Chelsea Gallerista

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

Enrique Chagoya -  Return to Goya No 9  - is that Obama in a frock? Yes it is!  Chagoya's cheeky seal I recently discovered the wonderful International Print Center NY , a shrine to all things pulped, pressed and printed - in ways that a camera or traditional brush and canvas are not. The center is non-profit and relies the support of annual auctions and some very generous artist benefactors.  For example, the above etching, an edition of 50, was donated by MOMA-lauded printmaking lecturer from San Francisco, Enrique Chagoya, featuring his signature wit and irreverence - in this case, Obama in a frock, and executed in the style of Goya.  The Denver Post featured this story of a woman who smashed her way into Chagoya's show in Loveland, denouncing what some locals felt were blasphemous images. Well, as they say, better to be talked about than not talked about ... My surge of interest in printmaking was inspired by a friend, Kate Holoka, a recent and promising

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

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

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'

"Bird Void", a still from Chris Doyle's video installation Waste_Generation Andrew Edlin gallery, "the middle one" of the 10th Ave trio of Lori Bookstein, Andrew Edlin and Alexander & Bonin is currently showing a captivating multimedia work by Chris Doyle , an artist famous for working with projected images in public spaces. Here's my favorite work in the exhibition -  a duotrans movie still called "Bird Void" from his trippy floor-to-ceiling video projection screening in an adjacent room. Illuminated as a lightbox, it features a kaleidoscopic digital backdrop overlayed with smokestacks reminiscent of the artist's hometown Brooklyn, surrealistically etched by the negative silhouettes of menacing crows. Though the artist demurs that this is a save-the-planet message or political message, that's the overarching sentiment. It's best summed up by the Edlin team on the gallery's site: ... In it a dump site for outmoded to