THE ART APSE

Who said art had to be serious?

Check out Galerie Perrotin's recently opened Paola Pivi's "Ok, you are better than me, so what?". 

Pivi's first solo exhibition in the United States is whimsical, colorful, and lighthearted. Don't forget to visit the rest of the show on the bottom floor - probably the only place in New York where money literally shoots out at you AND you can take it with you!

Closes October 26

(Photo by Paul Porter/BFA)

In the year since storm Sandy rocked the east coast, the art world has reacted in many different ways. Recently, in a 6 story warehouse called Industry City, The Brooklyn Rail and the Dedalus Foundation mounted Come Together: Surviving Sandy, Year 1, an exhibition curated by the Rail's Phong Bui. The 100,000 square foot

pop-up museum opened to the public on October 20th and includes over 300 artist contributors. 

The grand opening celebrated the many artists involved and their strength to pull through one of the worst storms to ever hit the east coast. Come Together: Surviving Sandy also exhibits works that reference the storm as well as other artists who were invited to participate in the "spirit of solidarity". One such artist submitted a work that uncannily predates the Superstorm. Dustin Yellin, a Brooklyn artist whose studio was one of the hardest hit, presented a 12-ton Triptych sculpture “After the Flood” which greets guests on the first floor of the exhibition. 

(Photo by Paul Porter/BFA)

The massive exhibition kicked off with a private opening event on October 17, where guests wandered through 4 of the 6 floors of the warehouse and mingled with artists, celebrities, and other VIPs. The party lasted well into the night, with curator Bui along with Industry City's Andrew Kimball and Dedalus Foundation's Jack Flam kicking the night off with celebratory remarks in front of Yellin's glassy triptych.

(Photo by me)

My night ended, as I wish it always did, in an elevator ride with Chuck Close, another participating artist, who was on his way up to the top floor of the show to see his two submitted works. 

Open Thursdays through Sundays from October 20 – December 15, 2013*

12:00 PM to 6:00 PM

Industry City

220 36th Street

Sheep have come to New York and are grazing in the Chelsea gallery district. Well, they're actually grazing in a gas station. Dubbed "Sheep Station", this public art program slash pop-up installation in the heart of New York's gallery row helped kick off gallery season and was a welcome spot of dry during last Thursday's torrential downpour. 

(View of "Sheep Station" from 10th Avenue, New York)

In the midst of sloshing and slipping into openings like Pace's Irving Penn show and Marianne Boesky's modernist Mirror installation, I came to the corner of 24th Street and 10th Avenue, where I found a herd of 'moutons' in a hilly, picturesque (gas pumps included) green pasture. The stone and bronze sculptures of sheep are part of an arts initiative based on the former Getty filing station and pioneered by collector/developer Michael Shvo. 

For "Sheep Station", Shvo partnered with gallerist Paul Kasmin and brought the work of the late Francois-Xavier Lalanne to the corner gas pump. The french artist was famous for his sculpture sheep, or 'mountons', having exhibited them for the first time in 1965 in an exhibition called "Moutons de Laine". For us, the quant scene set against the industrial backdrop of the west side of Manhattan offers a moment of joy, humor, and simplicity - or according to the press release (and Lalanne) joie de vivre. Touche Francois!

Although eventually the site will be turned into a luxury high rise, for now, we can expect a rotating series of public art installations for the next couple of years and a few more weeks of the sheep invasion.

Ken Price's Sculpture exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a beautiful, simple and engaging exhibition that stands in stark contrast to a summer filled with over the top art world shenanigans where Tilda Swinton slept in a box, Jay-Z took over Pace, McCarthy sexually assaulted the Park Ave Armory and Turrell lit up the Guggenheim rotunda. It's a bit overwhelming at times to live in New York and try and juggle the onslaught of manic, over-the-top exhibits. What I enjoyed most about Price's retrospective was the nuanced calmness of it all, the whimsical, yet thoughtful sculptures packed into the too-small modern wing of the Met. 

Price's sculptures ooze sexy confidence, ranging in form from blobby to linear, where color plays the leading role. The architectural sculptures are as harsh as they are strong, and the patterned egg-shaped and alien-esque forms are silky and colorful, all with the cut-out motif that draws a thematic line through the whole retrospective. A theme that comments on the wholeness and/or emptiness of ceramic sculpture. To me, though, the pieces, with their cut outs and all, seemed as sturdy and concrete as a marble sculpture. Maybe that's the most beautiful part of his creations.

The greatness of his small-scale works in ceramic were mirrored in the detailed drawings that appeared at the end of the show, which included works on paper from the early 2000's. Mostly landscapes, the drawings were incredibly detailed, colorful and full of whimsy and felt a little comic booky.

James Turrell's show at the Guggenheim, surely the blockbuster draw of the summer, transforms and re-imagines Frank Lloyd Wright's famous rotunda, pulsating with multi-colored concentric circles of light. In the works for years, this is Turrell's first solo museum show in New York in over 30 years, and the Guggenheim's most ambitious temporary installation to date. 

On a steamy Saturday afternoon I approached the museum, luckily making it inside before the queue starting wrapping its way around the block. Once inside, the familiar open rotunda was instead a tightly packed snake of high walls and bustling crowds. Barring any initial disappointments, I quickly rounded the corner and (after many reminders to put my phone away, "No photography!", Really? As if that stops anyone?) I stepped into the main atrium, filled with deep purple light and let out a completely un-ironic sigh of awe. "Aten Reign", the focus of the exhibit, is a spiraling, skylight-like space made of concentric circles of paint chip-like color gradations that is one of the more honestly beautiful things I've seen in New York in some time. 

The Metropolitan's Punk show is on view through August 14th and highlights over 100 designs of early punk culture and the current couture inspired by the movement. I was lucky enough to go on a private tour of the show with one of the exhibition researchers, a fellow graduate of NYU's Arts Administration program, who took myself and a small group of alumni through the show early one wednesday morning in May. 

The guide was fantastic and clearly had a love for the show's history and production. It was a wonderful way to learn about the impacts of the punk movement - not just in fashion but in greater culture. Hearing about the amount of detail taken to mount the show was what made the exhibit really special. From the reincarnation of the bathroom at CBDG's to the styrofoam walls that mirror the DIY, deconstructed tropes of punk, the story of punk's evolution from 1970's London to the couture creations of contemporary style really came together. 

[A replica of the toilets at CBGB. Photo By Thomas Iannaccone]

Curator of the show, Andrew Bolton, gives reverence to punk originators Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, whose designs make up most of the show's first few galleries, even recreating their store Seditionaries in London. The couture gallery, with it's styrofoam walls, showcases designs by Dior, Versace, Chanel and others, all inspired by punk themes. The big ones - hardware, DIY, graffiti, Bricolage deconstruction and subversion - all come together in the last few galleries, whose architectural elements put punk on a pedestal, literally!

What I really took away from the show was the enormity of the do-it-yourself concept, how that idea completely revolutionized fashion and culture as a whole, and what it meant throughout the evolution of postmodernism. Even today, there seems to be a huge resurgence of DIY. Perhaps we should all be thanking Vivienne Westwood as we take a stab at our next Pinterest project. 

Highlight: just when you think the Met is old and stodgy, you get this.