Why do modern designers still fetishize Soviet Constructivist Art? Why does text gain a certain air of authority when tweaked to appear Cyrillic-esque? Come investigate up close with an exhibit of Soviet, avant-garde film posters that revolutionized design in the ’20s and ’30s. That festive order! Those commanding lines! Now you want to see a bunch of Soviet movies you never heard of, just like an obedient comrade. “Revolutionary Film Posters: Aesthetic Experiments of Russian Constructivism, 1920-33,” May 6 – Jul 29, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, NYC
Why do modern designers still fetishize Soviet Constructivist Art? Why does text gain a certain air of authority when tweaked to appear Cyrillic-esque? Come investigate up close with an exhibit of Soviet, avant-garde film posters that revolutionized design in the ’20s and ’30s. That festive order! Those commanding lines! Now you want to see a bunch of Soviet movies you never heard of, just like an obedient comrade. “Revolutionary Film Posters: Aesthetic Experiments of Russian Constructivism, 1920-33,” May 6 – Jul 29, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, NYC
Five promising Iraqi artists to be exhibited in a comprehensive group show at Manchester’s Cornerhouse Art Gallery have been denied visas by the UK Border Agency for failing to produce valid bank statements, which is “a very tall order in an occupied country with no banking infrastructure.” The obstructive points system has wasted loads of taxpayers’ money and disappointingly leaves the cultural event opening on April 16th without the artists’ presence. Very “democratic,” guys. |Independent|
Image: ‘Born in Jail’ by Julie Adnan
“Living the Dream” at Fuse Gallery
When ‘do what you love and the money will follow’ tends to reveals itself as a folly, come celebrate “the luckless and the odd balls,” the street artists, the subway buskers and the dreamers. The “Living the Dream” painting and drawing exhibition opens at Fuse Gallery tomorrow. And if it gets you down, it’s conveniently located to several drinking establishments.
“Living the Dream,” group show, Mar 27 – Apr 17, Fuse Gallery, NYC
Specter and Various & Gould at the Brooklynite Gallery
This Saturday at the Brooklynite Gallery: Brooklyn’s Specter and German duo Various & Gould will “Make It Fit” with a labor-centric treatise of silkscreens, portraits and discarded materials. Specter’s cart-pushers and delivery boys take the spotlight in “hand-crafted” and “retro-fitted” medley of found objects arranged. Various & Gould’s vibrant work presents a distopia of body-part trading, “waltzing” workers. Opening reception is March 20, 7-10pm with musical guests Dj Cerock and Rifle Recoil. Read more »
On the dying breaths of the Deitch Projects, comes word of their Rosson Crow “Bowery Boys,” opening March 4th. As one of the last Deitch Projects shows, Rosson’s exhibit explores NYC’s “bad boy” side with large, bold, neon-ladden canvases featuring 1980s wild-style bombed trains, Chinatown opium dens of 1880s, vintage sex clubs, barbershops, discos, “gangs, graffiti, gays, drugs and illicit sex.” Lest you all forget how cool we are here in NYC. Read more »
Adam Stennett in Group Show “In Standard Time” At Ana Cristea Gallery Tonight
Adam Stennett, who’s previously brought us meticulous marvels Underwater Mouse and Girl In Bathtub (NSFW), has a new painting in the “In Standard Time” group show at the Ana Cristea Gallery, opening tonight. Featuring ten young artist with internationally shifting residences, the exhibition seeks to find ground in the fluid, scattering state of our time. Painters address the ever-epic (historical antecedents, East vs. West), while Michael Brown contributes commentary via vinyl discs melted into utilitarian objects and Joe Diebes’ video art interprets critical music change. Come to closer leer at the details in Adam Stennett’s Soothing Syrup with two Poppies. It looks so pleasant, so very pleasant… (I WANT!)
“In Standard Time,” Feb 25 – Apr 3, Reception Feb 25 6-8pm, Ana Cristea Gallery, New York
South African photographer Pieter Hugo‘s photography exhibit Nollywood opens tomorrow at the Yossi Milo Gallery. Third largest film industry after Hollywood and Bollywood, Nollywood produces 1000 low-budget straight-to-video films a year. Tragic, raging, and rooted in traditional story telling, the Nigerian film industry’s focus lays on the supernatural, the symbolic, the melodramatic and the macabre. Read more »
The Museum of Unnatural History at Clamp Art
A somewhat mysterious group exhibition “The Museum of Unnatural History” opens tomorrow at Clamp Art. It appears to feature photography, digital works, dioramas, taxidermy, birds, bears and Twinkie idolization. The museum exhibit spin-off views animals “through a pseudo-scientific lens,” says Brian Camp. Participators include Nicole Hatanaka, Amy Stein, Jill Greenberg, Blake Fitch, Marisol Villaneuva and Animal Logic author Richard Barnes.
“The Museum of Unnatural History,” Feb 25 – Apr 10, Clamp Art, New York
Sofi Zezmer at the Mike Weiss Gallery: Something Plastic This Way Thumps
Mike Weiss Gallery presents Sofi Zezmer‘s Remote Control and her manmade microorganisms. There’s something unsettling about these deliberately wadded plastic odds and ends, but if you want to see colorful cable ties, funnels, drinking straws and bicycle helmets form “irrational Duchampian hybrids of mechanical and biological systems” that comment on “consumption, mass production and overflow,” float on over to Mike Weiss and see this Frankenstein-MacGyver hoopla. But don’t blame us if you get neon nightmares of this thing buzzing around your room trying to eat you.
“Remote Control,” Sofie Zezmer, February 27 – April 3, Mike Weiss Gallery, Manhattan
This weekend, the Olof Gallery presents former mobster turned government snitch, Dominick Montiglio, as he joins the co-op of the autistic, insane, molested and otherwise marginalized artists paraded each year by the Outsider Art Fair. Dominick ‘The Cape’ Montiglio was once a high-ranking member of the infamous Gambino crime family. Read more »
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