Seeing it all, well - most of it, during Armory Arts Week in NYC!

This wrap-up of Armory Arts Week is the only posting this week. The next posting of ARTSnFOOD will be late Saturday Evening for your Sunday Morning, March 13th enjoyment. Cannot wait? Check out some of these past issues: Feb 3, 2011 - Stieglitz, Steichen & Strand Met's Fab Photos, Rubell's Collection + Times Square Warm-Up  Jan. 16, 2011 - Tim Flach's Beautiful Dogs, Art Auction Trends + Easy Chinese  Dec. 15, 2010 - Think Small at The Whitney & Dinner Party, No Cooking!

William Pittman Andrews's  "Insomnia"
at PooL Artist Fair, 2011

WOW what a marathon Armory Arts Week in NYC was and it was everywhere: Uptown, Downtown, MIdtown, the Lower East Side, Williamsburg, Dumbo, Chelsea Arts District, West Side Highway, the Flatirons district and of course Piers 94 and 92 - with more art than any set of eyes could possibly process.  

Kyu Seok Oh's Flock of Paper Sheep

Niki de Saint Phalle's Fountain

Sheep sculptor, Kyu Seok Oh

Let's start in Times Square with the public art put on display there during Armory Arts Week. There were 5 sculptures and a video on display. When I went to visit, the area was so packed with people I had to walk in the street, the sidewalk was pure gridlock. The tourist enjoying Times Square had no idea what these strange sculptures were or why they were in Times Square, but they enjoyed climbing on them like a jungle gym and having their picture taken with them. Tom Otterness displayed a giant mouse, the late Niki de Saint Phalle showed a running lady (water fountain), Amoros's back lit plastic balls looked the worst for the wear and while I was there artist Kyu Seok Oh came to repair his 

sheep. Some over- loving child had ripped one of the heads off. These sheep are made out of paper and glue with no underlying armature. Kyu said he coated the paper to withstand moisture, I have no idea how they weathered Sunday's cloudburst.

The other Times Square show for Armory Arts Week was the Zabludowicz Collection. Mr. Zabludowicz is a New York City Real Estate developer and he used his own building at 1500 Broadway, at 43rd Street, on the 33rd floor to create this exhibition. The collection is very challenging and I would have to spend much more time with it to give you a quality opinion, but the view from the top of that building would be hard for any object to compete with. There are clocks and ornamentations on the buildings in Times Square, which you can not see from street level. And the new permanent New Years Eve Ball (at eye level) is constantly changing colors and designs. This exhibition and this view from the top, can still be seen (by appointment only now) until April 15, 2011. Contact information: www.Zabludowiczcollection.com  or Email: ny@Zabludowiczcollection.com

THE ARMORY SHOW NYC 2011

The Armory Show was truly interesting to me this year. New ideas and fresh works were around every corner. I did not feel like I had seen some version of every artwork at previous fairs or gallery shows. Type set in neon has become quite cliche, though. The show including The Armory Modern show is gigantic. I don't know how many miles all of the main aisles and cross aisles add up to, but according to my feet it would be several plus you are there to look at art, so you meander for hours checking it all out. Some of the work in the 270 galleries represented in the Armory Show 2011 is shown below.

G.Scott's Three changing videos within a photo print.

Galerie Lelong at The Art Show

"THE ART SHOW" on the upper east side, Park Ave at 67th Street, was a unique crowd and all about class, courtship and famous artist name dropping. The floors were all carpeted and all of the very consistent booths were lined with a dark blue gray felt. There seems to have been a dress code memo that I had not received, because the men in attendance were all in suits and ties and the women, both young and mature, were dressed as if they were attending a very posh gala. The conversations I overheard were,"Oh! This show is just lovely!" and "I'm not going to the Piers, I'm afraid I might get mugged." Each aisle had several large, fresh arrangements of orchids and the art being displayed was extravagant and mostly museum quality works. I saw a Degas pastel for $5,000,000, a Childe Hassam pastel for $2,500,000 and a Milton Avery oil painting for a mere $1,250,000. There were Rodin drawings selling for around $100,000 and some of his small sculptures. The featured show was of Alice Neal paintings, from her estate, at David Zwirmer Gallery and there were many signed Picasso and Matisse prints, and original paintings and pencil drawings by Egon Schiele. The Art Show has been going on annually for the past 23 years and is organized by the Art Dealers Association of America and some of the proceeds from admission and all from the silent auction go to benefit the Henry Street Settlement.

FOUNTAIN ART FAIR, NEW YORK

For the self-proclaimed "scrappy" Fountain show: a video.

THE INDEPENDENT ART FAIR

The Independent Fair was like a very, very fresh gallery opening or "like" a best-of-the-best show of work in graduate school art programs from around the world. I really thought The Independent was a lively and great show of "new" work.


At the Milan based Mousse Publications table two small books caught my attention. They were from a new series called "Drawing Room Confessions" (http://www.drawingroomconfessions.com/) and were based on a game played at the end of the nineteenth century by artists in England and France. The first two participants in this personality profile of a game are Charles Avery and Jason Dodge. 9/10s of each 50 page small format book is made up of three separate interviews by three different types of people and the book ends with a timeline of influences and a standard set of questions to be answered by the artist. As you can see I enjoyed this game, here are the details.

The cast during the interviews are THE SUBJECT (first name only), THE EGOTIST (interviewer selected by the subject), THE BLIND MAN (questions asked by a person who's identity is concealed) and TANGO (it takes two to tango so others select a person who will ask the core questions about the artist's inspiration and creative process. Where does the work come from?). Record the interviews. The timeline section is broken down by date and the following question categories in a horizontal grid across the page: 

Year...........#1...........#2...........#3

#1 "The events in your personal life that define who you are now."

#2 "The art and cultural experiences you have had that define what you do now."

#3 "The historical events you lived through, or were aware of, that define how you think and live now."

Charles Avery's timeline STARTED by answering question #3 with: "The American Declaration of Independence"  (1776) and ENDED by answering the #1 question with: my daughter Elvera Rose Glass Avery was born (2010). There were 36 other entries.

Jason Dodge STARTED his timeline with the 2nd question: "The Shakers' Era of Manifestations drawings (1837-1850) and ENDED with the birth of my second child (2010). There were 23 other entries. 

The standard questions at the end of the game are: (short answers please) What do you do? Would you like to do something else? What is the first artwork you remember? Do you believe in luck? From the works you have done, which is the one you like the most? What is your biggest failure? What is your favorite colour? What is inevitable? What artist do you envy? What is your favourite toy? Has your family ever been embarrassed by what you do? What are your favourite virtue and your least favourite virtue? What is your shameful pleasure? What are you reading now? Do you speak during lovemaking, and if so, what do you say? What are you most afraid of? Which is the best title for a book, a work of art or a film? Which famous actor or singer, dead of alive could play you in a film? What outfit would you like to be wearing when death catches you? Assuming both God and the devil exist, who will welcome you when you die, and with what words? Who are you?

Interview your artist friends, have them answer the questions and make your own book of Drawing Room Confessions. Order these limited edition books from the publisher at http://www.drawingroomconfessions.com/ 

Moving Image Fair
A fair focused on Contemporary Video Art.

Videos from this fair. 
James Cohan Gallery presents: Hiraki Sawa

Zimoun, above, creates sound installations.

Red Dot Fair 

George Billis has returned his fair to a better venue this year, at 82 Mercer between Spring and Broome in SoHo. He has partnered with the Galleries Association of Korea. 

Now Showing at George Billis Gallery, NYC

Pulse

The Pulse fair was at the Metropolitan Pavilion, in the Flatirons district,  a very easy to get to venue using public transportation! It was a progressive fair, giving space to many excellent international and NYC galleries. Just by coincidence when I went on Sunday, many of the pieces up were of art made up of very thin lines, or string. Not all, but just enough to make it stand out in my mind that way. One artist drew triangles to create abstract web-like paintings and there were at least two artists who worked in actual thread stretched between straight pins and then individually painted to create say an American flag or a design over an underlying photograph and an oil painting of a fishing net.

David Connearn

 Ink Drawings "lines"

Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London

One of the most interesting of these thin line pieces for me were ink drawings by David Connearn at Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, out of London. This artist has been doing this exact piece of art over and over again for the past 30 years in different sizes and thickness of lines. He free-hands the top line as straight as possible across the paper. Then he repeats the natural flaws until he has made a rectangular shape. The natural variations and edges makes each drawing unique.The imperfectly drawn lines form wrinkles, waves, knots and traveling rhythms. They are drawings you can spend time exploring and they are quite soothing just to be around.

Verge Art Brooklyn

"Tomorrow Stars - the best of Brooklyn's artists" 

Olek and Dev Harma showed:

"Suffolk Deluxe Electric Bicycle 1," Brooklyn, NY,

A sculpture, animation, video, design and painting all in one piece.

Marta Kochanek's photo

" Deliverance of Body and Soul"

Marta currently works as an archivist at Annie Leibovitz's studio but she is also a freelance photographer. Her photographs have been shown in both group and solo exhibitions.

Both artists above are represented by Christopher Henry Gallery.

A LIST OF OTHER "TOMORROW STARS" shown last week: Google them to find out more. Jean Marie Grenier, Eric Graham, Kwabena Slaughter, Mu Pan, Ethan Ryman, Janice Gewirtz, Gabriela Herman, Tom Graham, Davina Feinberg, Laura Lee-Georgescu, Margaret Wiatrowski, Leslie Kerby, Roni Downey, Gregory Jiritano, Luca Bariola, Lisa Levy, Chiezo, Christina Massey, Christina Graham, Chang Nam Lee, Christopher Rose, Olek and Dev Harman, Bryce Hammond, Rachel Alliston, Melissa Sunny Armstrong, Jess Levey, Eric Mavko,  Brian Fekete, Francesco Vizzini, Dolly Faibyshev, Nobutaka Aozaki, Scott Goss, Ryan Magyar, Sue Rissberger, Ahron D. Weiner,  John Westmark, Marta Kochanek, Amanda Marchand, Peter Teraberry, Pablo Cristi, Lisa Foster, Camille Eskell, Ashley Simone, Frid Branham, K Levni Sinanoglu, Kathy Levine, Sami Ben Larbi, Brian Moriarty,

Scope NYC
Over 50 quality international galleries displayed in 60,000 square feet of exhibition space.

Represented by Foley Gallery NYC, Hikari Shimoda - title: Secret

VOLTA NY's concept is a showing of a single artist per space or two artists collaborating with each other. Volta has connections with The Armory Show and is promoted and tickets sold, side by side with it. 

PooL INTERNATIONAL ARTIST FAIR- Inspired by Courbet’s 1863 Salon des Independents. The fair only shows unrepresented artists. The Artists set-up and mind their own rooms at the Gershwin Hotel (a contemporary art object all by itself) located in the lower east side on 27th between Madison and Fifth Ave. The artists were from all over the world and it was a pleasure to talk with them about their work.

William Pittman Andrews's work is shown above and at the top of this issue. During our conversation he told me he wakes at 2 am to work in his studio located in Oxford, Mississippi. He says, "I have kids", implying that its the only way he can find studio time. His abstract expressionistic drawings have a sincerity that makes them fresh. PooL is only for artists looking for galleries and is very much of an International fair. There was some great art in these cramped and sometimes dark little rooms. Three other artist who stood out for me, among the many good artists in this show, were Benito Valadie and his paintings from the French West Indies; Mexican artist, Ramadam Karim's paintings of graffiti sprayed over finished realistic works. He says, "I have ruined many good paintings." And the paper cutouts of Jeanett Uldall from Denmark. She made the cutouts during the show, repeating the shapes in her oil paintings, I liked the cut paper best! PooL is one of the last hotel art fairs left in NYC - it is like going for an artist's studio visit - you get to see the work and talk to the artist about their thoughts and process. Every smart gallerist should go to every room at this show every year!

Karim's painting "KB"

FOOD

Brown Café has three names:

Green, Brown and Orange 

Green Café is the catering side of their food business, Brown Café is for dinner service and Orange Café is the family style room for Brunch and large groups plus private dining at night. Alejandro Alcocer is the executive chef at Brown Cafe, which he calls a "locals hangout for lower-east-siders". "We have a LOT of late risers around here, so we serve brunch until 5:30 pm. You should try our new baked eggs with smoked salmon or our 4 cheese mac and cheese."  The focus on simplicity of flavors, organic and bio dynamic foods, local, seasonal farms and consistency in quality and excellent service. The cafe is open for brunch 7 days a week. 8:30am-5:30pm and for dinner Tuesday - Saturday 6:30-11:00pm, with half priced bottle wines with dinner on Tueday and Wednesday.

Green, Brown, Orange

61 Hester Street, New York, NY 10002-4627

(212) 477-2427
http://greenbrownorange.com/brown/photos

Menu:

Orange: wine & cheese menu 

*d r i n k* 

 amayna  

sauvignon blanc 

leyda, maipo valley, chile 2009 

primitivo quiles 

mourvedre 

alicante, spain 2009 

*s e l e c t    f o u r* 

cana de cabra goats milk from spain 

manchego aged 6 mos sheeps milk from spain 

tallegio cows milk from italy 

robiola cows milk from italy 

valdeon cows milk from spain 

baked ricotta sheeps milk from italy 

 served with pickled cherries, greens, and rustic breads a

Orange Brunch

la colombe coffee 

fresh squeezed grapefruit juice 

fresh squeezed orange juice 

assorted toasted breads 

served with fresh butter & preserves 

smoked wild atlantic salmon, tomatoes & capers 

served with herbed ricotta cheese 

greek yogurt & granola 

served with colorado honey 

tropical fruit salad 

fresh yummy fruits 

baked eggs 

with pancetta, roasted tomatoes & age manchego 

served with mixed greens & roasted red potatoes 

with caramelized  shallots 

baked eggs

with roasted peppers & herbed goat cheese 

served wild boar sausage, 

roasted leeks & roasted potatoes 

roasted vegetable platter 

served with marinated lentils & wild arugula 

mediterranean tuna salad 

with tomatoes, capers, sweet onions & mixed greens 

six cheese platter for $16 

Dinner

 small 

 charcuterie board board, pickled vegetables, chicken liver pate 12 

 cheese board 11 

 beet & haricot mesclun salad, gorgonzola dolce &spiced walnuts 11 

 raw vegetable & herb salad 8 

 blue point oysters, grapefruit sriracha mignonette  3 

 shitake & french lentils spinach salad 10 

 wild boar sausage baguette, cornichon, grain mustard  11                  

 duck breast, warm bacon & date chutney, pistachio  7 

 tuna crostini, avocado, spicy paprika emulsion  7 

 large  

 striped bass, butternut squash, hazelnut brown butter 18 

 roasted cornish hen, brussel sprouts, kumquat gastrique 18 

 rack of lamb, rosemary, buttermilk chive polenta 19 

 filet mignon, truffled cauliflower gratin 19 

 roasted seasonal vegetables 16 

 arctic char, caraway beets, spiced yogurt 18 

sides  

 vegetarian soup of the day   8 

 roasted beets   6 

 brown’s macaroni & cheese     6 

 brussel sprouts     6 

 baby carrots     6 

 butternut squash     6 

  

 sweet 

 warm chocolate cake, hazelnut gelato  8 

 rhum soaked raisin cake 8 

 blueberry & lemon tart  8 

Until later,

Jack
ARTSnFOOD, All rights reserved. Concept & Original Text © Copyright 2011 Jack A. Atkinson under all International intellectual property and copyright laws. Images © individual artists, fabricators, respective owners or assignees.