Blues for Smoke Whitney Museum
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APRIL–MAY 2013 www.galleryandstudiomagazine.com VOL. 15 NO. 4 New York GALLERYSTUDIO Blues for Smoke at the Whitney Museum pg. 6 , 2007 Oil and acrylic on canvas, 32 x inches. Courtesy of the artist No Room (Gold) #42 Glenn Ligon, Los Angeles. Photo by Joshua White. Los Angeles. Image courtesy of Regen Projects, and Regen Projects, ©Glenn Ligon In Real Life, All Happy Endings are Temporary, an excerpt from Ed McCormack’s HOODLUM HEART pg. 12 VIRGINIA EVANS SMIT 1%0/%-2&%0 Recent work 4%8,303+=3*6978 “F is for flowers, fish and fragments” 4LSXSKVETL])\LMFMXMSR “Bird of Paradise” digital print 22" x 30" April 9 to April 27, 2013 Artist Reception – April 13, 2013 4-6 pm 1E]XL¯.YRIRH Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 12:00 – 6pm 3TIRMRK6IGITXMSR8LYVWHE]1E]XL¯TQ VIRIDIAN ARTISTS, INC :HVWWK6W1<& 548 W. 28th Street / 547 W. 27th St. Suite 632, 7XHV²6DW²SP New York, NY 10001 212-414-4040 www.viridianartistsinc.com ZZZQRKRJDOOHU\FRP %6'-0)7--2631)´4%68PP 4EMRXMRKWERH(VE[MRKW 1E]³ µ8LI(VIEQIVERH,IV(VIEQ¶\ 3MPSR'ERZEW %,%%6'-0)7- +EPPIV],SYVW;IHRIWHE] *VERGIWGE%VGMPIWM ,31&)6+*-2)%68 7YRHE]TQ *VSRX7XVIIX 7YMXI ELE$ELEÁRIEVXGSQ 2SVQE,SQFIVK &VSSOP]R2I[=SVO [[[%,%*-2)%68'31 GALLERYSTUDIO APRIL/MAY 2013 GS On the Cover: The Blues is more than a mere mood or musical genre. It is an original homegrown American art form that has gone worldwide, multimedia and interdisciplinary in “Blues for Smoke,” a major exhibition at the Whitney Museum. –Page 6 Also in this issue “In Real Life, All Happy Endings are Temporary,” by far the bluest excerpt of Ed McCormack’s Hoodlum Heart. –Page 12 A Group Show About People “Stylin’ and Profilin’ ” umming up its theme in a single color print of the smooching bridal couple, these inanimate surrogates are sometimes Sword, “People” a photographic group she looking like Billy Holiday with a silken haunted by reminders of mortality in the exhibition, curated by participating artist Jack faux-gardenia in her hair, he sporting some form of tiny plastic skeletons with whom they Cesareo for the West Side Arts Coalition, sort of haute couture futuristic suit with share shelf space. made a highly entertaining statement about matching flying saucer beret. The little boy Paul Margolis, another skillful exponent of the species overall. in the snazzy suit and tie grinning as though the black and white silver gelatin print, makes For some time now, Cesareo himself proud to now have all his teeth also cuts a a trenchant statement about “the artistic has been toting a huge fake pink-frosted snazzy figure in another color print by Gecht life” in his “Portrait Painter, Port Authority cupcake around the city and the country to called “Four and a Half.” Subway Arcade, NYC” in which, surrounded photograph the reactions of the citizenry. Jean Prytyskacz also treats people as a by framed examples of his handiwork, the In Tompkins Square Park, in New York’s colorful spectacle in her raucous color picture painter sits at his easel copying a snapshot of East Village, where they’ve seen everything, “Mermaid Parade,” in which contestants his latest portrait subject, an island of calm two local girls, dressed for some reason like decked out in blue bra-tops and fishtail in one of the most hectic sites in the entire dancehall girls in Dodge City 1880, cozy bottoms appear on the verge of falling off a hectic city. up to the confection as though they’ve been blue float that resembles a swimming pool In his five-image sequence of archival expecting it all along. In a remote corner of raft as they wave to the crowds lining the pigment prints on premier art gloss paper, Atomic City, Idaho, a lone bemused-looking sidewalk for the yearly festival in Coney “Polyptych: A Young Girl’s Progress, Central gent coming out of a Texaco station with Island. Prytyskacz also immortalizes two Park,” JD Morrison explores the filmic his hands in his pockets spies it sitting out femmes fatale posing bodaciously in period possibilities of still photography focusing in the dusty road and probably wonders if costumes (what period uncertain) and ornate from some distance above to capture the long the Martians have landed. But in Spokane, opera masks, one holding a white Pekingese journey of a small child across what amounts Washington, where a public park boasts a in a white tutu, in another bizarre print called to a relatively short space for the adults gigantic replica of a toy red wagon by the “At the Fair ll.” traversing it at the same time. By contrast, sculptor Ken Spiering, the cupcake that Air Senegal mechanics also “style and in his collage series of three color prints Cesareo has placed right next to it looks profile,” judging from a picture by Francois mounted in a single frame in a staggered proportionate –– the perfect-size after-play Ilnseher’s picture “Cap Skirring” of one such arrangement, David Reibman speeds up the treat for a five year old giant! technician standing on the wing of an aircraft action of a bicyclist’s shadowy nocturnal ride “Smile, you’re on candid camera,” Cal and leaning over to make some sort of pre- past lit-up storefronts in his piece “Night Eagle seems to be saying to the strollers takeoff adjustment while sporting a pair of Cycle.” traversing the pedestrian mall in Times shocking pink 1970s-style flared bellbottoms. The final artist, Celia Cruzado, treats us Square in his large digital prints. A Japanese Ilnseher also captures the combination of to a veritable travelogue with perceptive and tourist couple look agog, gazing up at the the everyday and the exotic that invariably iconic images of a woman in a saffron shawl kinetic billboards as though they’ve never catches the eye of a perceptive stranger selling vegetables in a marketplace in India; seen the Ginza. A gray-haired daughter touring a strange land in archival digital other women displaying their national finery in navigating her gray-haired mother through prints of faraway places that include scenes Tanzania, Africa, and San Juan, Puerto Rico; the madding crowds looks intimidated. But a in Bangalore, Natechka, and San Miguel de and men enjoying gelato in Venice, Italy. slender young fashionista sporting a sleeveless Allende. One world, one love, as they say. halter and culottes, as she strolls along The “people” in Deena Weintraub’s –– Maurice Taplinger carrying an H&M shopping bag and sipping surreal series of monochromatic silver iced coffee through a straw, looks cool. gelatin prints “The Watchers,” are actually “People” was recently seen at Broadway Mall Fashion was also in full flower at “Tanya’s dummies in store windows and their ghostly Community Center, 96th Street Wedding,” judging from Robyn Gecht’s big reflections. Like the real people they imitate, (center island). 2 GALLERYSTUDIO APRIL/MAY 2013 Robert Cenedella: A Daumier of Saloon Society “ ’ve done roughly 50 advantage of poetic Ibar paintings,” Robert license!) When New Cenedella recently York magazine ran informed me in one of his a feature article by characteristically stream Peter Kaminsky, who of consciousness letters, neglected to mention erratically typed on one the mural, Cenedella of those now antique got his revenge contraptions called a when Philip Roth manual typewriter in the visited his studio. A wide borders around an lightbulb went on over original print, exquisitely Cenedella’s head. He linear in a manner recalling said “You’re a better both his early Art Students writer than this guy,” League teacher George and painted Roth Grosz and maybe Matisse right over Kaminsky. (if our foremost living (Message: Don’t fuck satirical painter will forgive with the leading gadfly me for comparing him of the New York art to one of those French world!) art-for-art’s sake aesthetes!) In the late 1940s entitled “Drawing from Franz Kline reportedly Life” depicting a semicircle did some bar murals of eager students with in ginmills around the their sketchpads at the Village in a pseudo ready gathered around Ashcan School style an instructor gesturing that he later considered with his pointer toward a hack work and was pedestal containing a giant eventually embarrassed can of Campbell’s Soup. by when he became “Thomas Hart Benton one of the big guns of whose work influenced Abstract Expressionism. me early on once said, ‘I’d By contrast, Cenedella’s rather show my work in Brughel-lively bar any bar than a museum scenes do not depart ... Definitely my view as from the distinctive well. Maybe I’ve taken figurative style for the concept further . which he is well known. I’ve often pointed out to Quite the contrary, my students or anyone they rank among else who would listen to the highlights of his me that ‘I’ve definitely Bar” collage adamantly humanistic sold more art and made social realist oeuvre. connections for sales and exhibitions in bars East 58th Street, where “Le Cirque –– The In the same recent letter, he told me that than galleries.” First Generation” a six-by-ten-foot mural, he’s presently doing a painting of a well In quoting from Cenedella’s typewritten completed over two years, may well be his known hangout called Toad Hall (“My latest communiques, one dares not attempt to masterpiece in the genre. favorite bar”). “They don’t know it yet. It’s reproduce his unique syntax, grammar, While much to the artist’s credit he often how I work. Incognito, one might punctuation, or unique approach to spelling, generally steers clear of the celebrity culture say.