I heard the opening movement of the requiem for communism, The Gramsci Project, as it was played at LaGuardia Community College. Standing before a photo blowup of the sainted Depression-era mayor of New York pressing the flesh, artist Thomas Hirschhorn presented a slide show about the Bijlmer Spinoza-Festival he produced in 2009 in a housing project outside Amsterdam. He was invited to Queens by professor Charity Scribner as part of her class’s Gramsci Project.

scOpOphilia

4 Questions from Galerie Richard about Art Rétinal Revisité: Histoire de l'Oeil

"Greater New York" is one of the most influential exhibitions for young and emerging artists presented in the city. In this, its third edition, the number of participating artists is reduced to 68 from nearly 200 in the 2005 version. Artists were given more room to construct environments and installations that represent the creative processes and its juncture with life. Glimpses of works by David Brooks, Franklin Evans, Lucy Raven, Hank Willis Thomas, Sharon Hays, Ishmael Randall Weeks and others are visible. Guest crucifixion by Jerry Saltz.

Dynamic minimalist laser environment

Raphaele Shirley
0910 Light Shots
May 21 – June 19, 2010
Opening Reception: May 20, 6 – 8pm

From the press release: "During the winter of 2002, Carlson noticed that many of the flags on display after 9-11 had started to fade...Looking to the faded flags of 9-11 she dyed fabric to match these faded colors. She then made the flag using a combination of hand and machine sewing." Since Jasper Johns reconceived this icon of America, there have been endless revisions of the flag. Mary Carlson's "Flag" however achieves a pathetic and fragile quality implying an obligation to continuity despite world weariness.

James Kalm believes in the serendipity of fate, and sometimes, despite the best laid plans, ends up turning on the camera and capturing intriguing happenings. Such was the case when he popped into view a debut exhibition by Trudy Benson. The artist uses thick slabs of oil paint in coloristically rich pictures that verge on relief. Trudy discusses her "fetishization" of paint, and her painterly influences in a brief chat.

Heading east we visit NURTUREART to partake in the opening of "Who's Afraid of Ornament?" curated by Natasha Kurchanova. This show investigates decoration and ornament and bares testament to the reemergence of the Pattern & Decorative movement from the late seventies.

May 16, 2010. Editor's Note:

The Tate Modern in London is celebrating its first 10 years in the Turbine Hall with an arts festival from May 14 - 16 that includes No Soul For Sale – A Festival of Independents (imported from its first outing at X-Initiative in New York), as well as an extended calendar of performances, processions and other similarly minded fare.

This is being accomplished with the support of BP, one of the Tate's major sponsors, devoted to atavistic oil exploration and currently responsible for cleaning up the ecological disaster of their ever expanding Gulf oil spill.

Some art activists cannot accept the tainted source of the Tate's BP funding. Hence the following communique.

LIBERATE TATE COMMUNIQUE #1 MAY 2010

Dear Tate: Happy Birthday. We wish we could celebrate with you. But we can’t.

As we write, your corporate sponsor BP is creating the largest oil painting in the world, inspired by profit margins and a culture that puts money in front of life, its shadowy stain shimmers across the Gulf of Mexico. A toxic tide that turns thriving ecosystems into deserts and deprives cultures of their way of life, it is one of the world’s greatest works of corporate art, a work that reeks of death and speaks of our society’s failure of imagination.

Every day Tate scrubs clean BP’s public image with the detergent of cool progressive culture. But there is nothing innovative or cutting edge about a company that knowingly feeds our addiction to fossil fuels despite a climate crisis, a company whose greed has killed twenty-one employees in just over a year, a company that continues to invest in the cancer-causing climate crimes of tar sands in Alberta, Canada.

By placing the words BP and Art together, the destructive and obsolete nature of the fossil fuel industry is masked, and crimes against the future are given a slick and stainless sheen.

James Kalm attempts to visit Shepard Fairey's May Day exhibition, the final show at this location of the Deitch Project. However, the crowds are too thick to get in the door, so your reporter documents some of the goings-on outside the gallery including a brief chat with Mark Kostabi, and the arrival of a motorcycle gang. A few days later, Kalm returns to tour the exhibition at an opportune time, without the mobs, for a better viewing of the art.

James Kalm schmoozes his way into the exclusive private debut of Ed Keinholz's installation "Roxys". This major piece is an artistic representation of a classic brothel. The interior space is populated with sculptural elements and period furnishings.

scOpOphilia
My painting "scOpOphilia" is a full-page feature in the May issue of Paper Magazine (p. 96) and announces my show "art rétinal revisité: histOire de l'Oeil" at Galerie Richard, Paris. It is not on-line, however (yet). http://www.papermag.com/magazine/

http://www.galerierichard.com/