Warren Neidich: Cindy Unveiled
Opening Reception: June 18, 7-10PM

Louis V.E.S.P.
140 Jackson St, #4D
Brooklyn NY 11211

In 1986 the artist Warren Neidich, then acting as American Editor of the Belgian photography magazine Cliché visited Cindy Sherman in her studio at 51 Walker Street. The banal photographs exhibited at Louis V E.S.P were the result of this meeting. Cindy Sherman is seen without the equipment of her trade. She is without make up and with out costume. She is unmasked. She is in between acts and as such the seven photographs shot from this encounter are more about her state of readiness then her state of being. They capture her desire to be invisible in front of the camera of the other, to be something else besides that which we have become familiar with. What we know of her. What her self-portraits depict; the female impersonator of the feminized persona of the filmic still. These portraits are then contradictions to the self-portraits. They are in the Lacanian sense of the Object a, the image of lack.

Received from Ford Crull in Shanghai:

OK, so I survived the performance. It was all improvised. I had one hour to paint these 2 canvases while 2 Chinese musicians each played for a half hour. It is very humid here so I was sweating bullets, but I just about got it done. The scaffolding wasn't quite high enough, so I stood on the ends to reach the top. I will touch it up when it comes back to Red Town in Shanghai where it will be permanently displayed.

Thanks to Sue Sillery via Chuck Sillery.

from Bloomberg:

June 11 (Bloomberg) -- Sigmar Polke, one of Germany’s best-known artists, died last night from cancer at the age of 69, his dealer Erhard Klein said in a phone interview.

Polke, a painter, graphic artist and photographer, was “one of the most important and most successful representatives of German contemporary art,” Culture Minister Bernd Neumann said in a statement. “He was a critical, ironic and self-ironic observer of postwar history and its artistic commentators.”

June 11, 2010. Just before running off to Chelsea to view some work, I checked Ed Winkelman's blog and saw he had posted this comedy skit about galleristas in their natural habitat. Enjoy.

It will be hard for me to keep a straight face should I encounter the antics and attitudes of certain art dealers this afternoon. So I will try to concentrate on the art.

June 10, 2010. Feel the blandishments of youthful (and sometimes mid-career) ambition! Cringe as the artists "explain" their work! Chortle at the pretensions and the gamesmanship! Watch usual suspects from the power elite of the NY art world as they preen and pontificate!

Here it is: the "Self Reflexive" episode of the Work of Art reality TV show that premiered on Bravo last night. See it and weep!

from The Onion:

LONDON—As the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico entered its eighth week Wednesday, fears continued to grow that the massive flow of bullshit still gushing from the headquarters of oil giant BP could prove catastrophic if nothing is done to contain it.

The toxic bullshit, which began to spew from the mouths of BP executives shortly after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in April, has completely devastated the Gulf region, delaying cleanup efforts, affecting thousands of jobs, and endangering the lives of all nearby wildlife.

No Longer Empty presents The Sixth Borough
Governors Island, NYC
June 5 - October 10, 2010

June 7, 2010. No Longer Empty: non-profit arts organization, collective of curators, administrators, artists. Product of the recession, response to the downturn, creates new curatorial structures to accommodate new economic realities. Has been placing art in public spaces for a year. Eight projects thus far. Takes advantage of commercial spaces throughout city that are empty due to the economic slowdown, "liberating" them for art projects. Not squats. Rather: diverse spaces donated by landlords. An abandoned shoelace warehouse in Brooklyn. A shuttered Tower Records storefront in NoHo. A raw, never used, commercial ground floor of new residential conversion in Chelsea. In each case, there's an attempt to thematically integrate the former use/identity of the space, and the surrounding neighborhood infrastructure, with the current art project. For example, the empty Tower location was re-imagined as a music store, filled with artist projects themed to a music/commerce interface.

from Abu Muqawama.

from Max Boot's op-ed in the June 1, 2010 Wall Street Journal:

Israeli officials are right to say the operation was justified and that the blood was on the hands of the pro-Hamas activists. Right, but irrelevant.

From Holland Cotter in the New York Times:

Louise Bourgeois, the French-born American artist who gained fame only late in a long career, when her psychologically charged abstract sculptures, drawings and prints had a galvanizing effect on younger artists, particularly women, died on Monday at the Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. She was 98.

The death was reported by Wendy Williams, the managing director of the Louise Bourgeois Studio.

Ms. Bourgeois’s sculptures in wood, steel, stone and cast rubber, often organic in form and sexually explicit, emotionally aggressive yet witty, covered many stylistic bases. But from first to last they shared a set of repeated themes, centered on the human body and its need for nurture and protection in a frightening world.