Our neighbors on West 29th, the Coates Wyllie gallery, are hosting an opening party for their latest show, Character Saturation, which includes a few friends. If you’re in the neighborhood check it out — let them know you’re coming here.
IMOGEN, ANSEL AND THE POT PLANT
We started to have a talk about Minor and Ansel, and she began to tell stories about these younger friends of hers, who in her opinion couldn’t properly take care of their health — she was 91 at the time. Then she began to gossip about Ansel and what a prude and tight-ass he was. “He’s always showing off,” she said.
Ansel had done an advertising campaign for Yuban coffee, and they used one of his Yosemite pictures on the outside of the can. Ansel sent a five-pound can to Imogen, and the coffee was excellent, and she figured, “Well, I now have to pay him back.” So she put a bunch of earth in the can and some seeds and sent it down to Carmel with the directions, “Just add water, Ansel. Here are some beautiful plants for you.” He did as she directed, and the plant came up strong and healthy. And then one day his buddy the sheriff came to visit in his home and looked at it and said, “Ansel, what are you doing growing dope? You know I can arrest you for this.” Needless to say, Ansel then got on the phone to cuss her out. She just thought it was hilarious.
Photographer Abe Frajndlich on his first meeting with prankster and photography legend Imogen Cunningham, and her punking of Ansel Adams, in his book Penelope’s Hungry Eyes. Imogen’s spiritual kinship with painter Georgie O’Keefe is the subject of one lens in the Seattle Art Museum’s Elles exhibition — a look at work by seminal female artists, up through February 17. If you need a place to stay while you’re here, let us know.
All photos by Alan Ross
Working in video and performance, Japanese video and performance artist Meiro Koizumi has built a compelling body of work that deals with power dynamics on scales from the familial to the national, and examines questions of political and psychological control. Implicating himself, his performers and the viewer through choreographed emotional manipulations, Koizumi creates works that straddle the uncomfortable and indefinable line between cruelty and comedy.
His first solo museum installation in the US, Projects 99, at MoMA includes a selection of earlier projects, as well as Defect in Vision, Meiro’s most ambitious and accomplished project to date. Probing the idea of blindness—both philosophical and physical—the piece is projected on two sides of a single screen, preventing the viewer from taking in both views at once. The action follows two blind performers who repeatedly enact a domestic scene set during World War II — the last meal they will ever eat together. While staged in the historical past, the scene’s portent of impending catastrophe has taken on a new relevance following the Fukushima nuclear disaster, in a work that is incisive, thought-provoking, and visually lush. The show is up through May 6 in New York.
A tour of Chris Rubino’s studio in Brooklyn from Love Kills Demons, a twelve-part film portrait by Jim Helton. Chris is an Ace NYC artist — he was there right at the start making huge canvases for some rooms that still count among our favorites. He is a an artist with a sacred air about him — at once passionate and cynical about beauty, he is pretty beautiful himself. You can see more about him from the early days of our blog.
Collage #2 from Caris Reid’s workshop in the lobby at Ace Hotel New York for Notes from the Underground during CMJ. Caris is in Interstate Projects’ The Black Lodge in Brooklyn, opening today and up through December 9. Come party with us at the opening reception tonight from 6-9pm — Joseph Jagos and Chris Puidokas are performing at 8.
Greg Lamarche has painted murals in a whopping three rooms at Ace Hotel New York. His show Timeless is up at the Joshua Liner Gallery through Saturday. Get ye.
Parra flew in and painted a woman and her familiar on the walls of room 1201 at Ace Hotel New York. Then he kindly made the bed.
The final installment of Caris Reid’s Collage Workshops for Notes from the Underground during CMJ goes down today in our lobby at Ace Hotel New York. We’ll be following up next week with some greatest hits from all of you — for now, we’re posting our favorites to Instagram. Get ye to the creation station.
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