Le Petit Versailles
346 East Houston Street, NY
(between Avenues B & C, additional entrance at 247 East Second Street)
Aurelio del Muro, 7th Avenue, through May 31, 2009

Aurelio del Muro, Twins, 2009

A sure sign that Spring has arrived in the East Village is the opening of the regular season of outdoor events at Le Petit Versailles, which generally runs from early May through October. A community garden and public art space, LPV is the brainchild of a pair of artists, filmmakers, performers, gay/queer/trans activists, green guerrillas and co-conspirators, Peter Cramer and Jack Waters, who are also amalgamated as Allied Productions, Inc., a non profit arts organization established in 1981.

East Second Street gate

Adel Abdessemed, RIO
David Zwirner Gallery, NY
April 3 - May 9, 2009

Adel Abdessemed, the 38-year-old Algerian born, French educated artist who now lives in New York, has been a curatorial darling for the past several years. He was included in Rob Storr's 2007 Venice Biennale, and given solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Art Institute, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, the List Visual Arts Center at MIT, and at P.S. 1 in Queens. His current gallery show in New York, spread over all three of David Zwirner's expansive Chelsea galleries, reveals a shape shifting, confrontational artist who works in all media and all scales.

There is a room filling installation of several airplane cockpits and tailfins twisted together like a huge pretzel. There are small drawings of proposed projects. There is a steel oil drum that has been morphed into a music box which plays a bit of Wagner when it rotates around a motorized axle.

Proliferating and losing oneself. This was the sense of the collective enterprise that the movement was attempting in Italy at the time.
–Franco Berardi

Please join The Change You Want To See Gallery for a conversation with renowned philosopher, media activist and cultural agitator Franco Berardi "Bifo" and media theorist MacKenzie Wark, author of Game Theory and A Hacker's Manifesto.

Here's the complete plazaville Series.

cOncerning Abu Graib
terra incOgnitO
Joseph Nechvatal
March 26th – April 25th
Wm Turner gallery, Atlanta
http://www.wmturnergallery.com/

In the exhibition terra incOgnitO, computer viruses and computer-assisted paintings address a psychic departure from the shadow world connected to the abuses at Abu Graib.

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009:

New York Congressman Ackerman at the Financial Services Subcommittee hearing into AIG’s impact on the global economy. A strong critic of the lack of oversight of credit default swaps, Congressman Ackerman likens the product to “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Insurance.”

Click here to play

March 12, 2009. Muntadar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi journalist who tossed his shoes at President George W. Bush during a Baghdad press conference on December 14, 2008, was sentenced to three years in prison yesterday.

Dozens of shoe throwing games and video edits were placed online in the days following this incident. Perhaps the most famous, Sock and Awe, appears above for your gaming pleasure. Thus far, nearly 100 million virtual shoes have successfully hit little Bushie in the face. He grimaces and turns a shade of purple when the shoe strikes; there is a yellow explosion graphic and a sharp, meaty slapping sound. All very cathartic and addictive. My high score is 15.

So take a moment to celebrate and try your luck. Although he no longer occupies the White House, this game allows you to connect with the ex-president in a resounding and satisfying manner.

The Armory Show 2009, Piers 92 & 94, March 4 - 8, 2009
Pulse New York, Pier 40, March 5 - 8, 2009
Volta NY, 7 West 34th Street, March 5 - 8, 2009

Bradley McCallum/Jacqueline Tarry, Detroit Boys, Michigan, July 1967, 2007

Although swimming in space on its West SoHo pier, Pulse basically sucks. There are exceptions to any rule, and Ms. Diaz is right to cite McCallum/Tarry. I would add Jim Lee’s wall sculpture/paintings at Freight & Volume, Vadis Turner’s femme/folk wedding fantasia at Lyons Wier Ortt, Eckart Hahn’s cross fixations at Pablo’s Birthday, and various work at Conner Contemporary, Magnan Projects, Daneyal Mahmood, Bravin Lee and P.P.O.W. Was also glad to see Constance Collins-Margulies given space for her non-profit Lotus Endowment Fund, a portfolio of photographs by women artists to benefit a Miami women’s shelter.

But Pulse was a general morass of post-student fiddlings, jejune installations and mindless decoration, not ready for prime time. Ironically, the Parsons MFA booth came off better than many of its surrounding “professional” counterparts. Or was I influenced by the spirited advocacy of Parson’s new Fine Art chair Coco Fusco? — we escaped the fair together by taxicab.

ASTRONOME: ASTRONOMEReview of
ASTRONOME : A Night at the Opera
A Richard Foreman and John Zorn's music/theater collaboration

Willoughby Sharp, Inside-Out, at 112 Greene Street, 1974

White Columns, the venerable downtown New York alternative arts space, celebrates its fortieth birthday this year. A retrospective exhibition, organized by Matthew Higgs and Amie Scally, the current WC director and curator, provides a necessary historical overview of its various SoHo and West Village addresses, and of the hundreds of projects and thousands of artists that have passed through its doors. From the Archives: 40 Years/40 Projects continues through February 28, 2009.

Forty years, one show from each year, is a good structure. Like any retrospective, there is a high nostalgia quotient for those who viewed the particular exhibitions when they were first mounted at 112 Greene, 325 Spring, the two Christopher Street locations or the current West 13th Street address of White Columns.

The show is decidedly archival and historical. There is some actual work - by Frank Majore, Lutz Bacher, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Cheryl Donegan, John Stezaker, Kathe Burkhart, Lovett/Codagnone - but mostly we find documentation of the events: press releases, invitation cards, exhibition checklists, installation photography, typed artists' statements and letters, posters, catalogs, brochures, slides, videos, photos from the openings, a short grainy film, clippings of reviews from various magazines and newspapers (some no longer being published - another lesson in ephemerality).