The new one is out. Here is a sample:

Eschaton provides some context.

So, did anyone else experience wonky sound while watching Angels last night? I have friggin’ digital cable and their digital recorder from Time Warner. One would hope they could get sound right.

I have a comment on an older post from an Iraqi woman who speaks English and is hoping to find work with one of the international groups or companies working in Iraq.

I’m not in a position to help, really, but I’m hoping someone who reads me, or their readers, might know someone.

No one can challenge our art creds. James and I trudged through a northeaster to see some gallery shows in Chelsea yesterday.

We started on 19th Street, which has two great painting shows. The first is Raoul de Keyser at David Zwirner. He is the teacher of Luc Tuymans, which I didn’t know when I first saw the paintings, but I certainly saw an affinity with Tuymans’s work.

Recover
2003
Oil on canvas
82 × 67 cm

The show across the street at Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert (no web site, so these are examples) is a group show titled Every Heartbeat is Past and Gone! with four European painters: Siegfried Anzinger, Axel Kasseböhmer, Marie Luise Lebschik, and Andreas Schulze.

Siegfried Anzinger
Madonna, blau, rot, blond, (2002)
Leimfarbe auf Leinwand
75 × 60 cm



Axel Kasseböhmer
Yellow, green and brown landscape I
1993
oil on canvas
60 × 90 cm

On 20th Street we tried to see AES+F’s King of the Forest at Claire Oliver, but I didn’t feel like spending much time with the work, given the reception from the gallery guy working there. We had come in from the snow to check out the show, and given that it’s a highly conceptual show, it seemed reasonable to ask to see the press release or checklist. His response? “Sorry, my friend. The show’s coming down today, and we’ve given out all of the materials.” Ugh. No wonder sometimes people want to go into galleries and say, “Oy, shopgirl!”

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Let’s end on a happy note. Our last stops were at Rare Plus‘s holiday gift store to buy a hankerchief by Orly Cogan and some t-shirts by Emily Noelle Lambert, and then across the street to Massimo Audiello. Massimo had an over-the-top show titled Pantone, curated by David Hunt. We know a number of people in the show, and I would have to say the highlight for me was seeing Emily’s first large painting. She is a young, smart artist, and I’m enjoying watching as her work grows. We picked up a painting by her when she had some works showing at the Mini minimarket in Williamsburg in May.

Wildlife
12 × 18 inches
Acrylic on canvas
2003

We first saw Teresa’s work in the Soft Cell show at Foxy in June. I was really struck by the large painting she had in that show, and the gallery already had some works on paper that I liked and thought we might want at some point.

The current show, titled Wildlife has paintings (acrylic on canvas) and works on paper (gouache) of various pieces of furniture. Most of them are floating in space rather than in a recognizable setting. The perspective is often off, and the object often lies off-center in a large field of blank space.

I waited until we had decided what to buy before I posted. We bought three works on paper that are not in the show, but we were able to see at the opening:

We’re headed to d.u.m.b.o. arts center’s winter auction tonight. There are some great works by artists we know in the silent auction – Matthew Callinan, Jenny Scobel, etc.

DUMBO is so nice in the snow…

We may not make it to the opening, as we’ll he headed to BAM for Death of Klinghoffer, but check out Pantone, curated by David Hunt, which opens tonight (6-8) at Massimo Audiello. The show includes works by Emily Lambert, Jesse Bercowetz and Matt Bua, and Nicole Cherubini.

We saw the opening program of Central Station — “a multi-week, multi-venue and multi-city program that will bring East/Central European work into the spotlight in many U.S. communities.”

The evening consisted of La Sonnambula by Galina Borissova (from Bulgaria), Two and Stretching Thighs by Márta Ladjánszki (Hungary), and Serial Paradise by Cosmin Manolescu.

Galina Borissova

The Borissova, danced by her as a solo, was an excerpt of a larger work. It’s set to various sections of opera recordings, and mixes odd, fascinating movement, humor, and bits of sadness. The entire work consists of solos by 14 women dancers, and I would love to see it.

Mircea Ghinea and Eduard Gabia in Serial Paradise

The piece by Cosmin Manolescu consists of various excerpts from an hour-long work. It includes some great dance making fun of machismo, the boy band phenomenon,

and nationalism. There is an amazing solo danced by Eduard Gabia, who wears earplugs to prevent hearing the Romanian folk music that plays as he dances.

Here is a page with some more images from works by Manolescu.

The events take place at DTW, Danspace, and P.S.122. Go here for more information.

This is my World AIDS Day post, in a way. Last night James and I were talking with fabulous health care activist Karen Timour at a sort of “kick-off” party — generously supported by Counter, for the ACT UP Oral History Project.

Karen told us about a program we didn’t realize existed. New York State’s ADAP (The AIDS Drug Assistance Program) will pay for the health insurance of people with HIV, assuming they make less than $44,000 per year, which is a pretty generous number for most people I know. Go here to learn more and download the application. Spread the word! I’m sure we all know people who need help paying for their health insurance.

Appropriately, we had just come from a program, titled Pink Mafia: Movement and The Bent Minor, of short queer films dealing with youth issues at Galapagos/Ocularis. We went mainly to see Matt Wolf’s Small Town Boys:

Smalltown Boys imagines the historical relationship between AIDS activist artist David Wojnarowicz and Sarah Rosenburg, a teenage lesbian on the Upper West Side in 1994. In a “fake documentary” story, Sarah fights to save the television show My So-Called Life from cancellation on ABC in 1994. David is dying in the face of culture wars and an aggressive AIDS activist movement during the late eighties and early nineties. The collision of biographical fantasy and historical fiction calls the efficiency of contemporary modes of political protest into question. Wojnarowicz spread his seed — in a lineage of political rebellion through different cultural times — like a disease. Smalltown Boys addresses a precarious generational transition and the shifting fantasies of aesthetic and political liberation.

The Ocularis event also included a chance for us to see Scott Trelevean’s brilliant Salivation Army again. Here is what James wrote after we first saw it last summer.

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One more item: Matt Wolf’s film uses footage by ACT UP documentarian James Wentzy. If you haven’t seen his documentary on 15 years of ACT UP, you have another chance on December 15.

We spent all afternoon walking around Chelsea galleries. The highlights:

Carolyn Swiszcz at M.Y. Art Prospects — an incredibly beautiful show of works on paper using various techniques including collage and painting.

Camelot Cleaner, 15 X 17, acrylic, pencil, and ink on paper, 2003

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Henry Horenstein: Honky Tonk, Portraits of Country Music 1972 – 1981 at Sarah Morthland — getting in touch with my heritage

Playing For Tips
Tootsies Orchid Lounge Nashville, Tennessee, 1974
Gelatin Silver Print, 16 X 20 inches
printed 2003

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I can’t get an image from her site, since it still shows the last show, but Framing Architecture, a show of architecture-related art curated by Daniel Marzona at Elga Wimmer is a great show. I especially liked the paintings and sculpture of Simon Aldridge, the works on paper by Eric Brown, and the styrofoam sculptures by Patrick Meagher. We saw Eric’s work at the Cheap show at White Columns, which was where we picked up our Matthew Callinan piece.

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Nancy Spero: The War Series 1966-70 at Galerie Lelong — it is pretty rare to see such beauty in angry, political work like this

Love, Peace, Glory
1966
Gouache and ink on paper

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Contra/Post at JG Contemporary — luckily the initials all worked out. The former Jay Grimm gallery on 28th Street has been acquired by Madison Avenue stalwart James Graham and Sons. They have a nice show of work by Joe Fyfe, James Hyde, Nancy Shaver, and others.

Nancy Shaver
Yellow and Black Horizontals and Red and Green Verticals
2002
Wooden boxes, plastic blocks, flashe, acrylic and house paint