A new installation of sculpture and paintings by Laetitia Hussain opens Saturday, August 22nd from 6-8 pm in the “barn” at John Davis Gallery.
The gallery is located between 3rd and 4th streets at 362-1/2 Warren Street, and the installation will remain on view until September 20th.
Above: Installation by Laetitia Hussain
The New York Times has just published a long review plus a slide show of last weekend’s whole-house series of installations by 14 artists in the former Smith family residence on State Street in Hudson. The main article can be read here and the accompanying slideshow is here.
JACK SHAINMAN DEBUT DRAWS 1,000 TO KINDERHOOK
For New York City art worlders of a certain age, the brass ring of their youth was to reach for a 2,000 square foot downtown loft. Now that they have attained maturity, that ambition has grown tenfold, to more like 20,000+ square feet. But for even the wealthiest 1%, that’s a difficult proposition in the five boroughs.
And so the abandoned municipal, industrial, and educational buildings of the Hudson Valley beckon—to the likes of Marina Abramoviç, or the clerics of DIA:Beacon, or contemporary collectors Steven Johnson and Walter Sudol, or Studio 54 fixture Francine Hunter McGivern, or, most recently, Chelsea gallerist Jack Shainman. Call it the Hudson River School of Art Storage.
Shainman debuted his vast new 30,000 square foot space, The School, yesterday in Kinderhook with an installation by Nick Cave. The event drew, without exaggeration, at least 1,000 attendees.
The crowd was a surprisingly comfortable mix: Grizzled Soho vetarans commiserated about the demise of Pearl Paint. Williamsburg and Long Island City hipsters clad in pristine Carhartts guzzled the free beer and locally-sourced hoagies, while wondering where in tarnation they had landed. Expatriate New Yorkers, who decamped to Columbia County long before any major collectors had heard of it, felt validated at last in their decision to move upriver. Lifelong residents who learned long division in these classrooms gazed in gently rueful amazement at the building’s dramatic-yet-respectful transformation by architect Antonio Jimenez Torrecillas. (Rule of thumb: The more pockets in a pair of pants, the more likely the person lives locally.)
The generosity of Shainman’s spread, the beauty of the rooms, the free Cave posters, the disco tent, and the absence of any velvet ropes or clipboard Nazis, gave the event an ease and uplift not common to the typically sour, tense atmosphere of so many City openings.
Only “downtown” Kinderhook itself seemed unprepared for its placement on the high art map. A half-dozen storefronts are empty near the intersection of Albany & Broad, waiting to be filled by the restaurateurs and baristas and mid-century modern furniture dealers who make the trek up Broadway, which eventually becomes the old Post Road–today, Route 9.
The Carolina House seemed like the only local business ready to take advantage of the influx, with black Beemers, Audis and Mercedeses replacing the customary muddied Jeeps and minivans in the parking lot.
The “space” (that once-annoying term now universally used to describe everything from literary salons to hair salons) is strikingly successful. A pitch-perfect glow illuminates a seemingly endless maze of galleries, the next larger than the last. It must have been a H Herculean labor for Cave to occupy the entire cavernous building, and his decorative-yet-political work is strong. But the structure itself was the star of the day.
It was not clear how often The School would be open, or how regularly the exhibitions would change, but Shainman earned a ton of local goodwill with his début. A photo sampler follows below; click each image to enlarge it.
A Ramsdell ancestor, painted about a century ago by his daughter, M. Louise (Lee) Ramsdell.
Laetitia Hussain and I have donated playing card designs for this Saturday’s Playing With a Full Deck show at the Greene County Council on the Arts (GCCA) gallery in Catskill. Organized by Fawn Potash, the show features works from 52 artists—some as well-known internationally as Kiki Smith, as appreciated regionally as Kenny Polinskie, and others as obscure as, well, me. The opening is from 5-7 pm.
Potash has printed up full decks of the art cards, which now are available online prior to the opening for $35, or $50 once the show debuts. An uncut print of all the cards as a single sheet poster is likewise available at the same prices... Each deck purchase includes an option to play in GCCA’s charity poker tournament on February 8th at 6 pm, featuring prizes donated by area business. Packs can be purchased in advance, or at the door.
Painted fireplace in abandoned apartment, Hudson (NY).
Richard Artschwager, the internationally-reknowned artist who lived for many years in Columbia County, has died at 89.
Richard used to rent a place next to the church on Union Street, and also in my barn behind Curtiss House, mainly for spraypainting some of his deeply, appealingly weird wire figures.
As the link above notes, Artschwager works could not be fit into any neat category; his art was truly sui generis. I remember being both baffled and charmed when I first saw his drawings and sculpture in person (as opposed to reproductions) in Soho at Mary Boone in the early ’90s. The bafflement was part of the charm. He truly made art only for its own sake, following his own peculiar path.
I saw his wife Ann just a few days ago in T.J. Maxx of all places. She mentioned that Richard’s retrospective at the Whitney was just closing, and moving on to L.A. It’s at least wonderful that the retro happened in his lifetime.
His immense talent aside, he was a witty but gentle guy, and will be much missed. The Times’ obituary is here.
Some 22 years ago, my first paid writing gig was for a British magazine, reviewing a Ralph Earl show at The Wadsworth Athenaeum, which was then celebrating its 100th Anniversary. A short business trip to the Hartford area brought me back to the Wadsworth for the first time since then. And I found its eclectic collections just as impressive as two decades ago.
Now, many regional museums have eclectic collections. It’s a function of availability and necessity—they take whatever they can get, by any reasonably-recognizable artis. But the Wadsworth is both eclectic and selective, with deep, well-chosen areas of expertise from early American furniture and painting to Minimalism (Sol Lewitt in particular).
There isn’t much else to see in Hartford, but if you’re ever in the area it’s absolutely worth a visit... Below is a gallery of some additional cameraphone shots of rooms and pieces there.
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Thursday through Sunday are the last four days to see Laetitia Hussain’s three-story elevator shaft installation, Sycamophology, at John Davis Gallery in Hudson (362 1/2 Warren Street) before it comes down—along with the rest of the excellent group show of which it is a part. The gallery is open from 11 am to 5 pm.
Art openings in Columbia County in the past few weekends have included (click images to enlarge) ...
The “Vote for Me” group show at Art Omi in Ghent, including works by Warhol, Johns, et al.;
Brian Dewan’s performance at CR10 in Livingston;
Bill Stone’s installation at CR10 in Livingston;
Laetitia Hussain’s elevator shaft installation at John Davis Gallery in Hudson;
Georgia Elrod’s paintings at John Davis Gallery in Hudson; and
Kenny Polinskie paper works at Carrie Haddad Gallery in Hudson.
Tspace, the private exhibition space in Rhinebeck created by architect Stephen Holl and curated by photographer Susan Wides, held an opening this weekend for National Medal of Arts recipient Martin Puryear.
The event, which featured an installation of Puryear’s work Vessel, also included a performance on a 300-year-old standup bass, a catalog essay by Carter Ratcliffe, and a separate gallery of paintings by Wides’ husband Jim Holl:
