For Immediate Release
The 2019/2020 season review
Lubov / El Apartamento
5 East Broadway
Havana
★★★★★
BY APPOINTMENT ONLY – Luckily, the policies that prevent travel to and from Cuba from the United States afford a “loophole” for the “intangible transition of wealth.” Thank God – José Manuel Mesias work inherits the “psychogeography of the contemporary,” where “weary, sensitive applications” of paint obfuscate “grunge-scale mechanical techniques.” Mesias might be the “Lucas Samaras of the Cuban art scene” — but must a “national subject” be specified here? Impossible to “box this work in” — or horizon it by the “overhead costs of international shipping.” What does a “Third World or Global South perspective” look like in the “age of the international MFA community?” Note that Mesias “lacks the usual pedigree,” so brush up on your “1984 Havana Biennial” trivia before asking after the back inventory.
Bortolami / Galerie Jocelyn Wolff
39 Walker Street
★★★
CLOSED – Bortolami Gallery is “pleased to host” Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris, representing Katinka Bock in an exhibition that “investigates shared experience” and “displacement”. Bock, who “lives and works between Paris and Berlin” has installed a silver spoon “quite conspicuously” between Bortolami’s “open-floor offices” and the “so-called” white cube. “Feel old yet?” Bock’s “vaguely provincial” scope and “raw materials” “invite and alienate” the viewer; the work is “dreamlike” and, “like a dream,” intentionally “staged off.” “A little like Law & Order” are former partners and collaborators Ann Veronica Janssens and Michel François in a two--plus-one exhibition that calls to mind a “Kunsthalle-scale model of a developing nation”.
5 East Broadway
Havana
★★★★★
BY APPOINTMENT ONLY – Luckily, the policies that prevent travel to and from Cuba from the United States afford a “loophole” for the “intangible transition of wealth.” Thank God – José Manuel Mesias work inherits the “psychogeography of the contemporary,” where “weary, sensitive applications” of paint obfuscate “grunge-scale mechanical techniques.” Mesias might be the “Lucas Samaras of the Cuban art scene” — but must a “national subject” be specified here? Impossible to “box this work in” — or horizon it by the “overhead costs of international shipping.” What does a “Third World or Global South perspective” look like in the “age of the international MFA community?” Note that Mesias “lacks the usual pedigree,” so brush up on your “1984 Havana Biennial” trivia before asking after the back inventory.
Bortolami / Galerie Jocelyn Wolff
39 Walker Street
★★★
CLOSED – Bortolami Gallery is “pleased to host” Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris, representing Katinka Bock in an exhibition that “investigates shared experience” and “displacement”. Bock, who “lives and works between Paris and Berlin” has installed a silver spoon “quite conspicuously” between Bortolami’s “open-floor offices” and the “so-called” white cube. “Feel old yet?” Bock’s “vaguely provincial” scope and “raw materials” “invite and alienate” the viewer; the work is “dreamlike” and, “like a dream,” intentionally “staged off.” “A little like Law & Order” are former partners and collaborators Ann Veronica Janssens and Michel François in a two--plus-one exhibition that calls to mind a “Kunsthalle-scale model of a developing nation”.
Kai Matsumiya
153 ½ Stanton Street (Storefront)
★★★
BY APPOINTMENT ONLY – If you didn’t catch Pedro Wirz’s “Sour Ground” on the heels of “Fleet Week,” you probably “didn’t touch anyone at Armory" anyway. (“Air kisses” and then some!) Okay, the online install shots don’t quite arrive at the “biometric” hue Wirz was aiming for, but this “Total Recall” of “Trading Spaces” uses a “deep orange based on the PH spectrum” warmed to every cismale “art wrangler”’s “Home Depot orange” kitchen apron. (The “great thing about colonialism” is that “everyone’s a subject!”) Think “Lynda Benglis” meets “The Flintstones”; Wirz’s use of resin anticipates a world “where we could still touch things.”
Franklin Parrasch Gallery
53 East 64th Street
★★★★★
BY APPOINTMENT ONLY – When I visited the “light filled” and “air conditioned” “upper east side townhouse” affair over the summer, Katherine Overgaard proposed “more than one contemporary art” over one or more “art histories.” (“It’s like a choose-your-own-adventure novel,” the dealer quipped.) @gallerycookist’s lively “cook taste drink nourish” profile sports food pics and editorialized meal sharing between the UES gallery’s close-knit custodians. However, recent events appear to have dragged the “west coast minimalist” outfit (whose programming “includes hot rodding and surfing”) into a more industry standard social media presence. “Don’t read too much into it” -- Overgaard is exactly one historian with “nothing to prove” on the PR front. “Sheltering-in-place” at Franklin Parrasch since February is the work of “Land Artist” and former “undergraduate Math student”, the late-career Charles Ross. “In light of developments pertaining to COVID-19, the gallery will be open by appointment only until further notice.” Look, if these people weren’t into “social distancing” in the first place, they wouldn’t be uptown. Ross’s six-figure six-foot series, “Human Sized Solar Burns,” is a “west coast” “east side” story that goes the distance.
153 ½ Stanton Street (Storefront)
★★★
BY APPOINTMENT ONLY – If you didn’t catch Pedro Wirz’s “Sour Ground” on the heels of “Fleet Week,” you probably “didn’t touch anyone at Armory" anyway. (“Air kisses” and then some!) Okay, the online install shots don’t quite arrive at the “biometric” hue Wirz was aiming for, but this “Total Recall” of “Trading Spaces” uses a “deep orange based on the PH spectrum” warmed to every cismale “art wrangler”’s “Home Depot orange” kitchen apron. (The “great thing about colonialism” is that “everyone’s a subject!”) Think “Lynda Benglis” meets “The Flintstones”; Wirz’s use of resin anticipates a world “where we could still touch things.”
Franklin Parrasch Gallery
53 East 64th Street
★★★★★
BY APPOINTMENT ONLY – When I visited the “light filled” and “air conditioned” “upper east side townhouse” affair over the summer, Katherine Overgaard proposed “more than one contemporary art” over one or more “art histories.” (“It’s like a choose-your-own-adventure novel,” the dealer quipped.) @gallerycookist’s lively “cook taste drink nourish” profile sports food pics and editorialized meal sharing between the UES gallery’s close-knit custodians. However, recent events appear to have dragged the “west coast minimalist” outfit (whose programming “includes hot rodding and surfing”) into a more industry standard social media presence. “Don’t read too much into it” -- Overgaard is exactly one historian with “nothing to prove” on the PR front. “Sheltering-in-place” at Franklin Parrasch since February is the work of “Land Artist” and former “undergraduate Math student”, the late-career Charles Ross. “In light of developments pertaining to COVID-19, the gallery will be open by appointment only until further notice.” Look, if these people weren’t into “social distancing” in the first place, they wouldn’t be uptown. Ross’s six-figure six-foot series, “Human Sized Solar Burns,” is a “west coast” “east side” story that goes the distance.