NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 www.galleryandstudiomagazine.com VOL. 12 NO. 2 New York GALLERY&STUDIO

HOBOHEMIAN FLOPHOUSE: The Carlton Arms Hotel, where each room is a funky art installation IVL\PMZM¼[IKI\JW`LW_VI\\PMMVLWN\PMPITT Q[6M_AWZS+Q\a¼[TI[\TW_ZMV\PQX[\MZPI^MV Ja-L5K+WZUIKSXO _Q\PXPW\W[Ja,IZMS;WTIZ[SQ Danièle M. Marin

Image Essay January 5 - 30, 2010 Reception: Saturday, January 9, 4 - 6 pm

530 West 25th St., NYC, 10001 Tues - Sat 11am - 6pm 212 367 7063 www.nohogallery.com

GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 Teona Titvinidze-Kapon “Love Tree,” 39"x27" Tree,” “Love December 1 - 12, 2009 Reception: December 1, 5 - 7 pm Gallery Hours during exhibition: Tuesday through Saturday, 2 - 6 pm Gelabert Studios Gallery 255 West 86th Street, N.Y.C. 10024 212 874-7188 www.gelabertstudiosgallery.com www.TeonaKap.com G&S Robert Gaudreau, pg. 29 Highlights

On the Cover: Rad art all over the rooms and halls, body bags bouncing down the stairs, rumors of ghosts, and even (for a time) a resident serial killer — staying at the Carlton Arms Hotel is a rare aesthetic adventure. –Page 22 Robert Cenedella, pg. 14 Anowar Hossain, pg. 31

TUTEN, pg. 8

Judith Zeichner, pg. 6 Teona Titvinidze- Kapon, pg. 9

John Fischer, pg. 5

Ailene Fields, pg. 12

Marianne Schnell, Levan Urushadze, pg. 7 pg. 28 GALLERY&STUDIO Subscribe to An International Art Journal GALLERY&STUDIO PUBLISHED BY $22 Subscription $18 for additional Gift Subscription $44 International ©EYE LEVEL, LTD. 2009 $4 Back Issues Mail check or Money Order to: ALL RIGHTS RESERVED GALLERY STUDIO 217 East 85th Street, PMB 228, New York, NY 10028 & (212) 861-6814 E-mail: [email protected] 217 East 85th St., PMB 228, New York, NY 10028 Phone: 212-861-6814 Name EDITOR AND PUBLISHER Jeannie McCormack MANAGING EDITOR Ed McCormack Address SPECIAL EDITORIAL ADVISOR Margot Palmer-Poroner DESIGN AND PRODUCTION Karen Mullen City CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Maureen Flynn www.galleryandstudiomagazine.com State/Zip

2 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 GALLERY&STUDIO 3 The Two-Fisted Aesthetic of Hendrik Smit f what the poet and critic Frank O’Hara and purple-violet twisting and turning like Ionce referred to as the “crisis of figurative glistening entrails. as opposed to nonfigurative art” dogged Smit is a burly fellow, and given the his illustrious fellow countryman Willem swirling circular energy that animates de Kooning throughout his career, the even the rectangular works that make up contemporary Dutch painter Hendrik Smit the bulk of his oeuvre, one imagines him would appear to be such a naturally abstract going at the painting with both arms, like artist as to suggest that he hardly, if ever, one of those great windmills so iconic to considered it. In the face of all the self- the Netherlands. Indeed, his two-fisted protective equivocation of postmodernism, approach almost single-handedly (if that’s Smit continues to churn out vigorous not a contradiction in terms) appears to gestural abstractions with unflagging restore the macho factor to the Abstract conviction in his latest New York solo show Expressionist ethos –– political correctness at 532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel, 532 West be damned! For, like it or not, there seems “Untitled” 25th Street, from October 29 through to be as much testosterone as turpentine symbols and all. November 28, 2009. (Reception November mixed into Smit’s oil pigments, and his Here, as in other works in this show, the 5, from 6 to 8:30 PM. ) handling of acrylics is no less muscular. viewer is practically wrestled to the gallery A tondo or two is invariably included in Yet that, admittedly, is a subjective floor by the artist’s sheer exuberance. There Smit’s exhibitions and is always a good place interpretation of his way of painting from is nothing passive about his compositions, to start discussing his work, since he is one the inside out, athletically and from the gut, which by their unrelenting intensity demand of the very few artists today who regularly so to speak, so that his compositions, while our full engagement. For one thing that paints in the round, and he does so very nonrepresentational, can seem as violent as can be said with absolute certainty about dynamically indeed. A circular format seems Soutine’s flayed beef carcasses. Another way the paintings of Hendrik Smit is that in to suit his freewheeling style, perhaps because of looking at his paintings might be to say them, as Fairfield Porter once remarked its perfect symmetry suggests limitless space that they are lyrical rather than brutal, and about another painter, “Energy is a bridge and enhances the sense of expansiveness in that one especially grand untitled canvas in to whatever is essential.” Yet, if the notion his vortex-like compositions. the present exhibition, in which the roiling, of the noble savage occurs to one in the Eschewing brushes, he paints directly boldly torn and splintered color areas presence of Smit’s work, it is promptly with his hands and fingers, which gives his suggest, if not an earthly landscape, perhaps put to rest by the degree of aesthetic compositions their visceral impact, with a raging rainbow-colored sea, is symphonic sophistication and sheer painterly panache bold, thick strokes of red, yellow, blue, in the manner of Beethoven, clashing yellow on display. –– Byron Coleman OPENING New Century Artists Gallery RECEPTION www.newcenturyartists.com Friday, Exhibit open November 6 4 pm - 8 pm daily Tuesday- Saturday ARTSHARE November 3-14 530 W 25th St., Suite 406 FOR 11 am - 6 pm Bet. 10th & 11th Ave. www.heartshare.org New York, NY 10001 HEARTSHARE (212) 367 - 7072 ASIAN ARTS & CRAFTS

Offering a variety of artifacts The GALLERY&STUDIO depicting Visit our store advertising deadline for Lord Ganesh MAILBOXES the February/March issue is and a rich & BEYOND INC. assortment of A full supply of shipping January 8 for color, Asian specialty needs and services January 12 for black/white. items and 217 East 85th St. antiques. New York, NY 10028 [email protected] Tel 212 772 7909

4 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 John Fischer: Renaissance Man of the Digital Revolution aving long been enamored of the with the similarly large color prints more set out to HBelgian-born American artist John familiar to Fischer’s oeuvre) possessed a incorporate Fisher’s transcendent and eclectic aesthetic spare elegance akin to Asian ink paintings. such art vision, but having somehow always Indeed, the effect was enhanced by their historical thought of him as an elusive citizen of presentation as vertical scrolls, rather references cyberspace, I did not quite know what to than framed under glass in the usual in his own expect when I learned that the legendary Western manner, with the graceful linear work, he says artist, who has been more active in Europe forms swirling down the center of the that he often than the United States in recent years, composition, surrounded by generous “discovers” would be having an exhibition at Artmus expanses of white paper. them in the Studio, 75 Warren Street, from November At first glance, too, Fischer’s forms course of 5 through 28, when I visited his studio to can appear spontaneous, like those that composing preview some of the featured works. Zen masters sometimes lay down with his Although his distinguished history as a single broad stroke of a long-handled “electronic an avant garde jazz pianist and composer brush as wide as a broom. But on closer paintings” and a poet, as well as a computer art inspection, one sees that the effect has on the pioneer, and a sculptor who attracted been achieved not with one swift swish of computer. widespread media attention for working diluted black carbon ink, but with many One of with bread (long before his namesake, the minute, long linear strokes of graphite, the more much hyped young art star Urs Fischer, laid down painstakingly over an extended striking, if created his “Bread House”), might have period of time on a much smaller sheet incongruous, suggested a figure more in the manner of paper. Fischer then scans and enlarges examples of John Cage, Moondog, or Sun Ra, in his drawing in several sections, which can be seen the vital and sturdy flesh, Fischer turned he reconnects seamlessly to achieve the in another out to bear a striking resemblance to the monumental scale of his finished prints. archival mature Norman Mailer, back when that The resulting image replicates in every inkjet print pugnacious author was still in fighting detail the subtle tonal modulations and called form. And, like our old acquaintance granular tactility of the graphite medium, “Moose Number 5- 1992 graphite on Charles Mingus, Fischer radiated the which Fischer deftly manipulates to make Variations,” paper Gicle archival digital physically palpable if not immediately the sinuous ribbon-like shapes appear in which a print 2007 40.5" width 72" explicable energy of eccentric genius, to ripple and undulate in deep space, cartoonishly height rather than hugging the picture-plane stylized frieze of moose heads harks in the flat, two-dimensional manner of back to the starkly silhouetted flat color a calligraphic character. Thus rounded areas in Braque’s post-cubist still life out and objectified, Fischer’s forms take compositions. And while Fisher also cites on a figurative allusiveness, or –– in the Matisse, Paul Klee, and Mark Rothko case of some drawings, comprised of as figures who have influenced him two adjoining configurations of close- coloristically, such references are but a set lines side — suggest two figures small part of his overall artistic project, standing side-by-side as a couple. Yet since he maintains that “the color universe even while evoking a human form, or at made accessible with computer software very least some semblance of a figurative is vast and enormously greater than presence, Fischer’s forms invariably retain what is possible with oil paints.” (One their gracefully fluid linear integrity as of the most dazzling possibilities that autonomous abstract entities. he exploits splendidly is the layering of Nor is line a new preoccupation for several luminous and translucent hues Gauguin’s Universe the artist. As a sinuously configured to evoke an illusion of infinite spatial Archival inkjet print 40" x 40" 2004 abstract oil on canvas from decades ago depth, particularly in one long, majestic when he proceeded to explain how his that happened to be leaning against a horizontal print that suggested, for this new black and white linear works emanate work table in the studio during our visit writer, the twinkling lights in a nocturnal directly from the diaphragm, from attested, linear forms were prominent urban panorama.) breathing deeply, as “the line begins, say, even before he switched to computer art However, he hastens to add, “I stay from the top and suddenly reaches the in the 1970s, when digital art was still in away from mathematical formulas and point of muscular intensity or reciprocity its infancy. And although they may not do as painters have always done, use my where motion to one or another side be the main event, linear elements also eyeballs to choose and appreciate color.” is dictated by the reciprocating muscle inform to a significant degree Fischer’s And it is this final reliance on the eternal groups and the breath simultaneously.” color compositions as well, as seen in his faculties of the human sensibility, in The concept became more immediately archival inkjet print “Gauguin’s Universe,” harmony with modern technology, that graspable when Fischer likened the where a wavy configuration scanned one feels certain will finally make John process of concentration without prior directly from one of his graphite drawings Fischer (who was honored in 2008 with a visualization required to create the is juxtaposed with a serpentine rainbow major solo exhibition at the Oberhessiches original graphite drawings that he later of hues that evoke through their tropical Museum Giessen, and has another scans and enlarges to Zen mediation. radiance an abstract sense of the heat and major survey coming up in 2010 at the For one’s first thought on entering the sensuality of the older artist’s self-made Kunstverein-Landau, also in Germany) an studio was that the large black and white Tahitian Eden. artist for the ages. ––Ed McCormack works on paper (interspersed on the walls Although Fischer does not usually

NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 GALLERY&STUDIO 5 Everyday Alchemy in the Art of Judith Zeichner ithout making qualitative appear incongruously funereal. The formal the youthful comeliness of the nude figure Wcomparisons between the artists elegance of their dresses, in darker shades adds a more immediate erotic element to one is about to cite as examples, there is a of the same two colors, also suggests that the aesthetic appeal of the picture. particular strain of domestic realism that they have just arrived from the city, as “Spider Hat” is another painting of a stretches from Pierre Bonnard to Fairfield one woman places a hand on the others’ sunbather, albeit with the composition Porter to Alex Katz. In their different shoulder and imparts a confidence that cropped just below her yellow bikini top. manners, all three of these painters causes her friend to stare off despondently The title refers to the intricate spidery depict people at leisure in settings that with the one blue eye visible beneath the shadows cast over one side of the dozing appear to combine the creature comforts scalloped brim of her shadowy black hat. woman’s face and neck by the wide weave of bourgeois life in the floppy brim of her with the cultural straw sun hat. Here again, riches of a genteel Zeichner shows a mastery bohemianism. of close-up composition Although comparable to that of Alex previously familiar as Katz. However, it is doubtful a landscape painter, that Katz’s severely simplified some of whose most style could accommodate outstanding canvases such intricate shadow play were created during convincingly, or that he a residency in “Cape possesses anything like the Cornwall,” a rugged painterly versatility that and remote coastal Zeichner displays in her juicy region of southeast wet-in-to-wet interpretation England, the name of of the densely wooded area Judith Zeichner must behind the woman’s slatted now be added to this deck chair. company. Zeichner shows equal Zeichner’s new mastery of less fluid solo exhibition can techniques, such as drybrush be seen at Noho and scumbling, in two other Gallery, 530 West close-up compositions: in 25th Street, from “Yellow Hat,” the opacity November 3 through “Secret in a Garden” of the pigment employed 28, with a reception to depict a woman on November 7 from 4 to 7 pm. The Such subjective fantasizing on the basis hidden behind sunglasses and a big show is called “Hats,” but the title is of implicit content aside, the real drama in yellow sombrero, along with her blond somewhat misleading; for while various Judith Zeichner’s paintings derives from Scandinavian beauty, enhances a sense hats, ranging from straw sun bonnets the skill with which she merges nuances of of Garboesque mystery. Here, too, the to Western stetsons to baseball caps, are figurative gesture with the actual material impenetrable impasto, which solidifies worn by all of the figures in her new gestures of painting itself, to achieve, even the warm-toned shadows on her paintings, Zeichner actually evokes an through layered or juxtaposed patches of sunbaked complexion, could possibly extensive milieu, fraught with a complexity color, the sense of pictorial tension that suggest an opaque personality as well. of subtle undertones. Hans Hofmann, referring to the most Then there is “White Nightgown,” Indeed, prompted by a painting in the vital element of Abstract Expressionism, in which Zeichner demonstrates further show called “Secret in a Garden,” one called “push and pull.” Indeed, this more virtuosity with the loose gestural manner was tempted to imagine the series as links palpable sense of drama comes across she employs to evoke a majestic full in a narrative, like film stills. Aside from even when Zeichner paints the figure in length standing figure in a transparent a couple of interior and beach scenes repose, as seen in “Rosanne Reading,” in nightgown. Set seductively against a the setting in most of the paintings is which the push and pull derives from the vigorously brushed blue ground like a the lawn or deck of what appears to be abstract confluence of the woman’s green strangely palpable phantom, the woman a sprawling country estate. Perhaps it bikini, the simplification of her form, with appears as though illuminated by belongs to one among a group of women its barely modulated flesh tones, and the moonlight pouring through a window who have gathered there for a weekend bold blue, green, and white stripes on her into a boudoir, her breasts and pubic of friendship, sunbathing, light summer recliner. patch visible through the gossamer fabric reading, plein air painting, and other While “Rosanne Reading” approaches conjured with smoky white strokes. convivial activities. “Secret in a Garden” the semiabstraction of a painting by Here, as in “Reader at the Beach,” could depict the pivotal moment at which Milton Avery, the shadow-dappled figure where a swift, pale triangle suffices to the casual gathering takes on dramatic of the nude sunbather in “Jody on the supply the flash of light that delineates an depth and conflict. Deck” is more worked up in the manner entire face, or in both versions of “Lynn Cropped more in the manner of a of Bonnard’s many paintings of his wife at Work,” where the patchy vigor of the cinematic close-up than a traditional in the bath. Zeichner’s handling of the brushstrokes exemplify the activity in composition in painting, the picture chiaroscuro in the foliage beyond the deck which a woman standing at an outdoor depicts two young women having railing behind the figure also recalls the easel is engrossed, Judith Zeichner an intimate tête-à-tête. Set against a patterning of the Nabis. But while such splendidly accomplishes the peculiar background of clear blue sky and bright references to her artistic predecessors are alchemy which belongs to the art of green lawn, their dark designer chapeaux inherent to her painterly sophistication, painting alone. –– Ed McCormack

6 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 Taking a Broader View of Marianne Schnell’s Painterly Oeuvre ven taking into account that her contrasts of subjective interpretation however, Schnell employs gold leaf not Eapproach is no less adamantly abstract within the stylistically consistent in the traditional manner of Byzantine than that of the New York School painters continuum of an artist who apparently icons but with freewheeling experimental from whom she descends, one has such found her true direction early in her exuberance. At times, she even paints over an overwhelming memory of so many career. That no dates were included in the gold leaf to lend her colors a radiant gracefully floating forms with serrated the price list also seemed to indicate that underglow. And in one an especially edges in a muted palette of burnished reds Schnell considers the immediate sense vibrant and visually witty work (to which and golden ochres set off by dark, swift of a fleeting moment in time poignantly she uncharacteristically affixed the title “action lines,” that it can be tempting to apprehended in each individual canvas “24K”), Schnell appeared to playfully typecast Marianne Schnell as a painter of infinitely more germane to her intentions parody the neo-chinoiserie of “Pattern and primarily autumnal hues and moods –– than the much in the same way that one tends to actual date think of Monet and Renoir as a painters of of the summer and sunlight. painting’s The association of painter and season is completion. so automatic that on an afternoon in Carl Overall, Schurz Park this past Fall when a member the of the maintenance crew walked by with installation a machine that scattered the fallen leaves of the and sent them flying and spinning into the exhibition air, one thought spontaneously, “Ah, a made it Marianne Schnell!” possible (at Of course, it is no small thing when least for this any artist appears to own any aspect of the particular everyday world so thoroughly. For even if viewer) Schnell actually did make only one kind of to get a painting, her talent is such that she would broader belong to the first rank of those artists view than who mine a strictly circumscribed milieu ever before to make a creative contribution far greater of how than the sum of its parts. not only “Untitled” However, Schnell’s most recent nature, as exhibition of paintings at The Broome reflected through the prism of Abstract Decoration” painters like Robert Kushner, Street Gallery, at 498 Broome Street, in Expressionism, but aspects of subsequent bracketing florally allusive forms between Soho, made clear that even those of us art movements such as Color Field staccato dashes quite unlike the cursively long familiar with her work have had a Painting, have been assimilated into sweeping “action lines” employed in her tendency to shortchange its variousness, Schnell’s aesthetic agenda all along. Her more gestural paintings. due to the persistent impression of a coloristic subtlety, in particular, came Perhaps the most pervasive revelation signature style fostered by one particularly across most appealingly in works such as of this splendid exhibition, however, forceful aspect of her overall artistic an unusual hinged triptych with wing-like was the belated discovery of what a project. protrusions displaying painted canvases dazzlingly dexterous painter Schnell truly But while Schnell purposely refrains on all five sides of the structure that were is, particularly in her use of the “wet from titling her paintings to avoid not flush with the wall. Thus one could into wet” technique to make one layer promoting just such specific, self-limiting view the piece as one would a sculpture, of color recede into another, as seen in interpretations on the part of the viewer, walking around it and literally into it to be an especially sumptuous untitled large there were, to be sure, several canvases enfolded by its lyrically limned extensions canvas in which splashes of yellow, pink in the exhibition that reinforced the as if by a welcoming embrace. and orange of a more confectionery than autumnal impression through her choice In this work, Schnell quite literally natural aspect fairly melt into a luminous of colors, as well as through the buoyant achieves her oft-stated goal of giving the pale green ground. Here, the effect is windswept character of the forms that viewer a sense of being “within nature,” more atmospheric than physical, like she set in motion against a pristine white as opposed to being a mere spectator to candy-colored neon burning through ground. Yet one also noticed –– if not for it. Here, too, the intimate space that the fog, while in other departures from her the first time, more consciously than ever piece beckons one into calls attention familiar practice of setting leaf-like or before –– that the same sense of flotation to the shimmering chromatic harmonies florally allusive forms afloat on a white that we often associate with her more sparked by the blue, purple, green, and ground, the artist again explores a more familiar motifs also animated compositions reddish hues that bring the composition chromatically saturated approach. in which the colors were more varied and alive like a smaller abstract descendant of And it is in these paintings, where her the forms were more elusive. Monet’s water lilies. forms become less descriptive, dispersing Perhaps this sudden clarity of Another relatively anomalous and vigorously into colorful scrawls, blurs, perception had to do with the skillful newly invigorating feature of Schnell’s and drips, that Marianne Schnell finally arrangement of the paintings on the most recent solo show was a series of transcends nature altogether to breathe gallery walls, which juxtaposed older and new works incorporating gold leaf, which the intoxicating ether of unfettered newer works with little apparent concern could admittedly seem an incongruous painterly endeavor. for chronology. Rather, the installation material for an artist known for working seemed calculated to demonstrate a sense spontaneously with diluted, translucent of simultaneity, encouraging considerable layers of oils and acrylics. True to form, –– Ed McCormack

NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 GALLERY&STUDIO 7 The Exuberant Vision of TUTEN at Caelum Gallery he old saying “Turnabout is fair play” is a much more intrepid colorist than that violence toward the opposite sex that once Tis perhaps truer in art than anywhere American Abstract Expressionist, often made de Kooning’s painting controversial. else. Every art student knows that Van combining colors that depart from the For while TUTEN’s woman is also Gogh was a great admirer of Japanese familiar palette of nature. Sometimes, for formidable, she is by no means a monster, prints and even painted copies of two example, he’ll employ all three values of and the strokes with which she is evoked, famous prints by Hiroshige: “Bridge in cadmium red (light, medium, and dark), while vigorous and thickly pigmented, are the Rain” and “Plum Tree in Bloom.” along with alizarin crimson, cerulean blue, not strident in such a way as to suggest Without going so far as misogyny. Rather, they are as to copy any specific work by luscious as those of Nicolas de Van Gogh, or even to emulate Stael, expressing the artist’s his style, the contemporary sheer delectation in the painterly Japanese painter TUTEN process and unabashed affection Hiromi-Sakurai, best known for his subject. by the single name TUTEN, These feelings are expressed recently resumed the East- most overtly in the painting West dialogue in his solo he calls “Women Strength,” exhibition “Life from O>1,” in which a mythic female face, at Caelum Gallery, 508-526 evoked with muscular skeins West 26th Street. of thick impasto, appears to The title painting of materialize majestically amid an TUTEN’s show, a large abstract landscape, suggesting abstraction featuring the an archetypal “Earth Mother.” sun as a huge yellow orb In a painting such as this, one dripping light like egg yolk sees the most serious side of an over a jigsaw terrain whose artist who in a poetic written fiery colors match its own statement issued in connection radiance, set the chromatic with the exhibition expressed a tone for his entire exhibition. yearning to unite with “the shine Indeed, the overall effect “Chrysanthemums Playing with Moon” of the spirit toward the unknown on entering the gallery world.” transported one back to a time when ultramarine blue, blazing oranges, hot Yet what makes TUTEN such an large-scale abstract painting still seemed bubblegum pinks, deep purples and other appealing artist is that he is also just as like a heroic endeavor. The old excitement unexpected hues, within a single canvas willing to engage with a lighter aspect of of what Clement Greenberg once hailed as to sensational effect. Bumping right into human nature, as seen in another major “American type painting” was there again each other, played off against strident canvas called “Manhattan Lady.” Here, in these big brilliant oils on linen, albeit in yellows, such colors create a sumptuous, once again, since the painting is essentially a bright new Japanese package. abstract, nothing is delineated in detail. The show presented a refreshing change Yet the svelteness of the central form, from certain other venues in the New York the appealing “kandy-kolored” hues and art scene, where one could almost get the the vertical thrust of the composition impression that an atmosphere of gloomy simultaneously call to mind the elegance recession-era austerity and uncertainty of John Singer Sargent’s society had begun to permeate the work itself. portraits and one of their contemporary Even TUTEN’s paintings in which the counterparts (the type of sophisticated sun was not the main motif projected a fashionista who, as she strolls along Fifth sense of radiance and energy, with their Avenue shopping, gets photographed vibrant colors and their bold, buoyant for the Sunday Styles section of The New forms. While the main thrust of these York Times) translated into a dynamic paintings is invariably abstract, vestiges of arrangement of interlocking abstract landscape, organic growth, and the human forms. figure often play hide-and-seek among the While TUTEN’s largest canvases are flowing, flowering color areas. invariably comprised of bold, often thickly In one large oil on linen, pigmented, color areas that are clearly “Chrysanthemums Playing with defined without becoming exactly “hard- Moon,” although nothing is spelled out edged,” his relatively easel-size paintings, specifically, not only is the lunar orb of such as the lyrical composition “Rose the title indicated by a vigorously brushed Mind,” are generally created with more form floating in the upper left-hand calligraphic gestural strokes of variegated corner of the composition, but there is “life from 0>1” color in the manner of the Abstract a also a strong suggestion of a nocturnal Expressionists. Both modes of expression, landscape, with shadowy hills, a body of simmering optical frisson. however, possess his unique “touch,” as water, and fanciful vegetation indicated Perhaps TUTEN’s chromatic daring is well as the exuberant expansiveness of in TUTEN’s muscularly painted shapes, at its most intense in a large canvas called vision that made this exhibition at Caelum many of which have a biomorphic quality “Woman & Sunlight,” where the semi- Gallery so downright exhilarating. similar to that in the paintings of William abstract amazonian figure makes one think Baziotes. However, this Japanese painter of de Kooning –– only without the hint of –– Ed McCormack

8 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 The Jungian Imagery of Teona Titvinidze-Kapon Return to Gelabert Studios Gallery he long awaited publication of the considerably more Tgreat Swiss psychotherapist Carl Jung’s subdued. And although self-illustrated dream journal the Red Book this tree appears suspended seems auspiciously timed to enhance interest in a metaphysical space in the upcoming exhibition of paintings on a plot of land torn free by Teona Titvinidze-Kapon, at Gelabert from the firmament, its Studios Gallery, 255 West 86th Street limbs bear not the ripe from December 1 through 12. (Reception: fruits of passion but the Tuesday, December 1, 5 - 7 pm.) ragged, down-to-earth For as I wrote in a previous review for remnants of dreams this publication, Titvinidze-Kapon, who deferred: an empty emigrated from the Republic of Georgia groom’s suit blowing to the United States in 1994, is an artist in the wind on a hanger whose Neo-Romantic paintings are more in from one limb, a bride’s the spirit of Jungian theory regarding the dress flapping like a flag of transformative powers of dreams than of surrender from another, the coldly analytical Freudian model, which while a naked man hugs inspired many of the Surrealists. the tree’s trunk yearningly, Indeed, although the paintings with a nude woman perches out which Jung illustrated the Red Book almost of reach in its uppermost a hundred years ago were locked away with branches, and all around his manuscript in a bank vault in Switzerland them filmy winged for the last quarter century, only to see the phantoms swirl. light of day recently, their sinuous forms From this composition, and brilliant colors show a real kinship with one can only gather that Titvinidze-Kapon’s compositions. the ecstatic early eroticism An important difference between them, of love has given way however, is that while Jung’s pictures, to the complexities of a conceived on the miniature scale of medieval long-term union, in which book illuminations, are literal illustrations the couple has apparently of his dreams, and therefore more beholden reached an impasse that to specific content than to aesthetic lends the painting its considerations, Titvinidze-Kapon’s paintings melancholy beauty. are conscious works of art. Thus she is free Without such to embellish imaginatively upon subject complications, of course, “Big Tree” 39" x 48" matter dredged up from the subconscious, Teona Titvinidze-Kapon creating easel-scale compositions of great would be a less profound painter; for it is also recalls Chagall, while other paintings complexity and beauty. her willingness to embrace all of life that of family groupings within landscapes, The tree, a recurring motif in Titvinidze- makes her work resound with universality. In such as “Mother and Children,” are tender Kapon’s work, as it was for her Neo- this regard, perhaps her most drastic vision evocations of maternal love by an artist who Romantic predecessor Pavel Tchelitchew, is the composition entitled “Loneliness,” in has two children of her own. was also an important symbol for Jung, which forlorn figures inhabit a landscape of Somewhat anomalous for the absence of judging from the few advance examples mud-colored ruins closer in atmosphere to human figures, yet altogether characteristic of his illustrations reproduced prior to the the desolate terrains of surrealism than the for its visual poetry, “Butterflies” depicts Red Book’s publication. Two of the most bucolic settings in most of her paintings. many of the ephemeral little creatures of striking among Titvinidze-Kapon’s tree And in another canvas called “Rain,” the title swarming around a tree stump paintings are “Love Tree” and “Big Tree.” we again see a darker dimension of the with a delicate flower-bedecked bird’s nest In the former painting, the entwined bodies artist’s psyche in a composition depicting nestled in the crook of one of its sawed off of lovers make up the tree’s trunk and ramshackle dwellings caught in a deluge limbs. This is one of her most poetic and spring from its limbs; the entire composition that approaches the abstract for the pure, meticulously detailed pictures, right down appears lit-up in glowing rainbow hues like powerful expressiveness of its forms. to the delicate wildflowers growing at the a tantric Christmas tree by the heat of their However, the prevailing mood base of the stump, which rival the floral passion. of Titvinidze-Kapon’s oeuvre is pastels of Redon for their vibrant colors, and In the latter painting, the overwhelmingly upbeat, as seen in the the swarm of even tinier insects attending anthropomorphic tree filled with lovers has delightful pastoral scene “Girls Picking them. Like a symbolic crucifixion (for the apparently twisted free from the earth and Apples,” and the more fantastic composition stump’s sawed-off limbs make it resemble swirls skyward in the manner of a tornado, called “Whirling Children,” in which a somewhat askew cross), “Butterflies” high above the curve of the earth and the young couples in flowery costumes take could be seen as a secular yet highly spiritual fairy tale castle in the fanciful landscape flight like Chagall lovers around an idyllic statement about natural regeneration. below. Both paintings suggest a state of sun-drenched landscape with a decidedly Indeed, Teona Titvinidze-Kapon’s entire intense erotic transcendence, tantamount to folkloric feeling, perhaps influenced by oeuvre finally comes across as an enterprise a spiritual epiphany. East European peasant art. Another at once aesthetically uplifting and life- By contrast, the tree takes on a especially charming painting “Morning in affirming. somewhat elegiac aspect in another painting Georgia,” where a courting couple kisses called “Marriage,” where the colors are on a bridge spanning a quaint little village –– J. Sanders Eaton NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 GALLERY&STUDIO 9 Yvonne Thomas (1913-2009) at Katharina Rich Perlow ike drinking and brawling at the Cedar as well as the seminal 9th LTavern, male chauvinism was part Street Show in 1951. Her and parcel of the Abstract Expressionist work was exhibited in the movement. Few women were admitted to Tanager Gallery, a legendary that exclusive boy’s club. One of them was cooperative of the Tenth Yvonne Thomas (1913-2009), the subject Street period, as well as of a magnificent memorial exhibition at such prestigious commercial Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery, in The Fuller venues as the Stable Gallery, Building, 41 East 57th Street, through Zabriskie, Betty Parsons, December 10. and Xavier Fourcade (de Thomas, who worked right up to the Kooning’s last art dealer). end of her life, dying at age 95 of lingering And her paintings have found injuries sustained from a fall in her studio, their way into the collections was born in Nice, France, and brought to of the Guggenheim Museum, the United States by her parents in 1925. the National Gallery of Art, She initially studied art at Cooper Union and numerous other public “Summer Quartet” 1961 oil on linen 47 x 67 and the Art Students League, and later institutions. was a student of Amédée Ozenfant for The exhibition at Katharina pink hues and expanses of green suggesting over a decade. In an honorary sense, she Rich Perlow Gallery makes splendidly clear verdant vestiges of lyrical landscape. became “one of the boys” in 1948, after why Thomas was so widely exhibited and And by the time she painted “Summer the Surrealist painter Robert Matta’s wife collected, as well as why she was so esteemed Quartet” (1961), in which a buildup of introduced her to Subjects of the Artist by her New York School colleagues. She white strokes, bracketed between a single (better known as “The Club”), a loose-knit was not only a vigorous gestural artist in the streak of strident yellow at the upper left New York School discussion group in a best tradition of Abstract Expressionism, edge of the canvas and a welter of blue loft on 8th Street. Fellow members, such but her chromatic subtlety anticipated Color gestures on the right, abruptly aborts a as Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Field painting, even in early canvases such looping linear configuration, creating an Robert Motherwell, quickly recognized the as “Summer Day II” (1952) and “Summer exquisite sense of Zen “emptiness” at young artist’s talent and welcomed her into Fantasy” (1954). The former painting is the center of the daringly asymmetrical the fold. most notable for the elegance of its cubist- composition,Yvonne Thomas’ mature Thomas was included in all five of the inflected color construction; in the latter, mastery was everywhere in evidence. New York Paintings and Sculpture annuals, color alone carries the day, with luminous –– Ed McCormack “Transformation” in a Church Chapel lthough artist and West Side Arts Coalition creating an effect that suggested nightfall Arthur Bitterman,” celebrating the recently Acurator Sonia Barnett didn’t know her occurring upside-down. deceased Poetry Chair of the WSAC. An exhibition, “Transformation,” would have The simple emotion of exaltation has rarely affecting affirmation of a kindred artistic spirit, to be relocated to temporary venue due to been as beautifully expressed as in “Soul Rudder’s radiant sunburst image brilliantly construction on Broadway Mall Community Flight,” one of two acrylic paintings by Mikki illuminated Bitterman’s lines, “Seldom do I see Center, the move was serendipitous, since Powell, depicting a serenely smiling brown- dawn but when / benediction comes along the show seemed especially apropos on the skinned woman in a blue frock, set against a / horizon hugging, leaving space expansive walls around the altar at Second Presbyterian vibrant yellow ground, a graceful white bird and inventive, /painting white over indigo, Church, at 96th Street on Central Park West. soaring within the wide, welcoming circle of displacing the receding dark...” Carol Maria Weaver showed lyrical figurative her arms, the rhythmic arc of the composition The show’s curator Sonia Barnett was oils with titles such as “Nature’s Revenge,” making the emotion contagious for the viewer represented by a single work of modest scale and “Nature’s Transformation.” While the as well. Another painting by Powell, of man with a remarkable allusiveness. At a glance, latter work focused on a beautiful female tree with his face hidden behind a broad-brimmed Barnett’s acrylic on canvas “Out of the Blue” goddess, the other two canvases featured hat lowering his head to a sliver of watermelon, could have suggested a swiftly executed faceless, ethereal figures with the slender grace had strong formal appeal. Zen-like abstraction comprised of a roughly of dancers amid tall grasses. They appeared in Three small compositions in mixed media circular red gestural shape set against a blue a surreal state of metamorphosis into plant life, on paper by Madi Lanier, from a series called background. Up close, however, ghostly their heads and bodies partially deconstructing “Crio,” were noteworthy for their lighthearted silhouetted figures could be discerned within into veinlike tree-limbs, presumably in charm and buoyant mood. Lanier has a unique the red central shape, which now suggested a punishment for the centuries of ecological ruin gift for making visual statements that express kind of enclosure, such as the setting in which humankind has wreaked upon its environment. the poetry of pure delight with gemlike collage the Angel sometimes visits the Virgin in a Transformation, in two florally-derived elements floating over amorphous, cloud-like Renaissance Annunciation. acrylic paintings of Amy Rosenfeld, took a areas of bright color applied with a spatter The final work, a large geometric abstraction more abstract form. Both were created with technique and enhanced with a gracefully by Kenneth L. Mathewson, entitled circular splotches of pure primary colors flowing line. “Metropolis,” was notable for its unusual applied as though with cotton-balls in densely Anne Rudder is one of those gifted visionaries, combination of geometric form and subtle, concentrated overall compositions. Subtle like William Blake and Kenneth Patchen, muted, harmonious color. While Mathewson’s chromatic events took place at the edges who achieve a sublime synthesis of the visual shapes are precise, they do not appear strictly of the circular splotches, where the colors and the literary. Here, along with another hard-edged in the usual sense of the term. partially overlapped, creating secondary hues. characteristically compelling hybrid work entitled Instead they seem to float within the surface In “Flowers- Abstract 2,” the concentrations “All Things Measures Of (Caveat Humanus),” rather lying flat upon the picture-plane, evoking grew more dense toward the bottom of the Rudder showed an especially moving mixed the city’s atmospheric mystery. composition, darkening to deep purple and media piece called “Turner Said –– Tribute to –– J. Sanders Eaton 10 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 Ambiguity Triumphant: Martha Russo’s “nomos” Sculptures at Allan Stone artha Russo, like Lucas Samaras, is an obsessive) on tendril-like shapes originated wiggling out Martist who plays with the boundaries with a family squid-fishing trip: “One night, toward the between seduction and repulsion. The a flashlight beam in the water lured a squid viewer. And the three large sculptures in Russo’s installation from the darkness. The creature flooded unusual visual nomos (detail), 2007 “nomos,” seen recently at Allan Stone the water with color and shimmered in a synthesis of the Gallery, 113 East 90th Street, were at once swirling phosphorescent glow, causing Russo maximal within the minimal makes Russo’s beautiful and scary, like gigantic man-eating to decide to use color to create a similar sculptures daunting in formal terms as well, flowers or an undersea species that hypnotizes experience of ‘happy disorientation,’ to lending them a dynamic, edgy energy, as the viewer and draws him or her in for the kill surround viewers with a sense of ‘floating though the sprawling, unruly components of with its visual / tactile siren song. mass’ while saturating their peripheral vision so-called “scatter sculpture” were rolled in With enough room between them to with delicate texture and color.” a ball and placed on the wall, or the unruly absorb their formidable impact, the three In any case, it can be disorienting on more gestural strokes of Abstract Expressionist large pieces commanded the entire gallery levels than one to encounter the myriad closely painting were corralled within the formal space. The smallest, roughly 48 inches clustered porcelain projections that comprise confines of a minimalist format. around, sat on the floor. It’s approachable her pieces. The overall effect is that these One of the most innovative aspects of quality made it appear relatively benign. smooth porcelain forms are essentially flesh- Russo’s sculptures, which she has referred From a slight distance, it gave off the amiable colored, although some of their hollow tips are to as “painting with porcelain,” is that presence of a giant ball of bean-sprouts. Then marbled with blues as delicate as the veins in they belie Robert Morris’ notion that the one got closer and was brought up short by fine China, or tinted with pinks like those in concerns of sculpture are “not only distinct the strange organic forms of which it was the lips of the labia minora––which in fact their from but hostile to those of painting,” even comprised. The next-to-largest, mounted petaled openings suggest, appearing oddly at while putting a confounding new spin on on the wall like the head of some shaggy the ends of phalloid stems. (One who wanted that artist-theorist’s contention that, in the prehistoric behemoth, was immediately more to go out on a somewhat zany interpretive most advanced (read: minimalist) painting, forbidding. And to walk up close to the third, limb might even read a hermaphroditic ‘the structural element has been gradually which measures 16 x 8 x 8 feet, spanning two symbolism into these strangely original forms.) revealed to be located within the nature of walls at the corner, was akin to entering an Others, however, are a deeper, more viscerally the literal qualities of the support.” unearthly cave entirely covered in writhing glistening red, evoking images of decapitation By combining the distinctly different alien stalagmites. and inducing a queasy sensation. qualities of sculpture and painting so The gallery’s well written press release Because each individual component within innovatively, Martha Russo not only brings informed one that the artist’s fixation (my each of the massive monolithic forms is about a harmonious détente between the term, for surely her sculptures, created from hand-shaped, and therefore has its own two mediums but demonstrates intriguing thousands upon thousands of hand-formed peculiar character, the tubes overall could new directions in which each may proceed. glazed porcelain tubes, are nothing if not suggest living things, as in a nest of serpents, –– Ed McCormack Ruth Gilmore Langs’ Lyrical Songs of Herself s a child, the painter Ruth Gilmore Langs, writer for this publication work is especially in tune with Awho grew up in what she calls “a very who visited him in his nature, seems logical given that restrictive and punitive environment,” spent studio in East Hampton, the bucolic mood is everywhere several hours of every day locked up on a hot “All abstract painting evident throughout her own oeuvre, porch in her hometown, Kalamazoo, Michigan. comes from landscape.” distinguishing it from the more “As awful as it was for me,” she said in a One could quibble with gritty urban Abstract Expressionists recent interview,” it has made me an artist, this generality, but not such as Franz Kline. An especially because my imagination saved my life.” in the case of Langs, buoyant sense of the pastoral comes It isn’t difficult to picture those rectangular who has stated, “For me, across in a painting such as Langs’ porch screens that framed her childhood nature is a constant theme “La Valleries,” where a verdant hill fantasies of escape morphing into the vibrant and the abstraction allows pops up like a big bubble amid landscape-inflected abstract expressionist me freedom to paint how sensual areas of fleshy pink that canvases that Langs paints today. Yet it’s never I feel about a place.” suggest fields of flowers seen from quite that simple. First, Lang had to discover This, however, does an aerial angle, the delicate hues that kindred spirits and guiding lights in Abstract not prevent her from “Swimming with illuminate an early evening sky in Expressionists such as Richard Diebenkorn, also expressing how she Diebenkorn” Summer transposed to the earth, or Hans Hofmann and Joan Mitchell. She also feels about painting itself and other artists an anthropomorphic take on landscape. credits Kwok Wai Lau, a teacher from China whom she admires, as seen in “Swimming Other paintings by Langs, especially ones with broadening her knowledge of painting with Diebenkorn.” In this large, wittily with horizontal compositions such as “River and shaping her artistic philosophy. titled oil on canvas, Langs pays tribute to No. Ten,” read to the eye like abstract Langs’ mature belief that “art is the the older California artist who, like herself, versions of sweeping Hudson River School language of the human spirit, the rhythm, evolved a personal approach to abstract panoramas, with vast land masses, bodies of beat and song of the self,” is made implicit in expressionism outside the orbit of the New water, stratosphere, and sky suggested by the affirmative directness of the title she gives York School. Here, she appropriates a sense luscious pastel color areas. Then there are to her solo exhibition: “PAINT,” on view at of Diebenkorn’s wide open spaces and compositions such as “Island Series: River Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, from characteristic palette of Pacific blues, marrying No. Six,” in which form and color are both November 20, 2009 to March 19, 2010. them to her own unique compositional particularly buoyant, and “Blue Moon,” (Opening reception: Thursday, December 3, boldness and gestural panache. where Ruth Gilmore Langs’ brushwork is at from 6 to 8pm.) Langs’ affinity for Diebenkorn, as well its most exuberantly vigorous, and muscular. Willem de Kooning once remarked to a as for Joan Mitchell, another artist whose – J. Sanders Eaton NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 GALLERY&STUDIO 11 From the Silly to the Sublime: The Incomparable Sculptural Fantasy of Ailene Fields culpture commands space like no other Sart form besides dance. But usually being stationary and bound by the force of gravity, it rarely transports us. Virtually alone among contemporary sculptors, Ailene Fields commands a peculiar alchemy that enables her to make fantasy palpable in stone and bronze. Perhaps the most literal example is the exhilarating piece she calls “Flight,” in which a sleek swarm of delicate bronze insects takes off in graceful formation from a craggy burred oak base. Encountering Field’s pieces individually or in small groupings over the years, one tended to regard her as a kindred spirit of Lewis Carroll working in three dimensions. Who else would put a pair of dime store spectacles on an anthropomorphiic annelid and title it

“12:01 A.M.” visual artists, much less sculptors, have Anderson’s “The Princess and the availed themselves of their wealth of Pea,” a willowy bronze beauty writhes psychological and moral archetypes, as uncomfortably atop a tall stack of alabaster Fields has in pieces such as “Be Careful mattresses. Clearly visible on the bottom What You Wish For,” and “It Was the mattress is the single green pea that ruined Most Amazing Thing.” In the former, her sleep and proved her royal pedigree, based on the tale of King Midas, the since “nobody but a real princess could be greedy monarch is seen sitting on a as sensitive as that.” gold throne woefully contemplating a But perhaps the crowning achievement gold banana ... Be careful, indeed! In of Fields’ fairy tale series is “12:01 A.M.,” “Sunset” the latter, inspired by Hans Christian a magnificent orange alabaster pumpkin on ornate bronze wheels, surrounded “Bookworm?” Or envision a rotund Pied by tiny bronze mice –– not only for its Piper leading a conga line of upright evocation of the most poignant moment rodents, as in her fanciful sculptural in the tale of Cinderella, but for its sheer tableau “Rats”? formal splendor. Then Fields created “Eve,” a life-size Fields’ Lewis Carroll-like sense of hybrid figure in bronze, in which the whimsy also comes across in “Baby,” lower body of a human female gradually a fetching little bronze dragon that so narrows to become a snake, and it became reminded Neil Zukerman of his beloved clear that, when she chooses to, she can pet puppy that the sculptor named the also seem a sculptural descendant of piece after the pampered pooch. However, Dante. that Fields’ imaginative and aesthetic At last one can experience the full scope stretches far beyond mere whimsy, scope of Ailene Fields’ oeuvre in “Out of into the realm of the seriously fantastic the Nowhere ... Into the Here,” a major and the truly sublime, can be seen in retrospective at CFM Gallery, 112 Greene “Drawing Down the Moon,” a three part Street, from November 20 through sculptural sequence, exquisitely realized December 6. Curated by the artist’s close in pink alabaster, in which the lunar orb, friend and art dealer Neil Zukerman, the electronically illuminated from within, owner and director of CFM Gallery, this is gradually sinks into a clump of trees that, the final exhibition to be presented in the in the final piece, enfold it like a lovely venue’s Soho space, before it relocates to breast caressed by a furry hand. (One spacious new quarters at 236 West 27th can’t help thinking of an X-rated Beauty Street, suite 4F, in Chelsea. and the Beast!) Although many literary writers have Another illuminated alabaster orb found inspiration in fairy tales, far fewer “Eve” emerges from a cloud-like mass in 12 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 “Sunset,” one of Field’s most abstract yet evocative pieces, and is also a prominent motif in her “Sanctum Porta,” where it nestles in the shoulder of a mysteriously fragmented structure with an arched doorway that suggests the hallucinatory setting of one of Paul Bowles’ macabre short stories set in Tangier. In fact, her entire “Sanctum” series –– in which the ethereal clear crystal material and interior steps of “Sanctum Silentium” suggest spiritual ascent, while the pink alabaster surface and fleshy portal of “Sanctum Eros” evoke the entry to the womb –– is as intricately wrought as the metaphysical mazes of M.C. Escher. Yet other sculptures, particularly her life-size “Rats” bronzes, such as “Bacchus,” a majestic male nude, and “Parable Fountain,” are among the more heroic accomplishments of contemporary neoclassicism. “Parable Fountain” is perhaps Ailene Fields’ most over-the- top creation to date, like Benvenuto Cellini’s famous salt cellar with Neptune and Ceres blown up to gigantic scale, only more elaborate. The central figure is a full-length Botticelli-like bronze mermaid with a mane of long, wind-blown locks being held aloft by the tentacles of a large octopus perched atop a huge mass of coral fashioned from alabaster, out of openings in which the snouts of dolphins poke and water gushes in a steady stream into a pool at the sculpture’s base. One cannot think of another sculptor at work today who could carry off a baroque production such as “Parable Fountain,” then turn right around and create such modest masterpieces in “Flight” alabaster as the erotically allusive “Kissee Rose,” the scrumptious “Black Eyed Susie,” and the exquisitely minimalist “Calcite Shell.” THE BROOME STREET GALLERY Such stunning virtuosity within a conceptually consistent aesthetic is what makes Ailene Fields one of our most Ground floor, 1,300 sq. ft. thrilling talents and makes this long-awaited major solo show Exhibition space rental available indispensable. 498 Broome Street, New York, NY 10013 –– Ed McCormack Tel: (212) 941-0130

From Nature October 28 - November 15, 2009 Artist’s Redeption: Saturday, Nov. 7, 2:30-5:30 A Photo Exhibit Curator: Jennifer Holst Adoniiah • Arthur Cajigas • Rudy Collins Archie Hamilton • Jolene Varley Handy Myrna Harrison-Changar • Robert Helman Jane Hoffer • Jean Prytyskacz • Thom Taylor Broadway Mall Community Center Broadway@96St. (NYC) Center Island Gallery Hours: Wed 6-8pm, Sat/Sun. 12-6 pm

“It Was The Most Amazing Thing” [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 GALLERY&STUDIO 13 Robert Cenedella, Gadfly for Social Realism ctivists –– political, cultural, or “unnecessarily offensive, especially at Aotherwise –– can be a real pain in the this time of year.” ass. Take Robert Cenedella, for a prime “I’m not the one who replaced example of the species. The opinionated Christ with Santa Claus,” replied social realist painter likes to test peoples’ Cenedella, a Catholic, claiming that mettle by putting them on the spot. He he painted the picture to protest the certainly tested ours when he reserved a commercialization of Christmas, not full page ad on our back cover months in to mock Jesus. advance, then close to deadline, sent us a Admirably, the school didn’t big color picture of what appeared to be a succumb to the pressure to remove painting by Mark Rothko crudely scrawled “Crucifixion” from its window. But with the phrase “Bull Shit!” ironically, the same painting had Jeannie, my wife and editor, being been removed from Cenedella’s more attuned to the esoteric than myself, retrospective at the ad agency has long been an admirer of Rothko, owned by the Charles Saatchi, while I’ve always been a bit put off, not the supposedly hip collector of by his paintings, but by his insistence on outrageous avant garde art. Thus one their spiritual significance. Neither of us, can only assume that had Cenedella however, has ever considered Rothko’s tried to include in his show a later work “bullshit.” So we were taken aback painting, depicting a giant load of by Cenedella’s limited edition print “Un excrement elevated on a pedestal in Hommage del Maestro, Rothko.” But a museum, it would also have gone only for a minute. For while neither of over at Saatchi & Saatchi like the us was eager to give even the dimmest of proverbial turd in the punchbowl. our readers the slightest impression that But that painting, too, hung in “Man About Town” by David Chalfin we shared Cenedella’s opinion of Rothko, the League’s window, not be removed we knew that to reject the ad, which no matter how many grossed-out or making his pugnacious way up 57th appeared on the back cover of September passersby, public decency monitors, or Street in his broad-brimmed Stetson and / October 2009 issue, would make us no self-designated guardians of good taste grizzled white Hemingway beard, on better than anyone else who decides he threw shit fits. And that quite a few his way to The League to lay The Word or she has the right to hamper any artist’s reportedly did perhaps demonstrates on his adoring and adored students, to freedom of expression. (We could feel no better than anything else the value of an know that he’d defend that vision to the more justified in censoring Cenedella for artistic provocateur like Bob Cenedella. It death. The man is a veritable steam-driven scrawling a fake Rothko with graffiti than dynamo when it comes to laying out what had we condemned Duchamp for doodling has to be changed in the world in general a mustache on a reproduction of the Mona and the art world in particular. Hell, he Lisa or Rauschenberg for partially erasing feels so strongly about it that he has put and exhibiting a drawing that de Kooning it all down for posterity in an illustrated had given him. Art has no sacred cows, screed of a pamphlet that he calls “The baby; let the good times roll!) Robert Cenedella Commentaries,” culled Besides, being a pain in the ass is part from among the copious bloviations on of Robert Cenedella’s job description. his blog www.whatisntart.com. The other part is being one of our most In the Commentaries, Cenedella courageous, imaginative, and conscience- asserts, “Today we have direct and indirect driven figurative painters and arguably the censorship both in the news media and most charismatic and popular instructor by the art establishment.” In another at The Art Students League since his own paragraph, he goes on to say, “Today’s teacher, mentor, and artistic hero George art world is an interdependent mix of Grosz. businesses that control price and access And don’t think for a minute that at every level. Recent scandals involving Cenedella is not an equal opportunity auction houses attest to this. Museum pain in the ass. Surely someone at The boards have trustees with holdings of Art Students League must have had to the very artists’ works which are in roll his or her eyes heavenward on the featured shows.” And he concludes,“In more than one occasion that Cenedella this environment, artists and viewers tested that venerable institution’s mettle “Southern Dogs” alike become dupes in the shell game of as well. But God bless The Art Students manipulation and art works become mere League: nobody there would even think of may also validate his claim that not only currency.” knuckling under to public pressure when the art world’s designated Tastemakers Like his hero Grosz, who expressed his the Daily News ran a big banner headline but all sorts of other nutjobs and disgust at the Nazi regime as a prominent that said “Crucified Santa Triggers commercial interest groups are bent on figure in the Dada movement in Berlin Crossfire,” after William Donohue, surpressing what he refers to as “The before being forced to emigrate to the president of the Catholic League called Democracy of Vision.” U.S., Cenedella lashes out at the political the painting that Cenedella exhibited All you have to do is see Cenedella establishment as well as the art world during the 1997 Christmas season in the holding forth on a bar stool in his system. One of his most amusing Neo- school’s big front window on 57th Street favorite downtown pub, Nancy Whiskey, Dadaist pranks was a sculpture called

14 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 “Giant Waste Basket,” with George W. Bush’s face grinning like Mad magazine’s resident imbecile Alfred E. Neuman (of “What Me Worry?” fame) under the slogan “White Trash.” Later replicated in red lacquer as an actual limited edition waste basket, it was picked up in an item by the nationally syndicated “Fun City Express” columnist Liz 2005 oil on linen “Untitled Landscape,” Smith, reaching an audience far wider than in which a desolate, cubistically angular that of the gallery and museum circuit. landfill of discarded canvases, ranging However, Cenedella, like Grosz, has as far as the eye can see, suggests the made his greatest contribution as a protest ultimate detritus of commercial junk painter, starting with the 1962 oil on culture. –– Ed McCormack linen “Southern Dogs.” This affecting statement, painted in response to the Robert Cenedella and his wife, the fiber artist suppression of the Selma civil rights Liz Cenedella, will be featured in a two-person march, depicts a black man being set exhibition at Broome Street Gallery, from Dec. 8 upon by a mob of half-canine cops and through 20. rednecks.

“Untitled Landscape”

The same year Cenedella painted his touching tribute “The Death of George Grosz,” showing the German émigré artist, who had become disillusioned with life in America, lying at the foot of a window staircase after a fatal drunken fall, images from some of his familiar paintings and drawings swirling eerily above his head. Both pictures rank with the best work of older social realists such as Ben Shahn, Jack Levine, and Philip Evergood. A steady stream of powerful political and humanistic subjects, scathing satires, and urban genre scenes with the hectic energy of a latter-day Bruegel have followed over the decades. But perhaps Robert Cenedella’s most prophetic “The Museum” statement may yet prove to be the large

NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 GALLERY&STUDIO 15 Discovering Janese Hexon’s Affecting Humanism hether she intends to do so or not, the our common condition. psychological core of her WWestern Pennsylvania sculptor Janese There is also a satirical side subjects, making sculptural Hexon takes a radical stance when she asserts to Hexon’s art, yet it is statements as impressive for that her goal is “to express clearly feelings never devoid of sympathy. their human drama as for and thoughts that all of us, at once time or Selden Rodman once wrote their formal attributes. another, have experienced in our lives.” For of James Kearns, a fellow Indeed, Hexton’s in the context of today’s art scene, where sculptor with similarly sculptures invariably engage a sophisticated irony has become dogma, humanistic proclivities the viewer on different such unadorned direct expressions of human that he “laughs (or smiles levels simultaneously: while empathy may be, to borrow a phrase coined ruefully) with the various harking back to the eroded by another writer for this publication, The victims of vanity he portrays, figures of antiquity, the Last Taboo. never at them,” and the fragmented face of terra Yet there is no denying the humanistic same might be said of cotta sculpture “Untitled resonance of the pieces on view in Janese Hexon. III” evokes the female Hexon’s first New York City solo exhibition, Witness, for example, subject’s poignant sense of at Pleiades Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, the piece she calls “My spiritual incompleteness, from November 3 through 28. (Reception: Pretty Hat Has Fallen,” just as the rough surface Thursday, November 5, 5 to 8 pm.) in which a young woman modeling of the two Indeed, one of Hexon’s greatest strengths with wavy bobbed hair who clutching figures in the is having the courage to invest her human resembles an old fashioned “My Pretty Hat has Fallen” mixed media piece “No figures with a clearly emotional resonance at film starlet in the manner (Detail) Consolation” enhances a time in art history when formal values are of Jean Harlow or Marion the palpable sense of often privileged over expressive ones. Her Davies throws her head back toward her codependency and crisis that it evokes. tactile relationship with her pieces ––– most bare shoulder in a posture of world weary In the same manner, Janese Hexon of which are created in resin, terra cotta, or narcissism, as though her own beauty is employs varying degrees of realism and mixed media for ultimate rendering in bronze the cross she must bear. Or contemplate abstraction to create entirely different moods through the lost-wax casting method –– lends “Predator/ Prey?” which depicts the face from piece to piece. This enables her to them a raw power that harks back to the of another woman merging as one with explore a wide range of plastic possibilities as tradition of Rodin. the grimacing visage of her grotesque well as emotional and psychological nuances, Even when working on a relatively inner demon. In both pieces, through a making each individual sculptural statement as intimate scale, Hexon restores a sense of mastery of gesture and expression which is much of a new adventure for the viewer as it the monumental to the human figure, a becoming increasingly rare in contemporary clearly must be for the artist herself. mixture of pathos and dignity which honors art in any medium, Hexon zeroes in on the ––Maurice Taplinger Steven Mark Glatt and the Majesty of Melancholy “ y work comes from a place that few manipulates diluted pigment with his fingers, Mpeople get to visit,” says Steven Mark creating ethereal veils of color that could Glatt, whose paintings will be on view at appear to have materialized of their own Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, from accord, rather than to have been created by January 8 through 29, 2010, with a reception conscious will, on his large canvases. The sense on Thursday, January 14, from 6 to 8 PM. that one is being drawn into a mysterious “This place is blessed and cursed.” milieu can give even the most pragmatic Because he was raised in the back country viewer pause and make him or her consider of North Dakota, is self-taught, and can make the artist’s statement about a place both such a statement without any apparent irony, blessed and cursed. there could be a tendency to classify Glatt For Glatt’s paintings possess an undeniable as something of an “outsider.” However, presence and power paradoxically coupled with the innate sophistication of his large Color great delicacy. His forms are at once abstract Field paintings in acrylic on canvas belies and allusive, as seen in the poetically titled large that evaluation, since Glatt’s vision is far canvas “A Crown Upon Her Foot,” in which “Bottles of Emptyness” too expansive to be confined to the ghetto deep purple linear swirls around the outer Then there is “Bottles of Emptyness,” a of innocent obsession. And while he has edges of the canvas veering toward its center title worthy of a country and western song for arrived at that vision intuitively and without could suggest tree limbs set against a vibrant a composition organized along more formal pretension (“My approach towards painting blue sky swarming with stars resembling lines, with Glatt’s characteristically fluid color is simple. I just paint myself. I stay true to celestial fireflies. Even while the overall field––this one of a mottled reddish hue my feelings and use honesty as my main nonobjective character of the composition appropriately suggesting a mixture of whiskey ingredient.”), it resonates with a spiritual allows for a range of subjective interpretations and blood––overlaid by evenly spaced vertical authenticity which reminds us that abstract as infinite as the space that it evokes, one is put divisions. painting originated not with formalist in mind of William Blake’s famous line “The Of course, no one can really know if there theorizing, but with the desire of Kandinsky sky is an immortal tent.” For like that great is any truth to the meanings he or she reads and other avant garde pioneers who were British visionary, Glatt appears to have a gift into paintings as essentially abstract as those inspired by Theosophy and other esoteric for internalizing vast mysterious vistas, as seen of Steven Mark Glatt. Yet there is no question belief systems, to apprehend some essential in “The Mistakes I Make,” another majestic that since they are clearly motivated by the essence of the unknown. canvas wherein rhythmically pulsing veins artist’s authentic emotions, every perceptive Seemingly searching in a similar way, within another luminous blue field lend cosmic viewer will discover his or her own truth in Glatt employs a poured paint technique and dimension to personal emotion. these lyrical works. ––Maurice Taplinger 16 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 The CLWAC’s 113th Annual Open Exhibition at the National Arts Club loria Spevacek is a unique sculptor in that Kahlo,” which impressively joined elements Gshe bridges the gap between classical and of painting to sculpture with a varied patina the Pop with inimitable volumic grace and to depicting the Mexican surrealist’s red visual wit. Her “Workman’s Shoe” is a clear case lipstick, the roses in her hair, and her famous in point: a blue collar monument in smooth unibrow. In her work in walnut, “Hot on the white limestone, well worn and full of character, Trail,” Barbara Beatrice gave visual definition yet eternal as a Roman head on its pedestal. to the term “hangdog” with her semiabstract Spavacek’s piece was but one of many depiction of the quintessential hunting hound, delightful surprises in the epic (more than 250 its nose as elegantly elongated as the torso of a works) 113th Annual Open Exhibition of The Modigliani nude. Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club, named Other pieces that made the sculptural for the only woman among the 106 founding component of this year’s show especially members of The Metropolitan Museum of strong were: “Kore,” a partial female nude Elvira Dimitrij Art, seen recently at the National Arts Club,15 figure in marble with the classical grace of a light. Dramatic contrasts between light and Greek fragment by Jean T. Kroeber; Antonia dark also figure prominently in “Not Fade Layton’s “Swimming with Pride,” capturing Away (In Memory of Frank)” an affecting the movement of a fish in alabaster with the portrait of a gently smiling man seated half in swift fluidity of a brush drawing by Hokusai; shadow on a porch at dusk with the trees and and “Thalia,” a voluptuous nude female torso foliage of a garden silhouetted behind him by Jinx Lindenauer. by Kathleen Bartoletti. Also notable among One of the more striking pieces gracing the the portraits were “Esperanza,” Liena Dieck’s painting gallery was “At the Opera,” a large realist painting of an elderly woman’s deeply watercolor by Nadine Charlsen that stood lined face in the unusual medium of dyes on out for the artist’s ability to evoke a winding silk; and “Self Portrait,” an intimate tondo stone staircase, crystal chandeliers, and in pastel by Lucille Berrill Paulsen, with the numerous other baroque architectural details Gloria Spevacek artist’s face distorted as if seen through a zoom in chiaroscuro without sacrificing the freshness lens. Gramercy Park South. innate to her medium at its best. By contrast, Although it would be literally impossible Although greatly outnumbered, the Holly Meeker Rom made a statement to do justice to all the worthy works in an sculptors in this year’s exhibition made an more spare yet no less impressive in “North exhibition of this size –– especially given the especially strong showing, which seemed Country,” a snow scene in which one could high standard maintained by the CLWAC auspicious, since the 2009 almost feel the crispness –– others that caught one’s eye for one reason Honored Member was Amy of the air on an overcast or another were: Lita Schwartzberg’s mazelike Bright Unfried, perhaps best winter’s day and imagine abstract watercolor “Continuum,” its brilliant known for her figurative trudging past that bare colors contained within black outlines in the bronzes, as well as sculptures skeleton of a tree to manner of stained glass; Jaye Moscariello’s of birds perched on branches reach the cozy red cabin bold and witty painting of a jungle primate cast from nature. Especially in the distance. leaping from limb to limb “Capture the evocative here was Unfried's Like Irene Rice Moon”; Elizabeth B. Derderian’s exquisitely “House in the Woods,” in Pereira, Elvira Dimitrij accomplished realist still life “One Fine which cast branches became has the rare ability to trees clustered around a imbue pure geometry miniature cottage. Antonia Layton with poetry, as seen in More in the spirit of her abstract composition Dada, Marsha Tosk made a wry visual pun in oil and acrylic “Ruins,” with its evocative with pig in a blanket, a porcine figure in poly forms and subtly harmonized hues. By resin with a Scotch-plaid scarf wound around contrast, Toni Silber-Delerive turned a its middle. Then there was “Narcissism,” a realist aerial view of a suburban intersection piece consisting of a dazzlingly glitzy pair of into a bold geometric abstraction in her oil platform “Church Tower Road,” which also recalled shoes and an old Americana genre painting of an Iowa matching town square by Grant Wood. Another fine handbag example of a genre for which a writer for this covered publication coined the term “abstract realism” with shards was “Party Papers XII,” a watercolor by Carol of shattered Z. Brody, in which a meticulous trompe-l’oeil mirror by rendering of scraps of decorative wrapping Sue Arnold. paper created the illusion of collage. Kathleen Bartoletti Another Among the several excellent landscape Morning”; Dora Natella’s haunting standout was painters in this show Jane Bloodgood Abrams Neoclassical bronze wall relief “Gaia”; Helene Lena Olson’s made an a special impression with “Effusive Mukhtar’s vigorous and funky mixed media portrait bust Glow,” a hauntingly atmospheric panoramic composition “Triumphant Trumpets”; and in bronze oil of three shadowy trees on a high grassy “36 Golden Landscapes,” a remarkable grid and concrete ridge set against a vast golden sky alternately of exquisite miniature paintings in oil and gold Lena Olson “Frida darkening with clouds and shot through with leaf by Cary Thorp Brown.––J. Sanders Eaton NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 GALLERY&STUDIO 17 The Hand of Carmen Raset Mir hat distinguishes painting from other Other subtle painterly felicities and Wforms of image making and accounts coloristic surprises can be seen in such for its longevity in the face of photography contrasting yet complementary canvases and other technology, which should logically as Mir’s “Manhattan “Bridge” and have led to its demise, is invariably the touch “Soledad.” In the former painting, the of the human hand. One artist who makes graceful span of the majestic bridge, like this point auspiciously is the Spanish painter a vast stringed instrument placed on its Carmen Raset Mir, who recently had a solo side, is juxtaposed with the Manhattan exhibition at Montserrat Gallery, 547 West skyline, its spires and facades ruddy 27th Street and also exhibits in that venue’s with sunlight, bracketed between the year round salon. brackish green water and the infinite Mir is a realist who, rather than sky. By contrast, in the latter painting, a replicating exactly what she sees before large black rowboat takes on the brute her, strives for something more elusive and scale and presence of a beached whale, “Soledad” affecting: its essence and its spirit. Granted, locked between land made tangibly such things are intangible. However, that tactile by sand mixed into the pigment suggests that a realm of enchantment lies is where the hand comes in as a conduit of and a stunning purple sea that lends the just behind the picture plane. human emotion, flowing directly from the composition a striking abstract appeal. In the latter work, (the title of which painter’s nervous system onto the canvas. Mir’s ability to imbue simple subjects translates even more loosely, albeit poetically, And in Mir’s case, the hand of the artist is not only with formidable formal qualities as “Apples Looking at the Sea”), Mir everywhere in evidence, as seen in her acrylic but with an underlying sense of the surreal presents us with a shapely vase of piled-up on canvas, “Velas al Viento,” where the can also be seen in paintings such as “La apples placed on the broad sill of a stucco irregular rhythms of the brown hills flow Puerta Del Jardin” and “Manzanas Mirando window facing out upon a serene blue body smoothly into the sparkling semitranslucent El Mar.” In the former work, (the title of water under a pale pink-violet sky. The aquamarine waves, traversed by nine little of which translates loosely as “Door to only incongruity in the entire composition sailboats with white sails bent like scimitars the Garden”), the green foliage and the is the choice of that last color. Yet, through by the breeze. The entire composition comes tall poplar tree in the garden beyond are her pristine technique –– particularly in alive by virtue of Mir’s peculiar painterly converted into forms as solid as the cement evoking shadows and the vibrant red and fluidity, which is especially impressive here globes that give the impression of two green skins of the apples –– Carmen Raset where the milky, pink inflected sky meets sentries standing at the entryway of the Mir lends this simple picture a surreal quality the burnt umber earth and their overlapping garden wall. Yet, even while enhancing the worthy of René Magritte. hues create a misty yellowish aura around the abstract frontality of the composition, the It’s all in the hand. humps of the hills. large expanse of solid cerulean blue sky –– Ed McCormack Lyrical Vivacity in the Paintings of Alyssa Traub lthough twenty-one year old Alyssa and flecks of red that appear to chase each of water, the effect is enhanced by swift ATraub has a BFA degree in Fine Art other around the composition like playful gestural streaks suggesting the shimmer of Photography, she is also a sculptor and fireflies. While the calligraphic energy of the sunlight on tall grasses bending in a gentle painter. To be exhibited at Agora Gallery 530 composition could call to mind the personal breeze. West 25th Street, from January 8 through calligraphy of Mark Tobey, the complexity Equally lyrical in its own manner is 29, 2010, with a reception on January of color relationships calls to mind the Color Traub’s acrylic painting “Morning Illusion,” 14, from 6 to 8 PM, Traub’s paintings in which the dance of spare strokes of are refreshingly free of the trendy trickery soft pastel hues against a brilliant blue practiced by many youthful artists today. field is sufficient to evoke a sense of early Indeed, Traub’s lyrical abstractions morning freshness. Then there is the suggest a mature, fully formed aesthetic, buoyant composition “Portrait of a Fish,” combining the chromatic complexity of in which bold circular strokes of green Color Field painting with the gestural acrylic, apparently applied with a palette vivacity of Abstract Expressionism. knife, wittily create the creature of the title While her overall love of vibrant color through the most economical of means. The could have been inspired by growing poetic playfulness of this painting, if not the up in the sunny clime of St. Petersburg, more freewheeling manner of its execution, Florida, Traub possesses an innate gift “Portrait of a Fish” recalls the whimsy of Paul Klee. for harmonizing a wide range of subtle Yet Traub can also evoke an entirely secondary hues that goes far beyond mere Field innovations of Jules Olitski. different dynamic through the animated exuberance. Along with their purely nonobjective layering of one color upon another. And she This is especially apparent in her oil and attributes, however, Traub’s paintings are does so quite dynamically in “Anarchy and acrylic on canvas “Gold Rush.” Here, a further enriched by an element of natural Deceit,” another large canvas in which more brilliant blue rectangle is energetically laid allusiveness that comes across most overtly violently configured strokes of pinkish white down over a burnished bronze-colored in a painting such as her large acrylic and and gray, set against a variegated reddish undercoat that forms an irregular border oil on canvas “Dreams of Green.” This field, provide a more visceral visual jolt. around the edges of the canvas and shines is an especially lyrical picture in a palette Alyssa Traub’s ability to convey a variety through the blue, imbuing it with a subtle dominated by lush blues and greens, of subjects and mood through form, color, radiance. The central blue area, also augmented with streaks of yellow and and gesture alone sets her apart as one energetically activated by swirling strokes bits of red. Without resorting to specific of our more promising among the new of thick impasto, plays host to a plethora description, the artist evokes a strong generation of abstract painters. of short cursive daubs of golden yellow sense of verdant vegetation around a body ––Maureen Flynn 18 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 Password: The ASCA’s 92nd Annual Exhibition rom the works available for preview, to urban grafitti. Ray Shanfeld’s F“Password: Art’s Secret Symbols,” the While other works in this exhibition do not “Flight” presents 92nd Annual Art Exhibition of the American come with such an elaborate “back story,” a stout, smoothly Society of Contemporary Artists, at Broome most speak eloquently for themselves. One rounded form poised Street Gallery, 498 Broome Street, from dares not even guess, for example, what upon its tall pedestal November 10 through 22, promises to the title of Imelda Cajpe Endaya’s mixed with a balloon-like be one of the more inclusive and varied media work “Spoliarium and Agnes’ Carcass buoyancy that belies its upcoming group shows of the current season. Cornucopia” could possibly mean. Suffice formidable bulk. While The venerable artist’s organization boasts it to say, it’s a rich visual melange of form, the vertical form of Ray close to one hundred members and a good color, texture, and disparate imagery, artfully Weinstein’s “Nocturne Imelda Cajpe Endaya many of them juxtaposing a partially obscured reproduction # 7” suggests a can be seen in of a classical painting, a silhouetted swan- monkish robed figure, rather than suggesting this exhibition, diving female figure, and a large serpentine an orifice the circular negative space in its the stated shape ala vintage Rauschenberg, albeit in “head” evokes the moon as a poetic phantom intention of Endaya’s own unique manner. presence in the mind of a contemplative soul. which, to Mina Myer, on the other hand, employs Similar contrasts can be seen in the work of paraphrase the mixed media in an altogether more abstract two painters of cityscapes: Anita Adelman’s press release, manner in “ASCA Series II,” wherein the street scenes show the more intimate side is to assert the Mina Myer work’s considerable visual / tactile of the city. Adelman’s breezily brushed role of art as an appeal derives from the artist’s strong, composition “No Parking Anytime” touches affirmation of life in roughly rectangular forms, ruggedly upon the notion of privilege with the contrast these times of global scumbled paint surfaces, and elegantly sign posted in front of an elegant edifice, rather crisis. ragged collage technique. With tiny than near the modest brownstones down One of the exhibiting traces of brighter hues showing through the block. By contrast, like a 21st Century artists, Olga Kitt a palette dominated by subtly tinted off counterpart of the America Futurist Joseph exemplified this goal whites and earth tones, Myer’s forms Stella, Allan Simpson is attracted to Gotham’s on the grass roots Sachie Hayashi float and loom against a mythic majesty. Simpson’s precisely delineated neighborhood level by solid gray field like ghostly silkscreen print “Night, Midtown” is wholly forming an alliance with young monoliths. characteristic of graffiti artists while teaching art The sculptor Barbara his style, with at DeWitt Clinton High School Browner Schiller’s bronze its illuminated in the Bronx. While influencing figures suggest more skyscraper some of the the young artists upbeat cousins of Alberto spires and lit-up to paint on canvas rather than Giacometti’s Existential windows glowing in subway cars, Kitt found that starvelings. For their dynamically against the influence flowed both ways. Anita Adelman elongation comes across as a brilliant blue sky. Barbara Browner Schiller A long time gestural painter who had studied lithe, rather than emaciated, and they have Yet other with Hans Hofmann as a young woman, she a sprightly charm that complementary contrasts in the interpretation came to regard graffiti as being in the tradition is especially winning in of landscape subjects could be seen in the of Abstract Expressionism and began to Schiller’s two figure tableau, work of two final artists: Miriam Wills champion the cause of the these kids, speaking “After Glow.” Here, one combines elements of Neo-Cubism and out as an adult advocate on their behalf skinny character leans on Neo-Expressionism in her acrylic abstraction against authorities who dismissed their work as the shoulder of the other in “The Sun Behind,” with its luminous primary vandalism, thereby “banning a school of art,” a configuration of relaxed, colors and outlined shard-like shapes. Sachie as she puts it. Indeed, she came to identify with gangly limbs engaging for Hayashi, on the other hand, takes a lyrical them to the point where she now considers its formal grace and levity. approach to nature in her mixed media herself a graffiti artist, at least in spirit. Isabel Shaw, on the other composition “Here Comes the Morning,” However, Kitt’s “Flora,” an acrylic painting hand, projects a pared-down Olga Kitt where luminous pink and yellow hues ignite on Tyvek (a plastic taupelin material)), which essence of feminine sensuality in her bronze verdant green mountain peaks. translates Rembrandt’s famous portrait of his torso “Counterpoise,” its curvaceous contours If the artists reviewed here are representative wife Saskia as the goddess of Spring into an giving the illusion of swaying sinuously in of the many others to be seen in the ASCA’s exuberant semiabstract statement in line and space. Two other sculptors, both working in 92nd Annual, this is an exhibition not to be color, appears as much beholden to Matisse as marble, adhere to a more minimalist aesthetic. missed. –– J. Sanders Eaton

Ray Shanfeld Isabel Shaw Ray Weinstein Miriam Wills Allan Simpson NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 GALLERY&STUDIO 19 FusionArts Museum Hosts a Zany Caravan of “Art Cars”

eave it to Shalom Neuman, the Beehan and Linterdisciplinary art pioneer and other downtown mastermind behind FusionArts Museum, luminaries on 57 Stanton Street, to stage an aesthetic Sunday evening, demolition derby on the Lower East Side. October 18, “Art of the Crash” (its title a double which reportedly entendre, referring both to the art attracted over created from salvaged automobile parts 2,000 spectators. featured in the show, along with a fur The event and DVD-covered “Techno Truck” by coincided with New York artist Hi Tek Hoop, and the a screening, current state of the economy) opened earlier in the

FusionArts Museum director Deborah Fries (second from right) with art car creators (left to right) Alan M. Bolle, Harrod Blank, Shalom Neuman and Hunter Mann

day at Anthology with 2,700 cameras –– spent the week Film Archives, of prior to the event at Shalom’s drive-in Harrod Blank’s studio, in Brooklyn, and were parked “Automorphosis,” outside the Fusion Museum during the winner of The Royal reception. Flush Festival’s As with all of FusionArts Museum’s prize for Best exhibitions and events, the ultimate aim Documentary. of “Art of the Crash” is to promote Some of the multidisciplinary –– or “fusion” –– work vehicles from Art as a recognized contemporary art genre. “Camera Van” (detail) in Shalom’s studio Car World Museum The show continues through December in Douglas, Arizona, 27. with a gala reception featuring poetry and that were featured in the film –– including performance by Steve Dalachinksy, Carrie Harrod Blank’s “Camera Van,” covered –– The Editors

G&S NYC GUIDE opportunities ESTABLISHED CHELSEA GALLERY reviews artist portfolios monthly. Send sase or visit www. WEST SIDE ARTS COALITION (WSAC) established 1979, welcomes new members from all noho gallery.com for application form. Noho Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001. geographic areas. There are approximately 14 exhibits per year for Fine Arts, Photography, and Craft Arts. 212 367-7063 Music, Poetry, Theater and Dance programs available. Contact info: Tel. 212-316-6024, email- [email protected] or website- www.wsacny.org. Or send SASE to the West Side Arts Coalition, MONTSERRAT CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY is reviewing artist portofolios for its new PO Box 527, Cathedral Station, New York, NY 10025. Visit our ground floor gallery at 96th Street & Chelsea Gallery. National and International artists are invited to submit. Sase, slides, photos and brief Broadway (on the center island) New York City. Open: Wed. 6-8pm, Sat. & Sun., 12-6pm. artist bio. Send to: Montserrat Contemporary Art Gallery, 547 West 27 Street, NYC 10001

CUSTOM PICTURE FRAMING for artists and galleries. Museum quality, selected frames & ATTENTION ARTISTS – A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY–IN CHELSEA–THE ART mats. Float & dry mounting, canvas stretching. Jadite Galleries, 662 10th Ave. (betw. 46/47 Sts.) CENTER OF NEW YORK CITY VIRIDIAN Artists, Inc., established in 1970, is accepting applications Hours: 12 - 6 pm, Free delivery in Manhattan. 212-977-6190 [email protected] for membership. For information please visit www.viridianartists.com or call 212-414-4040.

AMERICAN WATERCOLOR SOCIETY, INC. 143rd Annual International Exhibition. Estimated $40,000 in Cash and Medal Awards. April 6 - May 2, 2010. Slide or Digital entries, Elegant exhibition space available for curators, artists and special art related events. postmarked no later than Nov. 16, 2009. Prospectus available after Sept. 1st. Send SASE to Exclusive uptown location. For information: Tel. 212 753 0884 Cell 917 544 6846 American Watercolor Society, Inc. 47 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003 or download from website, [email protected] www.americanwatercolorsociety.org. 2010 GROUP SHOW AT GELABERT STUDIO GALLERY ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE Artists are invited to submit images of two paintings and a page-long biography for possible inclusion in a group exhibition *Learn how to use your body correctly. *Improve your posture. to be presented from January 9 through February 2, 2010. *Achieve lasting results. All services (reception, mailing list, invitations, press release, A hands-on redirecting of the mind and body that has been used successfully for over a century. Learn to use your body in a more efficient way which will have far reaching publicity, lighting and hanging) are provided by the gallery, for a benefits. It involves changing old habits and learning new ones to last a lifetime. Please reasonable fee. Submission fee $30 (non-refundable.) Deadline call for a private consultation and introductory lesson. Union Square studio, or house for submission: December 1, 2009. SASE required for return of and office calls available.Limited Introductory Offer: Consultation, photo analysis, materials. For further information, please visit our website at intro lesson, plus free additional lesson. Sliding scale available. http://www.gelabertstudiogallery.com or e-mail us at info@ DIANA MULLMAN, AmSAT. 212-734-7875 gelabertstudiogallery.com. 255 W. 86th St., NYC 10024

20 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 Bidding on the Gift of Art at Noho Gallery’s Annual Benefit Auction

Stephanie Rauschenbusch or the fifth consecutive year, veteran and novice Anne Kolin Fcollectors will have an opportunity to acquire original works of art at much lower than usual prices Augusto Bordelois by members of one of Chelsea’s most venerable and respected artist run venues, in the Noho Gallery 5th Annual Art Auction, from December 15 through January 2, 2010. There will be an opening reception on Saturday, December 19, from 4 to 6 PM. Silent bids can be placed on-line until December 31, or in person at any time Tina Rohrer until the final live bidding takes place at Noho Gallery, 530 West 25th Street at the closing reception and live auction on Saturday, January 2, at 4:00 PM. The auction, a great success in previous years, is not only a good way to start a collection, but is also auspiciously timed for truly unusual holiday gift giving. And since all proceeds will benefit Noho Leon Yost Gallery, bidders will have the additional satisfaction of facilitating its stated mission “to offer a quality venue to actively Erma Martin Yost working artists based on the integrity of their work.” Shown here are just a few Nancy Staub Laughlin of the many paintings, prints, photographs, fiber pieces, and sculptures donated by participating artists and viewable at nohogallery.com.

Stephen Cimini Marilyn Henrion –– The Editors Sheila Hecht

NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 GALLERY&STUDIO 21 HOBOHEMIAN FLOPHOUSE: The Carlton Arms Hotel, where each room is a funky art installation and there’s a cat box down at the end of the hall, is New York City’s last low-rent hipster haven by Ed McCormack Photos by Darek Solarski once showed up for a party thrown by the composer George Kleinsinger, who kept a veritable jungle of exotic plants and pets in his suite, and our host immediately handed my wife Jeannie and our friend Beverly two live boa constrictors, saying, “Don’t worry; they won’t crush you unless they sense fear.” Or maybe, given the more modest size of the building and its advanced state of decrepitude, Ryan had something more modest in mind; something on the order of another small rundown establishment in the Latin Quarter of Paris, once nameless, which became known as “The Beat Hotel” after William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and other writers and poets of the Beat Generation took up residence there in the early 1950s. In his forward to the poet Harold Norse’s memoir of the period, Burroughs recalled, “There were no carpets, no telephones in the rooms, and the toilet facilities consisted of a hole in the floor on each stair landing.” If it happens to be laundry day, a visitor to a handed the boy at the window several keys However, the manager, Madame Rachou, nondescript tenement on Third Avenue at and said, “Go upstairs, take a look at the liked writers and painters, placed few limits 25th Street with a pizza parlor on its ground empty rooms, and pick the one you want.” on their personal behaviour and let them floor and an incongruous red awning that This seems a sound policy, since the decor decorate their rooms any way they wished. says “Ye Olde Carlton Arms Hotel” might of some of the rooms could hasten a nascent Norse remembers the entire room that encounter an obstacle course of plastic bags case of the DTs or heebie jeebies. In fact, in Burroughs was holed up in when he wrote the size of large boulders, spilling down much the same way that a fresh coat of paint “Naked Lunch” being “covered with the long, narrow stairwell and blocking the can sometimes magically delouse a decrepit black marker drawings of endless paranoid entryway. This presented no problem for a old apartment, it may have been the murals labyrinthes.” trio of youthful Scandinavian backpackers, that drove out some of the former residents, In any case, by letting artists paint the two boys and a girl, who scaled the stairs as described by one staffer as “madmen, rooms at the Carlton Arms, Ryan may effortlessly as Alpine climbers, with barely a junkies, comedians, ex-cons, pushers and have been hoping to attract a better class of glance at Darek Solarski’s ambitious mural, hookers, transvestites, drunks and nuts of all outcasts. reprising in miniature the multitude of kinds...” * * * works by other artists that cover virtually Over the past century and a half, the Next to the smudged plexiglass check-in every square inch of the hotel’s five floors. Carlton Arms has evolved from a respectable window there’s a door with a novelty-store It was not just their clean-cut blond mercantile stopover with a stable to a sign that says “Insane Asylum.” Behind Hansel and Gretel looks and knapsacks that prohibition bordello with a speakeasy to it are two small rooms, one with an old evoked the term “babes in the woods.” a sleazy SRO with frequent stabbings, desk and rows of room-keys on the wall, While one of the boys took care of business muggings, and fires caused by guests the other with a half-full bottle of booze at the first floor check-in window, the other freebasing cocaine. It was during the latter on a table opposite a row of green metal two kids gawked through a guest-room incarnation, some twenty or so years ago, lockers. If it looks more like a clubhouse door –– presumably left open to air out the that the then manager, Eddie Ryan –– than an office, the four men who man it stuffy little cubicle –– at the riot of color reasoning that art might cover a multitude seem more like an overgrown boys club swarming the walls within, and took in of sins, including cracked walls and exposed than a managerial staff. Today John is sitting the signs saying “toilet” and “shower” that plumbing –– started inviting his artist behind the desk. He was the first of the jutted out into the narrow corridor. friends to grace the rooms and halls with four to arrive, so he holds the official title After confirming their reservation for a their creations. of Hotel Manager, but he holds it lightly, triple, a member of the managerial staff, a He might have hoped to eventually turn almost as though by default. For he, Hugo tall, taciturn Argentinean man named Hugo the place into a refuge for hip eccentrics Arizmendi, Andrew Hickey, and Geof Green Arizmendi, who sports a Borat mustache, like the legendary Hotel Chelsea, where we are, to a man, non-hiararchal types and share 22 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 most of the duties and responsibilities of running the Carlton Arms equally between them. “When I first came to work here in 1986, they had just passed the law ending SROs and the place was in transition,” John is saying now, as we all sit around on the odd assortment of old chairs and stools in the Asylum. “We never kicked anybody out; the SRO tenants just gradually died off –– the last one was, an old guy named Charlie Byrd who had lived here for ages, and went in 1997. But we were gradually turning into a transient hotel, particularly popular with young Europeans, Scandinavians and Asians. They’re still the majority of our guests today, since they generally come to explore the city, not just sit in their rooms. They’re attracted by our low prices, which start at just $ 80 for a single room and $110, for a double; they like the funky, artistic atmosphere, and of the other rooms. The coroner has this for a number of years and had become they aren’t put off, as a lot of Americans deodorant that they use in cases like that, increasingly more paranoid over the last might be, by the fact that there are no TVs but it doesn’t help much; it might even be few. He was convinced that someone was or phones in any of the rooms and that over worse, because once you get familiar with it, sneaking into his room through the window half of the rooms don’t have a private bath. it still smells just as much like death.” and stealing his socks and underwear when Come to think of it, for some odd reason, Another time, when an old guy named he was out. It’s possible that he may have the only guests who seem to complain about Frank didn’t show up in the lobby for a jumped. But since he was more paranoid no TV are the ones who come for what we longer time than usual, and a putrid stench than suicidal, Andrew and the others think call ‘short stays,’ a special three hour for $30 started to permeate the whole place again, it’s more likely that he went up on the roof deal that’s a holdover from the old days.” Geof said, “John, I think we have another to investigate how the imaginary thieves “They probably want to watch pornos,” one.” might be gaining entry to his room and I suggest. “It was August, hot as hell, and we accidentally fell over the edge. John chuckles and continues: “For awhile, found him by the bed,” John recalls. “He “Another old bloke named Fidel came we were also a mecca for transvestites. (I apparently had had a heart attack and downstairs to help me identify the body, think one of the previous managers had a his body was so bloated that, by the time which was pretty messed up,” Andrew says. thing for them.) But these were not your we discovered him, he had inflated like “He took one look and said, ‘Yeah that’s fastidious, elegant transvestites. They were one of those huge balloons in the Macy’s Mike all right, can I have his room?’ because the type that frequently needed a shave! Thanksgiving Day Parade. In fact, the Mike, you see, had a room with a bath.” They were, like, if I just stuck a woman’s coroner’s guys actually had to pop him like Although some of them could be a royal wig on my head!” And here he grins and a balloon –– that’s exactly what it sounded pain in the ass, for the most part Andrew, strikes a comic pose. like!–– to fit him through the door.” Hugo, and John speak with bemused Like most boys clubs, the members of the One of the things John learned is that, affection about all the characters who have managerial staff seem to delight in telling while the coroner’s guys are pretty delicate come and gone. John remembers Charlie gross-out stories. High on their list are ones and respectful when they come to take Byrd coming into the Asylum one day and about “smell issues,” as John refers to them. away a body in most situations, when you asking to borrow the wire-cutters. “By the time I got here, I’d say at least die without any next of kin in an SRO type “ ‘Sure, Charlie,’ I said. ‘They’re hanging twenty-two of our fifty-four rooms were of hotel, even an arty one like the Carlton right there on the wall, go ahead and take still occupied by the SRO tenants,” he says. Arms, all formality goes out the window. them.’ A few minutes later, I happen to “One of them was a really stinky old lady Mrs. Chu, the elegant wife of Mr. Chu, glance out into the lobby, and there he is, named Myra, who lived in room 2B and the Chinese businessman who owns the sitting in a chair with his shoes and socks pretty much kept to herself. We rarely saw Carlton Arms, happened to be standing in off and his incredibly long toenails curling her, but we certainly smelled her. She had the lower landing when, thump, thump, around his toes like talons, performing such serious personal hygiene issues that I thump, the body bag came rolling down the surgery on his corns with the wire-cutters!” sometimes had to go up to her room and stairs. That was fifteen years ago, and Mrs. By that time the Carlton Arms was well have a talk with her: ‘Myra, honey, you’ve Chu has not set foot in her husband’s hotel into its transition from ordinary fleabag really gotta do something about the smell!’ since. hotel to what John describes as “a cross Then one day it got to be too much, Everyone who works at the Carlton between a Fellini film and Pee Wee’s overwhelming, everybody was complaining. Arms has had their own initiation. Andrew’s Playhouse.” The old guard characters like But when I went up to her room and came on his first overnight shift when a cop Fidel and Charlie Bird were now joined knocked, then pounded, on her door and showed up and said,”Did you have an old by a new breed of characters like Sylvain she still didn’t answer, I had to kick it down guy living here?” Sylvain, the guitarist for the seminal glitter- –– just like a detective in the movies!–– with “Well, we have several old guys residing punk band The New York Dolls, and the these big Doc Marten skinhead boots I here,” Andrew said in his nice British accent, late character actor and standup comedian wore then. It turned out she had been dead and the cop led him downstairs and around Rockets Redglare. about a week and the body fluids had begun the corner. It turned out to be an old guy “You know how fat Rockets got in the seeping out into the hall and into some named Mike who had lived in the hotel last few years before he died, right?” John NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 GALLERY&STUDIO 23 long gone old SRO geezers; to the various artists, musicians, and lowlifes such as one guy who had the dubious distinction of being first heroin addict in the city to be put on the methadone maintenance program; to Chino, a Puerto Rican dude with a Che Guavara beard who lived here with his wife when they were first married and stayed on to become the main room cleaner; to a painfully polite African American named Alfonso who actually grew up in this place with his mother back in its bad old days and is still considered part of the hotel family. Hugo, a man who carries himself with unpretentious dignity, seems more reserved than the others, even a bit shy for such a big guy. But you can see his eyes light up and his Borat mustache twitch with bemusement when Andrew says, “Why don’t we tell them asks. “ Well, I remember one night when unemployable”), can’t really imagine a about Mickey Cass? Now, there’s a story!” he feel asleep in a chair in the lobby with better place. And it seems clear enough that “Oh my God, Mickey Cass! Mickey was his false teeth propped up on his enormous the other two members of the managerial this handsome, muscular young drifter who chest. Now, there was a sight!” staff who are hanging out in the office (and showed up here about four years ago,” John It was Rockets who discovered the body probably Geof, too, who happens to be off begins. “He had no money but he offered of Nancy Spungeon, the groupie girlfriend today ) feel the same way. to do carpentry in exchange for a place to of the Sex Pistols guitarist Sid Vicious, after At the same time, while Mr. Chu pretty stay, and at that time, since we needed a he stabbed her at the Hotel Chelsea, where much leaves the day-to-day operation of lot of work done, we thought, ‘Why not?’ Rockets also stayed sometimes. Not to the place to them as long as business is And he did do good work when he felt be outdone, John says, “We had our own reasonably good, who knows what his like working. In fact, he built this shelving Sid and Nancy, this punky junkie couple eventual plans for the building may be? over the desk here. But Mickey had serious who used to stay here with their two kids, At times he has talked about adding more drug issues, and after awhile it was hard one a toddler and one slightly older. One floors (“First five floors art hotel, rest nice to get him to do anything. Not only that, day the older kid comes running into the hotel for tourists!”), a notion that would he turned out to be a real mooch, always office and says, “Mommy’s not working!” be the kiss of death as far as the fleabag borrowing money from everyone on the And right away I knew what he meant: she integrity of the place is concerned and fills staff, twenty here, twenty there. He got had overdosed. While Andrew called 911, them with dread. Then there’s this swine away with it for awhile because he could be I ran up to their room. She had stopped flu scare, which has seriously hurt business quite winning and seemingly sincere. But breathing, but I did CPR and, luckily, I was lately, since widespread advisories have been when I realized that he never paid anyone able to revive her.” issued by governments overseas against back, that he was probably spending it Although painters, poets, and musicians travel to the U.S., scaring away a lot of all on drugs, I finally got fed up one day like the bluesmen Dr. John and Michael foreign backpackers like the ones we saw and started yelling at him. I said, “Mickey, Powers have stayed at the Carlton Arms over earlier in the lobby. you’re nothing but a loser. All you do is stay the years, unlike the Hotel Chelsea, it has It’s almost as bad as after 9/11 when in your room getting high and you just sleep not played host to many A-list celebrities. business got so slow, according to John, all day and mooch off everyone. I don’t Some of the cheaper ones, however, have that every day they expected Mr. Chu to want to hear that you borrowed another been known to park their assistants and come in and announce that he was going dime from anybody in this hotel. Do you other underlings here. One day John to raze the hotel for a parking lot. It might hear me, Mickey? Because if you do, I’m showed up for his shift and saw a stretch have been around that time, with their gonna throw your ass out. Are you listening limousine parked right outside the building. future completely in someone else’s hands, to me, you goddamn loser you? I mean it, A beautiful woman in a long fur coat got that they decided it wouldn’t hurt to have Mickey: do it one more time and you’re out and flew up the stairs. When John made some kind of backup. So all four of them outta here!” it up to the lobby, he realized it was Racquel eventually became partners in an outside It was only a week or two after John Welch. She was storming around and project: an art gallery called Artbreak in finally had to make good on his threat that screaming, “I’ve been trying all morning Williamsburg, Brooklyn, featuring the work a couple of detectives showed up at the and I couldn’t reach any of my staff people! of some of the artists who have painted Carlton Arms. They wanted to question Doesn’t anybody ever answer the phone rooms in the hotel. But they only got Mickey about the murder of a gay man in around here? What the hell kind of hotel is around to opening it just as the recession Buffalo, New York. And not long after, this supposed to be anyway?” was kicking in, so now the gallery’s future is Hugo, who commutes to work from John shakes his head and rolls his eyes a little uncertain. Connecticut, saw him on the street. heavenward at the memory. “I was, like, But it’s obvious anyway that the Carlton “I was over by Grand Central Station, on ‘Well, why don’t you put them in a better Arms is their real home away from home. my way home,” he says, “when I spotted place?’” In one way or another, they all seem to him for a minute before he vanished into a But, in fact, you get the impression that think of themselves as outsiders and to crowd. He was just walking along eating an John (who frankly admits that he doesn’t feel a genuine affinity with many of the ice-cream cone .. Only in New York, right?” feel qualified to work anywhere other fellow outsiders who have passed through Soon after that it was all over the news: than the Carlton Arms, that he is “totally the hotel over the years, ranging from the Mickey Cass had been arrested for the 24 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 murder of another man, who he picked up in a gay bar out in Coney Island and strangled with his bare hands. “I’m gay, so that really freaked me out,” John says. “ Just to think that I had been right here in this office with Mickey standing right across the desk, screaming my head off at him, insulting him, calling him everything in the book. I could have been killed!” * * * Although the sunlit cat box under the window at the end of the hall, belonging to the hotel’s free roaming mascot, Charlie, lends it a homey touch during the day, some people at the Carlton Arms are convinced that the D-floor (the 5th floor) –– where the corridors display auspiciously spooky faux hieroglyphics, sarcophagus-like cast plaster 3-D life-masks of the hotel staff, and a full body cast of the artist, Diana Manni, wearing nothing but a Cleopatra tiara –– is haunted. Tamara, a friend of John’s, swore she once saw horrible faces in a mirror in one of the rooms up there. And when he’s cleaning the rooms, Chino often sees, hears, smells, and feels things on that floor all the time: doors that open or close on their own; lights the Artist, 2003.” ones, creating something like the basement that go on or off inexplicably; disembodied Inside, the walls were painted a deep domain inhabited by the protagonist of voices; unfamiliar, musty odors; and gusts nocturnal blue and adorned with Venus’s Ralph Ellison’s novel “The Invisible Man.” of air that blow from nowhere. It got so life-size figures of winged hermaphrodites * * * intense in one room he cleans regularly –– onto whose lower male genitalia, Hugo While I honestly can’t claim to have on the D-floor that he and his wife had to tells us, one guest saw fit to tape paper perceived anything remotely supernatural perform a Santeria ritual, burning sage to loincloths. That same guest might also on the D-floor or any of the other four exorcise malevolent spirits. have taken offense at Irene Dogmatic’s floors of the Carlton Arms, I did see a “Right after checking in, one guest came mural of cute copulating pandas in a room remarkable range of artistic ingenuity put running down from there in his tightie on the B-floor. Still, there seems to be to the service of environments that, for whities, trembling,” John tells us. “He something for everybody at the Carlton their wealth of weirdness and visual wit, claimed someone was in his room. So I went Arms: a room by Noelle Elia decorated often outdid many gallery and museum back up with him. I even opened the closet like a Day-Glo Hindu temple, with big installations. (“Whenever a new room is to show him that nobody was hiding in it. paintings of Ganeesh the Elephant god and completed, we have an opening reception, But just then the curtains stirred and he let other exotic deities; another done up like a just like in a gallery,” Bruno says. “We send out a shriek and ran all the way down five shrine to the Almighty Dollar with Neo- out invitations, serve drinks, and sometimes flights of stairs and right out onto the street. Pop monetary imagery by Jennifer Sands even have live music. For our last one we After awhile, when he didn’t come back, I Deane; Yunichi Ochi’s black and white must have had about 400 people here.”) called our local police precinct: ‘Did you by room, with sinuous Sumi-ink calligraphy What I did feel very strongly everywhere any chance pick up a man in his underwear?’ and intricate floral forms all over the walls; a throughout the building was a sense of how ‘Whereabouts?’ ‘ Twenty-fifth Street and room by Scott Forbes where eerie, zombie- the actual history of a place can haunt it in Third Avenue?’ ‘How about Lexington?’” like figures loom over the bed, gazing a very down to earth way. Which is to say, down in a mournful manner calculated to there is a lingering atmosphere here of hard Even before we heard these stories, unnerve the more morbid visitor; another luck lives lived on the margin that defies self Jeannie, who is more attuned to psychic was turned into a cartoon jungle by the conscious artistic renovation and cannot be phenomena than I am, said she definitely anonymous artist known only as Banksy, buried under no matter how many layers sensed something in a couple of the rooms who also adorned the stairwells of the of paint. At best, this residue of the past that we visited with our own handful of B-floor with a riot of zany characters; an can collaborate with the art, lending it keys, courtesy of Hugo. Most doors had Edenic environment of idealized floating additional depth, as in a room that Hugo standard locks, while a couple –– perhaps figures ala Michelangelo by Darek Solarski; Arizmendi created around a noirish mural reserved for guests more concerned with a visionary arboreal fantasy of spidery trees by Colette Jennings featuring a 1940s pulp protecting their belongings than their and floating clouds by Doug Ford; and a fiction floozie loitering against a brick wall privacy or safety –– were padlocked from the battleship gray room by Brian Damage, emblazoned with the motto, “Live Fast, Die outside. One intricately painted door on the who, instead of camouflaging the hotel’s Young.” D-floor bore the warning: “This room has exposed plumbing with zebra stripes or * * * transpeople. If you are uncomfortable with decorative vines (as other other artists have Because of their transient clientele, the this, please choose a different room. Do not done quite resourcefully), added a maze constant comings and goings of varied alter my painting. I am transgender. Venus of trompe l’oeil painted pipes to the real characters, hotels of all types and classes NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 GALLERY&STUDIO 25 naturally lend themselves to storytelling. of Charles Bukowski’s worst nightmares, I Former hotel worker turned artist and should think!) writer Ludwig Bemelmans gave us a now Surely I wasn’t as intrepid as Heinz sadly forgotten comic masterpiece set Krautberger, an Austrian artist who in a New York luxury hotel in “Hotel migrated to Australia and for some strange Splendide.” Joseph Mitchell, that superb reason reinvented himself as Andre van urban archaeologist, wrote an unforgettable der Kerkhoff, a name that would seem to account of rooting through the dusty relics have little to do with either his actual or left behind in a long-empty flophouse adopted nationality. It was through Heinz for retired seamen on South Street in his that I first heard about the Carlton Arms, immortal New Yorker piece “Up in the Old the name of which initially evoked that Hotel.” And of course we all remember of The Ritz Carlton, the real-life model great old movies like “Grand Hotel.” for “Hotel Splendide,” giving me an Perhaps it’s a vestige of my long lapsed ironically misguided notion of what class of Catholic upbringing that hotels have always establishment it might be. Heinz –– well, struck me as purgatorial way stations where, hereafter let’s do him the courtesy of calling as my experience as a traveling journalist him by his assumed name –– Andre moved later bore out, one stood a better than into the hotel about a year ago while in New usual chance of encountering what F. Scott York for an exhibition at Artbreak Gallery, Fitzgerald called “the dark night of the in Brooklyn, and stayed for awhile to paint soul.” But that wasn’t the main reason I room 14D. turned down Hugo’s generous offer to be Given a sizable public space to decorate, his guest for a weekend at the Carlton Arms. most artists will use it as a billboard to movie atmosphere and sense of fellowship Having given up itinerant journalism years advertise their signature style. Richard that he found at the Carlton Arms, where ago, when I quit freelancing for Rolling Hambleton, for example, splashed one he befriended a resident blues musician Stone, I have simply become too happily of his life-size “Shadow Men” in the named Michael Powers and hung out habituated to the modest creature comforts downstairs vestibule; Andre Charles in the Insane Asylum with “the head perpetrated characteristically honchos,” as he called them. For all intents funky graffiti all over the 4th and purposes, he went native as only a floor corridor; and art guerilla foreigner can. And although primarily a Banksy adorned the building visual artist, he was moved to compose a with images like the ones he series of impressionistic “love poems” to became notorious for sneaking the place, written in a breathless Kerouacian into museums. So since van stream of consciousness prosody made even der Kerkhoff is best known more impressionistic by his Germanically for exquisitely erotic photo- inflected broken English and a wide- based works, one might have eyed yokel-like enthusiasm for New York expected him to paper the weirdness unequaled since John Lennon first walls of 14D with blown up embraced the city that would fatefully put images of naked girls striking an assassin in his path. seductive poses, creating a Even while enduring “nightmares single occupancy oasis for featuring virtual armies of bloodsucking lonely onanists. But being one bedbugs and copious pissing patrons of our fifth floor walkup in Yorkville to take of those precious few contemporary artists leaning against walls shouting from below him up on it. Hugo, being the old school more driven by spontaneous inspiration than Fitzgerald’s and across the avenue,” Van gentleman that he is, had courteously self-promotion, he says, “I saw the room der Kerkhoff fondly describes communal extended the invitation to both my wife and I began to paint circles which grew feasts of take-out pizza and Puerto Rican and me. But since to stay almost anywhere into a homage to my adopted country’s food with fellow inmates and confesses with someone you love is to be essentially a aboriginal people who are the only keepers with unabashed sentimentality his possibly tourist, insulated from the existential terrors of the dream time.” unrequited affection for his fellow of solitary introspection, I knew that to get He ended up creating a spiritually residents: “Aware of the one sidedness what Hugo called “the whole Carlton Arms edifying cosmos of circles and boomerang of my emotions, the cynical bloke in me experience” I would have had to go it alone. shapes as visually dazzling as an early Op doesn’t care too much about equilibrium, And frankly I just didn’t feel up to it. Not Art canvas by Larry Poons or Brigit Riley. but simply rejoices in every moment with being an adventurous young tourist from However, his sense of the engagingly the folk of the place who have given him France, Sweden, or Japan –– or even for louche still fully operative, he also became for the first time in his lonesome life a that matter, the whacked-out younger self the eyes and the ears of the hotel during his simple nickname that wasn’t negative in its to whom my wry friend Fran Lebowitz used two-month stint as an artist in residence, connotation. I was and still am Mr. Dot of refer as “The Existential Ed” –– I preferred producing a series of memorable black 14D (also known as de Angelo) and those to imagine, rather than experience what it and white photographs documenting its two names hang proudly from my old man’s would be like to make one’s woozy way characters and day to day life in a gritty shoulders...” down those narrow corridors to the water style akin to Robert Frank and Larry Clark, While Andre’s rhapsodic outpourings closet in the middle of the night, naked light which he later exhibited in a solo show in sometimes swamp specifics and smother bulbs illuminating the garishly painted walls, Brisbane. clarity, they possess a peculiar poetic making them glisten like entrails in the belly Andre, who may be The Last Romantic, resonance from which an attentive reader of the beast. (Like something out of one was bowled over by the Jim Jarmusch can occasionally excavate perceptive cameo 26 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 characterizations of a staff and guests well even for a weekend, should indicate) I had pickles were hanging from the ceiling and matched in their eccentricity, and come hoped that Tyler’s book, out this year from attached to the walls, walls in the main upon half-buried gems of poetic description a small press called Art Cannot Be Damaged painted green”; “The Diaper room, where like the “shredded threads of suffering silk” Inc., would be a rich source of anecdotes you slept in a cradle”; “The Bachelor Pad,” (referring to the much-clawed armchair from which to quote. (In truth, I probably where James Bond music blared when you where Charlie the cat often reposes like a wanted him to have done some of my opened the door, the bed was a see-through leonine lord of the manor) and the “feline research for me. ) waterbed with olives floating through it, mementos of similar color” that the same But while, unlike Andre, English is the ceiling was mirrored, and the bathroom creature leaves in place of the gift chocolates supposedly Tyler’s first language, many of wallpaper was made with cutouts from found on the pillows of fancier hotels. his sentences turn out to be as much of a old magazines with names like Swank and After evoking “Finnish Absolute drinkers” shambles as the room in which he appears Swoon”; and, best of all, “the Hotel Room who “hibernate in arty farty rooms for in the large author photo on the book’s room, with a framed picture of ducks, a weeks on end to appear dressed confusingly back cover, striking a Johnny Rotten pose, plastic mint taped to the headboard of a in Scot’s kilts to march with Celtic pride his fingers hooked under the suspenders he sorta brass bed, a phone with a red LCD and matching harmonies down 5th Avenue sports over a soiled wifebeater undershirt. above it that added exorbitant amounts on St. Patrick’s day,” van der Kerkhoff He is decidedly an exponent of so-called to your bill every time you tried to use it concludes his ode to his newly discovered “experimental” prose (something I probably (it didn’t do that really), a television (the hobohemian flophouse with, “To put all should have guessed from such downtown only television in the hotel), and a ‘do not those things in a single sentence I need to credentials as his association with the disturb’ sign permanently affixed to the write an epic without full stop or a jingoistic Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe, where, according to outside of its door.” jingle, and I have decided to do neither and the dust jacket copy,“he famously broke his In fact, there actually is one rather plain say simply with all my heart: I love you, arm while reading a poem”). Writing about parody of a regular hotel room at the Artbreakhotel!” the chotchkas cluttering the Insane Asylum, Carlton Arms. But what it really evokes, Nor was Andre van der Kerkhoff the first for example, he sounds like the bastard with its neatly folded towels, its miniature to be inspired to literary expression by the child of Gertrude Stein: “The things were bars of soap artfully arranged on a little Carlton Arms. A young hipster named Mike all kinds of things. And the walls were also wood table, and its Edward Hopper Tyler moved in after his girlfriend kicked walled with all kinds of things. It was corny ambiance of shabby hopefulness, is what all him out of their East Village pad, ended up of plenty. It was shaken and stirred. It was a of the rooms might have looked like just staying several years as “poet in residence,” mess. It was beautiful.” before the hotel began its steep decline and and wrote a somewhat fictionalized book Yet he has moments of inspired standup- eventually had to be resurrected as a unique about it called “Hotel Stories.” In fact, style schtick. Taking poetic liberties with walk-in work of art. being a lazy researcher (as my refusal to an already improbable reality, he describes accept Hugo’s offer and “embed” myself, “The Pickle room,” where, “Embalmed * * * NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 GALLERY&STUDIO 27 ART ONLINE Levan Urushadze: A Russian Painter’s Dynamically Variegated Aesthetic Vision omeone once wrote that “style In this regard, he appears to follow the into his own unique painterly vocabulary, Sis character,” and certainly no example of Picasso, whose so-called making the subject entirely his own by contemporary artist whose name springs “periods” were often determined not by virtue of his highly individual “touch” immediately to mind demonstrates this chronological fact, but by dealers and and tactile paint application. Urushadze truism more effectively than the Russian later by art historians on the basis of further enlivens his distinctive combination painter Levan Urushadze, who has exhibited what the artist chose to release for public of gestural “handwriting” and sensuous widely throughout his own country, as well consumption at any given time from the paint quality with a uniquely appealing as in Paris, New York, Vienna, Rome, and enormous and varied inventory constantly visual wit in paintings such as “Meeting,” elsewhere. For Urushadze is a restlessly accumulating in his studio. wherein two ram-like creatures stubbornly prolific talent who works in such a wide A similarly unchronological approach lock horns, as well as in “Film,” where variety of figurative and abstract veins that makes surfing Urushadze’s site an ever- a sequence of vibrant neoprimitivistic, he could conceivably put cartoon-like images together his own group is set within a narrow show! band traversing a However, what holds monochromatic color field all of Urushadze’s modes to suggest a semiabstract of expression together treatment of an actual film as a consistent oeuvre is strip. the unique stamp of his It is finally in his individual sensibility, which abstract paintings, overrides his eclecticism however, where his formal and comes through gifts are set apart from forcefully in every stroke considerations of subject that he commits to canvas. matter, that one sees None of which is to deny Urushadze’s painterly that the sheer abundance prowess at its most nakedly and diversity of his output impressive. Yet even here can make navigating there is a great deal of Urushadze’s website: variety, ranging from glu.ru –– which is the relatively austerity organized under categories of “Composition # 39,” such as “landscapes,” with its central spiral form “portraits,” “abstraction and basically geometric works,” “still lifes,” and quality to “Sunny Square,” “available works” –– a a dynamic composition “Composition # 43” challenging experience. in which densely layered Yet it proves well worth the effort for the changing journey during which one may small rectangular forms in a palette ranging aesthetic riches to be found therein. encounter in quick succession: mellow, from strident yellows through deep Perhaps a good place to start is with the street scenes of Lisbon such as “Old greens, blues and earth hues converge painting entitled “Sunny Tram,” which Town,” with its subtle, earthy colors dynamically. Here, the artist combines is one of Urushadze’s most coloristically which evoke a sense of a timelessness as elements of Cubism, Color Field painting, vibrant canvases and could appear almost atmospheric as that in Utrillo’s paintings of and Automatisme akin to that of Jean- abstract, if not for the tram of the title Paris alleyways and thoroughfares; female Paul Riopelle, to create an overall effect and the small figures on the lower left portraits like “Young Woman, Profile,” of gemlike radiance, like points of light side of the canvas. For with its golden stylized in an elongated manner akin to refracting off the fractured planes of a auras, this picture, which looks as though Modigliani; or a composition in which diamond. Indeed, it is in a work such as painted with a brush dipped in liquid four different faces appear within a roughly this that Levan Urushadze’s unique form light, achieves an auspicious synthesis of configured abstract grid, entitled “Family.” of color construction achieves its apex, the artist’s different modes of expression, Urushadze is a painter who has making the palpable substance of pigment proving that they are not as disparate as obviously absorbed a wide range of art appear to transcend physical matter they may initially seem. Thus prepared, one historical influences, as any ambitious altogether and become somehow ethereal. can proceed on to the other works on the artist must who hopes to maintain the But perhaps one of his most appealing website with a better understanding of how continuum of a certain painterly tradition, paintings, in terms of its festive beauty, Urushadze approaches each painting with even while extending its perimeters. For is “Composition # 43,” a recent canvas untrammeled energy and passion, uniting example, in Urushadze’s “Game,” the that fairly explodes with color, light, and all of them by virtue of a shared chromatic three women playing cards are subjected gesture, like one of the great British painter power and tactile sumptuousness. to a formal simplification and a chromatic Turner’s epic nineteenth century novel It is instructive, above all, to study the heightening that can recall the primitive battle scenes updated in abstract terms. recent paintings on the section of the site force of both Nolde and Rouault. And For like Turner, whose contemporary labeled “Available Work,” where one gets in Urushadze’s “A Girl,” the purposely Constable once exclaimed that he painted the impression that rather than pursuing childlike imagery can remind one of the with “tinted steam,” Levan Urushadze is one direction for a time and then moving “art brut” of Dubuffet, as well as the an artist whose combination of gestural on to another, Urushadze works on all fanciful figures of Klee. energy and chromatic intensity often casts of them more or less simultaneously, In each case, however, he invariably an almost incendiary spell. according to his mood of the moment. assimilates the lessons of earlier centuries –– J. Sanders Eaton 28 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 Robert Gaudreau Celebrates the Dreams, Nightmares, and Vanity of Homely Humanity hat seems to set the figurative painter with whom he shares a lineage that goes all propped precariously on his shoulders in WRobert Gaudreau apart from a lot of the way back to Bosch and Bruegel. “Father and Son.” It is a situation that many other artists today is that he is not going The site features pictures from the 2000s, of us may recognize from leafing through through all sorts of clever conceptual or the 1990s, and earlier; but while one can an old family album and wondering, “Was stylistic contortions to overcome what one discern a steady, subtle progression as the Dad really that proud or just blind drunk, as critic recently had the audacity to refer to artist becomes more technically proficient usual?” as “the fallen state of painting since the in the handling of his mediums, the overall Yet there are also pictures such as “One 1960s, when Andy Warhol merged it with vision appears to have been present fully Moment,” in which a sweetly smiling, mechanical reproduction and Minimalism formed from the beginning. Humanity is relatively normal-looking woman cradles petrified it with a basilisk stare.” depicted in the raw; usually naked in both the head of her rotund mate, who grins like If, in fact, painting actually has fallen emotion and body; lumpy of physique, a contented sea lion. Illuminated by rays of nobody seems to have told Gaudreau about flesh scored with swirling “elephant skin” light that may emanate from a TV screen it; for he still proceeds right outside the picture as if painting matters, space, the couple seem and in doing so, makes to be enjoying one of it matter in the way that those simple moments it always has when it is of domestic tenderness any good: as a way of that make all the rest looking at the world and worthwhile. And humanity quite apart then there are slightly from the declarations of kinkier consolations, critics and the currents the artist seems to tell of fashion. us in another picture of Gaudreau, who was a naked man kneeling born in New Jersey and submissively before a still resides there, at a woman descending safe remove from those a staircase in a filmy thoroughfares where art white nightgown titled intersects with fashion, is “Obey,” as well as “A self-taught. However, as Spanking,” its very title always in the case of an telling the whole tail (if autodidact in the age of one may be permitted to the MFA, it is necessary indulge in a bad pun). here to make clear that But then again, Gaudreau, a former “Alone and not Alone” Gaudreau obviously professional sign painter, has developed a lines recalling the figures Henry Moore sees no point in denying the more vexing highly sophisticated personal iconography sketched huddled in air raid shelters during situations to which we were are all prey, which combines elements of Expressionism, the W.W.II bombardments of London. If such as “Friend,” in which the person of Surrealism –– and even hard-geometric the notion of beauty or elegance ever comes the title literally attaches him or her (here, abstraction, in a somewhat anomalous series up it is normally seen merely as a facet of it’s hard to say) self to one like an albatross. of compositions depicting brightly-colored pretension, in a pose that one of Gaudreau’s And then there are horrific nightmares that books on shelves. figures strikes in a moment of grotesque, lodge themselves in the subconscious, such However, the overwhelming majority self-parodying vanity. Yet their lack of as “Guilty Until Proven Innocent” where of Gaudreau’s paintings are figurative, and comeliness does not stop these beings, most hapless figures attempt to escape a surreal that he is without question one of our more of whom, male or female, are as hairless as room where a hangman’s noose casts the prolific observers of the human condition exterterrestials (which, with their dome-like shadow of a clock on the wall, and becomes immediately clear upon logging sculls, they often resemble) from coupling “Alone and Not Alone,” in which a woman onto his website: robertgaudreau.com. hungrily . and a small child, clutching hands, approach Indeed, the swarming profusion of In “Nibble,” two faces of indeterminate a queue of other naked souls that could be figures one encounters there can be initially gender, seen in close-up, appear intent on the line for the “showers” at Dachau.” overwhelming. For like Walt Whitman, cannibalizing each other; in “Plowing” two Although he can conjure up complex Gaudreau –– or at least his teeming deathly gray nudes do it doggy-style with multi-figure tableaux as hellish as anything imagination –– literally contains multitudes. the wheel of a motorcycle jutting into the ever imagined by Bosch, as indicated A cast of thousands populates the hundreds picture behind them; in another picture by titles such as “West Bank” and of oils and pastels that, along with a lesser called “Cuddle,” fornicating with a woman “Totalitarian,” that Robert Gaudreau is number of gouaches and photographs (soon in the missionary position, the strident also an astute student of human behavior to come) make up his online oeuvre. colors suggesting the moment of climax, the (as well as the pathos of conformist social But it is not the sheer number of works male partner swivels his head around as if to conventions) can best be seen in intimate that impresses one most; rather, it is the invite applause from the viewer. pictures such as “How to Blow a Kiss,” in many bizarre situations and psychological Such self-consciousness seems to be a which a morose-looking couple appears to states that his paintings portray that tempts constant in Gaudreau’s world, where the be attempting to teach their child to be just one to regard Gaudreau as a contemporary drawn or painted characters often seem to like them. –– Ed McCormack peer of artists such as Ensor and Munch, pose and preen for us, like the man flashing Robert Gaudreau will be exhibiting at World Fine who link Expressionism to Symbolism, and a big toothy grin with a grimacing child Art Gallery, from December 2 through December 23. Reception December 2, 6 to 8pm. NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 GALLERY&STUDIO 29 ART ONLINE Adventure and Enterprise in Fanny Escolar de Siere’s the Art of Joseph Swenarton Magical Dimension hat the realist painter Joseph Swenarton is an artist of many facets f the Kandinsky exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum Tis the first thing that becomes obvious on visiting his web site: Icelebrates the master who, in the early twentieth century literally swenartongallery.com. One of the more unusual series to be seen invented abstract art, that the possibilities of pure form and color as there is the painter’s posthumous collaboration with his late father, a major aesthetic direction continue to fascinate some of our most much in the spirit of the dubbed duets between Nat and Natalie Cole. adventurous contemporary artists was made auspiciously clear by Robert Swenarton was an accomplished amateur photographer Fanny Escolar de Siere, a painter from Argentina whose work was who shot mostly in black and white, and in the series called “Like seen recently at Jadite Gallery, 413 West 50th Street. Father, Like Son” Joseph Swenarton interprets some of his pictures As a professor of Spanish, Latin, and Literature, de Siere brings in color, a sophisticated world view, bolstered by her studies of Art History photo and and her workshop experience in a variety of studio techniques, to painting set bear in her energetic and colorful canvases, which have been widely side by side exhibited and were featured in the definitive art book “A View of to create Argentine Art,” published in 2008. striking One of the most immediately impressive aspects of de Siere’s diptychs. paintings is her refusal to succumb to stylistic formulae. Rather Since the than cultivating a stylistic trademark, she prefers to make each son is new painting a new adventure. While this is very much in the primarily explorative spirit of Kandinsky and other modernist pioneers, a nature it requires real courage and conviction in an era when a certain painter, instantly recognizable iconography has become very much a part of the father many artists’ marketing strategy. Obviously de Siere puts a higher inspires him premium on discovery than on the form of light manufacturing that “Golden Shadows” auspiciously much postmodern art has become. And that she refuses to cater to with subjects such as the woodsy scene “Golden Shadows,” the lyrical our expectations makes her work an adventure for the viewer as well vision of which Joseph Swenarton expands upon with a full palette of as for the artist. luminous hues, the dappled chiaroscuro of the photograph suddenly In the mixed bursting forth in a symphony of yellows and purples. media painting called Similarly, the son sensitively tweaks the rustic charm of the father’s “Affinidades, for “Autumn Rapture” by virtue of his chromatic amplification and example, the fiery subtle compositional reorganization. Since Joseph Swenarton seems reds and yellows to be generally more of a landscape than figure painter, his dad that de Siere favors appears to encourage him to try a new approach in “Clara.” Rising are combined with to the occasion, the son puts a new spin on this rearview portrait of linear configurations an elderly woman in a sun bonnet, positioning the portion of her “drawn” with head that is cropped out of the photograph in reverse order to jog the sinuously twisted viewers’ perceptions in an intriguing manner. wire affixed to the The son slightly alters the composition of the father’s photo “Bird canvas. At first Lady of the Beach” in his painted version, creating the cinematic these collaged illusion of a shift from medium shot to close-up, lending a sense of forms appear totally “Untitled” sequential movement to two static images. abstract, but on Juxtaposed in this fashion, each photographic and painted image in closer viewing they become figuratively allusive, suggesting people the “Like Father, Like Son” series reveals its own individual merits, in a crowd moving rhythmically, their linear relationships evoking making not only for a heartfelt tribute, but also for an engaging the communal feeling implicit in the title. Yet while this humanistic aesthetic dialogue animated by complementary contrasts. idea comes across quite vividly, the artist’s more pressing interest in Other series on the website feature Joseph Swenarton’s landscapes color harmonies and abstract autonomy defies literal interpretation, in oils and acrylics, primarily of locales in Italy and Key West, Florida, making such connections metaphorical rather than literal. where he arrived in 1985 and claims to have found love, spiritual By contrast, “Untitled,” with its swirling gestural spirals rejuvenation, and artistic inspiration. The paintings in his “Joseph’s generating a sense of energy, movement, and light divorced from Garden” series reflect this sense of epiphany with their exotic matter (albeit paradoxically evoked in the substance of tactile vegetation and vibrant tropical colors. pigment) is all about cosmic phenomena, rather than vestiges of the Joseph Swenarton could be termed a Neo-Impressionist, since his physical world. Here, de Siere transcends even the metaphorical to light-filled plein air style suggests that he has absorbed the inspiration approach the plane of pure metaphysic –– a subtle but significant of Monet, Renoir and other nineteenth-century French masters. distinction in relation to this painting. And that she avoids titling Rather than appearing dissolved by light, however, his forms retain the composition leaves it open to an infinite range of imaginative more detail and palpable substance. He also seems to eschew the conjecture. Impressionists’ pseudoscientific theories regarding light and color Then there is “Ficciones,” in which de Siere bridges the physical phenomena, in favor of an exuberantly intuitive interpretation of and the metaphysical in an especially vigorous composition with nature. sensual forms that seem to vacillate before one’s eyes, morphing Along with producing giclee prints, Joseph Swenarton has from the figurative to the abstract and back again in the manner of innovated what he calls All Weather Art, a process by which fine art those mythical beings known “shape shifters.” reproductions of his paintings can serve as outdoor murals on patios That this particular painting shares its title with the most popular and elsewhere. Described on his website in the section called “New anthology of short stories by the great Argentinean writer Jorge Horizons,” as well as on a related site called patiopizzaz.com, this Luis Borges seems especially appropriate. For like a visual peer of her new process is yet another facet of this versatile painter’s enterprising fellow countryman, Fanny Escolar de Siere is also something of a spirit. ––Byron Coleman magician. –– Maurice Taplinger 30 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 Anowar Hossain Dissects the Michael Jackson Myth in Pigment f fame is the cut-rate immortality of a techniques than Kline. Isecular age, celebrities are our disposable In paintings such as Hossain’s gods and goddesses, clay feet and all. As the “Snow Storm” and “River principals of our tabloid myths, they often Side,” for two examples, while pay dire consequences for being perceived solid draftsmanship is the as larger than life. Few, however, have ended underlying armature on which as tragically as Michael Jackson, our recently the compositions rest, all traces of deceased King of Pop, who after growing up linear structuring are swept away in public sought to transcend race, gender, as though by the very forces of and even the aging process, only to succumb nature to which those two titles to an early death in that peculiar squalor allude, even though the artist and isolation which all too often attends does not literally depict the storm outlandish notoriety. or the river in even the most Sadly, once the mass hysteria that serves vaguely illustrative manner. What as emotional catharsis for the legions of fans is captured instead is the spirit who live vicariously through them subsides, and untrammeled essence of such such latter-day deities have a relatively things; their energy and sense of short posthumous shelf life, unless they are flux. These intangible things are resurrected in a medium less popular but evoked by the sheer speed and more enduring than their own. power of Hossain’s gestures: the Only time will tell if Anowar Hossain strokes of a broad, loaded brush has accomplished this feat for Michael, spitting forth sparks of whitewash but in the meantime the paintings that the at the point of impact with the singer’s myth inspired the Bangladesh-born canvas like froth from crashing American painter to create are impressive surf; or a muscularly configured on their own merits, in his Open Studio shape in black pigment as viscous Exhibition at L.I.C.. Arts Center, 44-02 as tar that flips off the sudden 23rd Street, in Long Island City, from twist of a wrist with a practiced November 7 to December 7. (Reception: dancers’ grace. November 7, 5 to 8 PM.) Many of the qualities that One thing that should be understood make Hossain such an engaging “Michael Jackson in Red” 36x48 mixed media about Hossain at the onset is that he is one painter are combined in the more organically, as seen in “Michael Had a of our most accomplished contemporary composition oddly titled “Lower Side Style,” where the appealing smiling face of exponents of the Abstract Expressionist idiom. Brooklyn.” A sinuous black line, bolstered the very young pre-plastic surgery Michael Perhaps the best place to see how thoroughly by more broadly brushed broken strokes of floats like the man in the moon within a he has mastered its entire formal vocabulary rusty ocher and areas of much thicker black vibrant pink field enhanced with cloud-like and range of effects is in the series of recent calligraphy. Variously overlaid with semi- areas of yellow and green. Or else, in the mostly black and white (except for touches translucent washes of white that allow bits of contrastingly spooky “Michael in Blue Hair,” of ocher in a few canvases) compositions he pentimento or “process” to show through he gives us a Halloween vision of the singer’s is showing along with his Michael Jackson and imbue the painting with a sense of later mask-like, wig-framed visage, with paintings. Few painters today can match the immediacy, or completely canceled here and opaque blue sunglasses and garish red lips sheer majesty and velocity of his Hossain’s there with opaque slashes of grimy urban gray, suggesting the empty eye-sockets and mortal brushstrokes, which appear in his large these elements all swirl furiously around each grin of a skinned human skull. canvases as though laid down with broad other, gathering force like a tornado. Here, By contrast, in “Michael in Thriller,” house painters’ brushes like those that early as in other paintings by Hossain, a sense of Hossain depicts the singer sitting pretty New York School painters such as Willem de spatial tension pushes out against the edges of on the success of his most famous album, Kooning and Franz Kline often employed. the composition –– as if to implode the very a toothy Sphinx afloat in a field of dollar Indeed, although he also cites great Indian stretcher bars to which the canvas is stapled! bills. Then, in “Michael with Makeups,” we artists such as the writer Ravindrath Tagore One might validly wonder how an see the fading star as a painted and tainted and the filmmaker Satyajit Ray as early artist could assimilate specific figurative specter, as rouged, bruised and doomed as cultural inspirations, these American abstract imagery coherently into such a powerful one of Andy’s iconic “Marilyns.” Hossain’s painters would appear to be Hossain’s most gestural force field. In the case of Hossain’s lyrical pastel hues make paint a literal immediate artistic ancestors. Of course, when Michael Jackson series, this is achieved in surrogate for cosmetics, reducing the King of Hossain works monochromatically, as in this just the opposite manner of de Kooning’s Pop to a clown prince as grotesquely pathetic series, it is Kline’s name that comes most “Women.” Which is to say: rather than as the lovelorn decadent middle-aged immediately to mind, not only for the stark wreaking monstrous distortions on the protagonist of Thomas Mann’s “Death in beauty he achieves without benefit of color figures themselves, Hossain integrates classical Venice,” his mascara diluted by tears. but also for the architectonic structuring realist draftsmanship within the color areas Apparently Anowar Hossain set himself the of his compositions and his bold, sweeping in a manner more akin to the hybrid style task of making each of his Michael Jackson strokes in paintings such as “The Hanger” of Larry Rivers. But while Rivers sometimes pictures a unique painterly statement. That and “Old Dock Yard.” However, the painterly diluted both the Abstract Expressionist and he also makes each one a powerful comment fluidity in most of Hossain’s compositions is figurative elements in his compositions by on the rise and fall of a tragic American icon actually more akin to that of de Kooning, who succumbing to a fussy illustrative tendency, makes the series all the more remarkable. had a broader and more refined arsenal of Hossain integrates drawing and painting –– Ed McCormack

NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 GALLERY&STUDIO 31 A Gift of Art Winter Darkness December 9 - 27, 2009 A Fine Arts Exhibit Comes To Bright Curators: Margo Mead, Patience Sundaresan December 30 - January 17, 2010 Patrick Antonelle • Carson Ferri-Grant • Madi Lanier A Fine Arts Exhibit Margo Mead • Amy Rosenfeld • Anne Rudder Curators: Larry Frank, Anne Rudder Patience Sundaresan et al Broadway Mall Community Center Broadway Mall Community Center Broadway@96St. (NYC) Center Island Broadway@96St. (NYC) Center Island Gallery Hours: Wed 6-8pm, Sat/Sun. 12-6 pm Gallery Hours: Wed 6-8pm, Sat/Sun. 12-6 pm [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org

American Society of Contemporary Artists 92nd Annual Exhibition November 10 -22, 2009 Password-Art's Secret Symbols Bay Area to New York Broome Street Gallery, 498 Broome St., NYC 10013 Tues.-Sun. 12 - 6 pm/closed Mon. Reception: Sat., Nov. 14th 2 - 5 pm Anita Adelman Lawrence Alboum Elaine Alibrandi Joseph Amabile Esther Berman Marcia Bernstein Elinore Bucholtz Nikolai Buglaj Linda Butti Rose-Marie Cherundola October 28 - December 22, 2009 Eleanor Comins Jeremy Comins Maria De Echevarria Judith de Zanger Elvira Dimitrij Imelda Cajipe Endaya Steve Erenberg Harriet Fe Bland Sachie Hayashi Judith Huttner Rose Sigal Ibsen Janet Indick Jessica Iwamoto Sueyoshhi Iwamoto Erin Stukey Johnson Hortense Kassoy Florence Keveson Olga Kitt Olivia Koopalethes Dorothy Koppelman Estelle Levy Annette Lieblein harriet R. marion Leanne Martinson Basha Maryanska Meredith McIver Margo Mead Marie Mutz Mina Myer Hedy O’Beil Marian H. Oken Lisa Robbins Alan Roland Hank Rondina Bonnie Rothchild Gerda Roze Joanne Beaule Ruggles Barbara Browner Schiller Allan Stone Gallery Neva Setlow Raymond Shanfeld Isabel Shaw Uri Shulevitz Allan Simpson Margery Small Sonia Stark Kelley Stengele Tamara Tarasiewicz Lubonir Tomaszewski 113 East 90th Street, NYC 10128 Lea Weinberg Raymond Weinstein Marilyn Weiss Miriam B. Wills Jan Wunderman Tel. 212.987.4997 Fax. 212.987.1655 Doris Wyman Leslie Shaw Zadoian Zizi www.allanstonegallery.com Next ASCA exhibition from 12/2/2009 to 1/7/2010 at Synagogue For The Arts, 49 White St. NYC 10013 Reception: Thurs, 12/3/2009, 6-8 pm

5th annual auction ABSTRACT 2009 December 15–January 2, 2010 November 18 - December 6, 2009 Opening Reception: Sat., Dec. 19, 4–6 PM A Fine Arts Exhibit Closing Reception and Live Auction: Sat., Jan. 2, 4–6 PM Elinore Bucholtz • Jutta Filippelli Bid on-line until Dec. 31, or in person at Noho Gallery where Leanne Martinson • Peg McCreary silent bids may be placed anytime until final live bids on Sat., Jan. 2, at 4:00 PM. (Closed Christmas & New Year’s Day) Amy Rosenfeld • Beatrice Rubel Meyer Tannenbaum ZZZQRKRJDOOHU\FRP Broadway Mall Community Center Broadway@96St. (NYC) Center Island xÎäÊ7iÃÌÊÓxÌ Ê-ÌÀiiÌÊUÊ/Õiðq->Ì°]Ê££‡ÈÊUÊӣӇÎÈLJÇäÈÎ Gallery Hours: Wed 6-8pm, Sat/Sun. 12-6 pm [email protected] 212-316-6024 www.wsacny.org

32 GALLERY&STUDIO NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 works by ENRIQUE CUBILLAS & Other Gallery Artists

“Rembrandt Tulips” by Enrique Cubillas by Tulips” “Rembrandt Through January, 2010 SUTTON ART GALLERY 407 East 54th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022 Tel. 212 753 0884 Cell 917 544 6846 Tues - Fri 11am - 6pm Sat 11am - 5pm [email protected] NOV/DEC 2009-JAN 2010 GALLERY&STUDIO