Microscope Gallery, Underdonk, Transmitter, TSA New York, Studio 10, Amos Eno, The Border Project Space, Green Door Gallery, Scholes Street Studio
Microscope Gallery, Underdonk, Transmitter, TSA New York
Above are just a handful of hints and glimpses of notions of formal analogousness I noted among four quite different works by four different artists in four different excellent exhibits, all of which opened at the 1329 Willoughby building in Bushwick on the same night earlier this month.
At top left, an instant of a video involving a ‘vectorial world’ by Lisa Gwilliam & Ray Sweeten at Microscope Gallery . At top right, one of Amy Butowicz‘s amusingly alt-quotidian metamorphs in her bizarrely joyous solo show at Underdonk . This piece in particular seemed immediately suggestive of Humpty Dumpty’s pants, or The Penguin’s pants, or the pants worn by some bloviating politician in a parodical caricature by Daumier. I’m not sure if they’re supposed to be anything of the sort. I am sure I want pants, or I guess culottes, of just that sort. Moving along, the painting to which those pants, or maybe ‘pants,’ point is by Alessandro Keegan . It’s one of several strong works he’s showing in “Heed,” a winning two-person show at Transmitter that features also very strong work by Angela Hiesch . At bottom left, a sculpture that seemed to imply a distilled tincture of time frozen still in atemporal liquid motion, or something of such a strangely wordable sort, in “Object of Desire,” a large group show curated by Amanda Martinez at TSA .
Studio 10, Amos Eno, The Border Project Space
I happened to note a number of common notes of blue notes in noteworthy works in three shows that won’t leave you with the blues if you note them too.
All are recent or current shows at the 56 Bogart building in Bushwick: at top, Elise Siegel’s solo show at Studio 10 ; at bottom right and center, works in “Color Matters II,” a group show at The Border, featuring Noriko Mizokawawa , Pilar Uribe and William Bradley ; and another solo show, Erik Banks at Amos Eno .
Green Door Gallery
For some, January 6th is observed as Epiphany or Three Kings’ Day, among other ways of observing or knowing it. For all the artists and other folks involved with “Advent: Mindful Waiting,” a large group show curated by Elisa Jensen at Green Door Gallery in Greenpoint, January 6th this year marked not only that holiday, but also the closing day for their laborious and gradually realized ordeal of an exhibition. Sure, that might describe many an exhibition, but that was particularly true for this show that welcomed into its folds work by one additional artist on each day of Advent in December.
So the show is no longer up, but it’s worth noting that there were so many remarkable relationships among and intersections betwixt the works on view, which included a broad trove of 2D and 3D works in a range of media, that it seemed as though certain pieces could truly trail, trace, and trot right into and out of one another as if following each other somewhere. A hint of what I mean is in these spliced together details from works by Tine Lundsfryd , Lauren Bakoian and Michael Volonakis . The show was so full of entry and exit points and other kinds of visual sutures from one piece to another that putting together some kind example was irresistible.
There have been some great shows at Green Door Gallery over the past year. Peek in next time one is up. Epiphanies can be had there even when it’s not Epiphany.
Scholes Street Studio
It can be such a surprising pleasure to see sometimes a certain work that, in a different setting, might’ve seemed to suggest a certain something that changes entirely when that same potentially suggested something is, instead, immediately present.
I guess I could be less obtuse about it. Backdropped differently — say, on a relatively more standard white wall — this painting by Emily Berger might have implied, among other things, something along the lines of the somewhat regularizable staccato of a red brick wall. Yet here, backdropped by a red brick wall, the same painting hums along with a less intermittent or more mellifluous harmony.
Maybe that still makes no sense. At any rate, the artist’s fine exhibition at the heavily music-infused Scholes Street Studio did bring just such an elusively explicable something out of this great painting, one of the dozen in her solo show that closed on January 20th.
The occasional “Nota Bene with @postuccio” pieces by Paul D’Agostino are modified versions of selected capsule reviews and other art notes he posts on Instagram. Follow him there for other posts as well: @postuccio.
Paul D’Agostino, Ph.D. is an artist, writer, translator and curator living in Bushwick, Brooklyn. His occasional “Nota Bene with @postuccio” pieces are modified versions of selected capsule reviews and other art notes he posts on Instagram. More information about him is available here, and you can find him as @postuccio on Instagram and Twitter.