ART FOR IRAN
When it comes to the populist protest in Iran, visual designers are on the case. Following the contested 2009 Iranian elections, the Iranian photographer Green Bird put out a call for graphic designers to make posters supporting the Green Movement in Iran. Over 200 artists responded, and their posters are currently on line at SocialDesignZine, the blog of the Association of Italian Graphic Designers.
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Now, a selection of over 125 of those posters are going on view in "Where Is My Vote? Posters for the Green Movement in Iran," Aug. 30-Sept. 25, 2010, at the School of Visual Arts Gallery, 601 West 26th Street, 15th floor. The show is organized by designers Anita Kunz and Woody Pirtle along with gallery director Francis Di Tommaso.
STREET ART FAIR FOR FRIEZE WEEK
London’s annual Frieze Week is beginning to look interesting. First, Christie’s London declared that it would enter into the art-fair fray with its Multiplied fair, focusing on "emerging talent in two and three-dimensional contemporary editions." Hot on the heels of this announcement comes news of the Moniker International Art Fair, organized by Vancouver dealer Vanessa Vainio, which promises to focus on street art and so-called "low-brow" culture. It’s set to go up at the Village Underground, at 54 Holywell Lane, Oct. 14-17, 2010.
Vainio told the UK telegraph that, "We’re not billing it as 'street art’ because I think it will represent a broader, sub-culture movement." Nevertheless, at least one popular street-art critic, RJ Rushmore of the Vandablog, described Moniker’s exhibitors as "practically a best-of of international ‘urban art galleries’": Black Rat Projects (London), CampBarbossa (London), Carmichael Gallery (Los Angeles), Circleculture (Berlin), New Image Art (Los Angeles) and Patricia Armocida (Milan). Also promised are six "project spaces," which will include new works by Philly street art pioneer Steve Powers and Frankfurt-based duo Herakut.
KENNETH ANGER FOR MISSONI
The Italian fashion house Missoni is promoting its 2010 fall/winter line. . . with a little help from Los Angeles experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger, famed for Scorpio Rising (1964), an ode to the occult and leather-clad bikers, and Hollywood Babylon, a series of books about the sordid side of Tinseltown. The resulting clip is notably light on the seediness. Filmed in Sumirago, Italy, outside of Milan, it features a dream-like, kaleidoscopic montage of members of the Missoni family -- that would be Rosita, Angela, Margherita Maccapani, Jennifer, Teresa Maccapani, Ottavio, Vittorio, Luca, Ottavio Missoni Jr., Francesco Maccapani and Marco -- clad in their company’s clothes, set to ambient music. The collaboration follows Missoni’s spring/summer ad campaign, which involved images of the Missoni clan in their home, by Juergen Teller.
And what did Anger think of the collaboration? Apparently, he got on with the Missonis. A rather confusing anecdote in Italian Vogue has Angela Missoni claiming that after the collaboration, the 83-year-old artist gave her mother "a film award he recently received."
SPERONE WESTWATER SETS OPENING
Sperone Westwater gallery is celebrating its 35th anniversary with flair -- inaugurating its new eight-story gallery building at 257 Bowery on Sept. 22, 2010, with "Guillermo Kuitca: New Paintings, 2008-2010." One highlight of the show -- and a sign of the expansive new space at the disposal of art dealers Angela Westwater and Gian Enzo Sperone (and gallery director David Leiber) -- is the installation of Kuitca’s Le Sacre (1992), a series of maps painted onto 54 mattresses.
The much-anticipated facility, designed by Foster + Partners, is marked by a double-height, 27-foot-tall exhibition space at street level, a sculpture terrace overlooking the Allen Street park, and an unusual "moving room," measuring 12 x 20 feet, with a 13-foot-high ceiling, that goes up and down like an elevator. The project, launched in 2008, is also notable for forging ahead despite the recession. In addition to Kuitca, Sperone Westwater represents Wim Delvoye, Charles LeDray, Richard Long, Malcolm Morley, Bruce Nauman, Evan Penny, Susan Rothenberg, Tom Sachs, Not Vital, William Wegman and Liu Ye, as well as other artists.
CINCINNATI CAC DOES SHEPARD FAIREY APP
The Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati, which is currently presenting "Shepard Fairey: Supply and Demand," Feb. 20-Aug. 22, 2010, has developed a special smartphone application that takes users on a tour of the Fairey murals on view in the city. Using Google’s SCVNGR platform, the app is organized as a game, with various challenges, that bring players "a unique FaireyTrek badge." The game can be downloaded either from the iPhone App Store or Android Market; for more info, click here.
"SEDUCE ME," SAYS ISABELLA
Collector and art patron Mickey Wolfson’s Wolfsonian-FIU design museum in South Beach has kicked things up a notch for the next Art Basel Miami Beach in early December. It’s an installation beginning with Isabella Rossellini’s series of short videos on the mating rituals of the natural world, set in an installation of paper sculptures made by Andy Byers as sets, props and costumes for the vids. "Seduce Me" goes on view in the Wolfsonian’s lobby and auditorium, Dec. 1-5, 2010. To take a look at some of Rossellini’s vids, see YouTube.
LARRY RIVERS IN EAST HAMPTON
For all you vacationers on Long Island’s East End, be sure to catch "Larry Rivers: Pop Icons," July 30-Aug. 24, 2009, at Vered Gallery in East Hampton. Rivers was a Hampton regular for many, many years, of course, and the exhibition is being praised as "the show to see." It features two remaining paintings from Rivers’ 40 Feet of Fashion, a huge mural made in 1968 for the Smith Haven Mall, the very first mall in the country to use art as its signature. Also on view are works from Rivers’ comic "Audubon" series of goofy birds done in bas-relief, and his maquette for La Danse, the artist’s final sculpture project, now on view for the first time.
WOLF KAHN IN THE ROCKIES
Paintings by the great American colorist Wolf Kahn (b. 1927) are coming to Jackson Hole, Wyo. "Wolf Kahn: Refractions of Light, Paintings and Pastels," Aug. 19-Oct. 24, 2010, goes on view at the Tayloe Piggott Gallery in a show co-organized with Camille Obering Art Advisory. The exhibition marks the first time that Kahn, whose works have been shown in art centers on both coasts, is being exhibited in the Rockies, and fans of his work can look forward to matching his ethereal, formalist compositions of color and light -- until now suggestive of the landscapes of the northeast -- to the more dramatic landscape of the West. For more info, see www.camilleobering.com.
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