In Chelsea:

Jim Richard at Oliver Kamm.

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Kevin Christy at Monya Rowe in her new Chelsea space on 26th Street.

I don’t think we’re likely to hit Williamsburg as well, but if we could, we would also go to Jerry Kearns at Jack The Pelican Presents.

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UPDATED:

I forgot to include one other opening in Chelsea: Marco Boggio Sella at John Connelly Presents. He is in the same building as Monya Rowe (10th floor while she’s on the 5th), so take the elevator to the 10th floor and walk down if the elevator is slow.

Ave, 2000
lithograph with collage, 68/230
Kiki Smith

Good things come to those who go to art benefits. The Momenta benefit operates as a raffle — you pick a work among those remaining when your name is called. This time we had three tickets, and one of those was drawn first. We chose the Kiki Smith work pictured above. We also got a painting by Joey Kotting and a mixed media/collage work by Michael Cambre. It was one of our best experiences ever at such an event.

Tomorrow (Wednesday May 5) we’re going to Groundswell‘s benefit. Tickets are $100 or 3 for $250 for the art raffle, or a minimum of $15 to go to the party. You get to a good party with a cool art crowd, and it’s a good cause. Groundswell brings artists and members of a given NYC community together to create a permanent mural in their neighborhood. More info on them is here.

Go see SplitStream (April 30-May 1 at 7pm) at Dance Theater Workshop. It includes Ann Liv Young, of whom I’ve written before, Jonathan Berger, and Antonio Ramos. File under the theater side of “dance theater”, with a heavy emphasis on ”Lordy, what was that all about?” We loved it.

Go to Momenta‘s benefit, held at White Columns, on Saturday, May 1. It’s one of the great art bargains in the city – a raffle of great art works for a $175 ticket. We’ll be there, so don’t pick any of our favorites if your number gets drawn sooner than ours.

Go see Joe Ovelman at Oliver Kamm, closing tomorrow. Check out the review by Holland Cotter in today’s NY Times. It sounds like he’s wondering what Joe’s up to, but whatever it is, he likes it.

We just got a mailing about two shows at Marc Selwyn Fine Art in Los Angeles curated by Simon Watson/Scenic.

The first is a show of works by Paul P. We’re big fans of Paul’s work and own a painting plus a couple of works on paper. The second is a group show that includes the likes of Christian Holstad, Terence Koh, Ann Craven, Wangechi Mutu, Scott Treleaven, and Joe Ovelman.

Both open May 1 (6-8pm) and run through June 19.

Newsday has a nice essay today by Matthew Shenoda on Arab culture and literature. An excerpt:

A survey of any of the major forces in contemporary Arab literature teaches us that while U.S. media have painted Arabs as villains of humanity, the truth is that dignity and a connection to place are central to Arab identity. We learn that the preservation of a peaceful life in one’s home is a major theme in Arab literature. We learn that resistance as an innate part of people who deeply love their home and their humanity comes second to a celebration of life. We learn a reverence for nature.

In the midst of the horror of a U.S.-led war, we can look to Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef to understand that in his Basra, a child learns, “that when rain falls in mist/there will be no lightning at the end/of the horizon,/no thunder in the heart,/no wave on the river.” Is this child now grown to be a “thug,” as Rumsfeld claims, or is he a person yearning to reconnect with his land, to provide a place for his family to live and grow, a place in which to gaze out on a horizon that will not be dotted by missiles?

In Darwish’s monumental memoir “Memory of Forgetfulness,” which chronicles his experience being exiled in Beirut during the 1982 war, he writes, “They can aim sea, sky, and earth at me, but they cannot root the aroma of coffee out of me.” Here we see coffee being used as an ancient symbol with roots in Abyssinia and Arabia to reflect a part of the very being of Darwish, a symbol rooted in the land, an aroma that cannot be erased by any amount of force.

Syrian poet Adonis, too, speaks of his connections to place in his poem “Remembering the First Century,” when he writes, “A mountain speaks its name/to me./ After all, I have/some credentials.” His credentials are roots tracing back beyond written record – his credentials are centuries of lineage in that place.

What many citizens of the United States do not have the opportunity to witness is the beauty of the Arab world, the way olive groves grace the landscape, the way children sit at the feet of their grandmothers, the way an ancient way of life has survived despite centuries of foreign occupation. And so perhaps the greatest understanding is for the people of the United States to see that Arabs are an ancient people, that the bombs over Iraq and the siege of Palestine are seeking to wipe out memory, the memory of history, of ancient and revered places, places we are all in some ways linked to.

Perhaps we need to learn that if we wipe out and erase Iraq and Palestine, we will, as Qabbani has learned, see that we are striking out half our own lives. Think of the beauty, as Darwish does, next time you smell the aroma of coffee.

Handel’s Tamerlano at 2003 Spoleto Festival U.S.A.
photos by Lenore Doxsee

Our good friend David Zinn, costume and set designer extraordinaire, has a new web site. We first saw his work as a little baby designer with Target Margin, with whom he continues to work, in addition to more famous venues such as New York City Opera and Santa Fe Opera.

When we saw his Flavio at New York City Opera, the audience applauded the set changes.

Tamerlano is an opera by Handel loosely based on the life of Timur, a conqueror and ruler in 14th century Central Asia. Suitably for an opera set in that region of the world, being produced last summer at an American music festival, David didn’t ignore what was going on at the time.

In Handel’s rarely mounted Tamerlano, the defeated Bajazet…wore traditional sultan’s robes, while his corporate conquerors, barking orders and gleefully dividing the spoils, sported snazzy business suits. Mixing sexual and power politics, the libretto is nearly incomprehensible, but its centre–Bajazet losing his culture, his dignity and his daughter–is tragically clear. David Zinn’s cunning set was littered with ancient books and other looted treasures at the front of the stage, and endless, empty bookshelves at the rear.

— Jack Sullivan, Opera Magazine