Chelsea Gallerista

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...

UPDATE March 2014: Great article about Wendell's latest freestylin' furniture FOR once at a gallery opening, it was obvious who the artist was. On the wall:  a photo of a bearded gent sporting Kermit-on-acid green spectacles and a pinstriped jacket.  Floating around the room was a person matching that exact picture. Bingo! I've always thought the artist should always wear a sash or button at his/her reception saying "Ask me about my art!" I guarantee that "is there artist here?" is the #1 thought bubble at these openings. He or she is not necessarily the nouveau Warhol in the shredded jeans and impossibly pointy boots, or the artsy one in the middle of a huddle. And it's embarrassing to think you just wandered blithely past him/her or worse, asking where the restroom is. But I digress. Wendell Castle's exhibition at Barry Friedman gallery featured "12, unique stack-laminated wood chairs", hand carved by this 77-year old ...

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...