1th chelsea strole/3 great shows

Richard Prince at Gagosian. (I was not allowed to take pictures; (this was the opening) ;I can tell you; the work is very good. Using collage & paint to make trashy Mademoiselles d'avigon's
(with exception of the car; that's pretty lame) (artists should never paint on cars)






Olaf Breuning at MetroPictures; Very silly, smart, overwhelming












Matthew Monahan at Anton Kern;

MonkeyTown & ISCP Williamsburg

Went to ISCP openstudios. Nice & rough new location in Williamsburg. Much better then the terrible building where it used to be, and where I stayed when I was there. But quite disappointing on the presentations.
Seen one video I liked a lot. By a group from Bologna called zimmerfrei. Street theater like video. Simple, smart & beautiful.
After that we went to this bar Monkey Town that has a nice little theater in the back. Many places with nice little backspace for event here in W'burg.
Tonight there where 4 computer/video performances. More or less as boring as the everywhere. But with a greater variety of dullness that it was actually quite interesting. Earlier this year after I had visited the SonicAct festival in Amsterdam, I came with this short theory; A group of people are working in a cultural-niche. Can be anything. Everyone of them wants to be the best. One easy way, to get there is to go extremely radical. To go radical you exclude as many rules as possible, until you only have the essential left. Everybody wants to becomes radical. After a while being radical they all end up at exactly the same dead end (or full circle). At that moment radical-art has become folk-art with all its laws and rules again.
The laptop music scene is a perfect example of that. (As graffiti, painting, video, comics, movies, etc,etc,etc)
But to my surprise yesterday the visuals where much more divers and better then what I've seen over the years in Amsterdam. Especially Naval Cassidy, with analogue live stuff
and
Jeremy Slater with very dark road movie style simple footage.

Annie Gosfield/Roger Kleier at The Stone

After Badiou lecture I went to my favorite music place The Stone. Hidden in a old corner shop on Avenue C. Sitting there I realized the place must be about the same size as my apartment without walls. There's like 25 chairs, no bar, no desk, no stage and the toilet is behind the stage. It's mainly Tzadik Zorn stuff playing here. Like yesterday I saw this; Was OK.
Roger Kleier (guitar) Annie Gosfield (keyboards) Trevor Dunn (bass) Ches Smith (drums, percussion)
Annie and Lauren Radnofsky perform "Four Roses" for cello and sampler, followed by El Pocho Loco, Roger Kleier's new quartet, with an emphasis on noisy guitar instrumentals and improvisation. The premiere of the group features Roger Kleier, Annie Gosfield (composer), Trevor Dunn and Ches Smith.

Jeff Perkins showing John Wayne

My friend Jeff Perkins telling a story about the time he drove with Guy de Cointet through the desert and how they ended up at a John Ford movie set. He was allowed to take some pictures. And tonight, 20 something, years later, he hold them above his head at the Emily Harvey Foundation on Broadway

Alain Badiou in Lower East Side

The Miguel Abreu gallery is well connected to the magazine Lacanian Ink . The owner Miguel, organizes a lot of lectures from Lacanian philosophers, such as Sizek and Badiou. Men who are quite popular in the US art scene, and also in Europe. This time Alain Badiou did a talk in a packed old community theater in a poor but very nice old jewish part of L.E.S.
' is the word 'communism' forever doomed?'In a month when kapitalist countries, nationalize banks a very interesting question.
Mr. Badiou was very fond on speaking about this , during these historic times, in NY. The declining Capital of capitalism. Good moment to start thinking and talking more about other systems of states. Capitalism has always treated other systems as criminal, as dangerous. But now, the dangers and crimes of capitalism are shown everywhere. A new dawn, but no alternative. The communistic-hypotheses like Badiou names it, should be inspiring now. But should start back from the book. Not USSR or China. He's not the first one to say this of course. I read somewhere that last month Marx was the best selling author.
About Obama, very careful; 'enjoy the symbolic, but don't trust the state'.
(that hurts!)
They love a good old pessimistic Frenchman who speaks very well, with a maximum accent. (Ze Communiste i-pod-these)
To solve the problems the world stands for, American democracy is too small, too embedded in the world dominating idea of capitalism; it's not a possibility anymore, but a necessity. And Capitalism is short therm thinking. 4 years is nothing.
After the lecture I bought the NYC historical communist touristguide. Interesting because, I'm also ready ' Howard Zinn's 'American people's history' and just read a chapter about the american labor movement. As a european, my vision was only the anti-communist history of the US and nothing about the time the labor movement really meant something here.

Partys and great joy & megaphone on Union Square NYC

This pictures is actually taken at a Party where I was and also the ARTFORUM photografer
The following days at least 3 people; said very excited; 'oh!! your on the Artforum celeb. pics !!




UNION SQUARE

darkness in soho

just arrived a day ago, going on a little strole in Soho and see three really intersting shows; There's not so much in Soho, but the quality is really high. Making it less excausting then Chelsea. At the drawing Centre was a show of Rirkrit Tiravanija's Demonstration Drawings. First time I see drawings of this artist. It's a interesting show; around a hundred small, fotografic pencil drawings from newspaper pictures of demonstrations around the world. Using drawing to make something anonymous and invisible, clear and sensitive; a crowed of people But the drawings where a bit to dull.It's well drawn, like a street-portraitist can draw well. When conceptual artist start to draw it often becomes so careful,dry.Or I didn't get it.

Around the corner on Grand; David Ratcliff at the uber-uber hip TEAM gallery.
They do have sometimes good stuff here, but also a lot of Purplemagazine-fashion-emptieness. I saw David Ratcliff's painting a few years ago on The Armoury,then it was the best thing I had seen.Very punky, but original. It's one of the rare cases that I get excited about contemporary painting.But never heard from him again till now;a couple of years later he's here with new paintings. It's made from the same dark, deathmetal brain as a lot of art now (not only in this gallery) but he doesn't do kids stuff like skulls, bats & devils (for god sake). This is a great painter.It's quite abstract, but really scary. Always using stencils and spray paint.
collector/museum/gallery;You should buy this now!




Saw this interesting looking book, about the history of the color black by Michel Pastoureau who also wrote historical studies about stripes and the color blue. Just came out.


Right across the street also lot's of dark matter, but not in black; Drawn with soft colorpencils. Over the top, but so well made that you get absorbed by it. at Deitch project space; Aurel Schmidt