Banksy at Vanina Holasek

You've got to give them credit for trying. Perhaps the world's most famous street-artist, Banksy has long been a personal favorite of mine—I think he's clever and creative, plucky and genuine, and I find his work to be enormously appealing, both in content and visual style—and was thrilled to stumble across a couple of his pieces on the streets of his native London a couple of years ago.

But Banksy on paper, framed behind glass? Banksy for sale... and, by the way, for astonishing amounts of money? In no way do I begrudge the guy his success, but wouldn't his stuff lose all of its impact in a gallery setting? Well, mostly... yes, in fact it does. Not that the Vanina Holasek gallery show isn't worth seeing—even if you're not a fan, there's enough original ideas, well executed, to recommend it—but, maybe more than anything, it certainly did make me re-appreciate the miracle of last December's Wooster on Spring show.


In some ways, the narrow, stand-alone, three-story townhouse of Vanina Holasek is the perfect gallery for such a show, and everyone worked mighty hard to create an atmosphere that at least somewhat evokes (however implausibly) the grit and spontaneity of the street, or a squat. Banksy's mascot rubber rats are everywhere, for example, and there's lots of police tape and paint splatters and the like. Problem is, because they also wanted to sell the stuff, it's not like Banksy could just go in and tag the walls (again, HUGE re-appreciation of the Wooster on Spring show!)

Anyway, there are many of the artist's greatest hits here, most of which I love, all packed into the gallery's three stories, and it was definitely a pleasure to see these pieces "live", even in print form. In the end, I think Banksy and Vanina Holasek did a fine job with an extremely difficult assignment. And even if it doesn't entirely work, well, heck, it's better than nothing.


Banksy Does New York runs through December 29. Vanina Holasek is located at 502 West 27th Street, just off of 10th Avenue. If you can't afford several hundred thousand dollars for a signed piece, they are also selling $50 T-shirts and $55 catalogs. My advice? Get Wall and Piece instead, available in lots of places for under $30. It's written by Banksy and filled with hundreds of great images of his stuff out in the world.

The Geometry of Hope at the Grey Art Gallery

I was finally able to stop by NYU's Grey Gallery last weekend to check out the Latin American Abstract Art exhibition, an interesting, occasionally striking and cool collection of paintings and sculptures from the 1930s through the 1970s; works united by their geometric, mathematical structure and, in the words of the catalog, "a Utopian belief in progress and idealism," or the opposite of the "Geometry of Fear" that apparently dominated the art world in postwar Britain. This is not a destination show by any means, but the great thing about the Grey Gallery is that it's on your way to most everywhere, and it's almost (or completely) free.

The exhibit is organized by city of origin: Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janiero, Paris (?), and Caracas. I liked the visual vibrations of the wall sculptures of France's Carlos Cruz, the largest of which is below, seen from the front and the side.


The Brazilians, too, had some great stuff, including the piece at top by Hélio Oiticica, and these minimalist pencil drawings.

Not at all to my surprise, however, I liked the Argentinians the best—their energy and cleverness (and, in another context, gorgeousness)—including the three paintings below by Tomás Maldonado, Virgilio Villalba, and Gregorio Vardánega, respectively.



The Grey Art Gallery is located on 100 Washington Square East, between Waverly and Washington Places, right across the street from the park. There is a $3 suggested donation, which I waived without getting any dirty looks. The gallery is closed Sundays and Mondays.

Jim Isermann at Deitch Projects

A few years back I asked a friend of mine if she could please recommend a few things to do in Soho to entertain some out-of-town visitors. Her thorough and thoughtful list included this bit of advice: "Deitch usually has cool shows..." Simple enough, but I'm always reminded of (and usually take action on) her almost-throwaway line when I'm wandering Southern Soho—mostly because she was, as usual, totally right.

Even when the art itself doesn't completely engage me, the generally playful Deitch sensibility, the large open space, and, in the summer, the blast of air conditioning, all always make it worth a look. Like last week, for instance, when I stopped in to see Jim Isermann's Vinyl Smash-Up, 1999 - 2007, for which the artist had covered the huge gallery walls floor-to-ceiling with six different decal pieces, all running into one another.

Now, I was less than blown away by these designs, perhaps especially now, in the age of bliks. Isermann's primary palette isn't exactly my favorite, either. But still, there is something powerful about the overall effect of such a big room, vinyled up so bright. For scale, that's my messenger bag on the floor in the picture below.

And if there's not something cool going on inside Deitch Projects, there usually is across the street. On this day, for example, these two papered-on crushed cones...



And this three-dimensional Stickman piece...

Jim Isermann: Vinyl Smash-Up, 1999-2007, will be on exhibit through August 4. Deitch Projects is located on Wooster Street, just south of Grand. There is also a Deitch gallery around the corner, on Grand Street, just east of Wooster.

Karine Laval at Bonni Benrubi Gallery

OK, first things first: Karine Laval is a friend of mine. More specifically, she's my sister's longtime roommate, and most of my family was at her opening last night... Dad, Mom, step-mom, brother, sister, and, as it worked out, the increasingly tanned and teenager-y Bo and Co. So take whatever kind words I have to say about Karine's photography with all that in mind. Of course, if I didn't like her stuff I would just not write about it, as she most definitely doesn't need my help with her career.

Anyway, Karine's new exhibition is called Leisure, and features a dozen or so mid- to large-sized photographs of people in pursuit of just that. Many of these luscious prints are done up in her signature, beautifully flat and bleached-out colors, and all highlight Karine's keen eye for the unexpected perspective, or composition. After much discussion among the three of us, Bo, Co and I picked our three favorites: the lonely, humbling beauty of Patagonia, above (Co especially loved the way the water was "all one color"); the whimsical Untitled #58, at top, taken on a Moroccan beach and which I can't help but read as spelling out "love"; and the exuberant Untitled #36, below, of leapers in Marseille.

I mean, just in case you see the show, and feel like buying us a present.


Bonni Benrubi gallery is located on the 13th floor of the Fuller Building, on 57th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues. Karine' exhibition will be up through September 15. Karine also sells some of her work through Artnet, here.

Van Gogh and Expressionism at Neue Galerie

Despite my usual resentments toward the Neue Galerie—too expensive for such a small space (an exclusionary tactic?); too uptight, with no one under the age of 12 allowed—I decided to swallow my righteousness and check out the Van Gogh and Expressionism show. And while there certainly were a number of beautiful works on display here, the whole thing had a somewhat stale, been-there-done-that feel to it. In fact, I wish I held on to my indignation a little longer, and skipped the exhibit entirely.

The concept is simple: how Vincent Van Gogh, both in his creative techniques as well as his emotional intensity, posthumously influenced the works and lives of Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Vasily Kandinsky, Otto Dix and others of their German/Austrian Expressionistic ilk. Fine. But many, if not most, of these works—there are 60 pieces in all, both drawings and paintings—seem to be from the Neue Galerie's permanent collection, so if you've been here before, you've seen these Klimts. If you came for the Schiele show last year, you've seen these Schieles. If you went to the Van Gogh exhibit at the Met in 2005, you've seen many of these VVGs. Again, there is some magnificent art here—I particularly liked the Kandinskys, and the portraits by Oskar Kokoschka, and perhaps most of all a series of graphic, dynamic Kirchner woodcuts hanging in the upstairs hallway—and I know I wouldn't sound so cranky if I hadn't paid $15 to see these six small rooms. But I did. So I am.

The Neue Galerie is located on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 86th Street. The Van Gogh and Expressionism exhibit runs through July 2. Admission is $15 (as much as $14.99 more than the pay-what-you-wish Metropolitan Museum across the street), and no one under 12 is allowed; under 16 must be accompanied by an adult.

Open City: Tools for Public Action at Eyebeam

I finally made it over to Eyebeam on Saturday for Open City, a lively, clever, funny (although often familiar) and engaging (if slightly amateurish) exhibition of the "current media and tactics" of various street art practitioners, including taggers and pranksters, guerrilla sculptors and performers. Overall, Debbie and I liked the show a lot (some "booths" more than others, to be sure), though we wished the video installations had been better handled. Only Improv Everywhere broke out the flat screen, to excellent effect, while everyone else was left with too huge, poorly lit wall projections. Either way, there's lots of interesting ideas and techniques on hand. Here's a quick look at a few highlights...

Those geniuses over at the Graffiti Research Lab have several works up, including a video of the Night Writer (in a much more clear format here than you'll see at the show), Laser Tag (this is amazing: watch it here), and their brilliant LED Throwies, set beautifully to music here.


Aram Bartholl has a few projects on display, such as this one, for which he placed a "life-size" Google Maps marker balloon in the courtyard of a building complex...


I liked this quite a bit, from a group of Detroit artists called Object Orange, who are seeking to call attention to that area's housing problem by painting dozens of dilapidated buildings in "Tiggerific Orange."


This graffiti-writing robot—programmed to spell out specific words and phrases, releasing shots of spray to form the letters in the manner of a team of skywriters—was pretty awesome, courtesy of the Institute of Applied Autonomy...


Borf contributed a stencil...


Charlie Todd's Improv Everywhere "booth" focused on just a few of his pranks, including the time they pretended to be U2 and played on a rooftop across the street from Madison Square Garden, where the real U2 was playing that night... or their annual No Pants Subway ride (below)....


Or their Best Buy ruse, when 80 agents infiltrated the store on 23rd Street in full employee regalia and stood around as if they worked there... Hey, wait a minute... what's that picture in the middle there, on the lower left-hand row....???


Holy smokes it's those crazy pranksters Scoboco! Now hanging in a Chelsea gallery!


Open City will be at Eyebeam, on 540 West 21st Street, through this Saturday April 7, only.

Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle at Grey Art Gallery

Before Debbie and I went to The Grey Gallery at NYU a couple of weeks ago, I knew nothing about Wallace Berman and the loose community of beatnik/hippie experimental artists who swirled around him in Southern California in the 1950s and '60s. But after about an hour of looking at these people's (often beautiful) portraits and reading their (often incisive) little bios and seeing their (sometimes engaging) artistic creations and even watching them play softball in an (often boring) movie by Toni Basil (yes, she of the "Oh-Mickey-you're-so-fine..." ditty), I couldn't help but feel a strange sense of misplaced longing, a sensation I call "nostalgia for a life I never had."

Semina refers to Berman's avant-garde magazine, which was a showcase of sorts for the poems, collages, photographs, drawings and writings of the members of his circle, and the complete nine-issue run (self-published between 1955 and 1964) is on display here. But most of the show is structured like this: photograph and brief write-up of an artist, how he or she is connected to Berman, accompanied by a few pieces of the person's work. The art itself is somewhat of a mixed bag—the highlights, as Debbie pointed out, being the terrific photography of the portraits themselves, as well as much of the collage work—but the show does an excellent job at capturing a time and a place and a specific creative energy. There is definitely an appealing, playful, even hopeful vibe to the whole exhibit, even though many of these men and women died young after living hard. Most of the more than 50 artists here were strangers to me, and the names I did recognize I usually knew from some other context, like Dean Stockwell, Bobby Driscoll, Dennis Hopper and the aforementioned Toni Basil.


The Grey Art Gallery at NYU is located at 100 Washington Square East (right across the street from the park); the Semina Culture show is free, and runs through March 31.

Scope at Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center

Scoboco felt like looking at some art yesterday (well... I felt like it, and Bo and Co were game). But instead of wading through the throngs for hours at the massive Armory show over at the pier, we decided to take in the far more manageable, less expensive, easier to get to, and less crowded Scope International Contemporary Art Fair, located in a big white tent in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center, just south of the Metropolitan Opera House. Here, 67 galleries had booths crammed with what I imagine they perceive as their latest and hottest stuff. As you can imagine, some of it was exciting, some of it was awful, some of it was pretty ho-hum, but the three of us had a lot of laughs as we chit-chatted strolled our way through the maze, taking it all in. If you're on the Upper West Side Sunday or Monday, it's definitely worth a look. Heck, we even bought an original piece! Here's some pictures, starting with the "box office", where it was $10 for me, and Bo and Co were free...


These miniature trees with aluminum shadows were nice...


Goofy pieces like this one are always a welcome addition to our art-gazing...


One of several awesome collages by Michael Anderson. We especially liked the way he chopped up images of graffiti for the background...


This piece, called "Murmur I" by Richard Barnes, was amazing. It's a photograph, and those are bats. There were several in this series, and the accompanying video was totally mesmerizing...


Our favorite of the many light-based works...


This is a detail from Tessa Farmer's kind of gross but also pretty cool piece—called something like Flying the Frog Ship—that was constructed from dried insect carcasses. There were dozens of minuscule "fighter planes" buzzing around this "mother ship"...


My favorite work of the day might have been by Deborah Grant, a series of eight or ten stark, collage-y pieces with hand-drawn type. Here's one...


More Deborah Grant...

Finally, the lure of becoming a collector proved too powerful to resist...


Waiting for the artist Jason Metcalf to deliver the goods from his tiny "studio"...


Scoboco's first piece in what will almost certainly be a truly important collection: