Parting & Together
Greenpoint Hill | 100 Freeman St
Opening Reception: Friday, September 15 | 7–10pm
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Greenpoint Hill’s newest show features works from all-female artists ranging from hand-painted digital prints to ceramics to paintings. “The works share an emphasis on materiality. Just as Elizabeth Murray’s painting, an oil painting on a rectangle, was pushed to 3-d objecthood by rotating the canvas about 45 degrees, the work in this exhibition does not simply exist as 2-dimensional image. In Maria Caladra’s work, this shift occurs more subtly, through the mark-making. The work in Parting and Together asks for a more intimate viewing experience.” Continue reading
New(ish) art gallery Point Green (260 Java Street) is hosting a multidisciplinary group art show opening tonight (8/17), called TREMORS, in response to recent political and social upheaval, with a portion of proceeds going to charities nominated by the artists (including the ACLU and Planned Parenthood among others). Tonight’s opening (6-9pm) will include performances by Nyssa Frank and DeDeeDame. On Saturday from 7-11pm they’ll host a night of music and dance, with performances by Ninjasonik, Howardian, Jocko Weyland, Cathy de la Cruz, and DM Kinch. Scott Sternbach and violinist Andrei Matorin will host an artist talk & performance on August 30th from 6 – 10 PM.
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We’re already lucky to have a handful of mid-century home goods shops in Greenpoint, and now we have a newcomer to the ‘hood, You & Yours Fine Vintage. Tonight they’ll officially celebrate their opening with a drinks and desserts soiree from 6-9pm and everyone’s invited. Continue reading
On a gorgeous springlike evening last week, Jen G and I popped into the newly opened Brooklyn Safehouse for an early dinner. This is the place at 120 Franklin Street, which seems to have been in the making for at least two years and finally opened its doors last month. Continue reading
Ugly Art Room & Greenpointers Present “NOW” – A Group Art Show @ Dobbin Project Space (50 Dobbin St) in participation with Greenpoint Gallery Night.
Opening: Friday September 13, 2013, 7-9pm
Exhibition: 9/13/13 – 9/30/13
There is never a better time than now, but the moving target of “in the moment” is ever elusive. We are often told to “let go of the past” and “stop worrying about the future.” At the same time we are told that patience is a virtue and that we must wait for the “right time.”
But what about now? What is now? Right here. Right now.
Now is a time and place. We are all inspired by our time – the year 2013 – and our space, which is Greenpoint, Brooklyn, USA, the planet. This will be the loose connecting theme among the artwork chosen. Special considerations will be given to works that consider time and place.
All mediums accepted.
The show titled “NOW” will present the contemporary artwork of artists living or working in Greenpoint – work that has been created specifically for this show or within the last 6 mo, as well as work created on site during the opening reception on 9/13/13. Progressions of pieces: studies along with completed work will be accepted. Unfinished works will also be accepted. Artwork will be created on site during the opening.
The show will serve as a “snapshot” of the contemporary art community in Greenpoint, Brooklyn during the year of 2013.
Submission deadline: August 15, 2013
Email the following to greenpointers (at) gmail.com
Subject Line: “NOW” (Your Name)
In the email include the following information:
Name:
Email address:
Phone:
Website:
Attach small jpg(s) images of artwork(s) for consideration:
For all work submitted include: name of piece, size in inches, medium, price
Brief summary of work to make for the show and/or during the opening (if applicable):
If your work is chosen you will be notified and must be available to drop off your work during the week of Monday September 9th and pick-up your work on September 30, 2013.
Clay Space 1205 celebrates 7 years of community and creativity! Tonight, Friday March 22, 2013 from 6-9pm, join Clay Space (1205 Manhattan Ave) for a group show of former and current members’ work exhibiting the diversity of the Clay Space community.
Thanks to our twitter buddy @boredvegetarian for taking this shot on the door of Coco66 that says they are reopening this Friday 3/22. She also wonders, “How long before they get shut down again?” Good question.
When I previewed Calico Brooklyn’s show titled Born Again, featuring the works of Thomas Buildmore, Allison Maletz, and Charles Wilkin, it was easy to find the theme of reuse and reinvention in collage artist Wilkin’s enlarged pigment stained postcard prints and Buildmore’s drippy spraypaint floral still lifes, but Maletz’s sound installation called Utility Purgatory, outfitted with a telephone and surrounded by her watercolor mold paintings was harder to discern. That is, unless we consider the post-Mayan apocalyptic experience referenced by Curator Scott Chasse, which he described as “very similar to the pre-Mayan apocalypse, only we are able to celebrate the afterlife in real-time.”
When I asked Chasse what inspired Born Again he said, “I understand that appropriation and reuse of images, ideas, materials, etc is nothing new, but I think that looking at the works by these three artists as a form of “rebirth” gives a fresh, slightly different way of experiencing what is being presented.”
Sitting on a rotary phone on hold with the telephone company for so long that mold grows on the walls would leave anyone dreaming of the apocalypse, or at least the reinvention of customer service tactics.
Maletz explained that, “these services exist in theory to improve our lives, yet are rendered useless as all the various “please hold” messages loop endlessly, leaving the audience completely impotent.” But Maletz doesn’t take “hold” for an answer and presents this experience in a new way with “a new meaning, so that we might all step back as outsiders looking in, to observe and perhaps even enjoy this well known and frustrating experience.” She went on to say that she made “the Mold Paintings specifically to go with Utility Purgatory. At their core, both works are about what can grow out of neglect.” Continue reading
Greenpointers contributor and local artist Martin Esteves and local artist Amanda Browder will feature recents works at Calico Brooklyn (67 West St #206) with an opening reception tonight Friday, November 16, 2012 from 7-9pm. The show will run from November 16 – December 2, 2012. RSVP
“Bad on its Own”
Technically, a tree falling in the woods doesn’t make a sound unless the resonance has an eardrum to bounce off of – an argument that only stands under the assumption that the “anyone” in the famous question is a human being. Yet the crash displays independence even within its own nature. The tree falls despite our ears and despite its own roots.
Art also provides an example of an imaginary sentience, and “Bad on its Own” is a particularly mischievous one. Pairing the malleable found textile patterns of Amanda Browder with “nature” paintings by Martin Esteves, the show demonstrates a pretend awareness through a more puckish spite; but art isn’t actually aware of itself, so the line treads wearily between a straight face and a smirk.
Browder’s oversized installations create optical hallucinations from the simplest found sources. Her materials have been freed from all practical intentions and aren’t afraid to let you know it. Esteves’ paintings highlight the fact that nature is mean spirited already, regardless of human interferences such as greenhouse effects or global warming. Both artists’ mix of beauty and farce are what gives this show its title. The word “Bad” here means an intentional state.
“Bad on its Own” plays Browder’s lively environment against Esteves’ more traditional containment. The playful tension that results is welcoming to the public – while an actual need for the public is another story…
