werner herzog eats a sandwich i (by Roxanne Palmer)
Tomorrow night at Yashar Gallery, Roxanne Palmer, a Williamsburg-based science reporter whose illustrations have appeared in Newsweek and elsewhere, will unveil her paintings inspired by the brooding German director behind Fitzcarraldo and Even Dwarfs Started Small. The series, “Werner Herzog Eats a Sandwich,” takes its name from two things: the first being Les Blank’s documentary “Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe.”
w.h.e.a.s. IV // exit treadwell (by Roxanne)
“The thing I really admire about Herzog is his utter commitment to his aesthetic principles,” Palmer told us. “The man does not flinch! HE LITERALLY ATE A SHOE TO FULFILL A BET. I think that’s one of the best encapsulations of Herzog — both incredibly serious and hilarious at once (kind of like Kafka).”
And the other thing that inspired the title of the series? The time when, at a q&a following a screening of Cave of Forgotten Dreams at IFC Center, Palmer asked Herzog if he ever dreamed of the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave after making the movie.
“No,” she recalls him replying. “I don’t really dream. Except that about once every five years, I’ll dream of something mundane, like eating a sandwich.”
w.h.e.a.s. II // ‘even dwarfs…’ (by Roxanne Palmer)
And speaking of mundanity: on March 28 Fowler Projects Space will contemplate an artist who may well be the anti-Herzog, when it launches “Who’s Taylor Swift Anyway?” According to the press release the group exhibition “seeks to explore our relationship to celebrity through embodiments of the pop-fictional character, Taylor Swift” and may or may not manage to answer the burning question: “How has this inescapable singer transformed our cultural landscape, and how might our relatively recent 24/7 obsession with all things celebrity affect how we relate to each other in ‘the real world’?”
Lauren Kaelin, Elisa Kresigner, Torie Leigh, Jennifer McDermott, Chris Tyler and exhibit curator Elizabeth Grammaticas will all take their crack, with one of them “inhabiting the character of Taylor Swift in performance.” Exciting!
“Werner Herzog Eats a Sandwich” opens March 14 from 8 p.m. to midnight and runs through March 26 at Yashar Gallery, 276 Greenpoint Ave., Greenpoint; gallery open Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 7 p.m. or by appoitment.
“Who’s Taylor Swift Anyway?” opens March 28 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. and is on view til April 13 at Fowler Project Space at 67 West St. #216, Greenpoint; gallery open on Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m. or by appointment.