“Dance movement” is the first piece to capture your attention when you walk into Gallery 151 in Chelsea for Anton Perich’s showing, Painting in the Machine, and it holds your gaze for the entirety of the visit. Even when you look away to see the other works – Many of which resemble brightly woven French beach towels and colorful throws with horizontal lines – your mind still lingers with “Dance Movement.”
Terms like “arm candy” and “wallflower” aren’t explicitly gendered, but they’re the sort of hyper-critical comments about someone’s looks or behavior that are generally more likely to be directed at women. In her new show, Words For Women, photographer Anna Friemoth mocks these phrases by styling herself and other models as the literal embodiment of the terms. In Butterface, she literally smears a stick of butter on her face. The arms of the model in Arm Candy are wrapped in crinkly polka dotted plastic of the kind that encases the sweets filling the glass bowls on every grandma’s coffee table. Seeing the terms depicted so literally makes it clear just how ridiculous they really are.
Go back a few hundred years to Renaissance Europe and you’d be falling over yourself for sculptors hammering away at a block of marble with chisel and mallet – the combined noise must have been like the early equivalent of a pneumatic drill. These days, sculpture seems to be all high concept installations, so it’s nice to see the art of stone sculpting isn’t dead as Gallery 151 and ABC Worldwide Stone hold a group exhibition that includes plenty of marble to marvel at.
Radical Intent brings together four skilled practitioners in the field, united not only by their material of choice but in their connection to everyday objects. The way in which Sebastian Martorana, Barbara Segal, Stephen Shaheen and Alasdair Thomson marry the seemingly archaic carving skill with contemporary items creates an arresting juxtaposition; Thomson’s t-shirt for example, folded as if ready for the wardrobe, and Martorana’s little lamb children’s stuffed animal pose questions about mass-produced objects’ intrinsic value in contrast to its worth when laboriously crafted using skills that take years to perfect.
Meet Hotel Grand Union’s Top 5 Artists:
Evan Desmond Yee
Evan Desmond Yee, a 25-year-old artist and welder, stood smiling in front of his silver sculptural work “Chasing Eternity,” at Gallery 151. It is a square silver light installation in perpetual ‘buffering’ mode.
“My work is a mockery, a satire on modern technology. Chasing Eternity is about waiting. We notice this a lot more now that everything is digital,” said Yee. The artist has even set up a fake Apple store, branded with a colored, rotating computer icon called the Pinwheel of Death. “Waiting for things to load on the internet is akin to meditating in limbo,” added Yee, who self-identifies as a millennial.
Fab 5 Freddy
Fab 5 Freddy is a renowned visual artist and hip-hop music video director. At Gallery 151, he presented “Abstract Remix #4″ (2011) a collage of original 80s-era graffiti using spray enamel, acrylic and crystals on canvas. “This is a throwback to that 80s energy,” explained Fab 5 Freddy. “My work is made the same way urban music is made. Everything is a remix.” Though his street art heyday was in the 70s and 80s, Freddy looks to abstract artists Frank Stella andJohn Chamberlain for his current inspiration.
Justin Jay
Photographer Justin Jay has spent the last several years shooting a book project in Hawaii documenting the subculture of professional surfers on the north shore. At Gallery 151, he presented a photograph of renowned surfer Mark Cunningham.
“I took this photo in front of his house. I love that it shows the vastness of nature with one lone person about to body surf inside a wave. He’s not fighting nature, but resorting it. He’s a peaceful, powerful person. This is his world,” said Jay.
Isaac Aden
Artist Isaac Aden is known for controlling the oxidation of steel in his contemporary work. At Gallery 151, he discussed the process involved in his painting “Book of Exodus.” In it, the melted bronze steel creates a kind of tortured landscape, poured over the pages of a book.
“The point of this book is an escape from bondage. It is a historical, Biblical reference. Ultimately, it is about how people are subjugated and oppressed physically,” said Aden. “I’m interested in how people overcome or contend with that.”
Arthur Cohen
“Leaving,” by artist Arthur Cohen, is a tremendous portrait of a riding bull walking away. Cohen began painting bulls in 2009 after buying a ticket to see a rodeo at Madison Square Garden in New York. “I’m intrigued by the mortality and self-annihilation of it, while still trying to look cool,” said Cohen, before joking, “I myself am aging, and facing mortality – and I’m still trying to look cool!”
