Armsrock

Opening tonight at Thinkspace alongside Tran Nguyen will be a joint show from Armsrock (interviewed) and Imminent Disaster entitled “Refuge”. Slated as the last show before the gallery moves into their Culver City location, it looks like the two artists are taking this opportunity to put in some massive immersive installs. Inspired by “tent cities,” temporary places of living for those who have no where else to go, the show is a allegory that alludes to the fact that we all are stuck on a sinking boat together.

Take a look at some setup pics after the jump…

Imminent Disaster

Discuss this show here.
Discuss Armsrock here & Imminent Disaster here.

One of the highlights of Armory Week was a pop-up show like none other thrown by the Carmichael Gallery and Jun Lee at the Ogilvy & Mather’s Manhattan corporate offices. Imagine allowing urban talents running a muck through each floor of office hallways and elevator entry ways creating gigantic colorful installations, filling the places where normally bland office interiors greeted you every Monday. Even the customary plasmas that housed generic greetings/company slogans where remixed with a rad loop of the artists installing their newly minted artworks.

The reception was held on the 7th floor and the packed housed played “elevator action” throughout the night waiting to get on and off the lifts to check out each of the uniquely laid out floors and works by artists Will Barras, Simon Birch, Boxi, Ethos, Mark Jenkins, Labrona (interviewed), Aakash Nihalani, Nina Pandolfo and WK Interact.

Check out all of our openings night coverage after the jump.

Photos by Joe Russo (AM-NY)

AM took a trip to the exclusive side of town last week to see what the Agents of Change had in store for their latest venture - Ghost Mews Project / 10. We checked out the collective - Derm, Juice 126, LX One, Remi/Rough, Steve More, System and Timid (Stormie was in Australia for a solo show) - putting the finishing touches to the installation of their first collaborative London show.

The Mews 42 gallery is situated at the end of a classy mews street in one of London’s most select areas, South Kensington. Not the side of town you would expect to see a collective of underground and street artists admittedly, but the gallery transformation looked great, knitted together using the theme of 10 (for example, one of Derm’s pieces depicted the global position of the moon at the time of the show opening and one of System’s pieces was based on the traditional Chinese astrological 10 heavenly stems), and Remi’s bold abstract geometric slashes forming the basis of the on-wall decoration - spilling out onto the floor with 3d wood pieces and even onto the front doorstep.

This was the first flurry of activity from the AoC since they transformed an abandoned, never populated, Scottish village built for oil workers in the 1970’s into a living art gallery in their Ghost Village Project. With these last 2 exciting projects under their belt, we look forward to what the AoC will come up with next.

The show runs until May 4th, so there is plenty of time to check it out in person if you are in London, in the meantime, check out some of our pictures of the installation after the jump.

Remi/Rough

Steve More (in giant condom ;))

Timid

Council workers hang picture....

Derm

System

LX One

For the full set of pictures, go here.

During our recent trip to Basel Week Miami, our friends at Thinkspace introduced us to an artist named Tran Nguyen. From the moment we saw her work, we were hooked. Lucky for us that she has a show just around the corner as her latest body of work “Nurturing The Uneased Soul” will be opening at Thinkspace Gallery this Friday (3/12). Her gentle acrylic strokes form some fantastic surrealist images that will surely make you do a double take. So if you’re lucky enough to be in LA then definitely take time to check this one out.

More preview images after the jump.

Discuss this show here.
Discuss Tran Nguyen here.

Greg Lamarche @ Anonymous

We attended the preview of Scope New York last Wednesday and visited the fair again on Saturday, and with the exception of stand-out booths by Anonymous, David B. Smith and newcomers Jackie Paper, found the fair to be somewhat disappointing overall. The show seemed small, not just relative to the enormous size of this year’s Armory Show, but compared with this year’s Scope Miami or last year’s Scope NY. And the overall selection and quality seemed to be down as well, with not a lot of interesting work beyond what we were already familiar with.

But we’d rather not harp on the negative, but instead focus on the aforementioned galleries that we enjoyed.  More after the jump…

Kostas Seremetis @ Anonymous

Upon entering the fair, we had high hopes, because the first booth we encountered was that of Lower East Side’s Anonymous Gallery. We were really impressed with Anonymous at Scope Miami this year (David Ellis, Maya Hayuk and Rostarr), and without showing any of the same artists, they were able to create an equally exciting booth in NYC. Greg Lamarche took his art to the next level by creating an installation that likened his cut paper to drugs, complete with scales and dime-bags full of paper scraps. His framed collage works covered the wall above, with many veering away from the colorful text compositions he’s known for toward something a bit more minimal. Anonymous rounded out their display with the varied urban pop art of Kostas Seremtis and graphic abstract works by Eric Haze.

Christina Empedocles @ David B. Smith

As previewed, Denver’s David B Smith Gallery delivered a solid booth filled with works from his stable of artists, including Gregory Euclide, Jason Theilke (interviewed), Kristen Schiele and AJ Fosik. We were most excited to finally see in person two pieces by San Francisco-based artist Christina Empedocles, whose wax pencil compositions of birds were visually stunning, but also had a subtle conceptual aspect to them. We were definitely intrigued by her work, and look forward to seeing more.

Ryan V. Brennan @ Jackie Paper

Last but not least, Jackie Paper - a new project by Laura Pinello and Lori Zimmer - exhibited a solo show by Ryan V. Brennan, who creates whimsical yet intelligent mixed-media sculptures that incorporated video. Also on display, was Jackie Paper’s Art Machine - a candy vending machine repurposed to dispense small original works of art by the likes of Travis Louie and Molly Crabapple for only $1. Certainly the best bargain of the fair.

Discuss Armory Week here.

After tremendous showing in Australia (covered), AM favorite Ian Francis (featured) is about to have another exhibition in his home country. The show titled “Exodus” will be opening March 25th at Lazarides Rathbone Place. Stayed tune as we’ll get more info and pics for you leading up to the show.

Discuss Ian Francis here.
See our Studio Visit with Ian here.

Last summer, AM flew out to the UK and took a road trip up to Bristol to visit Banksy’s exhibition at the Bristol Museum. As we mentioned, Banksy made an installation that replicated his studio and in that brilliant space, we realized that he had numerous pages from his sketchbook. Between chuckles, we zoomed in to take detail pictures of each one. From “No Ball Games” to “NOLA” to more that we’ve yet to see used, this edition of our sketchbook feature gives us a little insight into the brilliant humor and wit of Banksy.

Enjoy all the pics after the jump.

Thanks again to the Bristol Museum for allowing us to take photographs of the exhibition.
Discuss Banksy here.

For those of you who want to collect legitimately reproduced images of Abstract Expressionist work, but have only $0.44 to spend on each, your day has come.  On March 11, the US Postal Service releases a set of 10 commemorative stamps featuring artwork by such legends as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, and Clyfford Still. The ten paintings were selected by Art Director Ethel Kessler and Art Historian Jonathan Fineberg and provides a great representation of the vital movement.

List of works featured and pre-order information after the jump…

George Boorujy @ PPOW

Everyone knows the story of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” where a picky little girl chooses between different bowls of hot cereal etc. to find the one that suits her. Well, sometimes we feel kinda like Goldilocks at art fairs, where some feel too big and others too small. However, more often than not, during the weeks of Art Basel and Armory, Pulse is the one that fits just right, and this year was no exception.

As far as size goes, Pulse got it right again this year: small enough to feel well curated and selective, but large enough to include a wide range of artists. And, of course, it’s not just about size, but also about content, and in that regard too, Pulse delivered. The fair presented a really nice mix of artists this year, with a good balance of both emerging and more established names.

William Powhida & Jade Townsend @ Charlie James

One name that has become more well known recently is William Powhida, so were excited to get a chance to see his work in person at the Charlie James Gallery booth. Powhida is not only an artist, but also art critic, who is based in Brooklyn. In his detailed drawings, which often take the form of lists or illustrated editorials, Powhida focuses his eye on the art world with insight and biting satire. One large collaborative piece with Jade Townsend has Art Basel Miami represented as a Hooverville, one of the shantytowns that emerged in America during the Great Depression; number markers throughout the image correspond to particular one-liner type text comments located at the top of the piece.

An emerging artist that we particularly liked was Danshaku Miyazawa shown by Tokyo Gallery + BTAP. Miyazawa creates amazingly subtle and delicate pencil and watercolor figures out of circles and dots, which we unfortunately could not capture with our camera (we borrowed the image below from the gallery’s Web site). We were told he will soon have a solo show in Tokyo, so hopefully we’ll have more and better images to show you.

Danshaku Miyazawa @ Tokyo Gallery

Also of note, Christina Ray (formerly Glowlab) had a solo show with emerging Spanish artist Roberto Mollá. We had seen his work two years ago at Scope Miami, and was impressed by his style and composition, which were heavily influenced by Japanese art and design. His new body of work definitely has progressed, so that although Japanese motifs are still present, they are now more balanced within the overall image. Others must have enjoyed Mollá’s work as well, as he was voted as the winner of Pulse’s People’s Choice Award. Congratulations to Mollá and to Christina Ray.

Roberta Molla @ Christina Ray

There were certain booths at Pulse that we really enjoyed and we will be highlighting those in individual posts soon. In the meantime, here’s our gallery of images from Pulse.

Tara McPherson

The 50th Anniversary of the first Playboy Club opening in in 1960 will be celebrated in style at the Warhol Museum at the end of this month.  Artists including Gary Baseman (featured), Tim Biskup, Shag (interviewed), Frank Kozik, Andrew Schoultz, SEEN, and of course Tara McPherson have been asked to reinterpret the iconic Playboy Bunny for the exhibition. The show will open on March 27th with a special pajama party and then to the general public starting March 28th.

Discuss this show here.