This says it all:

Went to a show at WORK Gallery in Red Hook Saturday night. Artist Gabriela Vainsencher’s psyche splashed all over the small, red,  tin-roofed shack at the end of Union Street. The space was a buzz with kids roaming around wearing ipod shuffles and listening, looking and taking in the film being projected on a renegade window shade. All senses were evoked. The show is up until December 22nd.

Check it: www.redtinshack.com

Press Release:

WORK is pleased to present WORKING TITLE, the first New York City solo show by Gabriela Vainsencher. The exhibition will open with a public reception Saturday, November 22nd at 7pm.

Focusing primarily on drawing and photography, WORKING TITLE examines two distinct strands of Gabriela Vainsencher’s work:  reflection of her own daily life and appropriation of other artist’s work. Frequently each category includes nuanced compositions of text oscillating between poetry and caption, striving simultaneously to translate and to displace the context of the accompanying images. An extensive selection from the series “Morning Drawing” and a dozen altered photographs from the “Other People’s Art” series together envision a space wherein the minutiae of passing moments is raised to the level of the extraordinary and the exalted concept of contemporary museum art is deglamorized and brought into the realm of the everyday.

The “Morning Drawing” series is foremost about discovering freedom within a regimented form. In this case, her regiment involves making a 6″ x 6″ drawing before noon every day of 2008. Some mornings yield gorgeous ink line drawings over lush watercolor surfaces punctuated by short, incidental text, while others articulate a narrative, leaving space for text and texture to dance. Whole stretches of the calendar year are embellished with moody renderings of toes, fire escapes, lamps, internal dialogues – the interstices of experience.

In the “Other People’s Art” series Vainsencher operates with equal parts homage and subversion, engaging an art historical context by placing herself in direct, intimate conversation with art history itself.  Her co-opting of other artist’s work is also recognition of the powerful physicality of experiencing art in public space.

In addition to Vainsencher’s drawings and photographs, WORKING TITLE includes several stop-motion videos and a unique audio collaboration with three other artists, all of which bring to life the themes addressed in Vainsencher’s oeuvre. The ordinary as extraordinary and the use of text as a means of transporting meaning are explored in the videos, which are full of whimsical, almost absurdist scenarios.

Additionally, “Your Voice Came Out of My Mouth” is an audio-literary piece commissioned for WORKING TITLE by Vainsencher in collaboration with Pulitzer-prize winning poet Stephen Dunn, writer Ryan Britt and artist Amelia Saul. The collaboration features seven recordings, including two Dunn poems, “Turning Yourself Into A Work of Art” and “The Reverse Side,” and the title piece, “Your Voice Came Out of My Mouth,” a Britt short story in which most of the dialogue and imagery is taken directly from text in Vainsencher’s drawings.

I happened upon an illuminating lecture at Columbia this past week. Christian Boltanski was fresh off his AirFrance flight and there in the crowded lecture hall: strange mannerisms, broken English and a self-important/self-consciousness personality–had to love it.

His work is haunting. His use of found objects exhibited as relics is genius. He created a series in NY a couple years back where he riffled through the lost and found of Grand Central Station and put the forgotten mittens, key chains, sunglasses on revered display. My years patronizing thrift stores and giving unwanted objects a new life was profoundly realized.

He spoke on his process, or lack there of, when creating art. Dumbing down or putting down himself who constantly awaits an idea, or reissuing the same idea in different ways his entire career to make art (this being completely ironic and hilarious to the silent, interested crowd listening on).

Boltanski is obsessed with death. The death of a person, or era and the relics or anthropological study of these past lives. He is like an investigator for the long lost.

As the slides of his work (not that he spoke directly of them in any manner throughout the lecture) flipped behind him he looked up sort of annoyed as if the images were stealing his thunder. He is most definitely a trickster of sorts. Passing bets on his life with a casino-shark, publishing a silver foil book made to scratch away uncovering graphic photos of the dead, cataloging heartbeats…I will continue my research.

Here is a good  interview:

http://www.tate.org.uk/magazine/issue2/boltanski.htm

Although I cannot be there, I urge everyone in Denver to go, go, go. The photographs are lucid, fantastical—with a clarity or filter of being underwater. Thinking of you Mark and Kristen on this very special evening.

I had the great luck to go to a show at the Giant Robot Gallery in my first week in NYC. Friend AJ Fosik was showing his paintings/sculptural animal studies along with a large (full wall) work by Isaac Lin. Very, very colorful and the vibe at Giant Robot seemed very open, multicultural and welcoming. Part art boutique, part gallery GRNY showcases design-centric books, comics, clothing and toys. So very, very.

The press release:Giant Robot is proud to present With Friends Like These, a group show featuring new works by Isaac Lin and AJ Fosik.

After graduating from Rhode Island School of Design in 1998 with a BFA in painting, Isaac Tin Wei Lin moved to Philadelphia. There, he became a Space 1026 member, made paintings and screen prints, participated in shows, and worked odd jobs. In 2003, he moved to San Francisco to attend California College of the Arts. Completing his MFA, he attended a two-month long residency at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Having had his fill of school, he returned to Philadelphia where he continues to create art ranging from psychedelic, hyper detailed illustration to found photos adormed with geometric corruption.

Drawing inspiration from his background creating street art and signage, AJ Fosik is a Philadelphia-based sculptor who creates animal abstractions, or as he calls them “existential fetishes.” Totemic apparitions of ursine beasts and delicately rendered paintings skirt American folk art and psychedelia. Viewers are confronted with cryptic symbols from overlapping sources, both traditional and contemporary, creating a dynamic tension where art and viewer come together in an expanded definition of culture and assumption.

Giant Robot Gallery
437 East 9th Street Between 1st Ave. & Ave. A, in the East Village
New York, New York 10009
(212) 674-GRNY (4769) | grny.net Giant Robot magazine, please contact:

I had a vintage pair of glasses fitted with my prescription two weeks ago. I have been wearing them around have experienced really positive responses. Here is a visual potluck of friends wearing my spectacles. More to come from this series.