"Control Alt Delete": A One-Night HKJB Show in Bushwick

Graham Collins in "Control Alt Delete," curated by HKJB, at 840 Broadway, 4th Floor, Brooklyn, New York, May 27, 2011. Photos: 16 Miles [more]

The official start of summer may still be three weeks away, but HKJB, the curatorial nom de guerre of artists Benjamin King and Jay Henderson, has already delivered what feels like the first show of the season: a one-night-only affair held last Friday on the fourth floor of 840 Broadway in Bushwick. It was, for one thing, gorgeously hot up there. My camera fogged up for a few moments as I tried to photograph the revelers, who were keeping cool with large, cold beers bought in the bodegas below. More to the point, though, the show, "Control Alt Delete" (a Windows reference from the art crowd!), had the raucous, anarchic spirit that we expect of the city's summer shows, with roughly fifty works by fifteen artists installed around the premises.


Matt Jones

A few participants had enough work on view to fill entire solo shows of their own, like Wayne Adams, whose trademark paintings of repeating chevrons were installed around the walls of the room. There were also two small ones leaning against a wall and an enormous one, ominously titled Ask Me No More Questions, Tell Me No More Lies, hanging off the side of a column. Matt Jones had a bounty on offer, too, mostly paintings that were propped up like sculptures and scattered around the floor. (Jones has already produced a book of photos of the show that he snapped with his iPhone; its available in a full-color or a thrifty black-and-white edition.)


Stacy Fisher

Though brutally outnumbered by the painters, the sculptors (or, at least, the sculpturally-minded) fared well. The California transplant Ernesto Burgos delivered on the promises of the work he showed at Kate Werble Gallery at the beginning of the year. His best piece (partially pictured below) was a curiously crumpled sculpture balanced against a wall that features an image of a hand proffering a stiff-looking cocktail. Yes, please! He also had two wall-hung constructions — one silver, one black, both sleek — that looked like immaculate, high-gloss seat cushions.


Left to right: Ernesto Burgos, Vince Contarino, Benjamin King

A new name for me: Graham Collins, whose painted slab of wood on top of a cinderblock (pictured at top) was a welcome moment of smart, quiet presentness, matched in that regard only by work of a trusty established name, Stacy Fisher, whose intimate black constructions held their ground impressively, tempting viewers to touch them.

With so much work placed on the floor and hung low on the walls, there were ample opportunities to admire the paint-splattered floors, the slow, steady work of Lauren Luloff and Tisch Abelow, who both use the space as their studio and had work in the show. Luloff offered a large painting (pictured below) with sections of bunched-up fabric — filled with white-on-dark-green leaves and snakeskin prints of umber, amber, and ocher — that abutted a swath of flowing, potable abstraction, all smooth grays and tans that almost tilted into peach. It looks like two or three or maybe four pieces seamlessly spliced into a single work, a multitude of divergent ideas operating in unison — not a bad metaphor for any successful group show.


Lauren Luloff


Top row: Ernesto Burgos, two paintings by Halsey Hathaway; middle: Wayne Adams, Ernesto Burgos, Wayne Adams; floor: Matt Jones


Matt Jones


Tisch Abelow


Floor left: partial view of Brion Nuda Rosch; center: Maria Walker; right: Wayne Adams




Lauren Luloff


Lauren Luloff


Lauren Luloff in the stairwell

Excepting the paint-bedecked floors, the joyous heat, and the strange indoor garden, the best part of the temporary, makeshift gallery may have been that it was on the fourth floor, meaning that twice — coming and going — visitors received a bonus show in the form of stairwells lined with art, mostly large canvases holding their walls against the streams of people visiting friends and eying their latest work.


The stairwell of 840 Broadway

Previously: HKJB's first show, "Personal Abstraction," held in May 2009, out in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, with the likes of Jim Lee, Wendy White, and Chris Martin.

"Stone Soup": Esther Kläs and Thomas Fougeirol at C L E A R I N G

Esther Kläs, Untitled, 2011. Plaster, pigment, concrete, in "Stone Soup," at C L E A R I N G, Brooklyn, New York, through May 16, 2011. Photos: 16 Miles [more]

If artist Olivier Babin, the proprietor of the nascent C L E A R I N G gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn, hadn't told me that his current show, "Stone Soup," is a two-person affair, I would have guessed that three artists were involved in its making. There are two austere black canvases on the walls — one large, one small, both clearly the work of a single artist. And there are two tall, solid abstract sculptures — one yellow, one mint green and concrete grey, seemingly created by another single pair of hands. But there is one more work — quite different from the other four pieces — that consists of a long, narrow rug, with almost its entire interior sliced away, hanging from the ceiling and a plaster cast of a forearm balancing on the ground beneath it, holding a partial handstand.


Left: Esther Kläs, Untitled, 2011. Aquaresin, pigment; right: Thomas Fougeirol, Untitled, 2010. Oil and spray paint on canvas.

The paintings are the work of Thomas Fougeirol, a French-born artist with studios in New York and Paris. Fougeirol coated them with thin, slick layers of paint and then pushed objects up against them — a pegboard in the case of the larger work and a bundle of string in the smaller one, according to Kaleidoscope. The resulting marks are indexical records of those materials, traces of simple, rote actions. Your opinion of the works will depend on your view of the strain of vanguard painting to which they resolutely belong, which favors a handcrafted — occasionally battered and frequently chilly — minimalism, sometimes ornamented with machine-wrought dysfunction. Think Ned Vena or Wade Guyton or Jacob Kassay (who was in C L E A R I N G's inaugural show) or at least half of the works in the Journal's current "One Dozen Paintings" show. I'm fan of that field, but I'm beginning to suspect that it is one that today's best artists will soon need to leave fallow.


Front: Esther Kläs, Untitled, 2011. Plaster, cut-out rug; back: Esther Kläs, Untitled, 2011. Plaster, pigment, concrete.

The two standing sculptures belong to the German–trained and Brooklyn–based Esther Kläs, who presented another, similarly playful and mysterious sculpture at Bureau earlier this year. Her yellow piece suggests a tumescent John McCracken or an Anne Truitt that has grown a tumor. That sounds scary, and the work is a little scary at first — imposing in size and heavy–looking — but it also projects a charming vulnerability, swelling awkwardly at its crown and spashed with incomplete, drippy coats of yellow paint. You will want to love it. Kläs's mint piece is a comparably elegant sight, and it shows her again gamely playing with viewers' sense of scale, placing a life-size cast of her knees on top of a lofty pedestal. (I want to place it next to Dan Walsh's mint-colored painting now on view at the Journal and eat a pint of mint ice cream as I stare at both.) As you stand in front of it, a strange figment or ghost of a person seems to float in the air in front of you.


Front: Esther Kläs, Untitled, 2011. Plaster, cut-out rug; back: Thomas Fougeirol, Untitled, 2010. Oil and spray paint on canvas.

And then, seeing this, it may occur to you, as it did to me, that another part of this uncanny, fragmentary body is on view behind your back, balancing on one hand underneath that hanging rug, which is also, it turns out, by Kläs.


Thomas Fougeirol, Untitled, 2010. Oil and spray paint on canvas.


Installation views of "Stone Soup"


Looking across the room and out the window across Johnson Street

More: Babin is also an artist; his work was on view at Marian Goodman in 2009.

Bushwick's WILDLIFE: "Selections from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Jon Lutz"

The lobby of 245 Varet Street, Brooklyn, New York, the home of WILDLIFE. Photos: 16 Miles [more]

A plastic Santa Claus greeted visitors on the first floor of 245 Varet Street on February 25th. His hand was raised to the sky, pointing to the third floor WILDLIFE space, an empty studio in which independent curator Jon Lutz had organized the latest installment of his Daily Operation series. That sterling brand would be reason enough to journey to the farthest reaches of Bushwick, and though that was not necessary (WILDLIFE is mere blocks from Roberta's), Lutz made the evening impossible to miss, tagging his exhibition with a title that promised class and discernment: "Selections from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Jon Lutz." (Click for more photos of the show, via Lutz.)


Left to right: Joshua Abelow, I MISS YOU BITCH, 2008. Oil on linen, 16 x 12 in. Joshua Abelow, I MISS YOU BITCH, 2008. Oil on linen, 16 x 12 in. Joshua Abelow, I MISS YOU BITCH, 2008. Oil on linen, 16 x 12 in.

The press release also heralded an auspicious evening. In it, artist Ivin Ballen writes breathlessly that Mr. and Mrs. Lutz's "ability to make decisions that are applauded by both museum and artist is truly remarkable." He notes that he first happened to meet Mr. Lutz when they were both at a local cobbler. Before long, he was enjoying cocktails with him and his wife on their yacht. "The rest is history," he says. Such antics aside, it was, of course, Lutz's quartet of artists that guaranteed the hefty turnout at the reception: Ballen, Ethan Greenbaum, Janine Polak, and Joshua Abelow.

Three nearly identical paintings by the Brooklyn–based Abelow, each with two smiling faces, a triangle, and the sentence "I MISS YOU BITCH," held one wall and dominated the room with their ambiguous, gleeful mania. Abelow is the proprietor of the wonderful art blog ART BLOG ART BLOG, which he updates relentlessly with photos of a wide range of (mostly) contemporary artworks. Astoundingly, he is apparently unaffected by this steady stream of imagery, having honed his practice to a single definitive style: just a few (if any) images — various self-deprecating self-portraits are a recurring theme — and some absurd or sardonic text. It has the rare distinction of looking complete, razor sharp, and fully formed.


Janine Polak, Once bitten, twice shy, 2011. Wood, tinted plaster, silver jewelry, paint.


Ivin Ballen, Mud Fence, 2010. Fiberglass, Aquaresin, embedded dispersed pigments, 24 x 24 x 1 in.


Ethan Greenbaum, Untitled, 2010. Artificial plant, concrete cast, various sizes (all plants)

Other Abelows included a 2008 painting with the equation "YES=NO" and a double portrait called Artist & Collector, which shows an obsequious patron kissing the Pinocchio nose of an artist. (Is it Abelow?) Fully confident in — and even proud of — its pleasant idiosyncrasies, Abelow's work evinces a great and ridiculous sophistication, like that of a difficult gymnastics maneuver ("a double Abelow!") or a rare antique fishing lure ("My Abelow has brought me my finest catches."). Seeing his work, I feel like the woman who appears in another of his pieces (sadly not on view in the show), tilting back her head in ecstasy and mouthing the title of the drawing in which she resides: OH! ABELOW.


Joshua Abelow, Artist & Collector, 2007. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 in.

On the subtler side, Greenbaum placed artificial plants, which had been encased in concrete, around the walls of the room. Polak — like Greenbaum, a Yale graduate — kept it low-key as well, with three precariously balanced thin wood sculptures embedded embedded with tiny pieces of metal. Think David Adamo without the whittling or Susan Collis on a budget — not a bad thing. And then there was Ballen (a Cranbrook alum, like Abelow), who was represented by four effervescently colored works that could have been made by four different artists, as long as each was an extrovert determined to have a great time and, thank goodness, intent on including you in the festivities.


Ivin Ballen, Partyland, 2011. Fiberglass, Aquaresin, absorbed ground, gouache, acrylic, 32 x 24 x 1 in.


A view of the crowd

Regina Rex, Texture.txt, at Regina Rex

Regina Rex, "Texture.txt" opening night, January 8, 2011. Photos: 16 Miles [more]

"Because of SoHo's sprawling character, I have yet to work out an effective system of taking it all in," critic David Bourdon wrote in 1977, describing his frustration at visiting all of the neighborhood's galleries. These days Bushwick (or Ridgewood, when that art area crosses over into Queens) feels like the trickiest expanse to navigate, and I have yet to work out an effective system for doing so. All of which is a roundabout way of admitting that, when, a few weeks ago, I visited the much-discussed Regina Rex gallery, which opened there in the middle of last year, it was — embarrassingly — for the first time.

The show on view at Regina Rex now is called "Texture.txt," it is up through February 13 (open Saturdays and Sundays only!), and it is a stunner, though viewing it took some patience and maneuvering at the wonderfully crowded opening reception. The most thrilling piece, for me, is New York artist Dona Nelson's double-sided painting Spacey Characters (2010). She has stained one side with masses and splatters of color and built up abstract figures around the canvas, which provides a thick, fibrous, and — yes — richly textured counterpoint to the stained "paint puddles and pools," as Jennifer Coates handily describes them in an accompanying essay.


Detail of Dona Nelson, Spacey Characters, 2010. Acrylic mediums on canvas, 90 x 120 in.


"Texture.txt" installation view


Detail of Dona Nelson, Spacey Characters, 2010. Acrylic mediums on canvas, 90 x 120 in.

In October 2006, artist Carrie Moyer wrote in the Brooklyn Rail, "Nelson has converted the last 50 years of painting history into her own private mosh pit," an idea that I'm not sure I can improve on. The discrete stains may say Morris Louis, but the winding flows of string and the wild and effervescent splotches of paint on the painting's back explode any fixed notion of genre. Nelson mines the past, as Moyer says, not so much to craft pastiches as to develop new visual weapons. Note the way the work is hung (you won't miss it). It has been propped gingerly on two plastic crates and then secured forcefully to the wall by two metal poles and screws, as if someone (quite understandably) feared the work could vanish from this world just as magically as it seems to have arrived. At the very least, would-be burglars will have some work to do. Thank goodness.


Mary Reid Kelley, Historic Sites blow the Dead, 2008. Crayon on paper, 12 x 18 in.


Kristen Kee, Beta, 2010. Soda, glass, rubber, canvas, digital print, 25 x 14 x 10 in.


David Humphrey, Clown Party, 2010. Paint, wood, and paper.

There are two sculptures here, David Humphrey's Clown Party (2010) and Kristen Kee's Beta, that look especially strong and refreshingly new. The former is a sloping box built from planks of wood and painted white and blue, its ends adorned with texts that read, alternately, "CLOWN PARTY" and "DOG BEHIND BARS." Kee's work is a glass vase filled with orange soda — a medium and texture we could all stand to see some more of inside art galleries — that supports a wooden panel covered with letters from some ersatz language. Not far away, Lucy Kim's oil-on-aluminum-foil portrait of Lil' Wayne, his head balancing on his upturned fist, looks out into the room and ever so slightly to the sky. He looks pensive and strong, and I think he would like it.


Leeza Meksin, My Rack, 2011. Spandex, racks, chain, spray paint, sand, sewing machine, found objects, site-specific installation.


Lucy Kim, Lil Wayne - Flat, 2009. Oil paint on aluminum foil, 15 x 21 in.


Partial view of Leeza Meksin, 5 Paintings, 2010-2011. Oil, acrylic and dye, on spandex stretched over canvas on wood.




1717 Troutman Street, Queens, New York


Mira Stroika at Tandem, 236 Troutman Street, Brooklyn, New York

As the crowd was cajoled out shortly after 9 pm, many trekked south on Troutman Street, crossing Cypress Avenue, from Queens to Brooklyn. A few blocks down, the admixture of people flowed into an already-packed Tandem, where the impressively multilingual Mira Stroika played accordion and kazoo, regaling a large crowd in the back room as fresh snow began sticking to the ground outside.



"Texture.txt"
Regina Rex
1717 Troutman Street
Queens, New York
Through February 13, 2011