Chelsea Gallerista

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...

Tobias Putrih at Muelensteen Gallery  http://www.meulensteen.com / Maybe it's a reaction to all the colorful tulips and daffodils blooming in pots around the city, but I'm in a decidedly monochromatic, minimalist frame of mind. Today, during New York Gallery Week  I was taken by black and white. Well, that's what seemed to dominate when I looked over the shots I'd captured. For example, I loved the menacing Meccano-like powdercoated, perforated panels bolted together by Czech artist Tobias Putrih in his show When Language Goes on Holiday at Muelensteen Gallery , above. Architecty and hard edge, it made me jones for an IKEA-antidote kitchen and bathroom made of it - dammit, make that the whole apartment. Check out the website of this Dutch-owned gallery (formerly Max Protech) and you'll see a special link for Architecture with all the great names - Frank Gehry doodles, Louis Khan scribbles ... and we know how much the Dutch love architecture. Read more abo...

Raise you to $2M for the Cindy Sherman ... (in one's dreams) A few more photos on ChelseaGallerista Facebook page Today, I discovered yet another "best thing in Manhattan life you can do for free" - go to a contemporary art auction. Truly, it's like going to "the game." "Amazing photos, we gotta go!" texted my fellow School of Visual Arts cohort Lisa, who'd downloaded the iPhone app of über-chic auction house Phillips de Pury .  The app allows you to browse the "lots" - auction-speak for artwork - and seemingly, do everything short of bid on your phone. 'Cos you wouldn't want to wave it around and accidentally swipe an extra 5 grand onto your cellphone bill, now would you? Lisa's favorite: RICHARD AVEDON, Sunny Harnett, model. Dress by Grès. Casino, Le Touquet, Paris, August, 1954. Estimate $15,000-20,000, Sold at $27,500 Our small SVA class has become so enthused about art we have continued to mee...

Portrait 5 (Stephens) sold for $27K at the Phillips d Pury March 2011 Auction. All proceeds went to DonorsChoose.org.   See what it was up against  and my "review" below. I've just completed my 6-week SVA Trends in Photography and Contemporary Art  : What's Happening Now mini-course. It's an indulgent immersion in the art world - feasting your eyeballs on everything from priceless icons of the modern art world to the proverbial "my 6 year old could do that." (Ah, but your 6-year old, my friend, is not named"Warhol").  We got to see the galleries of Chelsea, the Upper East Side and the Lower East Side, plus attend a Phillips de Pury "mid season" auction preview and a couple of Armory Arts Week shows.  Some of us were budding collectors. "The Confess Project": The gang check out artist Margot Lovejoy's confessions on the surreal "receivers" at  Stephan Stoyanov Gallery,  29 Orchard St -  ...

Developing that photographic eye early - budding photographer snapped by Lynette Chiang in Mike Weiss Gallery It's been an exhausting 4 days - all the art fairs - Armory Show, Pulse, Scope Volta, Independent etc collide in one short, compressed period, causing a stampede from venue to venue. Check out the list of fairs . And it rained moonsoons on the last Sunday. I hope one day They Inc. will make the shows span 2 weeks instead of half a week, somewhat like Restaurant Week.  I only got to see Pulse, Volta, the massive Armory Show.  More about this soon. Then of course, there was the Phillips de Pury auction preview which in many ways, I enjoyed most. PHOTO GALLERY: My favorites at the Under the Influence auction  and here are the results . A few things that caught my eye: PULSE: A Hans Kotter light tube. "Could have sold it several times over," said the gallerist. $12,000 PHILLIPS de PURY: Heliopolis IV  by Dionisio Gonzales - being auctione...

Vernita  N'cognita lets fly in a hyper-controlled butoh fashion In the spirit of "you learn something new every day as long as you refrain from saying  meh, " I learned a new word today:  butoh . Butoh is a kind of mute performance so eloquently defined in Wikipedia, I've copy-pasted the definition here:  Butoh   ( 舞踏  Butō ? )  is the collective name for a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for  dance , performance, or movement inspired by the  Ankoku-Butoh   ( 暗黒 舞踏 ankoku butō ? )  movement. It typically involves playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, extreme or absurd environments, and is traditionally performed in white body makeup with slow hyper-controlled motion, with or without an audience. There is no set style, and it may be purely conceptual with no movement at all. Its origins have been attributed to Japanese dance legends Tatsumi Hijikata  and  Kazuo Ohno I lov...

Replicas of "Horse and Rider" - the full sized bronze original is at The Texas Tech University in Lubbock.   I am utterly beside myself ... I'm now the proud owner of not one, but two Tom Otterness sculptures, entitled "Horse and Rider." Now before commuters familiar with the Brooklyn artist's quirky little figurines strewn around Manhattan's subway stations accuse me of grand theft with a hacksaw (um, make that a chainsaw), these are cast resin  replicas. The read deal (and other objects of my profound desire) are being exhibited Feb 23 at the artist's outlet of choice,  Marlborough Gallery , and will probably set you back at least $7K, last I looked. I came face to nose with the real deal at the Armory Show, NYC, 2011 The "Horse and Rider" full-size bronze currently graces the campus of the Texas Tech University in Lubbock. The subject itself is a  loose interpretation of the Texas Tech Uni's mascot, ‘The Masked Ride...