CITYist

It’s a beautiful weekend to head out to East Hampton and enjoy artwork that is as captivating as it is inspiring. John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Bookseller will host an incredibly original exhibition of Richard Phillips’ artwork, which will debut its showings this Saturday from 6PM to 8PM.

Welcome to a new, original model for purchasing and collecting contemporary art. If auction houses aren’t quite your thing, our art columnist and Half Gallery owner Bill Powers, along with designer Cynthia Rowley and co-founders Laura Martin and Gabby Munoz have created EXHIBITION A, which sell editions of iconic work by prominent contemporary artists including Terence Koh, David
LaChapelle, Richard Phillips, Rene Ricard, Josephine Meckseper, Hanna Liden, Aleksandra Mir, Brad Kahlhamer, Jon Kessler, Olivier Zahm, Geoff McFetridge, Ry Fyan and Duncan Hannah.

Last night in New York, the Rush Arts Gallery in Chelsea played host to the finals in the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series, a nationwide search for the next great talents in multi-media art and photography.

Tomorrow, CITY’s extraordinarily talented photographer Phil Knott has a show at Dandelion Wine in Greenpoint—where he’s selling prints for ridiculously low prices! Get there!

Now through November 13th, the Robert Miller Gallery will be hosting three incredible exhibitions featuring select paintings, drawings and screen prints by Jean-Michel Basquiat, photographs and installation by Robert Mapplethorpe and recent photographs and models by Mayumi Terada.

MOVE!, a series of performance-based installations created by well-known artists paired with celebrated fashion designers, opened at MoMa PS1 last weekend. Highlighting the event were Cynthia Rowley and Olaf Breuning, who dressed models in plain denim garments to function as canvas. The models were artfully doused with bright splashes of paint as part of the performance, and subsequently photographed as part of the exhibition.

Apart from robbing the MOMA, access to appealing, contemporary art is expensive and not to so easy to acquire (Actually, this would only be considered simple for James Bond). But to avoid jail time, because who actually looks good in orange, try this innovative way to obtain quality art. Enter ARTWELOVE, an up-and-coming art-shopping site that allows customers to purchase exclusive, high-quality paintings by contemporary artists. Amazingly, the quality and limited nature of these paintings well exceeds the low prices (works range from a modest $15 to $2,000). Each week, at least one limited edition work is released and ARTWELOVE.com features interesting interviews with each artist, so you can learn more about where each piece comes from.

Swedish artists Maria Larsson and Maria Olevik are getting some amazing support at Anthropologie’s gallery exhibition of their beautiful porcelain pieces. In Every Tree is now showcasing at Anthropologie’s 50 Rockefeller Center location until November 3rd; the pieces range from $200 to $6,000. Take a look at the video of art and antiques buyer Keith Johnson meeting with Larsson and Olevik in their home country.

When the right two artists come together in collaboration, the end result is often a celebration of two like minds. Do Not Abandon Me, a 16-piece series of drawings by Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin on view now at Carolina Nitsch, reflects just that and more. The gouache drawings by Bourgeois, which Emin “responded” to with handwritten text, overlaid line drawings and more gouache, are also the culmination of a genuine friendship. Despite a 50 year age gap, Bourgeois and Emin’s collaboration revolves around their similar studies of sexuality, attachment and abandonment, and longing for a connection with another.

A humming bird is stuck to the wall, midflight. A turtle, spun around on its shell, futilely paddles scaly legs. A garden snake hangs limply from a nail, coiled as a dried discarded rope. An overturned octopus, tentacles casting snake-like shadows, balances with a majestic eerieness surrounded by these smaller simpler beings. This is Mark Calderon’s sculptural menagerie of little lead animals now on view at the Nancy Hoffman Gallery.

Nocturne, 2008. Bronze.

For the past 25 years, the MoMA has held its annual New Photography exhibition, and this year (opening today through January 10) the exhibit features work by Roe Ethridge, Elad Lassry, Alex Prager and Amanda Ross-Ho. This go-around, two films have even been included—Alex Prager’s Desire, and Elad Lassry’s Untitled—a first for the New Photography showcase.

Have You Heard? is our weekly roundup of items we may have previously missed (or would like to remind you of again). So as you plan the week ahead, take a look at our cherry-picked selections of what’s hot in art, music, film and fashion right now.

LACOSTE L!VE—the hip and rebellious offspring of the Lacoste family—recently opened up their first shop in SoHo, and they’ll be celebrating tomorrow with a live Art Battle featuring Sean Ono and See One. Head on over to the shop (134 Prince St.) from 2-5pm to get in on the action. Cause after all, art and fashion—just like graffiti and New York—go hand in hand.

For many Hispanic New Yorkers, the city was “Nueva York” first. Thus, appropriately named is El Museo del Barrio’s newest exhibition. Opening today, Nueva York is a collaborative effort between the cultural institution and the esteemed New York Historical Society. The multimedia collection, comprised of paintings, sketches, documents, books, maps, artifacts and more provides nearly 400 years of context through which to understand the compelling history of the Latin American, South American, Caribbean and Spanish people who journeyed to (not always by choice), settled and lived in New York.

Joaquín Torres-García, New York Docks, 1920.

New Yorkers are fiercely protective and proud of their city—and their borough. So it’s only natural that artists would capitalize on this built-in market with city-centric prints. Enter pop artist Jim Datz, whose quirky, cartoonish posters pay homage to important spots with bright, bubbly pop personality. Pick up a poster at Three Potato Four for $48 and where your pride on your wall.

Via The Cut.

Collage artist Mark Weaver combines art deco landscapes with retro illustrations and photographs for a bizarre, Twilight Zone meets Mad Men effect. With clients including the The New York Times, Wired and Paste, it’s clear Weaver has the professional chops, and with prints of a gun featuring a woman’s face (very James Bond) with the words “BANG BANG” it’s clear he’s got a sense of postmodern cool. We’d certainly like to hang one of these in our living room.

The paint is drying and it’s nearly finished. Check out the final product (essentially) of CITY’s Soho mural on Crosby and Broome! More pictures after the jump.

Have You Heard? is our weekly roundup of items we may have previously missed (or would like to remind you of again). So as you plan the week ahead, take a look at our cherry-picked selections of what’s hot in art, music, film and fashion right now.

It’s now officially day three, and look how far the mural has come since this morning! Check it out at Crosby and Broome.

What’s better than gazing at Jeff Koons’ giant balloon dog and heart sculptures? Owning a car by the famed pop artist, that’s what. Koons has adapted James Bond’s ride of choice, the Aston Martin Black DBS, with an all-over psychedelic print. The colors are designed to deflect light, while the interior is outfitted in black leather with silver stitching. We’d imagine arriving to a party in this pop mobile would certainly make a statement.

Amazing news: CITY is getting its very own mural over at the intersection of Crosby and Broome in Soho. Don’t let your eyes fool you, this isn’t an ad for Bushmills. If you squint, you can make out the lines spelling out CITY (hey, these pics are from yesterday, and it was only day two). Advertisement in the form of art? Sounds good to us. We’ll keep you posted on the progress (and look for more photos after the jump).

If Andy Warhol was a woman, and that woman was a garden, how might it grow? Photographers Paul Solberg and Christopher Makos, longtime friends who collaborate in a prank-infused partnership dubbed “The Hilton Brothers,” set out to answer this strange question in their exhibit “Andy Dandy.” The show is a collection of diptyches—paired pictures—with Warhol in drag and vibrant blooms.

Have You Heard? is our weekly roundup of items we may have previously missed (or would like to remind you of again). So as you plan the week ahead, take a look at our cherry-picked selections of what’s hot in art, music, film and fashion right now.

At times colorless color can hold the most complexity. Miles Mendenhall’s solo show of grey, white and black screenprints opening at HALF GALLERY on Tuesday, August 24 proves this with an uncommon vibrancy. The intimate space is well-suited to host the reflective work of this young, talented finalist from Bravo’s Work of Art. (On a side note, check out judge Bill Power’s article on the show.) The Midwesterner, whose innocent fresh face could be more easily seen as a Disney channel heartthrob than a rising art world star, is exploring the subjectivity of digital distortion in this show.

Fans of nudity rejoice: now you can marvel in public nudity in a completely socially acceptable manner. Every Thursday night through September 9th, stop by CV on the Lower East side (105 Rivington St.) for a live nude art exhibit. Known as Statue Garden, the spectacle features nude art models to the beat of pulsating music, only during the mood-setting night time hours from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. On paper, Statue Garden sounds rather scandalous, but relax, people. This is art.