manages to create an illusion through tried and true Gestalt visual patterns of repetition that are shattered as the unostentatious nature of the rudimentary materials are recognized. A seemingly endless length of electrical wire unceremoniously nailed to the wall and terminating in a shining light bulb initially appears as a monotonous minimalist grid.

There is something surprising and unexpected to see these contemporary artists each in their own way explore and expose the foundations and mysteries of the materials of their own making and do so in a fresh and invigorating march forward standing on the shoulders of giants while not getting bogged down in the navel gazing narratives of the day.

By Andrew Cornell Robinson
Written for the Gay City News

Exhibition Information

"Saint Clair Cemin, James Hyde, Jac Leirner"

Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
530 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011
Tuesday - Saturday 10am - 6pm
14 December 2006 - 27 January 2007
(Closed 26 - 30 December 2006)

www.sikkemajenkinsco.com

Image courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co. Saint Clair Cemin's "Supercuia," 2006, polyester resin 46 x 46 x 46 inches

washing in the sink

2006-12-16T22:41:00.001-05:00

washing in the sink
Originally uploaded by Gayla.

War on xmas! hahahahahaha

In and Out Andrew Cornell Robinson and Robert Appleton

2006-12-01T17:13:00.000-05:00

Below is what artist and writer Frank Holliday had to say about my work in a recent exhibition at the Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art gallery in Chelsea.

Two artists, dealing with an interior/exterior narrative landscape share a location at Paul Sharpe in Chelsea. What is interesting about this pairing is how Robert Appleton starts with the interior self-spiritual, psychological, metaphysical-and ends up with a traditionally pictorial exterior space, where Andrew Robinson begins with real objects, from the exterior landscape-fabrics, needlepoint, ceramics, cards, hands-and ends up with an interior space.

These two artists intersect with their use of image clusters and their homage to the handmade, with polarized results.Appleton sets up his contradictions pictorially-productive/ destructive, here/there-exploring pathos while his subjects deal and escape from their landscapes. He embraces stories of birth and death as in "Genesis," or "Venus In Furs" by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Images of men dressed in suits stand alone in a graphite field, falling figures float in a mental landscape, barren trees and empty procreation fill these drawings with drama and obsessive narrative.In "Morphing," a crudely drawn heterosexual couple engages in intercourse; she resides between two landscape locations, the physical, and her own mental imagined landscape, splitting and escaping the realities at hand. These drawing evoke Blake but with a childlike, bad boy illustrative attitude.

Andrew Robinson's physical mapping of culturally loaded tropes and locations forces us to read the object as the body, and we end up with a more abstract idea. In "Measure of a Man" (2006), a large framed assemblage, canvas panels, Mr. and Mrs. pillowcases, and embroidered donkeys are juxtaposed with broad and loosely painted sections to create a physical interior that can support ceramic heads, a paper hand of cards, and a ruler that floats and hang above the picture plane on wires. Robinson magnifies the object's quality and the physical presence of the picture by leaning it against the wall with wooden supports. The disjointed image is more of a constructed "self" than an illustrated one, while all is offered up in an altar like sacrifice.Each artist embraces history through a handmade awkward humanness, yet retaining a razor sharp vision of intimacy. Although they explore image-making in a different way, the two both share personal stories that deal with otherness, of man trying to fit in, question, or even reject social hierarchies.

By Frank Holliday

Related Information

Robert Appleton "Another Green World"

Andrew Cornell Robinson in the viewing room

Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art

525 W. 29th St.

Tue.-Sat. 11 a.m.-6 p.m.

Through Dec. 16, 2006

www.paulsharpegallery.com

Eva Zeisel at 100: A Lifetime of Masterwork in Design

2006-10-04T11:00:00.000-05:00

Eva Zeisel is celebrating her one-hundredth birthday this year, and a retrospective of her contributions in ceramic design is on exhibition at the Pratt Institute.

Eva Zeisel, innovator and designer of delightful things, has come along way over the course of the past century. Born in Hungary in 1906 she was encouraged at an early age to pursue her creative interests. In her youth she became the first female apprentice of Hungary's ceramics guild. Her precocious nature led to early design jobs in the commercial ceramics industry. In the 1930s she worked in the Soviet Union where she designed with some of the largest Russian ceramics manufacturers. Her innovative sense of modernist design and a systematic approach to practical and functional wares resulted in the creation of delightful modernist inspired modular and geometric forms glazed in a colorful palette. In 1936 during one of the political purges she was accused of plotting to assassinate Stalin. She was imprisoned for sixteen months where she was subjected to interrogation, brainwashing and torture. While many of her peers simply disappeared she was fortunately later expelled from the country. Once she was free she initially went to England, where she married Hans Zeisel and then in 1939 they both moved to New York where she created the first department of ceramic arts industrial design at Pratt Institute in Booklyn, where she taught until 1952. Her designs are included in a number of collections including Crate and Barrel, Nambé and Chantal. Her work has been included in exhibitions with the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art. Last year she received the National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement by the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt Museum.

"My new designs reflect, as always, my playful search for beauty," says Zeisel, who continues to produce works regularly.

Zeisel's contributions as an educator and innovator of modernist ideas within everyday design have continued through out her life's work. Her early designs embrace innovations in form which show a relationship to modernist architecture and ideas emanating from the pedagogy of the Bauhaus. In the 1940s and 50s she worked on evocative forms in porcelain. Some of the asymmetrical petal like handles reveals a sculptural quality that distinguishes Zeisel's work from the more mundane production pottery of the time. Some of her more memorable designs come to life in prototypes that utilize modular porcelain forms. In a design of a colorful architectural screen developed while working in Italy at the Manufattura Mancioli, she introduces an undulating female hip form with a central dimple or belly button. The resulting design is a stunning example of the gestalt within a modern visual vocabulary. Her later work, which includes some furniture and glassware, shows a steady development of form with an attention to details which as the artist has said, is "designed to delight" and this exhibition surely will delight fans of modern design.

By Andrew Cornell Robinson originally written for the Gay City News

Related Information:
Eva Zeisel at 100: A Lifetime of Masterwork in Design

October 4 - November 18, 2006
Pratt Manhattan Gallery

144 West 14th Street, 2nd floor

New York, NY 10011

Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11-6

www.pratt.edu

http://www.evazeisel.org

Carl James Ferrero, "Three Way Tie For Last"

2006-06-28T16:09:00.000-05:00

Carl Ferrero's water color series "Three Way Tie for Last" at the Kathleen Cullen gallery drags the representation of private sexual escapades into the public space. The exhibition is filled with colorful serial narratives telling the tale of misadventures in gay male promiscuity. His work incorporates text and images which are similar to Raymond Pettibon's works in that they utilize a rough scratch-and-gesture brush mark. There is even some kindred spirit with the works of artists such as early Sue Williams or even David Wojnarowicz's personal and political narratives. However Ferrero's quirky imagery and guffaw one liners are a far cry from Wojnarowicz's political art-writing of the past. Consider the outrage of Wojnarowicz written just over a decade ago in Memories That Smell Like Gasoline: "I wake up every morning in this killing machine called america and I'm carrying this rage like a blood filled egg and there's a thin line between the inside and the outside a thin line between thought and action and that line is simply made up of blood and muscle and bone and I'm waking up more and more from daydreams of tipping amazonian blowdarts in 'infected blood' and spitting them at the exposed necklines of certain politicians or government healthcare officials".

Ferrero draws and writes upon the fringe, with a comic honesty which is almost embarrassing. His work manages to draw you into the story line with his wonderful use of color. Once engaged the text is easy to grab onto. For example in one colorful and explicit image of a man fucking another man's ass titled "Viagra", the text tucked off to the side of the figures states "I was staring at his tacky décor the entire night. Thank god for Viagra." Other cheeky catch phrases include references to "bunker busting" a code for fist fucking, a reference to Dick Cheney, a pseudonym for an anonymous sexual partner's online avatar in a chat room. While Ferrero's text-laden images are a far cry from the likes of Wojnarowicz some ten or even twenty years ago, there is something equally radical about his work, in that it lulls you into the narrative using the formality of color and a comic book narrative format. The exhibition can literally be read from wall to wall, in a serial manner similar to the comic book styling of Frank Miller or Justin Hall's "True Travel Tales". Ferrero's work is able to capture the eye, string along the heart and make you complicit with a wink and a giggle in a stark and often laugh out loud queer life.

By Andrew Cornell Robinson originally written for the Gay City News

Related Information
Carl James Ferrero in the Project Room: Three Way Tie For Last
June 28 - August 5, 2006
Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts
526 West 26th Street Suite 5A
New York, NY 10001
T 212.463.8500
www.kathleencullenfinearts.com

Doubletake

2006-06-01T09:01:00.000-05:00

Objects of fiction and fantasy abound in the exhibition Doubletake at the Schroeder Romero Gallery. This group photography exhibition of ten emerging artists makes connections between creative strategies which range from staged fictive narratives and artificial settings resulting in a broad range of disquieting and compelling visions which bend reality to suit their needs.

Alison Jackson, Elton has a Colonic, 2004

Selenium-toned silver print, 16 x 20 inches
Courtesy of Julie Saul, New York

Candid shots of the rich and powerful in compromising positions are always a crowd pleaser and Alison Jackson's photographs tap into an inner voyeur. In her photograph titled "Elton Has A Colonic" an Elton John look-a-like stands naked except for his sunglasses as he bends over straddling a hospital bed while a masked nurse inserts a very long hose up his ass. In another fuzzy image we find George Bush with a shit eating grin on his face as he cops a feel of the secretary of state. All of them are fakes, the photographic scenes I mean.

Nick Wallington's photograph "Carbon Monoxide Poisoning" presents a dark and almost comic scene of a compact car parked on a derelict urban street. A hose is taped at one end to the tail pipe and the other inserted into the window of a car. The widows are foggy and opaque from the resulting exhaust buildup obscuring the occupant and motive within.

On the sweeter, nearly saccharine spectrum of the exhibition are the works of Caroline McCarthy whose papier-mâché "Still-Life" adds a colorful and iconic play with the traditional take on fruit on a table. The weird pastel tones have a chalky appearance and are muddied the way a Giorgio Morandi painting might be if he'd had the same heap of fruit before him.

Simen Johan's wicked little narrative snapshots of kids offer a perverted picture of childhood. In one photo "untitled #78" a small boy wearing tight shorts appears to do a little jig before another child who is severely cropped out of the picture. The image at first appears so innocent. Perhaps something from a family album, but upon closer inspection the picture begins to open up to other interpretations. The young boy's crotch has an apparent bulge and his pose appears to thrust his hips forward in a cocky tough boy manner. The clouds in the background are not clouds at all but aerial jet streams which twirl about in a daredevil air show above. The photograph has layers of power and foreboding, and even if the image is meaningless the picture is memorable.

Brothers Carlos and Jason Sanchez collaborate to create elaborate and improbable psychological settings. They condense their images to the most important moment and utilize manufactured spaces to capture impossible angles within their bold color photos. In "Pink Bathroom" the perspective is intentionally exaggerated and although its affect is subtle the result is somewhat unnerving as much of the attention is placed upon a soaked androgynous figure peering out from behind a pink tiled wall. The pristine setting is jarred by heaps of dirt or shit on the floor. The resulting imaginary setting creates this unhinged narrative allowing many interpretations and yet something unseemly simmers in the psychological background.

Many of the artists in this exhibition play on the edge of a psychological sweetness. Artists such as Susan Graham, Walter Martin, Paloma Munoz and others tap into a perverse way of seeing which on the surface uses aesthetics and old fashion narrative to play with humorous and palatable emotions, but as the gaze lingers the narrative within the pictures begin to unravel. There is a rejection of a notion of pure innocence in these collective tales. I am reminded of the way in which author William Golding introduced his optimistic cast of characters in "Lord of the Flies". This charming group of pictures much like Golding's group of English choir boys appear filled with some sense of humor, and perhaps even an ironic optimism as they are stranded on an island together and yet as the gaze lingers in this exhibition like the stranded boys on the island, that pure innocence begins to unravel and the "nice" surface qualities of a first impression tarnish and point out through a false and manufactured mythology something unsettling and worth seeing.

By Andrew Cornell Robinson Written for the

Gay City News

Exhibition Information

Doubletake, June 2006

Schroeder Romero Gallery
637 West 27th Street New York, NY 10001212-630-0722 www.schroederromero.com

Artists: Susan Graham, Alison Jackson, Simen Johan, Walter Martin & Paloma Munoz, Caroline McCarthy, Carlos and Jason Sanchez, Wendy Small, Nick Waplington

Discovering the brand

2005-10-09T12:07:00.000-05:00

acrStudio

There are many ways to discover the essence of an organization's culture and brand. One way is to collaborate with members of an organization through work sessions, many interviews and exploring the history of the organization's visual collateral.

During a discovery session with an architecture firm, the team of designers that I was working with did several exercises with the leadership within the firm. One such exercise was to break the interviews into small groups and ask them to choose images of chairs and talk about which one(s) most reflect the firm as well as which ones are not aesthetically, structurally or visually relevant to how they see the firm.

Through this visual discussion we gained many insights into the aesthetics and dynamics of the firm, including a peak into the politics of design within the firm and a more casual and unguarded view of the philosophy of the firm's architects and engineers.

The important thing was to engage the client(s) in a verbal free form discussion to gain insights into the visual Sensibilities. This information helped to inform the visual direction of design explorations taken as the project progressed.

Below are some of the chair images we used during this exercise.

Photographs by Michael Meads "Carondelet"

2004-07-07T15:30:00.000-05:00

"Carondelet"

Photographs by Michael Meads

Michael Meads focuses his lens upon his own social circles,
dominated by unembellished masculinity. In earlier bodies of work, Meads captured our attention with the casual implication of homoeroticism placed in contrast to the loaded images of young men from Alabama toting guns, drinking beer, and posing proudly before a Confederate flag.

SEE http://www.michaelmeads.com/studio6.htm

Meads, who trained as a painter, initially used photography as way of creating visual resources for reference in the studio. Lucky for us his sense of painting history and composition is carried over into these collections of photos which stand on there own as works of art.

The image of young men in provocative poses is nothing new; from Caravaggio to Jean Genet this genre is rich with history and relevance. Especially in relationship to the commoditization of the male body in contrast to southern Bible belt culture. And in this context the images from Meads' most recent exhibition are indeed transgressive in that they uplift the posturing of hyper masculinity and reveal uncertain ground by capturing an ambiguous promise of violence or tenderness without relying upon the impossible unblemished male representation so prevalent in the mass media. For example one photograph titled "Love and Peace" depicting two young men; one leaning back into the other, initially has a sweet sentimentality about it and yet the facial expressions of the two men could be misleading, one is not sure if these men are lovers or rough housing cronies, if there smirk is a knowing wink toward a casual sexual encounter or if there is some baited deception below the surface. The same can be said for the image "Mardi Gras Reveler" depicting a man strewn with beads, hidden by a mask ready to reveal him self? Other images are more apparent in what they show about the model's proclivities, such as "Ryan with Clamps II" depicting a young man with several binder clips over his nipples while rosary beads hang loosely over his bare skin and he cringes in pain or pleasure.

Meads men are human to a fault. Like the rough trade cast of characters in Jean Genet's "The Thief's Journal" each man presents an outward appearance often of intimidating bravado and attraction while privately revealing their intimacies in a whisper or a howl. Like Nan Goldin, Meads photographs contain a sense of empathy and trust between the photographer and model while placing the viewer into the awkward position of
uninvited voyeur.

Perhaps Meads own words illustrate his admiration and fascination with the nature of masculinity represented in his art. A masculinity which is neither gay nor straight but entirely queer.

"They were like brothers, not lovers, and
the ease with which they found
being in each other's company was fascinating
if not aggravating. Perhaps
their bond was best illustrated when Justin
asked Allen to brand him using a
blowtorch and a wire coat hanger shaped
into a "J"."
- Michael Meads

ClampArt Gallery through August 20, 2004.

You can also view more of Meads work online at www.michaelmeads.com