Chelsea Gallerista

A sweet show: Pamela with Gumdrops (left) and Billy's Cupcakes (right) If you glance back through this blog you'll note that I'm a huge contemporary art fan – the weirder and more subversive, the better. But I do appreciate a good still life, especially if its weird, subversive, or makes me want to eat it.  That seemed to be the gut sentiment of the enthused crowd who gathered in the lobby of a Greenwich Village apartment building to view "Sugar and Fat" by New York painter Pamela Talese . Cheese and Hermes Scarf: Had even the most vegan diehards dreaming of brie and crackers. OK, maybe not vegans ...  The paintings featured some iconic New York sweets and treats, offset by unusual backdrops to give them a this-is-Talese-not- Thiebaud twist. Plates of mini-cupcakes disappeared in a New York nanosecond (the Oreos lingered), and many people were mesmerized by the buttery slice of brie in "Cheese and Hermes Scarf." It was the first of the

Artist and former dancer James Kennedy: precision abstractions created with an eye for the architectural and plenty of tape.  VIDEO (right) : ChelseaGallerista interviews James Kennedy in his studio (2:55 min) "I go through a tone of blue tape. It takes almost as long to mask up a painting as to paint it." James Kennedy is my latest favorite "local" artist. I say favorite, because I love practically every piece on his website . Flipping through his work is like looking through a kaleidoscope of color, line, form and some pretty deep cuts with an Exacto knife. I say "local," because I stumbled across him as normally I would, doing my Thursday night rounds of Chelsea gallery openings (when I can get out of work on time). I think I must have spent at least an hour or more in his modest workroom on a high floor in a Chelsea artists' labyrinth, going from painting to painting and back again, mesmerized by the studied surface treat

There Ain’t Time To Argue! Oil, spray paint, and enamel on canvas, 58 x 52 inches. This is my favorite. It's a huge work. RIGHT NOW, it couldn't be more politically incorrect for me to "like" this exhibition. Congresswomen Gabrielle Gifford lies breathing through a tube somewhere in Tucson, recovering from a point-blank gunshot wound to the head. Pro and anti-gun squabbles are loud and vocal. Psychoanalysis is the discipline of the day, as authorities try to work out how to spot nutjobs before they crack. So, it's with great trepidation that I dare even blog about this show, although the vivid poster-like images sitting in the large window of Lyon's Weir gallery caught my eye long before the tragic incident. Trouble Ahead Oil, spray paint, and enamel on canvas, 22 x 22 inches  I love the highly textured, thick blue thought bubble. Matt Straub hails from Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he "spent his early years hitchhiking and hopping freig

One of Bennett's many works featuring his famous "knit stitch". "What's a Oregon painting doing in the blog of Chelsea Gallerista, New York City? Well, it's my blog, so I'll finagle the GPS if I want to ... Sticks and Stones" by Paul Alan Bennett is sitting on a friend's wall in Eugene, Oregon, waiting to emigrate to the Coast where I am currently loitering with intent.  It may well have heralded the end of my wandering days as a solo bicycle adventurette. The print, one of an edition of 250, is about as big as the biggest flat screen TV turned sideways. It's framed - not the sort of thing you should be buying if you're in the move!  I'm still trying to decide if I should just gift it to him - the shipping of this very large painting will probably warrant just buying it again ($275) and re-framing it.  Something captivated me about this picture, when I saw it in a flyer on a notice board. Probably because it'

One of Alison's deep, dark melancholy clowns. Watch her riveting Hobo movie . I love the  Alexander and Bonin Gallery . I pop in several times a week when I'm in the neighborhood, and loiter longer than is decent before works that enthrall, intrigue, transfix. Like this creepy clown, by LA artist Alison Schulnik . The eyes are like two tragic abysses, hollowed out from the thick, thick paint, perhaps with a finger. The strokes look like a supersize tube of each color - mainly black - was the actual brush. She must have gone through a truckload of tubes. Creepy the Clown's brethren come alive in a super trippy, melancholy claymation clip called Hobo the Clown on Alison's website. Those eyes spin and merge and spread and splatter as only claymation can. Check out her other videos . With the classic circus clown, the sad mouth is always over-exaggerated, the eyes reduced to "+" signs receding into a backdrop of pancake white. Yet here, it's like

AFTER enthusiastically kicking off this blog, I'll admit the Manhattan winter bailed me up just outside the front door. Fortunately, the artsy mayhem begins as soon as I make it past the pooping chichuahuas and preening Sharpeis ... The first of these galleries is Postmasters which featured a very personal show by David Diao. The site features a concise roundup of his show entitled " I lived there until I was 6 ". From the Postmasters press release: David Diao left his home in China under extreme circumstances 59 years ago at the moment of the Communist takeover. The property was confiscated and made into the offices of the "Sichuan Daily." By the time of his first visit back 30 years later, the house had been demolished. For years Diao has sought to render his charged feelings about this loss into a group of paintings ... Essayist Philip Tinari writes: Using his memory and those of his assorted aunts and uncles, and calibrated by the fixed dimensio