Soho Galleries: From Josef to Jason, 4/13/10

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Soho Gallery roundup.

http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/visual-art/soho-galleries-from-josef-to-jason/826/

A sampling of galleries in Soho last weekend showed some very different trends and traditions, and some intriguing coincidences. At Peter Blum is Josef Albers’ Formulation : Articulation, 1972, a suite of 127 silkscreens paired off in folders. Essentially an overview of his body of work, it is displayed in vitrines that line the gallery’s walls. Most familiar are the three nesting squares in varying shades of one hue, alongside organic shapes emphasizing positive/negative, and his powerful interlocking grids of bars and squares.

Down Wooster Street is Premonitions, a show of Jules de Balincourt’s paintings at Deitch Projects. These colorful oils range from representational scenes that feel either post-apocalyptic or celebratory; to some more akin to symbolism or propaganda posters. A bunch of people on motorbikes exit a huge tunnel—escapees? participants in a race?; nearby are temporary tents like the kind set up for galas, and an out-of-place modern apartment house. In another, crowds of people line a beach. Are they recent evacuees? Clambake partygoers? The potential dual narratives are fascinating. (I don’t know when Deitch turned into a wannabe “Gossip Girl” location shoot, but one painting in particular, Power Flower, became the contemporary art equivalent of sticking your face in a cutout hole over Superman’s body, with a line of people waiting to have their picture taken at the painting’s exploding center. Vanity amid apocalypse, why not.)

Soho to Hell and Back, Twice, 8/4/09

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Los Grumildos at Here, and Black Acid Co-op at Deitch Gallery.

http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/visual-art/soho-to-hell-and-back-twice/738/

To be trapped in Soho in a hellish, multi-room environment that has been, or is, inhabited by mutants or delinquents—this might occur once in a blue moon, but twice in one week? Yup. (And I’m not talkin’ about Topshop.) Once at Here Arts Center, where Los Grumildos was on view last week, and again at Deitch Projects’ Wooster Street space, where Jonah Freeman/Justin Lowe’s Black Acid Co-op is up through August 15.

“Grotesque. Charming. Sordid. Tiny.,” is how the installation by Peruvian artist Ety Fefer is concisely described on the postcard for Los Grumildos, part of Here’s puppetry program. Foot-tall puppets—hybrids of humans and crustaceans, with lobster claws, scorpion tails, and extra limbs—in individual terrariums “play” various instruments, their herky-jerky movements driven by small motors. In the back room sits a four foot-tall tavern/boarding house, with each room of the several-story house elaborately detailed. A chanteuse entertains the saloon crowd on the ground floor; her pink boa is one of the few exceptions to the otherwise naked, basically anatomically correct crew. Upstairs, a woman with long hair saws on a violin. A man in the next room pumps his knee in rhythm. Fog added to the mysterious atmosphere in the darkly lit environment.

Kehinde Wiley: Down, 11/25/08

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Kehinde Wiley: Down, at Deitch Gallery

http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/visual-art/kehinde-wiley-down/650/

Kehinde Wiley’s painting show, Down, at Deitch Gallery’s Wooster Street space, has the unique effect of stretching time – taking you back a couple of centuries while keeping a foot firmly planted in the present. The most immediate impression of the show is its monumentality. The space itself is cavernous, better suited to showing large sculpture or installations rather than paintings. But Wiley’s paintings range from large to ginormous (up to 300” wide), and look entirely proper in the gallery — even the awkward platform viewing area reached by steps.

The title refers to the fact that all of the figures in these paintings are of “fallen characters” painted by old masters such as Velasquez and Mantegna, and other less-known technical wizards such as Maderno and Clesinger. Some of the subjects simply recline in sleep or repose; others are dead. They include religious figures: The Veiled Christ and The Virgin Martyr St. Cecelia, as well as subjects of formal or societal interest. It is refreshing to see the original painters, whose work inspired this series, credited in each caption, as often such sources are not.