Harvey Milk-soho

While I was signing in for a petition about gay rights on grand street in Soho and the young activist took my address, SOMEONE with dark sunglasses, a bass-ball cap, and a little moustache passed us by. I told the guy who was taking my notes, with a low voice. 'you should ask that guy..' ' 'why?' He just made a movie about the most famous US gay activist, I told him. By that time it was too late.
It was Sean Penn.
What is this silly excitement you feel when you see a celebrity?
I saw Sean & had a wonderful day.

Nikki S. Lee at Sikkema, Jenkins & Co (stroll3 Fotospecial!)

Nikki S. Lee is a Korean artist who became media-famous with one great project. By media famous, I mean; She was more or less in every magazine anywhere. Fashion, art, urbanism, photography, etc, etc. It was the perfect fit for any printed media. But not many museums or galleries. What is often the case with fotografy. Is it important to have seen the real print? Well, in 90% of the cases I wouldn't think so.
What she simply did was blending in. A urban tribe -research project. Very interesting to look how a young Asian girl can be black-girl, a puerto rican girl, a yuppy girl, a lesbian-girl, a punk-girl etc, etc. Off course woman can do this better then man. And maybe Asian woman do it better then other woman.



OK, now the hype is over. So what's next? Well it's less media-sexy. The show is called Layers. Nikki S. Lee traveled to different cities around the world, from Bangkok to Madrid, and in each city asked three separate street artists to draw her portrait on translucent paper she provided. Back at her studio she layered the drawings from each separate city one on top of the other, using a light box to bring out details from the underlying drawings, and then photographed the image. There's a bunch of small sizes photographs of these drawings in the front space. So so.
But the same images blown up big to Thomas Ruff-size in the back are very good. Blowing up a drawing in photograpy in black & white, lot's of things happeing here........not-a-bad-idea!


But I don't really love photography. So I wouldn't do it.
Nevertheless, there are 2 more amazing photography shows at the moment in Chelsea.
This show by Sugimoto at Gagosian is mind blowing & minimal. The mindblowing part is how the whole show is installed in this huge space. The light, the frames, the details, it's pervert/perfect! A threat. The whole production of these 14 B&W foto's must have cost at least 1 million $. The minimal part, is the images; very long exposure of the sea. 7 days/7 nights. C'est tout. When you go to the 3 gagosian-spaces in NY (9 in the whole world), it's allways overwhelming.
There must also be a enormous love for art behind all the money & power play. I mean, anybody can walk in any time, cost nothing and think what he or she feels like. And that is great. Moma tickets are 20$ but here you just walk in and see a museum size show.
This show by Richard Avedon at Pace gallery; same thing. This gallery has a staff of 200 people.