Chelsea Gallerista

My Cousin Heidi In Her Renaissance Fair Dress, 2006 [VIDEO] ChelseaGallerista meets Chris Verene at Postmasters Gallery, 2010 All photos from ChrisVerene.com except where noted IF you live in a Manhattan studio, one thing you can't collect too much of is books - especially the giant, panoramic, coffee table kind (unless you plan to use them as a coffee table). But I do own a handful: one fifth  Milton Glaser , one fifth a Picasso catalog from the Paris leg of my Damien Hirst Spot Challenge , one fifth Jan Kempenaers' Spomenik  (because you just have to). And two-fifths American documentary photographer, Chris Verene . Chris signing my treasured copies of  "Chris Verene" (2000) and "Family" (2010),  beautifully produced by Twin Palms Publishers. Photo by a friendly bystander.  I met Chris at his show at Postmasters Gallery on the auspicious date of 10/10/10. I already owned two of his books: Chris Verene (2000) and Family (2010). On op

Cookbooks in Bed with Lover Sleeping on the Side 9" X 6" Giclee Print, Edition of 25, $375 View series I've just started a 6-week Trends in Photography and Contemporary Art course at the School of Visual Arts, taught by New York art critic and consultant Brian Appel . The class has a number of working artists, blossoming artists, art appreciators, and "I can't draw for the life of me but I can just see it" arteests like me. Yup, I figured it was about time I expanded on my art knowledge from the "P" volume of the World Book Encyclopedia.  I confess that one of the most popular, dare I say, cliche paintings of all time, Henri Rousseau's Sleeping Gypsy, still sends a little buzz down my prefrontal cortex : Like a lucid dream: Henri Rousseau's The Sleeping Gypsy It's those toes on the footprintless sand ... the 3-D stripes of the robe ...  the beady eye of the lion ... the warped guitar strings ... brrrr! But I digr

Snap frozen Osaka: "Each person ... seems to convey his or her own personal life story even though they appear frozen in their action." Continuing on my photography-ogling odyssey , I chanced upon this wonderful shot in Ceres Gallery , a non-profit artspace for women artists. It's part of a show called "Recollections: From New York to Tokyo" by Osaka transplant Masayo Nishimura , who was manning the desk when I stumbled in on a rainy, icy Manhattan Saturday. The show features largely subway shots from both countries, with a handful of above-ground moments. Let me rant at length as to why I love this image. First, it's Japan. As of 2009, when  I visited Japan for the first time under the auspices of my job as a bicycle evangelist, I'm a hopeless Japanophile. Yes I have a Maneki Neko cat (2!) and a nabe pot  lugged from Kyoto. Yes I pedaled through its delirious, labyrinth-like cities, scarfed brilliant bento at train stations, surged with cr

I CONFESS that a week ago, I didn't give much thought to collecting photographs. Perhaps due to the push-button instant gratification of the camera, it always seemed the "easy way out" compared to artfully splashing about layers of paint or fashioning grand canyons out of core ten steel (a la Richard Serra). I've since done a 180-degree about face, partly due to a friend's recent purchase of a vintage photo that led me to "real deal" photo gallerista Deborah Bell , enthusiastic art consultant Brian Appel , and a fascinating series of mini-talks entitled "511: Holiday Focus on Photography"  this past weekend. The 20-minute talks by the seven galleries were excellent but scheduled a bit too tightly, leaving no room to browse before you had to beat it to the elevator to see the next. (A 30-40 minute window, leaving time to ponder the just-discussed work, would have made more sense). One thing I noticed was how affable and friendly this b

It's been my lucky week. I've been to two galleries where the artists were present and unmobbed. First, Wendell Castle  with his sensuous "repurposed trees" at Barry Friedman. Then, the maestro of ephemeral sculpture, Andy Goldsworthy. Andy is renowned for his transient sculptures constructed largely in nature - woven blades of grass forming a mesh with the sky completing the spaces; sticks marching in thin air;  petals arranged as a solid blaze of color on a pond before lazily dispersing. Quite simply, he's taken the simple rock cairn to the n+1th degree. The documentary "Rivers and Tides" brought his work to the ADHD attention of the masses. So it was intriguing to see him execute his shtick in the decidedly unnatural environment of the world's most celebrated city. The exhibition consisted of sequences of photographs and real time video. A single water splash photographed over time; a serpentine mark on pavement gradually obliterated by

From the Aperture website : During the 1994 genocide, hundreds of thousands of Rwandan women were subjected to massive sexual violence by members of the infamous Hutu militia groups, known as the Interhamwe. Among the most isolated survivors are women who have borne children as a result of those rapes. The number of children born from these atrocities is estimated around 20,000. Due to the stigma of rape and "having a child of the militia," the women’s communities and few surviving relatives have largely shunned them. Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape brings together Jonathan Torgovnik’s remarkable portraits of these women and children, and their harrowing first-hand testimonies. THIS exhibition was utterly harrowing, as it should be. It consisted of testimonial after testimonial by Rwanden women, describing their horrific ordeals at the hands - weapons, knives, broken bottles - of their captors. Each account was presented as a large portrait of t