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.

Henry Flint lecture in Jeff Perkins's Kitchen

Jeff invited me to a small lecture about the credit-crunch, recession, financial crisis, by Henry Flint in his kitchen. He has a nice messy loft at 100m from Ground Zero, where he lives and edits his films. Around 10 people came and sat around the table while Henry did his talk. Henry Flint is a interesting figure, but unfortunately didn't had that much interesting to say about the economical crisis. Talking about the economical crisis on a little higher level than everyone who reads the news is not so easy. My friend Ethan told me this Radio show is very, very good. Listen to this and turn a bit smarter in just 40 minutes ; NPR's this american live, economical crisis and Another Frightening Show About the Economy

Signs of change at ExitArt

Shows like this; historical political posters, mainly from sixties till today; you'll see them everywhere. Not to complicated to make; every university has a collection.
But the show that Exit art has put together is fantastic & huge. There's even a corner where you can print silkscreens. Amazing that a non-profit space like this can make a centre pompidou-size show.
ExitArt, is bit out of the loop but always very good.
I did missed one person in the show; Sister Corita.The LA nun turning anti-vietnam activist.
I asked one of the curators why she wasn't in and the answer was that she's had quite a lot exposure these few last years.

3 upcoming NY events

One of the reasons why I'm here is to organize a similar event as I did last month in Amsterdam, with a New York cast.

But now I'll be in 2 other events.

And I'll do a little talk on my book on this event on nov 26 between 6-8 at Emily Harvey Foundation on Broadway

Tuesday, December 2, 2008 6:30pm sharp

J&L Variety Show

Performances by:
David Reinfurt
Amy O'Neill
Andrew Lampert
Harrell Fletcher
Serge Onnen
Jason Fulford
Michael Schmelling
Leanne Shapton
and others...

Aperture Gallery & Bookstore
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York

Tuesday, December 9, 2008 7pm sharp

Book Release for Drawings on Writing

The book asks you to consider handwriting as a kind of drawing.
The event will turn performance into shadow.

Performances by:
Serge Onnen
Guy Richard Smit
The Skeleton Equation
Nick Kass
Rob Giampietro- lecture on Shaker's gift-drawings
Jeff Perkins
Debbie Nathan -talk and presentation of Gregg-shorthand
The New York Baroque Dance Company
Phil Kennedy
and others...

Refreshments will be served.

at Housing Works Bookstore
126 Crosby Street
New York City

chelsea stroll 2

A few shows I didn't liked;

Cindy Sherman, adding more Cindy Shermans

Irak's superstar Zaha Hadid making big, ugly shiny ornament-sculptures


Andreas Gursky, sorry for the terrible picture: a big gay-party crowed in a supersize architecturehorror night club. (Hadid?) Everybody's happy and sharp.
Anton Henning....
Eric Fischl! Still makes good paintings . But this?; please!


This was actually in Soho at Deitch. Kehinde Wiley's Super-xxxxl-size painting of horny black streetkids on a bed of daisys. I'm getting tired, really tired...
I like this painting by Barnaby Furnas

Thank You Fischli & Weiss! You saved my day.
Back to work.....

Kyrgyzstan, B'way, Bushwick

Busy Fridaynight;went to a talk for PS1Radio by a curator from Kyrgyzstan at The Lower Manhatthan Cultural Centre ( Wallstreet). I have this CD with overtoonsinging/mouthharp music from Kyrgyzstan and it's been my favorite CD from the last 2 years. So I was curious about the art scene in Kyrgyzstan. (Who isn't!)
Kyrgyzstan is very, very remote, rural and empty. It's a crazy idea to me. Anyway the lady, who's invited to NY by the Swiss (http://www.swisscoop.kg/) Didn't showed anything and was a little mysterious. (little suspicious to me..) I can't really remember much from the whole talk, actually. Later I had a little chat with here and showed here this clip, from my favorite Kyrgyzstan-band; She had never heard of them! (I don't want to give the impression I know the Kyrgyzstan arts scene better then this lady, but..well)

(correction, I was all wrong; Read the comment below by the real expert Mark van Tongeren; )

Went to the Emily Harvey Foundation where my friend Joao organizes several events this month .
Tonight one of them was this by Alison Knowles. People taken from the audience had to sing together a different song. Then, they all tried to jump up in the air at the same time.
Always a great time with the fluxus spirit & people!

After that we (3) went to Bushwick at a new club called Bushwick Starr.I think my first time in this park of Brooklyn. Great place, cheap drinks , nice people; a cute girl asked mefor a dance .Quite some people smoking inside! ( obama? people not scared anymore??). Met 2 people from Amsterdam I know. Crazy how many people I walk into every time.

Synecdoche, New York

Best Movie I've seen this year.

(It's been a while...this years wasn't that great, or did I missed something?). Charlie Kaufman ( Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaptation) takes the idea of art imitating life into many extrem forms. It's a whole aspect of the arts, but Kaufman takes it to an other level, without loosing it. Might be his best movie so far. It's packed & stuffed with ideas, big & small ones, that do fit well together. I need to see it a second time. Going from the dollhouse idea to SecondLife and from spying to translation. All these imitations of our lifes or other peoples lifes. It's also a depressing movie, but in a strange good way.
It's very very J-L Borges, and probably hundreds of other writers. But there's also a lot of things in it that reminded me of stuff happening in the visual arts at the moment.
Georg Schneider, Christopher Bücher and other hyperealistic sculptors.
What does the artist? Why, and why the artist keeps on failing, for ever and ever and ever.