For details on Armory, Scope, DiVA, Art Rock, etc., check out this artnet.com page.

Armory update: Regarding press access, James talked to their PR firm and all seems OK now.

Remy Toledo Gallery is hosting a moderately-priced art benefit for Queer Dharma featuring a lot of emerging artists on Wednesday, March 10th, 6-8PM. The web page has more details.

I don’t think we’ll get to it, but it sounds like a good thing to attend. This week is crazy…

Yeah for Clementine Gallery! After being rejected by The Armory Show, they took matters into their own hands and ended up with a contemporary show at the Rockefeller Center Plaza called Art Rock. It started today, and runs through March 14. Some snapshots:

Rob Fischer’s glass & metal house (Mary Goldman Gallery)

Example of lounges at either end, designed by Todd Oldham. Note the more attractive use of orange than we got from The Gates.

Ivan Navarro (Roebling Hall)

Neutral white flags put up by Tishman Speyer (owners of Rockefeller Center) for the duration of Art Rock

Taylor McKimens has a wonderful paper house installation. It was impossible to photograph, at least for me, so I’m showing you a detail of his little grass edge in the room. His installation is outstanding.

Also, the Richard Aldrich show presented by Oliver Kamm/5BE is really good. I just couldn’t get a good photo, otherwise I would have one here as well. The same goes for the excellent photography of South African Trevor Appleson presented by the London-based Hales Gallery.

—

We can relate to being rejected by the Armory Show. Scope gave us a press invite, but we were cc-ed on a mass rejection letter with grammatical problems from an Armory press person. I guess bloggers don’t count, when they can reserve space for magazines that will print articles a couple of months after the Armory Show is over.

Spotted in my subway station.

We watched Hi, Mom (1970) by Brian De Palma, with Robert De Niro, tonight. My reaction to the Be Black Baby theater segment was “Wow! This tops anything I saw by Reza Abdoh!”

There is a lot going on March 9, including the latest Second Wednesday downtown. I doubt we will make it, as we have an artist coming by to show us his work, but I would definitely hit several shows if we could, including Michael Zansky at Gigantic Art Space and a Rick Prol-curated show of East Village work from the 80s at Hal Bromm. We ran into Rick yesterday at MoMA while viewing the UBS show.

[That last sentence was an hommage of course.]

I have been intrigued by her work when I see it, but I would like to read some more about her and her work. Is this Phaidon book the way to go, or is there something better to read?

Their web page isn’t updated, but we got an invitation for the first show, so check it out on ArtCal.

Jules de Balincourt, Land of Many Uses, 2003

I was looking at the New York Magazine article titled The Ten “Greater New York” Show Artists Most Likely to Succeed, and noticed that they left off Hoggard/Wagner from the list of collectors for Jules de Balincourt.

[snapshot by me]

Snow Queen (9)
2003, c-print, 11 × 17 inches

For those in the DC area, or those that feel like visiting, Joe Ovelman has a show at Conner Contemporary opening March 4 and running through March 26.

From the press release:

Within gay culture the slang term snow queen typically refers to a black man who only dates white men. However, for Joe Ovelman the term is used more literally. His recent photographic series depicts the artist, dressed in his grandmother’s white stag coat and glamour drag, in wild abandon on a snowy night in the notorious ‘rambles’ of New York’s Central Park. The images possess both the candidness found in Lisette Model’s socialites and the campy absurdity of John Waters.

If you are interested in the details of the piece, I was told by Joe that it was shot in a single night by himself with a tripod. Amazing.

We are big, big fans of Joe’s work, having purchased the first piece he ever sold, and staying friends with him ever since. We own a couple of pieces from the Snow Queen series, including the one above. Ours is from an edition that is of larger dimension that this one.

For those readers that have visited our apartment, Joe did the Marine Corps Uniform- c1970 work in our entry hallway. Ours is the study for the final version.

I am impressed with Conner. Last year they showed a series, 17 Strangers, that was never shown in a New York Gallery.

Updated

I just remembered that a short-lived gallery in the Hotel Chelsea showed 17 Strangers, but I doubt a huge number of people saw it there, unfortunately.

Updated Again

Oops. We just looked at our Ovelman prints. A friend owns the one above, and we own two others from the series.