Lisa Nankivil: Lines of Inference

Lisa Nankivil, The Aerialist, 2011 via Spanierman Modern

Abstractionist Lisa Nankivil might wake up feeling green one day. She begins there, then walks away for a while, returns, and continues improvising until she completes another lush, colorful world. In her latest exhibition Lines of Inference, Nankivil creates stripes with brushes aided by blades, squeegees, planks of cardboard and wood, and a T-square on wheels. Sometimes she scrapes and smudges lines together, or drips paint and lets gravity do the work. The varied tones of paint and techniques of application produce a clear tension between surface and deep space. At the same time the consistency of lines in an innumerable rainbow of solid, blended, bright, and muted colors create a contrast of order and chaos. A completely different viewing experience emerges as the viewer steps away and fine lines become indiscernible.

See a complete gallery of works from Lines of Inference and an interview with Nankivil.

Lines of Inference is now on view at Spainerman Modern in Midtown through September 2^nd.

David LaChapelle: From Darkness to Light

"Adam & Eve" installation view via David LaChapelle

In From Darkness to Light, David LaChapelle hopes to “resuscitate the figure from its current state of commodity.” The photographer and director actually began his artistic career in galleries before Andy Warhol launched him into fame with a job at Interview Magazine. Like Warhol, LaChapelle playfully splashes in both commercial and conceptual puddles to stir together a highly distinctive concoction.

At the Lever House lobby, LaChapelle takes his primary medium of photography back to kindergarten art class with paper chains, collage, and stickers. In “Chain of Life,” LaChapelle replaces construction paper with photographs of the human form, stapled together into swooping and cascading strings that create a celebratory visual of human connectedness. In “Raft of Illusion, Raging Toward Truth,” he combines watercolor, pencil, paper, and glossy prints of his own staged photographs and mounts them on varying numbers of cardboard layers to create a 3D take on French Romantic painter Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of Medusa. Epic in both size and subject, the ceiling-high collage of cut outs and art class materials showcases LaChapelle’s eye for the surreal. In “Adam & Eve” he arranges tinted translucent stickers of nudes into two circles (separated by sex) on the glass walls of the lobby. The forms swim around each other in a distinctly cell-like mosaic that create an effect of a church’s stained glass window through a microscope, conjuring at once images of science and religion. LaChapelle’s vision of interconnectedness and enlightenment through a youthful lens makes for a compelling experience.

From Darkness to Light is now on view at Lever House in midtown through September 30th.

Amy Joy Watson

Untitled, 2011, balsa, watercolor, thread, balloon via Amy Joy Watson

The central intrigue of Australian sculptor Amy Joy Watson’s works lies in the irony that transforming childlike dreams into physical reality requires an adult patience and refinement. The unwavering dedication and vision is palpable in viewing her latest group of sculptures, Big Rock Candy Mountain. The structure of her wildly jubilant world is comprised of multi-colored fine cuts of balsa wood, hand-stitched with needle and thread. Her choice to stain wood with watercolor in lieu of a palette of harsh neons and crisp acrylics serves to conjure images of faded alphabet blocks.

Another central contrast in Watson’s creations is their inherent structural allusions to something technological and futuristic; like architectural mock ups from another planet or time, that are constructed by hand out of the basest of materials. Analog materials of wood, needle, and thread are stitched into a digital Willy Wonka universe, as if a 21^st century Oompa Loompa's early 3D renderings of everlasting gobstoppers were blown up into an otherworldly scale, to be transmitted into a million little pieces through Wonkavision. A playful relationship between hard and soft, and jagged and round pervades her pieces. A geometric orb is tied to a perfectly spherical pink helium balloon. Hundreds of hard wooden panels take the form of a ribbon's organic drape.

There is something life-affirming is Watson’s sculptures. They are magical artifacts of an undying child-like imagination that matures into a dedicated artistic vision. She honors the spirit of her former self with tools she’s gathered along the way. In a somewhat literal representation of such, she constructs a winged clam-like cradle that holds a gobstopper candy. The luxurious and precious preservation of frivolity makes Watson’s work hard to resist.

See the Big Rock Candy Mountain gallery

Never gonna let you down

Jason Bard Yarmosky, "Fanny" and "Harry", 2009

Jason Bryant, "Love's Labor Lost; Epilogue", 2011

Allie Rex, "Plate 22"

Fresh from the wildly popular exhibition of Matt Stone's Tectonics, Like the Spice has every reason to celebrate. Their 5 year anniversary show Never gonna let you down showcases an impressive 40 artists (including Stone). They've curated an eclectic mix of painting, drawing, mixed media and sculpture that feels, quite honestly, exhilarating to walk through. It's not too often that a group show this large doesn't feel daunting, but instead coherent and inspiring. Some standouts include Allie Rex, Jason Bard Yarmosky, and Jason Bryant. See all works on the Like the Spice blog.

Never gonna let you down is now on at Like the Spice through the weekend.

Hamburgers

"Kim Kardashian" 2011, via Shinji Murakami

In south Williamsburg you can enjoy Japanese comfort food at the same place you check out the latest from emerging artists. Now at Supercore, see Shinji Murakami’s physical manifestation of his love for 8-bit video games. His 3D sculptures of McDonald’s-inspired meals are visible from the sidewalk, placed on cafeteria trays along the front window. A map of a Super Mario-esque Central Park and other colorful, nostalgic resin panels line the bar. Kim Kardashian zoomed into 169 pink pixels looks especially striking and Internet-y with a backdrop of tiled cats that wallpaper the café. His work is fun and worth a look.

Hamburgers is now on view at Supercore in Williamsburg until August 31^st.

POWHIDA

Detail of "Portrait of a Genius" via Flavorwire

I entered Marlborough Gallery wondering if I indeed “may never seen an art gallery the same way again” as Brooklyn artist William Powhida boldly envisages in the gallery’s press release of his self-titled show. Rather than the usual air-conditioned perfume, I inhaled the scent of a hot stack of fresh pizzas where press releases and publicity packets usually sit. A photographer fervently documented a ping-pong match, men surrounded a poker table and seemed to challenge me to a game with their eyes. I kept walking, past velvet-roped leather couches and absinthe bottles. A painting called “Portrait of a Genius” by Tom Sanford shows a business casual Powhida holding a bottle of liquor and releasing a dove as a devoted blonde woman clutches his leg.

At the opening night an actor playing Powhida (who matched the “genius” in the painting) arrived in a Mercedes convertible, drinking champagne as women clutched onto his sides. He drank, smoked, and jerked people around while surrounded by an entourage of security and more groupies.

I think Kyle Chayka at ARTINFO hit the nail on the head when he says that, "...for contemporary art, reality and is parody are often so close as to be indistinguishable. What could be ironic satire, a knowing wink, might also end up as an ironic failure to satirize--funny and sad not for truth-telling and bullshit-cutting but for its own self-reflexive victimization, like a joke that falls flat. A large portion of the Marlborough audience wasn't in on the joke; they were there to see and be seen, and they were, regardless of the artist spectacle."

But does that prove Powhida's point all the more effectively? Does filtering subversion through the mainstream expose its cracks or buy into it? Does doing both destroy his credibility?

POWHIDA is on view at Marlborough Gallery in Chelsea through August 12th

Open Call Exhibition "Greetings"

via Culturefix

This is pretty exciting. To celebrate the end of Summer, LES bar/gallery/event space Culturefix is hosting an open call exhibition "Greetings." Submit a postcard-sized work of any medium by August 19th, to be shown and (hopefully) sold August 23rd-September 4th. Anyone can submit, and all submissions will be exhibited. Seriously?

More guidelines here.

Architects of Air

Inside a luminarium, via AoA visitor photo gallery Photo: richardosborn.com

Nottingham UK's Architects of Air (AoA) create 'luminaria,' walk-in sculptures which they alluringly define as "dazzling mazes of winding paths and soaring domes where Islamic architecture, Archimedean solids and Gothic cathedrals meld into an inspiring monument to the beauty of light and colour." These technicolor sanctuaries have toured 37 countries on 5 continents in 500 exhibitions since 1992. Their latest luminarium Miracoco can currently be seen in Lisbon, Portugal. Unfortunately the tour indicates no planned U.S. dates, but see their extensive flickr gallery here.

Cordially Yours

Liam Wylie, Untitled (2010) via Liam Wylie

To enter a gallery and engage in a warm chat with the curator is unusual. But when Enrico Gomez detailed the concept of the current show at Camel Art Space, this refreshing welcome suddenly made sense.

All too familiar with closing phrases of letters requesting consideration for exhibition, the artists who run Camel decided to help water these budding portfolios of potential. The aptly named Cordially Yours is a show made up of cold submissions from emerging artists, democratically selected by the staff after careful consideration of each portfolio submitted the past year. They each made a list of favorites, then voted on the best from each other’s lists based solely on the work itself rather than names, resumes or personalities.

Cosmic sculptures and collages from Ontario’s Liam Wylie stole the show. But the whole of this global collection of seven emerging talents is worth a look.

Cordially Yours is on view until August 14th at Camel Art Space in Williamsburg.

Live and Let Die

Video still from Nadja Verena Marcin's Grand Slam. Photography by Jessica Benett via NURTUREart

In the current installment of NURTUREart’s weekly exhibition series We Are:, Guillermo Creus of Fortress to Solitude curates “Live and Let Die.”

This week, three artists exhibit one work each that combine to fill the gallery with an unsettling tension. Sarah Frost’s paper sculpture of a machine gun is the first sight upon entering the space. It sits low to the ground, stark white and menacing. Upon visiting her website, it seems to be a piece from her larger installation “Arsenal” at The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.

Taking perhaps one of the most direct approaches to addressing the relationship of art and money, Ash Sechler stacks a thousand one dollar bills in a neat (surprisingly short) pile in the middle of the gallery floor, forcing the viewer to call into question the value of the piece.

In Nadja Verena Marcin’s video performance, Grand Slam, the artist plays a one-sided tennis match projected high on the gallery walls. In hectic hand-held camera shots, her high-contrast black and white figure ricochets in a blank, indecipherable space. Diegetic echoes of grunts and racket strikes and the echoes the video creates in the high ceiling of the gallery, coalesce into a single anxious soundtrack to the show.

Each piece exudes a matter-of-fact bravado that underscores the visceral reaction their forms incite. See more from each artist below:

Sarah Frost

Ash Sechler

Nadja Verena Marcin

“Live and Let Die” is on view at NURTUREart Gallery in Bushwick.