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11.08.2012

Viva Chelsea! Part 1

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A quietly cinematic view from Inside Cheim & Read looking out
 

Having already posted an extensive piece on the devastation in Chelsea, I have decided instead to focus on the art I saw and photographed in September through just about a week before the storm. Some of the exhibitions, such as Valerie Jaudon at Von Lintel, are still up. Others were curtailed as a result of the water damage to the exhibitions spaces. Even on the upper levels, where everything remained dry, electricity was out and so the galleries remained dark. But the point of this post is not who lost what, but that Chelsea survived. Even now, while cleanup and repairs are being carried out on so many spaces, exhibitions continue. This is the first of four or five posts. Marketing Mondays will return later in the month. 
 
Matthew Cusick's September solo at Pavel Zoubok Gallery on 23rd Street would be a harbinger of things to come. His collages of maps on panel offer views of turbulent skies and a raging sea.

Matthew Cusick, Rachael's Wave, 2011, inlaid maps and acrylic on wood panel, 30 x 42 inches
 
Below: partial panorama of the installation. The work on the back wall is shown in full and with a detail after this image 

 
All of This World at Once, 2012, inlaid maps and acrylic on wood panel, 40 xc 70 inches
 
Detail below 
 
 
At Cheim & Read Gallery, Louise Fishman's recent work was up through October 27. Fishman is having a well-deserved moment, with this exhibition of recent work and a five-decade retrospective at Jack Tilton Gallery uptown (through October 13). But back to Chelsea: How did Fishman's work make it through the storm? "We didn't have any damage to any artwork," the gallery reports.  

View from the entry
  
Postscript, 2010, oil on linen, 50.75 x 29.5 inches
 

Installation view of the large gallery with Crossing the Rubicon and A Simple Pulsation

 
Installation view of Assunta,  2012, oil on linen, 70 x 60 inches
 
 Full view below
 
 
That's a smiling Asya Geisberg in her 23rd Street gallery in late October, surrounded by the work of Melanie Daniel, who meshes images of military technology with painterly pattern. The gallery sustained a good deal of damage just a week later. Geisberg reported that paintings were being moved to a dry space and that the work of pumping out and repairing the gallery was underway.

 
 Installation view of Echo Shield, 2012, oil on canvas, 67 x 70 inches; image from the gallery website
 
 Detail below
 
 
Valerie Jaudon's exhibition at Von Lintel Gallery, up through November 21, made it through whatever water damage the gallery may have sustained. "The paintings were not damaged," said the person I spoke with at the gallery. Jaudon is, of course, one of the founders of the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s. Her work, always graphically strong, has gotten more powerful, muscularly calligraphic you might say, in this recent shift to black and white. What you can't see well from the photos is the luscious quality of each brush stroke, a staccato, hither-and-thither direction at lovely odds with the curve and flow of each composition.
 
View from the entrance: Circa, Archive and Glyph
 
Archive, 2012, oil on linen, 54 x 72 inches
 
Below: Detail of Glyph
 
 
Installation view of  Coda and Telos

 Coda, 2011, oil on linen, 45 x 63 inches
 

Telos, 2012, oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches
 
 
At Winkleman Gallery on 27th Street, I saw Chris Dorland's solo, Permanent Vacation, just before it closed on October 20. Using stock photography and other images of fashion, advertising, logos and commodities, Dorland layers images of a culture to the point of saturation. Yes, you do want to get away from it all. But you also want to keep looking. The saturated colors--acidic and clashing, but compelling--heighten both sensations.
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The block between Eleventh Avenue and the West Side Highway, an immense warehouse building that also houses the Derek Eller Gallery, Jeff Bailey Gallery and others, sustained  significant basement flooding as well as water damage in the galleries themselves. On his blog, Ed WInkleman wrote yesterday: "We have been so focused on the gallery and without much in the way of contact with the world, due to 5 days without electricity at home either, that we have only just begun to realize the extent of devastation in neighborhoods like Greenpoint, Redhook, and Staten Island. Our hearts are broken for the losses suffered so widely."
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Still he retained a sense of humor, which you have to go to his blog to read (I'm not spoiling the story).

Installation view: back wall of main gallery
 

Installation view: back wall of small gallery
 
 
Installation view: Back gallery

 More posts next week. Marketing Mondays will return on November 29 
 

3 comments:

Kesha Bruce said...

Keep the reports coming Joanne!

Nice to hear Valerie's work weathered the storm. (She was one of my grad school professors about a million years ago at Hunter.)

Indeed her work is SO lovely. Thanks for including the detail shot!

Anonymous said...

This came from Annell Livingston, which I deleted by mistake--JM:

Great post! Thanks.

www.somthingsithinkabout-annell-annell.blogspot.com

Joanne Mattera said...

This infor from Jari Chevalier (I'm posting it in this week's post ans next week's:

SHARING HURRICANE SANDY UPDATE I RECEIVED:

FEMA Assistance:
•President Obama issued a Major Disaster Declaration that may allow Private Non-Profits ("PNPs") to be eligible for FEMA Hurricane Sandy assistance. Details can be found on the Public Assistance website
•Eligible PNP’s should complete and submit the RPA form and email to John Grubsick by December 2, 2012.
•Information briefings will be held at 49-51 Chambers Street on Friday, November 16
and Monday, November 19 (at 10am or 2pm).  

Infrastructure:
•The Con Edison steam system has been fully restored, any persisting outages stem from damage in individual buildings.
•Verizon estimates that its Broad Street office will reopen later today.

Gas Rationing:
The City is restricting gas sales to cars with even-numbered license plates on even days, and odd-numbered on odd days. Plates ending with a letter will be treated as odd-numbered. People filling up gas cans will not be affected.

NewYorkGasPrices.com has been tracking prices and availability throughout the City.

Recycling and Garbage Collection:
The City expects reductions in refuse collection services. If your garbage is not collected from the curb, you may leave it out and, you will not get a violation. Recycling collection has been suspended. For more information, please see the DSNY press release.

Transportation:
•Battery Tunnel is expected to allow bus traffic next weekend. There is currently no timeframe for a full reopening.
•The Midtown Tunnel reopened to private vehicles on Friday, but trucks are still not be permitted.

Need for Temporary Apartments/ Vacant Lots:
As a result of Hurricane Sandy, the City expects that up to 40,000 people have been displaced and will need some form of temporary housing.
•If you have any housing stock available, please submit your inventory of available furnished and unfurnished apartments where people can be placed immediately, i.e. without Board approval.
•We are also looking for areas of vacant land (including vacant lots, parking areas, and open space) where modular housing could be placed.

At this time we are only trying to get a sense of available housing stock for those affected by the hurricane, we do not have specifcs on potential rental terms. Please submit all information to Ryan Baxter.

Generators:
If your organization has an available generator to lend to the City of New York, please send information to Rachel Squire at rsquire@cityhall.nyc.gov.

Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund:
The Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City set up a donation page for Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts contributions. Checks can be made out to:

Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City
253 Broadway, 8th Floor
NYC NY 10007

For any further information please call 212-788-7794 and thank you in advance for your generosity in our city's time of need.