Art Hag

Jerry Ma: A Chinatown Odyssey | Pearl River Mart

Happy Lunar New Year! To celebrate the Year of the Rat, Pearl River Mart presents artist Jerry Ma’s modern retelling of the classic Chinese tale Journey to the West.

Jerry Ma, Lion Dance

Jerry Ma, Lion Dance

In Wu Cheng'en's original 16th-century novel, Zhu Bajie (Pigsy), Sha Wujing (Sandy), and the mischief-making Sun Wukong (the Monkey King) accompany the monk Tang Sanzang on a pilgrimage to Central Asia and India to collect Buddhist scriptures. In A Chinatown Odyssey, Ma’s reinterpretation, the characters are transported to NYC’s Chinatown in the 1980s where they don streetwear instead of monastic robes and their adventures include grabbing dim sum, having bubble tea, checking out a fish market, shopping for designer knockoffs, liberating a tic-tac-toe-playing chicken from an arcade game, and celebrating the new year with a festive lion dance.

Jerry Ma, Fish Market

Jerry Ma, Doyers Street

Jerry Ma, Dimsum

Jerry Ma, Chinatown Arcade

“A Chinatown Odyssey is both a love letter and personal journey through the Chinatown I grew up with,” the artist wrote in the show’s introduction. “Who better to take that journey than Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, and his cronies?” Ma notes that his childhood memories of Chinatown include dim sum, ginger candy, shopping for groceries, and “finally finding a place where everyone looked like me.” The Taiwanese-American artist adds that his work is influenced by the film series A Chinese Odyssey based on Wu Cheng'en's novel and starring Stephen Chow.

Hong Bao, a limited edition gold foil print, faithfully replicates a lucky red envelope and features the four characters in A Chinatown Odyssey alongside a rat—the Chinese zodiac sign for 2020.

Jerry Ma, Hong Bao

Ma’s lively prints burst with details of iconic Chinatown locales including Canal Street, Doyers Street, the Golden Unicorn Restaurant, and the Chinatown Fair video arcade. Images overflow with shoppers, diners, and tourists. Each scene vividly depicts the energy of the bustling Asian cultural hub and evokes nostalgia for anyone with memories of Chinatown who has experienced the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of the neighborhood.

Born in Washington Heights, the New York-based graphic artist and illustrator founded Epic Proportions, an independent comics studio, in 2003 and created the graphic novel series Legend and co-created Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology. Ma also produces t-shirts featuring Asian-American celebrities including Bruce Lee, Jeremy Lin, Sandra Oh, and Constance Wu. Learn more about Jerry Ma in this interview and at epicprops.com.

Click here to see my post on Monkey: Journey To The West, a stage adaptation of the novel by musician Damon Albarn, artist Jamie Hewlett, and director Chen Shi-Zheng that was performed at Lincoln Center in 2013.

A Chinatown Odyssey 
Pearl River Mart
395 Broadway (at Walker Street), Second Floor, TriBeCa
Exhibition on view January 18 through March 8

Sol LeWitt | City Hall Park

Twenty-seven of Connecticut-born artist Sol LeWitt's (1928 - 2007) sculptures, or as he referred to them - structures, are currently on view in and around City Hall Park.  Several of his famous minimal, white, geometric squares are on display in Structures, 1965-2006, alongside more complex forms, a pyramid, a tower, and a wonderfully colorful and dynamic piece called Splotch 15, resembling of a bunch of rainbow-hued stalagmites or a gigantic heap of Crayola crayons melting in the brutal summer sun.

Presented by the Public Art Fund, the outdoor retrospective of LeWitt's works is the first of its kind, and chronicles the progression of his structures for forty years, from his "early white geometric cubes through to the late, multicolored organic forms," (from nyc-arts.org).  It's a nice change to see LeWitt's staid, minimal works displayed outdoors instead of inside a white, sterile gallery.  His structures boldy stand out and make a statement juxtaposed amongst grassy lawns, green foliage, the Brooklyn Bridge and assorted skyscrapers—"both natural and architectural forms in the city that helped inspire his art."  Learn more at nyc-arts.org.  Through December 2nd.

Splotch 15, right, 2005 and Three X Four X Three, left, 1984

Splotch 15, 2005 and Three X Four X Three, 1984

Complex Form 6, 1987

Double Modular Cube, 1979

Pyramid (Munster), 1987

Three-Part Variations on Three Different Kinds of Cubes 3 3 2, 1967 - 1974

Incomplete Open Cubes,1974

Incomplete Open Cube, 1974

One X Two Half Off, 1991

Tower (Columbus), 1990

James Franco | The Clocktower Gallery

Actor/artist James Franco's perplexing yet amusing exhibition The Dangerous Book Four Boys ends next month, so you have a few days still to check it out at The Clocktower Gallery located in Art International Radio's Tribeca offices.  The exhibit features twenty films by Franco along with sculptures, photographs, drawings, site-specific video installations and ephemera.  Inspired by the Boy Scout-like book The Dangerous Book For Boys, the artist's work "draws upon traditional depictions of masculinity, sensuality and celebrity, upending them in manners at once humorous, salacious and disturbing" (from show's press release).  Franco also "toys with the language of popular culture, referencing real and fictional public icons, including his own public persona, in order to highlight the ways in which fame and celebrity are personalized and made meaningful."  

Videos and photos document Franco and team outdoors building (or destroying?) the two large wooden house structures and rocket ship that are on display in the main gallery where defaced pages torn from The Dangerous Book for Boys are also displayed .  The plastic toys, plastic playhouse, rubber masks, and various other odds and ends piled in a corner in the front gallery also appear in the photos.  Though I had difficulty watching the videos because of the shaky camera work (I get super nauseous) the few minutes I watched of Dicknose Goes to Paris were pretty funny.  In it, an overacting Franco wearing a fake dick over his nose like a Paul McCarthy sculpture along with the bearded, suited Bill Faulkner and the masked and deranged Billy, travel to Paris because Franco's favorite director, Wes Anderson, lives there.  In a disturbing video practically hidden in a stairwell, a group of young boys are shown beating up another and then raping him.

Franco's debut solo exhibit is odd yet fascinating.  His youthful enthusiasm, strange sense of humor, and willingness to poke fun of himself make it easy to appreciate if not fully grasp The Dangerous Book Four Boys (though it's hard to forgive the bad grammar).  The back of the invite for the exhibit printed this helpful bit of advice and excellent excerpt from The Dangerous Book for Boys — "Don't swagger.  The boy who swaggers—like the man who swaggers—has little else that he can do.  He is a cheap-Jack crying his own paltry wares."  I'm guessing James Franco probably doesn't swagger.

Fortunately I read this Village Voice review prior to heading out to see the show or else I probably wouldn't have found The Clocktower Gallery.  It's located downtown amid all the courthouses at 108 Leonard Street in an unnumbered city building.  You have to go through security, have your bag x-rayed, take the elevator up to the twelfth floor where you then follow signs to a staircase that leads you up one more floor to the gallery.  Getting to the Clocktower is almost as quirky as the show the gallery is hosting!  Learn more at artonair.org.  Through September.

The Clocktower Gallery is operated by Art International Radio or AIR, a non-profit, online cultural radio station created by PS 1 founder and former director Alanna Heiss who also curated The Dangerous Book Four Boys along with Beatrice Johnson.  Learn more or listen at artonair.org.

A scene from Dicknose Goes to Paris

A Way Beyond Fashion | Apex Art

On view until Saturday at Apex Art in Tribeca is A Way Beyond Fashion, a small exhibit displaying the work of 11 artists and/or designers that "analyzes the shifting boundaries between art and fashion design."  The artists/designers in the exhibit "blur the lines between the two disciplines" and along with questioning individuality and identity they "revise some key technological, ecological and socio-economic issues of our day."  The exhibit's curator, Robert Punkenhofer, states in the exhibition notes, "For A Way Beyond Fashion, my primary intention was to find works on the periphery between art and fashion.  Together, the explored issues - relating to communication, identity, technology and ecological sustainability - provide exciting fashion themes, which in turn are analyzed from the perspective of art." 

Designer Rudi Gernreich "whose level of conceptual depth and radicalism" inspired Punkenhofer to curate the exhibit, introduced the "unisex design concept" at the 1970 World Expo in Osaka, Japan.  Along with "thematiz[ing] sexual identity as an important aspect of fashion," the pioneering Gernreich also "experimented with technology, toyed with unusual fabrics, including vinyl, plastic and paper, and created the space suit and military look."

One of my favorite designers, London-based Hussein Chalayan, often incorporates technology into his clothing designs.  On view is his 2007 LED Dress made of "Crystallized Swarovski Elements," LED lights, and chiffon/silk overlay.  The dress actually lights up like a Christmas tree!  The Absent Presence (2005), a 5-screen video piece created by Chalayan and starring fashion fave, Tilda Swinton, plays on a flat-screen television beside his LED Dress.  Originally shown at the Venice Biennale, the video shows a future that includes "fashion scans" that "access private data and track consumer behavior." 

Highly inspired and influenced by the "indigenous population of the Yucatan and other areas of [her native] Mexico" Carla Fernandez "challeng[es] the role of fashion and design in creating cultural identity."  Along with Pedro Reyes, Fernandez created Square Clothes for Round-Minded People (2009) which consists of "seven pieces of clothing featuring a strictly geometric design of squares and rectangles."  The very cool and contemporary pieces are made of wool, suede and cotton and hang from the wall on steel hangers.  Accompanying videos demonstrate the multiple ways in which the garments can be worn.

New York-based Jenny Marketou created ParKour (wear), 12 wearable paper dresses emblazoned with advertising slogans like "Fragile" and "Freedom is the new luxury."  Marketou hopes to show with her brightly-colored, paper, tent dresses (that remind me of Stephen Sprouse) "how the human body is reclaiming the public space through fashion." 

Japanese artist Takehiko Sanada enlisted 500 volunteers to cultivate their own cotton which he used to create Hou/Jun (2008) which means "healthy and happy."  He used the yarn along with wire and sculpted delicate human forms.  According to the exhibit's notes, the process of creating the sculptures helped Sanada attain "the state of an 'enriched heart and mind' where he turns a fragmented, hectic world into an infinitely layered and interconnected life encapsulated in the 'eternal time,'" a contradiction to the fast-paced and soul-crushing fashion industry.

Since I often bemoan the commercialization and dumbing down of fashion - every tasteless starlet now has a clothing line and every velour tracksuit-clad mall-rat proclaims herself a fashion expert, or worse, a "fashionista" (Have you ever noticed how the people who bandy that word about the most are usually the least fashionable?) - I'm glad that these artists and designers are aiming to take the art form to an intellectual and socially responsible level.  Learn more at apexart.org.  Through October 24th.

Rudi Gernreich, Scarf (on left wall), 1960's, and Takehiko Sanada, Hou/Jun (right), 2008

Hussein Chalayan, The Absent Presence (left), 2005, and LED Dress (right), 2007

Carla Fernandez, Square Clothes for Round-Minded People, 2009

Jenny Marketou, ParKour (wear), 2009

Hjortur Hjartarson at More North

More North is a sleek and chic gallery and design store in Tribeca showcasing the minimal and elegant works of Scandinavian artists and designers.  On Tuesday night it played host to an opening for Icelandic artist Hjortur Hjartarson. 

Evoking Iceland presents 23 beautiful, abstract, landscape paintings by the Reykjavik native.  The "heavily textural works... composed of several layers of paint and glaze" depict the various climates of Hjartarson's home-base Reykjavik as well as New York City.  The artist states, "New York inspires me because it is like a central station in many ways: art, food, people. business... very colorful."  Very colorful succinctly describes his canvases as well.  Though at first glance the paintings appear to be hazy and fuzzy mixes of colors, your eyes soon adjust and images or feelings of seasons, Central Park,  green fields, bodies of water, snowy landscapes, and urban skylines can be visualized. 

Extended viewing of Hjartarson's canvases give his pieces an organic yet surreal and dreamy feel.  See morenorth.com for more details.  Through December 6h.

More on More North ~ located at 39 North Moore Street, the store features sleek and modern furniture, glassware, ceramics, and art objects created by Scandinavian designers and companies including Artek, Knoll, Marimeko, Olby Design, Royal Copenhagen and more.  The 3,800-square-foot space was designed by KOKO Architecture and Design and is a clean, airy, and serene space.  Definitely drop by for a visit the next time you are in the neighborhood.  You can find more info on the store here.  See a few photos I took below.

Hjortur Hjartarson, Cold Painting, 2009

Hjortur Hjartarson, Manhattan Skyline, 2009

Hjortur Hjartarson, Summer Painting, 2009

Glass display at More North

More North with Hjortur Hjartarson's Clay, 2009, in background

More North staircase with Hjortur Hjartarson's Reflection III, 2007, in background

More North table display and Hjortur Hjartarson's Reflection in Blue, 2009, in background