Chelsea Gallerista

Anyone who has wandered into a Kid Robot store will know the  Munny  (pronounced Muni) doll.  It's a blank, white vinyl character you can decorate yourself with pens and crayons. If there was a word like "androgynous" with an expanded meaning to encompass "indeterminate creature" then it would describe the Munny. It's vaguely human, vaguely animal,  vaguely neither. Jan Huling, a former advertising creative, decided to bead the heck out of the minimalist Munny, making it decidedly maximalist.  The result is a stunning twist on this famous, faceless anime icon. I stumbled across it in Lyons Wier Gallery, an inviting, accessible corner space on 7th Ave which rubs shoulders with the more pedestrian Jamba Juices,  Pinkberrys and falafel joints, quite distant from the main westside Chelsea Gallery district. "We're on the cusp, I enjoy the location and being away from the Gallery scene," said Michael Lyons, one of the new breed of gallery owner I...

New York Fashion Week has gotten off to a sad start. 40 years young Alexander McQueen, a celebrated fashion designer, hanged himself in a hotel room yesterday . I happened to walk past his store in the Meatpacking District, today. It's right near Stella McCartney's store, currently depicting big pixelated signs saying LOVE. Flowers were laid on the pavement and the blind was drawn. As if in sympathy, many other stores in the area were closed, when they'd normally be open - a Friday night at 7pm. I don't have any McQueen threads - the pricing is stratospheric. But I have occasionally wandered into the store for a poke around. Boutiques in NYC are like mini-museums where you can actually touch the art, try it on, and if you've got the cash, take it home. Imagine trying that with a Picasso! However, a few months ago I happened to be passing by a building in Chelsea which often has a sandwich board out front advertising warehouse sales - in this case, one for Al...

New York never fails to redeem itself" - E.B. White in "Here is New York" A lot as already been written about the inhabitants of an apartment that rubs railings with the recently opened Highline Park in Chelsea . You can google "Renegade Cabaret" in the blabosphere and land on their Facebook page, webpage and a lot of citizen cyber-ink. Prior to the $152m, "no binoculars needed" viewing platform unrolling outside her window, it appears resident Patty Heffley "lived in obscurity for 31 years in her building on West 20th St", sashaying from bathroom to bedroom without having to duck 'n' run in a towel as you do, and ecologically hanging out her laundry on the exposed fire escape without hassle. On June 9, 2009, things changed, when this soon-to-be world famous public park knocked on her window box. Her sporting response was to grab a couple of friends with talent, string out the paper lanterns and put on a show. Since the...

Above: The view from the Standard Hotel's elevator - one you don't mind being stuck in The Standard Hotel - a shingle as chicly understated as the building is understatedly chic - has opened its lounge in the stratosphere. Straddling the wildly popular Highline aerial park, which I filmed just before it opened, this Polshek-designed, Andre Balazs-owned inn reminds me of the Jolly Gray Giant. I don't even know what the latest name of the lounge is - Manifest? Boom Boom ... Boom? The celebs have christened it of course, but this post is for us plebestrians who pass between the Giant's gray chino'd thighs, peering crotchward to see if those mile high performances are just a myth (Motel Sex? Boom boom). You enter the hotel through a Lego-like yellow cylinder and reappear in a small lobby flanked by two very cool, white egg-crate like partitions. The maid in me wonders if someone is hired to featherdust each and every hole ... The elevator to the lo...

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...

MOMA is nowhere near Chelsea, but occasionally I make my way up there on someone else's guest pass, and since this blog is mostly about art ... On this occasion it was to see a Tim Burton retrospective with graphic artist pal, Justin Winslow . I'm not a huge Tim Burton fan, but I appreciate the pathos in his work. He reminds me of one of Australia's greatest living melancholics, Michael Leunig . I'm just going to share a few of the ones I liked - the ones I got a shot of before being told "no photos." This the Tongue Twister. What kind of criterion is required to adequately twist a tongue, as this creature is so efficaciously effecting? Let's see now ... a striped bumble body, wicked-witch gloved hands, amphibious tentacles, waspy wings, and a 'do from HAIR. And a really scary, Joker-like countenance. But of course!   I really liked Burton's "Mars Attacks!" aliens. This one, in a glittery, swirly gown and bodice, took ...

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 ...