Greater New York 2010
MoMA PS1 Contemporary Art Center
Long Island City, Queens, NYC
May 23 - October 18, 2010

PS1 Celebrates the Presence of the Artist

May 24, 2010. Now is the Spring of our discontent, marked by downward stock market volatility and a continuing Gulf oil spill. But as the Whitney Biennial enters its final week, our critical fancy turns to thoughts of Greater New York. The newest blockbuster in town, with a mission to present the best young and underknown art that our city has nurtured over the past five years, GNY is in its "third iteration". Previous editions were mounted in 2000 and 2005 in what is now rather grandly called the MoMA PS1 Contemporary Art Center. Those who keep track of such things will note a change in the order of the institutional names - MoMA now stands predominate - indicating that the bride has finally been subsumed by her bachelor, even. Vita brevis, but Ars museums go on longa and longa. Hence the stated "quinquennial" timing of the exhibition, a designation that only a dedicated builder of dynasties could love.

Like the Biennial, GNY has been drastically downsized from over 200 participants in 2005 to the current roster of 68 artists or artist groups. This reduction, to one third its former girth, might lead some wags to call it "The Lesser of Three Greaters" or more simply "The Lesser Greater".

April 29, 2010. This image provided by the U.S. Coast Guard shows oil leaking from the drill pipe of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig after it sank. A confidential government report on the unfolding spill disaster makes clear the Coast Guard now fears the well could be on the verge of becoming an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf.

April 29, 2010. Paddy Johnson posted this on ArtFagCity last Saturday. It was originally seen on the Today and Tomorrow site back in February 2009. So consider it a re-re-post for a sunny and very windy day, without the LSD.

My gut feeling: had Tony Shafrazi encountered this sort of "movement" in 1974 at MoMA, he would have dropped his spray can in dismay.

^ Dan Asher singing Karen Dalton's "Every Time I Think of Freedom" ^

News of Dan Asher's passing on Friday, April 23, has been slowly spreading through the downtown NY art world. He was an original, unique presence, an artist of rare expressive power with an uncompromising anarchic temperament. We will all miss him.

Asher was seriously ill with lymphoma/leukemia, a condition which had gravely worsened in recent weeks. He was receiving extensive medication and had been admitted to the hospital for chemotherapy and other procedures. A stem cell replacement was being considered.

In order to help raise money for this health care, the Gavin Brown gallery organized and hosted a benefit sale of Asher's mid-70s photographs of Bob Marley, which was announced in a previous posting on this site.

We Like America and America Likes Us from Bruce High Quality Foundation on Vimeo.

I plan to go back to the Whitney Biennial for another viewing before it closes (May 30), partly to see this piece again. But since I have not yet done so, I decided to access the video online, admittedly minus its particular installation details: the white ambulance, with headlights blazing in a darkened room, mysteriously projecting its brooding interior monologue onto a blue tinted windshield.

April 21, 2010. Purvis Young, the soul of the indigenous Miami art scene, was generally labeled an "outsider" or "folk" artist, but he was making it happen in Overtown and Liberty City decades before "Wynwood" was able to pronounce the words "Art Basel Miami Beach".

He died yesterday at the age of 67 at Jackson Memorial Hospital after a long battle with diabetes.

April 18, 2010. This is the fifth consecutive day of eruptions of the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull [pronunciation], spewing ash into the atmosphere and shutting down air traffic over much of northern Europe. The image above represents the situation this morning. Below are images from days four, three and one. Obviously the volcano, after being dormant for 200 years under its glacier, is now experiencing a very public moment of midlife crisis.

April 16, 2010. News that the first exhibition planned by Jeffrey Deitch as the new director of MOCA/LA will be a survey of work by Dennis Hopper, curated by Julian Schnabel, must be greeted with mixed feelings.

On the one hand, Hopper is undeniably a prodigious, mythic presence on the American scene, mostly due to his extended Hollywood career as actor and director. He helped define the counterculture in Rebel Without a Cause and Easy Rider, and raised the stakes with fierce performances in Apocalypse Now and Blue Velvet. He is also an early and important member of the West Coast art demimonde, friendly with many of LA's more radical practitioners, including Wallace Berman, Ed Ruscha and Billy Al Bengston. He started buying art in the late 1950s and owns one of the Warhol soup can paintings from the historic exhibition at Ferus Gallery, among a varied and extensive collection that includes Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat as well as Schnabel.

ecoartspace presents “What Matters Most?”
at Exit Art Underground Space NYC
475 Tenth Ave at 36th St
April 15 – 28, 2010

ecoartspace benefit exhibition/sale and party
Wednesday, April 28th 6-9 pm

PARTY TICKETS AND ART SALE at Exit Art: $250

To purchase tickets in advance online:
http://whatmattersmost.eventbrite.com/
To purchase tickets at the event please bring a check to avoid lines.

Over 275 artists will exhibit an original artwork related to the NY Times Dot Earth blog "What Matters Most?"

April 8, 2010. Just heard, couldn't quite believe it. Malcolm McLaren died today.

From the NY Times blog:

2:45 p.m. | Updated
Malcolm McLaren, the impresario, promoter and self-promoter who once claimed to have invented punk rock, and who assembled and managed the youthful, unruly members of the Sex Pistols, the breakthrough British punk band, has died. He was 64.