AndrewAndrew: Art Begets Art

AndrewAndrew photographed by Marcus Yam for the New York Times

I’ll be the first one to admit: I don’t know everything there is to know about art. With that caveat, AndrewAndrew is one of the most exciting and, dare I say, original, works of creativity that I’ve seen in a long time. The two-man “collective” have a bio that reads like a short list of a curatorial brainstorming session: guerrilla art interventionist, tech savvy, socialist  DJ duo in NY known as “the i-pad DJ’s” who have been dressing alike for more than a decade, eliminating any aspects of personal identity outside of the joint persona in a Gatsby-esque act of freedom. I can’t think of anything more inspiring. Be sure to check out the full feature on AndrewAndrew written by Michael Schulman for the New York Times, add them on Twitter for links to their latest mixes, and check out the AndrewAndrew blog which features their latest endeavor: instant theater reviews filmed, edited and posted using only and i-phone4.

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The Sound of Art by Paddy Johnson

Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City is several days and a several hundred dollars away from her reaching her Kickstarter goal of raising $10,000 to produce a distinctive sound project. The Sound of Art is a DJ Battle Record which pits the sounds of art works exhibited in Manhattan (Side A) against those in Brooklyn (Side B). She’s throwing in some really amazing kickbacks to those who are able to donate anywhere from $10 and up. If it were me, I’d go for the $500 pledge and have dinner with her and William Powhida. How fun would that be? Too bad I don’t live in NYC…or have $500. But for a mere $20 you can nab a copy of the record and do something good for the arts. Who can complain about that!

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Breedings: A Solo Exhibition by iO Tillett Wright

iO Tillett Wright is on the rise. This girl is a major hustler – the good kind of hustler – blogging on the NY Times “T Magazine” site, curating exhibitions with internationally acclaimed artists like Remi Roughe, Cheryl Dunn and Anthony Lister, and working on her own photography practice. This girl is it and to keep the momentum of her accomplishments going, iO will be exhibiting a new collection of photographs in her first NYC solo show which debuts at Fuse Gallery on Saturday, September 18th from 7-11pm.

Breedings features an exhibition of photographs expressed as static films – 20 two-frame, 35mm., B/W micro-movies, nano-narratives, miniature-blockbusters. For Breedings, the artist looked for instances of solitude within her subjects, photographing these individuals when they were at their least self-aware, in genuine moments of aloneness, usually amongst a crowd. The resulting imagery portrays those fleeting points of vulnerability and isolation, cracks in the celebratory façade that counter the contrived yet conventional nature of party photography. The photographs in Breeding appear in pairs, a decision made by iO when she observed the phenomenon of certain images appearing to be drawn to each other. The artist playfully equates this attraction to a sexual act whereby the two photographs couple their documentary narratives to produce a fictional offspring, a new story.

iO Tillett Wright is a self-taught artist living and working in New York, NY as a freelance writer and photographer. Born in a New York taxi cab, raised in the East Village of the 1980s, and educated by a rare mix of real life experience and creative mentorship, iO developed a passion for photography, filmmaking and editing. The artist credits her 19 years of acting experience in film and theater as having an integral influence on her artistic practice. At age 18, iO founded Overspray Magazine, a nationally distributed art magazine with international readership that spent 5 years in publication. iO’s work has been exhibited nationally with the recent inaugural group show at The Hole NYC as well as the Manifest Equality exhibition in Los Angeles. Breedings marks iO Tillett Wright’s first solo exhibition and coincides with the release of her first published book of photographs.

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Blow.

Today sees the premier of Blow by Blow, a new play about the life of the divine fashion icon Isabella Blow. The debut performance will be part of the 11th Annual Midtown International Theatre Festival.  Will the most tragic part of the play be Blow’s self-induced death by drinking weedkiller or the impossible task of recreating her wardrobe?

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The Hole NYC: Not Quite Open for Business

The art world has been waiting with baited breath to see what would become of the downtown NY art scene subsequent to the departure of its prodigal son, Jeffery Deitch. Tomorrow, June 26th, we will soon know what lies in store for the gallerist cum museum director’s brood of artists as many of them cross the threshold of a new exhibition space launched by Deitch’s own Kathy Grayson and Meghan Coleman. The gallery, so appropriately named The Hole, will attempt to fill a void that Deitch left behind when he relocated to LA. I’m excited to see what Grayson and Coleman will make of themselves and of this huge opportunity. If Grayson’s blog, Art From Behind, is any indication of what NY can expect from this creative duo, we can count on the fact that they won’t be following the rules. I expect they’ll be taking what they’ve learned from their predecessor and re-envisioning a new contemporary movement that is nothing short of edgy and honest. I can’t wait to watch them flourish. The art world needs this! For more info including the artists exhibiting, a link to Grayson’s blog, and a press release that is unlike any I’ve ever written or read, visit The Hole.

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It’s A Wrap: The Art Handling Olympics Results Are In!

Photo: Michael Nagle for The New York Times

The results from the first ever Art Handling Olympics are in! Check out the action, and the team uniforms, in the New York Times photo story and read the full play by play, as covered by Art Fag City.

From the New York Times:

“Art handlers,” writes Randy Kennedy, are “an often-invisible international underclass of blue-collar workers, most of them aspiring artists trying to pay the bills. But on Sunday afternoon at a bare-bones gallery on the Lower East Side, a group of them finally got a chance to grab a little glory. And even better, they got a raucous public forum in which to mock gallery owners, curators, collectors, critics, fellow artists and just about everyone in the art world, not excluding themselves.”

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Do You Know About the Brucennial?

Brucennial Installation, via Art in America. Photo by Catherine Kron

“Given its radical scale and ambition, the inclusion of large scale (albeit unprotected, and acessible-feeling) works by Julian Schnabel, George Condo, and Rita Ackermann and many others, the Brucennial should be considered a serious curatorial gesture.” – Catherine Kron, Art in America

Coinciding with the inclusion of Bruce High Quality Foundation in the Whitney Biennial, the Brucennial is a collaboration between the group and Vito Schnabel. The Brucennial features the work of 420 artists from 911 countries working in 666 disciplines and is, as Holland Cotter says in his New York Times review, “…the most important survey of contemporary art in the world. Ever.”

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The New York Times Talks Street Art

Isabel Samaras "Wize", Oil on wood

The 5 Year Anniversary show at Jonathan Levine Gallery runs through the end of March. I was checking out the work online and just happened to catch the fact that Jonathan, his artists, and a run down of the street art genre was featured in a New York Times article. It’s a nice first attempt to bring the work of some worthwhile artists into the minds of the mainstream art establishment. Written by someone who I presume is completely outside the circle of artists he’s writing about, in terms of taste and life experience, the article does its best to define the work and give the group a nod of approval. Somehow, it still manages to rub me the wrong way, but that’s not difficult to do these days – especially when it comes to art and its criticism. I guess I just wish that the genre weren’t still in a stage of having to fight for recognition. Maybe “fight” isn’t the right word. It isn’t as though any of the artists referenced by the article are all that concerned with appealing to the snooty art establishment anyway. I guess to me, the piece just feels like a handout when it could have just been written about in terms that presented it as a capable art scene that’s been standing on its own two feet for a while now. It seemed the author was still validating it in some way. The name dropping at the end of the article didn’t help. And trying to re-define the entire genre as “pop pluralism” just sounds ridiculous. Whatevs.

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Shred Your Art at #CLASS

Tired of your failed art career staring you in the face? Done with waiting for the napkin doodle market to pick up? Then this is the event for you. El Celso is hosting an art shred happening on Wednesday March 3rd at 2pm as part of William Powhida and Jennifer Dalton’s month-long project, #CLASS, going on at Winkleman Gallery in NYC. Art Shred is an on-site shredding service that will liberate you of those important works of art, meaningful love letters, and one-of-a-kind photographs that your soul is just begging to be freed from. Think of it as eliminating the “skinny” clothes from your closet, those “what if” articles from your past, and embracing the full-bodied “you” of the present. Ahhhh. Feels good don’t it?

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