scream at the librarian, look at the art

While gallery hopping on Saturday, I stopped at Printed Matter. Scream at the librarian by Joel J. Rane was on the front desk. It's issue 3 of the Another Brooklyn chapbook series published by Brooklyn Artists Alliance and includes illustrations by Raymond Pettibon and Christin Sheehan Sullivan. I wanted to add it to my Facebook iRead selections but it doesn't have an ISBN. Sigh.

The Pettibon installation at Zwirner on 19th Street was pretty interesting: drawings like you'd expect with anti-war and other wrenching text. The Kitchen street fair was happening in the street and the big gallery doors were open so there was rather a blend of gallery and street. I kept going North and the street fair was still going on several hours later.

The Sol LeWitt installation at Paula Cooper was great: a beautiful print in the office/entrance area, solid series of drawings in the small gallery, and a great box in the big space. The edges of the box were especially wonderful. The graphite of the drawings was different blacks, depending on the light.

Ann Barham had three pieces in the "Like leaves" show at Tanya Bonakdar: a framed postcard with columns (I love architecture), a DVD with jumbled words and letters changing rapidly sometimes with meaning and well juxtaposed, a model of Leptis Magna constructed of pieces of drinking straws and water bucket handles. The Leptis Magna was wonderful and played well with the postcard.

Metro Pictures was showing a few T.J. Wilcox films and had some large films from the films on the gallery walls. "A fair tale" was about the Puyallup Country Fair and how the Indian chief saved the narrator after the sky diver's parachute covered them all when he landed. You really don't need to know more, just imagine it.

During a visit to George Billis Gallery in the early spring, I noticed a wonderful Kenny Harris painting in the back area and asked George if they planned to have a Kenny Harris show and he said one just ended. I'm really sorry I missed it. Again this Saturday, there was a Kenny Harris in the back area that really caught my eye. He does beautiful reflective floors among other things.

When I got the card from Mitchell Algus about the Willoughby Sharp show, I had a strong memory of issues of Avalanche and other 1960s/1970s art. Mr Sharp was at Algus when I got there and Mitchell introduced me as someone who worked at the NYU Libraries and he said he needed a photocopy. A tad surreal, or maybe it was performance.

The front room at Mixed Greens had some photos by Adia Millett that were ok. I almost left but noticed the curtain into the back room. There were the model rooms that were the inspirations for the photos: a wonderland dark room with constructions, windows into the spaces that were photographed. Quite magical.

The Arsen Savadov paintings at Daneyal Mahmood Gallery were pretty interesting and there was a wonderful photo in the office area. The same aesthetic was evident with colors and shapes spread across the surface but the first impression was very different. The landscape in the photo was picturesque with cliffs over the Black Sea in the Crimea. The foreground was occupied by five of six largely undressed men.

On Sunday, I joined some friends (Heidi, Dan, John, Jacquelyn) for an expedition to Sailor's Haven and the Sunken Forest on Fire Island. It was very pleasant and several times over the course of the day's conversation, art from one of the Saturday shows came to mind. Tucker Nichols's large photos with stick trees were reminiscent of John's hobo logo.