300+ GALLERIES IN CHELSEA
The New York fall art season begins the second half of this week, Sept. 5-9, 2006, with over 141 openings at more than 300 galleries in Manhattan’s Chelsea art district alone, according to the website Chelseaartgalleries.com. An astounding 81 exhibitions open in Chelsea on Thursday, Sept. 7, according to the report. The largest gallery in the neighborhood is the expanded space of David Zwirner on West 19th Street, which measures 30,000 square feet.
Other odds and ends from the changing Chelsea scene include:
* Barry Friedman Ltd. presents an exhibition of new work by Ron Arad, titled "There Is No Solution because There Is No Problem," Sept. 14-30, 2006, at a temporary space at 508 West 26th Street. The show features new Oh-Void chairs made of transparent and colored acrylic.
* Susan Inglett Gallery debuts its new ground-floor space at 534 West 22nd Street (the former home of Sandra Gering Gallery) with an exhibition of works by Hope Gangloff, Sept. 14-Oct. 14, 2006.
* Yvon Lambert New York, which opens an exhibition of works by Kay Rosen at its West 25th Street gallery on Sept. 14, is hard at work on a new space on West 21st Street (the former Lot 61 space), designed by architect Richard Gluckman and slated to open in February 2007. Lambert also welcomes to the gallery stable artists Francesco Vezzoli, Idris Kahn and Richard Jackson.
* Kustera Tilton Gallery on West 21st Street becomes Anna Kustera, opening with a three-person exhibition titled "Tract-Traction," Sept. 8-Oct. 21, 2006. The name change is designed to avoid "brand confusion"; uptown dealer Jack Tilton remains a partner, Kustera said. Next up at the gallery is the debut solo of recent Yale grad Loren Holland.
HARLEM OPEN ARTIST STUDIO TOUR
Meanwhile, uptown, the second annual Harlem Open Artist Studio Tour is scheduled for Sept. 9-10, 2006, with approximately 90 artists taking part (participants pay a $30 fee). Among the artists in the tour are Gabriel Forrester Serpa, whose ink and watercolor drawings capture the anomalies of daily life; Janice Taylor, otherwise known as "Our Lady of Weight Loss"; and performance artist LuLu LoLo, who plans sidewalk performances from her one-woman show, Macaroini and Mal Occhio. For details, see www.hoast.org.
WILLIAMSBURG OPENING NIGHT
The Williamsburg Gallery Association kicks off the season with "Fall Forward," Sept. 15, 2006, a series of openings and events that include a multimedia festival, a vodka tasting and a Swedish butoh dance performance. For details, see www.williamsburgcelebrates.com
PURVIS YOUNG ON FILM
Celebrated outsider artist Purvis Young is the subject of "Purvis Young: Paintings from the Street," Sept. 6-Nov. 26, 2006, an exhibition organized by Skot Foreman for the Boca Raton Museum of Art in Boca Raton, Fla. The show presents over 100 works, including 30 paintings and constructions recently donated to the museum. The museum survey coincides with the release of Purvis of Overtown, a feature-length documentary film by David Raccuglia and Shaun Conrad. The film includes appearances by Jane Fonda, collectors Don and Mera Rubell and curator and collector William Arnett. For more info, see www.ruralstudios.net
$50,000 GRANTS FROM "UNITED STATES ARTISTS"
Does the art world trust bureaucrats bearing gifts? You bet it does. A new Los Angeles-based organization called United States Artists has been formed to hand out 50 grants of $50,000 each (totaling $2.5 million), with the winners to be announced on Dec. 4, 2006. It sounds fishy, but it seems to be real -- the organization is underwritten by the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Prudential Foundation and the Anchorage-based Rasmuson Foundation. Executive director is Katherine DeShaw, who formerly headed the Nimoy Foundation’s grant program, and program director is Amada Cruz. Only insiders need apply -- the fellowship winners are selected from a secret list of candidates supplied by a secret list of nominators. The program is designed to foster "innovation, ingenuity, creativity and analysis" to help the U.S. retain its "competitive edge." For further details, see www.unitedstatesartists.org.
REMBRANDT, GREENAWAY STYLE
The art world loves self-indulgence, so it’s no surprise that London’s National Gallery played host to a special pr event announcing the cast of British director Peter Greenaway’s new film of the life of Rembrandt van Rijn. Among the stars of Nightwatching, as the movie is titled -- it pretends towards a "fresh reading" of the 1642 painting, god help us -- are the nicely potato-nosed Martin Freeman (from the BBC hit The Office and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) as Rembrandt, and Eva Birthistle, Nathalie Press, Emily Holmes and Jodhi May as the artist’s wife, lovers and models. Filming begins soon in Poland, with a release date of May 2007.
TWO MORE FAIRS FOR PARIS
FIAC 2006, the 33rd Annual Foire International d'Art Contemporain, is slated to unroll in Paris Oct. 26-30, 2006 -- and two other new fairs are coming along for the ride. The first, called Show Off, Oct. 24-29, 2006, features 25 young dealers from Paris, London and New York housed in a 12,000-square-foot commercial complex located a few blocks from the Grand Palais and the Louvre. The fair was founded by Paris dealers Magda Danysz, Eric Dupont, Vanessa Quang, and Stéphane Magnan and Christine Ollier of Les Filles du Calvaire, and Lyon dealers Patricia and Olivier Houg. For details, see www.showoffparis.com.
The second, dubbed Slick, is scheduled to take place Oct. 27-30, 2006. Organized by dealers Cécile Griesmar of the Galerie Hors Sol and Johan Tamer-Morale of Galerie Artcore along with journalist Aude de Bourbon Parme, Slick presents 25 galleries at La Bellvilloise, a two-floor complex in the 20th Arrondissement. For details, see www.slick-paris.com.
RENÉ BLOCK CURATES NORDIC PAVILION
René Block, director of Kunsthalle Museum Fridericianum in Kassel, home of Documenta, has been tapped to organize the installation of the Nordic Pavilion at the forthcoming Venice Biennale, June 10-Nov. 21, 2007. Details are to come; stay tuned.
CURATORIAL FELLOWSHIP TO TRUMMER
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Conn., has awarded its first Hall Curatorial Fellowship, designed to expand the museum’s international programming, to Viennese curator Thomas Trummer. He will organize "Voice and Void," an exhibition considering "the human voice in avant-garde art for the past 40 years," which goes on view at the Aldrich, Sept. 16, 2007-Feb. 24, 2008.
MUMFORD AT TUFTS
One of our favorite openings this month takes place up in Medford, Mass., where "Baghdad and Beyond: Drawings by Steve Mumford" opens at the Tufts University Art Gallery, Sept. 8-Nov. 19, 2006. The show features 41 works from the "Baghdad Journal," originally published in Artnet Magazine, plus an additional series of portraits of disabled Iraqi War veterans made at Brooke Army Medical Center in 2006.
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