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James Kalm braves fall showers and trains his way to the Bowery’s New Museum for the first major museum exhibition by Urs Fischer. Lionized as one of contemporary art’s most distinctive talents, Fischer earned the New York spotlight in 2007 by cutting a hole in the floor of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and digging out tons of dirt leaving a gaping crater for visitors to climb into and explore. As an astute observer of spatial perception, and a master of digital technology with a mischievous sense of humor, the artist uses the most advanced commercial printing techniques to tweak space and challenge “reality”.

E/AB www.eabfair.com is pleased to announce that the Opening Night Preview will take place on Thursday, 5 November, 2009, from 6 to 9 pm at X Initiative, 548 West 22nd Street, between 10th and 11th Avenue. Proceeds will benefit the Annual Exhibition Fund at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center.

Tickets are $50 and may be purchased in person at P.S.1 or at agnès b. locations throughout NYC, or online at www.ps1.org.
Each ticket is tax deductible in the amount of $30.

James Kalm treks into Marlborough Chelsea for the second one-man show by the eccentric abstract painter Steven Charles. Three days earlier, your reporter biked to West Harlem for an impromptu studio visit and interview with the artist. Charles discusses his recent investigations of figurative subject matter and accumulative sculpture.

“The protesters interrupted a presentation by Republican pollster Bill McInturff, whose work for AHIP on the series of early-90s “Harry and Louise” anti-health-care reform commercials has been called by Advertising Age ‘among the best conceived and executed public affairs advertising programs in history.’

AHIP represents insurers who provide coverage to more than 200 million Americans, the group says. Singing out against them were a small group of protesters from the group Billionaires for Wealthcare, which specializes in dressing up as members of the groups it is critiquing (often in an exaggerated or satirical way, as with top hats or suspenders).”

A California internet service provider ceded to the demands of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and has removed from the internet a spoofed press release set up by the culture jamming collective the Yes Men. The release falsely announced the Chamber now supports legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

A wide variety of mainstream news outlets picked up Monday’s hoax announcement, which was followed by a staged press conference at the National Press Club featuring a Yes Men member posing as a spokesman for the Chamber of Commerce. The press conference was interrupted when an actual chamber spokesman burst into the room and confronted his tree-hugging doppelganger.

John Lurie's show of paintings at Fredericks & Freiser Gallery occasioned the following interview in New York Press, which reveals him to be a low key, dryly caustic, self deprecating satirist, a mordantly droll observer of foibles and egos, the same fierce yet gentle iconoclast we have known and admired since the 1970s. Interspersed with the interview are images from his current show taken from the gallery website, and of course their very determinative titles.

Andrew Castrucci is laying out artworks and artifacts at the Bullet Space. Bullet Space is an art gallery in a squat. The place recently exhibited decades' worth of work by the tin can cutting recycling artist Rolando Polliti. His constructions ornament the fence of the Plaza Cultural garden on 9th Street and Avenue C, original site of the CHARAS agitations of the 1970s.

This assemblage of artworks collected by Andrew over the years reveals something about this period of Lower East Side history, and the people who squatted these buildings. The context of the early works of the ‘80s and ‘90s is the squatter struggle.

Well known curator Bob Nickas has spent several months visiting studios in L.A., New York, London, Paris and Berlin and he’s selected a group of works that exemplify his version of where abstract painting is today. "Cave Painting" is the second in a three part series of exhibitions presented in conjunction with the publication of his new book Painting Abstraction by Phaidion Press. Presented in the unusual space of the basement of 511 West 25th Street, this show will no doubt be controversial, and should give the painting pundits many topics of debate. Includes an interview with Gresham’s Ghost Director Ajay Kurian.

The sales force at AT&T stores has a lot to do these days. They have to customers disappointed over dropped calls and poor service on the overburdened wireless network.

http://www.publicknowledge.org/blog/4

They have to explain why the new iPhone data plan is more expensive than the old one, as my colleague and iPhone enthusiast Alex Curtis discovered.

post.thing.net

Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty at the NEW MUSEUM

Technésexual - At Artivistic TURN*ON In Montreal

Editions/Artists' Books Fair Benefit: Thursday November 5, X Initiative

Steven Charles “The Upstairs Room” at MARLBOROUGH GALLERY

Billionaires for Wealthcare Interrupt Republican Pollster with Song

Yes Men's Fake U.S. Chamber of Commerce Press Release Removed From Internet

Dishing With John

Bullet Soaked in Piss

So You Think You Know Painting?

Now On Sale At the AT&T Store -- Anti Net Neutrality Propaganda