“This gallery is my baby,” explained Christopher Stout, founder of the Bushwick Art Crit Group. This fall, Stout will host his inaugural exhibition as a gallery owner at his new space, the first of several anticipated art institutions inside an East Williamsburg warehouse space. BACG is “a not-for-profit community resource for everybody,” Stout explained. “But it felt like it was increasingly challenging– in a negative way– to make programming that was about everyone.” In order to host exhibitions that relate to specific subjects that Stout is more personally invested in, without having to worry about “alienating everyone else,” he said, “it really needed to be separate and become its own thing.”
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galleries
Penelope Gazin Draws Monstrous Broads and Alien Goddesses as If She Were ‘Living in a Cave’
Penelope Gazin in front of her work (Photo: Nicole Disser)
We’re guessing the world would look a whole lot different if bad ass women like Penelope Gazin had been well-represented in animation and comics from the start. But Gazin has her hand in so many projects, it’s almost as if she’s single-handedly trying to make up for lost time. Her paintings, drawings, and animations have a unique staying power, and will almost certainly end up plastered all over the walls of your skull if you spend some time with them. Gazin’s sassy, hilarious, and sometimes twisted images of alien babes and monster princesses don’t depart amicably.
At Girls at Night On the Internet, No ‘Old White Dudes Who Are Totally Out of Touch’
(Photo: Nicole Disser)
If Girls at Night on the Internet is a pool full of multicolored Jell-O, then the digi-only gallery known as Art Baby, founded by 26-year-old artist and curator Grace Miceli, is the diving board. “Being a girl at night on the internet is where I personally found the confidence to share my work and to create this really supportive community of artists,” explained Miceli, who also curated this show. “For me, it’s an identity and a space I wanted to celebrate. Being a girl at night on the internet is where I met all these artists and, in a very basic way, it’s just a description of where this all comes from. And this show has just been partially about bringing this world that already exists to a broader audience.”
I Found Out What This Courtney Barnett’s All About at Her Pop-Up Exhibit
(Photo: Nicole Disser)
Ludlow Studios was packed to the brim with people for the private one-night only event to celebrate and ogle Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett’s art work. The crowd included everyone from stylish hip kids furtively scanning the room for Barnett’s messy brown mane to appear somewhere in the crowd, loafers who weren’t sure exactly what all the hoopla and video cameras were all about but knew for certain there were infinite free mezcal cocktails to be guzzled, and the nearing-the-top-of-the-hills sponging around to see what the kids are into these days. I’m not old, but this event made me feel old, particularly because up until I heard word of this event, I had no idea who Courtney Barnett was.
Kim Gordon’s New Show: Fear of Lost Art and Ideas in a Changing City
“The City is a Garden” : an exhibition of work by Kim Gordon now at 303 Gallery (Photo: Nicole Disser)
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Three to See During Frieze Week: NADA, African Art, and a Design Fair
‘Untitled,’ photo by Bobson Sukhdeo Mohanlall on view at 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair (Photo from 1:54 website and courtesy of Axis Gallery)
If there’s anything to say about Frieze that speaks to the massive annual art fair as a whole is that it’s wholly impossible to see everything. Last year, there were 190 participating art dealers from all over the globe. And that’s just at Frieze alone. What’s more the art fair brings so many art people into the city and out of their studios in “far-flung” neighborhoods to Manhattan, that several satellite festivities coincide with the event in places other than the Frieze tent. So take your pick and get ready for two parts shmoozing and feigning interest and one part legitimate enthrallment!
Tags: 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, and Beyond, art, art fair, art fairs, Arts + Culture, Bobson Sukhdeo Mohanlall, bodega, Design, Events, frieze art fair, galleries, Lower East Side, Melissa Brown, nada, New Art Dealers Association Fair, pioneer works, red hook, shoot the lobster, Sight Unseen, Sight Unseen Offsite, Signal Gallery, The Hole, Tunica
Experience Synesthesia Through Interactive Brain Wave Art at Reverse Gallery
“Eunoia II,” installation by Lisa Park at Reverse Gallery (Photo: Nicole Disser)
For once count yourself lucky if you missed an art opening. Synaesthetics, a new exhibition at Reverse Gallery in Williamsburg opened last Friday; sure, there was free booze and great people watching, but the two interactive installations that are featured and the trans-sensory trips they inspire are best experienced in isolation or maybe at most with one other partner. Both Eunoia II, by Lisa Park, and Format No. 1, by Louise Foo and Martha Skou, strangely mimic our increasingly digital experience of the world, which is itself a lonesome, disconnected way of engaging with people more and more through social media.
Music Blog-Turned-Zine Alt Citizen Gets Even Realer With Shop and Gallery
a peek inside the space (Photo: Cheryl Georgette Arent)
Alt Citizen has been doing their thing since 2012– the music blog’s bread-and-butter is album reviews (past and present), essays, show recommendations (mostly local Brooklyn stuff), and interviews with bands from all over. Last year, they expanded to a pocket-sized zine, of which three issues have dropped. “When you do a blog for years you start to go crazy not having a tangible thing to show people in terms of what you’re working on, so the zine naturally came out of that,” editor-in-chief and founder Nasa Hadizadeh admitted. The same impetus was behind Alt Space, a brand new storefront and gallery Alt Citizen is opening in Bushwick next week.
An Artsy Market and Incubator Opens Off the L, But Not Where You Think
Sophia Dawson aka Wet Paint (Photo: Nicole Disser)
A few months back a certain abandoned lot just off the L train was overgrown with weeds and full of garbage, but as of last week it’s become a buzzing center for small retail shops, food vendors, and affordable art studios. A beer garden is set to open in the coming weeks. L train? Art? All signs point to this being Bushwick, but this is the New Lots Avenue stop, or East New York. ReNew Lots Market and Artist Incubator is a project of Arts East New York, a local non-profit working closely with the city to promote public art works, creative production, and arts education in one of the city’s worst reputed neighborhoods.
Candle-Lit Altars and Cunnilingus On Display at This All-Female Punk Art Exhibition
Jennifer Calandra in front of her altar (Photo: Nicole Disser)
On Wednesday night the Living Gallery in Bushwick was abuzz with punk kids and curious passersby who had stepped inside to soak up the atmosphere of Collective Delusion / Mass Hysteria, a new all-female art exhibition. “Pretty much everyone is involved in the punk or noise scene in some way,” Jennifer Calandra, who curated the event, explained of the participating artists. “They’re mostly ladies I know from the scene here and from going to shows in different states.” The exhibition arrived just in time for the annual punk fest, New York’s Alright, which kicked off last night with shows at the Acheron and Tender Trap and continues throughout the weekend.