Art Hag

Ray Sell | Leo Kesting Gallery

Brooklyn-based artist Ray Sell's fun and elaborate collages depict colorful, playful worlds for manly men.  Stand Yer Ground at Leo Kesting Gallery features Sell's surreal collages of Mad Men era images of businessmen in suits, pin-up girls in nothing or almost nothing, and impressionable, television-watching boys surrounded by stereotypically masculine imagery including Superman, soldiers, cowboys, guns, cigarettes, and beer.  Also cleverly inserted into his canvases are actual bullets, coins, plastic army men, pills, dice, and bottle-caps.  As the show's press release states, Sell reveals "the American male psyche" and "explores identity through both possessions and professions."

Sell's works explore the coming of age for American boys and the various social, cultural, and media influences that bombard them along the way.  While Ray's vintage collages refer back to another era, it's easy to see that toys for boys and society's ideas of maleness haven't changed very much.  Sell's balls to the wall works are witty, campy, and definitely stand their ground.  Learn more at Leokesting.com and the artist's website Raysell.com.  Through June 13th.

Superman Does Not Approve

The Gallery

Gamblin' Man

Hot Tea

Crash Diet

Business (top), High Stakes (below)

The Gunman

Bulls-eye

Linder Sterling & Jon Savage | Boo-Hooray

Fans of punk and post-punk should check out Linder Sterling and Jon Savage's The Secret Public at the Boo-Hooray gallery pop-up which has temporarily set up camp at Steven Kasher at 521 West 23rd Street.  Savage, the author of the punk tome England's Dreaming and Sterling, artist and singer for the post-punk band Ludus, named the show The Secret Public after the art fanzine the pair first published in 1978.  Many of the images on display "originally appeared as flyers and as posters for the Buzzcocks, Joy Division, Magazine, and Factory Records circa 1977-1980" (from boo-hooray.com) and include original collages, posters, flyers, and handbills as well as pages from issues of the zine.  Also included in the show are somber, black-and-white photographs shot by Savage documenting the "urban decay in London and Manchester circa 1977/1978, some of which provided the basis for his collages and montages."  Sterling's 1969 collage of a nude woman's torso with lips replacing her nipples and an iron replacing her head is probably most recognizable as the cover art for the Buzzcocks' Ogasm Addict single released in 1977. 

The Secret Public acts as an homage to the merging of visual art and music and to the good, old-fashioned, printed zine.  It also serves as a time capsule for a bleak period in England that strongly influenced music, art, and culture.  The Secret Public exhibit is dedicated to Malcolm McLaren who played a pivotal role in introducing punk to England and the masses.  Learn more about The Secret Public at boo-hooray.com.  Read an interview with Jon Savage at dazeddigital.com and read an interview with Linder Sterling by her longtime friend and former Smiths front-man, Morrissey at interviewmagazine.com.    Ends soon - through May 23rd.

Secret Public p. 12 (back cover), Another Music in A Different Kitchen/The Secret Public, Linder Sterling, January 1978

Secret Public pgs. 6-7, T.V. Sex, Linder Sterling, January 1978, offset printed fanzine

She-She, words by Linder Sterling, 1981

Untitled, Linder Sterling, color photocopy, ca. 1969; Orgasm Addict, The Buzzcocks, sleeve art, 1977

Go-Go, Jon Savage, photo montage, early 1977

Music by Muzak, Jon Savage, photo montage, 1978

Untitled, Linder Sterling, photo montage, 1978

London's Outrage, no. 2, p. 9, Jon Savage, photo montage, early 1977

London's Outrage Sex Pistols cover, 1976/77

London's Outrage, Jon Savage, photocopied fanzine, 16 pgs, Dec 1976

Shimmy, Jon Savage, photo montage, July 1979 and Shimmy (Joy Division poster), 1977

The Factory flier, Tony Wilson, original photocopy, 1978

Buzzcocks/Magazine handbill, Linder Sterling, 1978

Elliott Hundley | Andrea Rosen

I was not the only visitor at Andrea Rosen Gallery wowwed after leaning in for a closer look at Elliott Hundley's works in Agave of the Bacchae.  The Los Angeles-based artist combined collage, painting, performance, photography, sculpture and assemblage to create these large-scale pieces jam packed with details held in place by a multitude of pins of varying lengths and colors.  Based on the Greek tragedy The Bacchae by Euripides which "works as a vehicle to explore ideas of exuberance and ecstasy, mourning and remembrance, and the construction of form" (from show's press release), the works are named after the play's main characters, "becoming elaborations of the characters themselves."  Not surprisingly, Hundley clocked in some intensive labor to produce the works on view.  "He begins by photographing people, costumed or made-up, performing actions and sometimes even restaging parts of the subject matter he is working through... For this exhibition, the photographs are also enlarged and printed on rice paper to serve as the base for three large, wall-bound works.  Studded with thousands of pins holding meticulously cut out images, words, and objects; the resolution of the photographs gives way to an optically dazzling and abstracted surface.  Images, narrative and language fracture a linear reading of the past and show instead a[n]... ever changing image that allows us to marvel at the endless permutations of human culture."

Your eyes literally have to zoom in on Agave, Dionysus, and Pentheus and scan the works inch by inch.  Each is overflowing with details including cut-out imagery, text, painting, and assorted ornamentation coming together to create a surreal overall image.  Pentheus even comes equipped with attached magnifying glasses to aid in zeroing in on certain areas of the work.  It's impossible not to be tempted to graze your hand over the sea of pinheads poking out like porcupine quills creating twinkly, 3-dimensional textures.  Hundley's lush, Euripidean dreamscapes are dramatic and spectacular.  Learn more at Rosengallery.com.  Through May 1st.

Agave, 2010

Agave close-up, 2010

Agave close-up, 2010

Dionysus, 2010

Dionysus detail, 2010 

 

Pentheus, 2010

Pentheus close-up, 2010 

Thyrsus for Agave (front), 2010 and Stained Cithairon (back), 2010

Thyrsus for Autonoe, 2010

Nick Lowe | Marc Jancou Contemporary

For its first show at its new Chelsea location (the former Stellan Holm space), Marc Jancou Contemporary presents 30-year-old, California native Nick Lowe's Warped Tour.  Referencing sneaker company Vans Warped Tour, a traveling "music and extreme sports festival," the artist shows two colorful, large-scale, abstract collages featuring "bright bands... inspired by the etched pathways of a circuit board," whose surfaces have become "warped" from all "the weight of the various layers of clippings, glue, and paint," (from show's press release). 

The show's accompanying 22 drawings reference pop culture and "facets of the media and everyday life."  Along with a reproduction of the cover of the beloved Muppet Show soundtrack, Lowe's drawings feature diverse references from "the book Borders, Frames, and Decorative Motifs from the 1862 Derriey Topographic Catalogue; early 90s hip-hop album covers; an anatomical text book; and the Bob Hope airport."  While Lowe's inspirations may vary between high and lowbrow, his works exude a youthful energy and exuberance.  Learn more at Marcjancou.com.  Through April 10th.

Gorgeous George, 2009-10

Beige Collage, 2006-10

Freak Wharf, 2006-10

The Muppet Show, 2009-10

Dark Cheek (top), 2009-10, and Orange Pants (bottom), 2009-10

Text Face, 2007-10

Jeremy Kost | National Arts Club

I love a good drag queen. The more camp, glam, and fierce the better!  So when I heard photographer Jeremy Kost was having an exhibit at the historic National Arts Club featuring his Polaroids of a few NYC drag queens and club kids, I headed over to the Gramercy Park landmark to check it out.  The Ladies That Lunch features huge collages and grids of Kost's Polaroids - pieced together like puzzles to form a larger, staged scene, or lined up like comic book frames to illustrate a narrative.  Kost must have seriously stocked up on Polaroid film before it was discontinued!

The 33-year-old Texas native is known for his Polaroid shots documenting celebrities, NYC nightlife, fashion world parties and the backstage chaos of runway shows. Anyone Other Than Me, another solo show of his work, just closed at Washington DC's Conner Contemporary Art.  In the age of digital cameras and camera phones, everybody's a photographer - documenting their own celeb sightings and drunken buffoonery, so it's nice and nostalgic to see someone still having fun with a good, old fashioned Polaroid.  And it's also fun to see his images of vamping, cat-fighting queens in the old skool, posh environs of the National Arts Club.  Learn more about the artist at Jeremykost.com and learn more about the National Arts Club at nationalartsclub.org.  Through March 27th.

 

Sulking Cuz We Can't Get In (Gramercy Park), 2010

Golden Textures, The Ladies That Lunch (Kenny Kenny), 2010

Golden Textures, The Ladies That Lunch (Kenny Kenny), 2010

In The Arms of An Older Woman (Dirty Martini as Odalesque), 2010

A Little Sweetness Makes Me Smile (Jun), 2010

In The Eyes of The Patron (Koko Aviance), 2010

Afternoon Tea Gone Very, Very Wrong (Veruca and Sharon), 2010

Christian Holstad | Daniel Reich

Though the works in The World's Gone Beautiful, Christian Holstad's current show at Daniel Reich Gallery, may look fun and whimsical, the pieces actually hold a dark and melancholy meaning.  Holstad was inspired by Malvina Reynolds' deceptively titled song The World's Gone Beautiful, in which "the end of the world is anticipated with hyper real observation," (from show's press release).  Holstad created soft sculpture replicas of shopping carts from major retailers like Home Depot, Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy, Costco, Walgreens, Target, and Whole Foods made from vintage millinery tubing, vinyl, reflective fabric and lame' tubing.  The carts look just like the ones from the shopping meccas except they all lie flaccid on the floor, as if melted or deflated.  His collages depict mesh garbage cans filled with trash that includes assorted foods, sex toys, undergarments, a bible, and much more.  His works examine "beginnings and endings as expressed in the life and death of 'things' metaphorically born in shopping carts, 'used-up' and then buried in garbage pails."  As the press release states, people have a tendency to "replace our things on a biennial basis with better-suited renditions of ourselves."  We constantly consume "quick fix disposables" that end up being tossed once something newer and shinier comes along.

The even more depressing and alarming message that comes from the California-born, New York-based artist's work is that the carts are symbols of us.  Like the standard shopping carts, we are "all rather ordinary, despite our aspiration for difference.  We are rather, insatiable empty vessels looking to be fulfilled and as we are used up and knocked about like the twisted banged up metal can, little truly immortal spills out besides an assemblage of spent markers of hope and despair destined for anonymity..."  Oof, how depressing!  Now I need to go shopping!  Learn more at Danielreichgallery.com and check out the artist's website at Christianholstad.com.  Through March 6th. 

The Road to Hell is Paved (Bed Bath & Beyond), 2009 and Portrait #2 (broken umbrella, dildo, Chinese food and a candle burning at both ends), 2009

The Road to Hell is Paved (Target), 2009, The Road to Hell is Paved (Whole Foods), 2009, The Road to Hell is Paved (Walgreens), 2009 (from front to back)

Portrait #3 (upside down can with prosciutto and melon, a bra and a empty toilet paper roll.), 2009

Portrait #4 (bible, cornbread, broken high heel and a stolen denim purse), 2009