Continuing Education Blog

Artist Otis Houston, Jr.

During back-to-school season, most galleries open marquee solo shows with their flagship, hot, or new artists. Among the new, Davis Rhodes has his first solo show at Team Gallery, Tom Burr his first at Bortolami, Vincent Fecteau at Matthew Marks, and Dasha Shishkin at Zach Feuer.

Boys to Men: (l-r) Justin Conner, Juan Olivares, Matt Keegan, Jack Pierson, Dan McCarthy, Brian Meola at Vincent Fecteau's Opening

Some artvarks attend every opening on big opening nights, like those last week.  Obsessive, they check listings at Artcards.  Next, they plan an itinerary like a chess match.  Sequence galleries by location.  Check to see whether any openings end later than others.  Which galleries dim the lights at 8 on the dot?  Which welcome lingering scenesters for an extra hour?  Some lucky ducks, or those in the right company, make the afterparty, though open bars and lavish dinners are history.

I prefer to focus on shows of friends.  And maybe other artists of special interest.  And CANADA!  At CANADA, friendly smiles and shabby chic fill the room.  And that’s just the art.  The people are unusually amiable, low-key, and freewheeling.  No heels, blazers, hair gel, attitude.  It’s not a scene.  It’s a culture!

CANADiAns

CANADA opens an unassuming group show of artists with legit exhibition history, covering several generations (Dona Nelson, Chris Martin, Otis Nelson) and demographics, from sort-of outsider (Otis Houston, Jr.) to total insider (Agathe Snow).  The paintings and sculptures are messy, bumpy, juicy, festive, and…mercurial?  In a good way.

Artists Liz Markus (l) and Katherine Bernhardt (r) rockin the velour HOT

A nice guy named Tony gave me the low-down on Otis Houston, Jr and pointed me to the helpful blog/archive that he maintains for Otis.

Otis' overseer Tony Schultz

Katherine Bernhardt (in vintage, velour shoulder pads) and Liz Markus shared Swatch watch memories.  Andy Coolquitt told Michael Mahalchick and Benjamin Tischer about his installation at Moss, the fancy SoHo design store.  The venerable Chris Martin glowed about his friend, painter Mamie Tinkler.  Matt Greene shared studio updates and Anne Eastman described her adventurous flights to Europe: intercontinental, incontinent, incredible!  Dear Airlines, please carry an emergency stash of baby diapers! -Love, Anne

SVA alum Dan Nadel = PictureBox

CANADA openings also have the prettiest girls:

Chris Martin obviously knows this.

Matt Greene obviously knows this.

Artists Matt Greene and Trinie Dalton

But don’t take their word for it!

IMAGES: Michael Bilsborough

“It’s his second solo show in New York, but his first solo show as a New York artist,” noted Jeffrey Deitch as he led a toast in honor of Matt Greene. JD helped Matt move from L.A. to NYC, where Matt now has a studio in Williamsburg. I got to meet Matt last summer, when we were both in The Left Hand of Darkness, a group show at The Project curated by Sarvia Jasso and Yasmine Dubois.

Opening night

Massive paintings on canvas and maple panel fill the main gallery at Deitch’s Grand Street space. We see apparitions of phantom women in dresses and heels, or mouth-watering bouquets of mushrooms, presumably of the genus Psylocybe. Friends and I looked closely: most seemed to be mixed media collage combinations of large scale photocopy, acrylic, oil, and varnish or resin. Matt probably has a tried-and-true system, though the variegated surfaces make the handicraft elusive. The glistening resin surface is suggestive more than functional. In different hands, it would “seal” the heterogeneous surfaces, it instead bubbles and drips at random, leaving too many untouched areas to actually be protective. Though Matt used this technique in Surrender, his previous show at Deitch in 2006, it is still a refreshing alternative to the skillful and demanding planes that seductively enclose work by Fred Tomaselli or Julie Mehretu. It’s cool, and I imagine a studio full of big jugs – jugs of polymer, PVA, and “Matt” medium – and an overworked mop.

Yipes, Stripes! Sue de Beer (with fur coat) and Matt Greene (right)

An neat arrangement of drawings in ink and acrylic depict ranks and files of Victoria’s Secret models who occasionally dogpile into a morass of stray body parts. The drawings dismember the bodies by selecting choice bits and cropping out others, and feel more seedy and sweaty than the starched, suburban donnas of elder ladies man John Wesley, an untouchable titan whose insurmountability nevertheless should not discourage imitation. And between both the drawings and paintings, we might think of Bellmer’s segmented bodies, not to mention Bellmer’s process of constructing, rather than hiring, a female body to be his model for a photograph.

Which would you rather take home?

Artist Matthew Ronay, one of my favorite sculptors, and a fierce drummer, is an exception, a hired (or at least borrowed) model who dazzles the camera in a dress, wig, and terrifying mask that makes Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley’s “Heidi” look like Miss Hawaii. “Who else would have arms that hairy?” quipped artist Jesse Bransford. Bransford’s ex, video vamp Sue De Beer, looked on, opped up in a striped dress. (She looks great, and I wonder if she uses the same Creme de la Mer that inspired one of the sculptures in Rear Projection, the new show by John Waters, Sue De Beer’s gallery mate at Marianne Boesky.)

John Waters at Marianne Boesky

IMAGES: Michael Bilsborough, Marianne Boesky Gallery