Autumn Almanac 2010
September 7th, 2010Back to school! Yes, oh yes, here’s my autumn almanac:
New spaces: Rental Gallery moves to a new space at 30 Orchard Street designed by Andrew Ong, and James Fuentes Gallery moves to Delancey and Eldridge. Uptown, Taxter & Spengemann reopens at 459 West 18th St and Bortolami Gallery just around the corner at 520 w 20th.
At Taxter, SVA faculty member A.L. Steiner breaks in the new space with Community Action Center, a join effort with AK Burns. Steiner is currently featured in Greater New York 2010 at PS1/MoMA, where she recently hosted a discussion with faux-vocateur Ann Liv Young. Always a vital collaborator and queen-bee of lesbian art in NYC, Steiner is kicking off another action-packed year, with an upcoming show at Horton Gallery’s Schwester space in Berlin.
Get in, sit down, hold on, and ACT UP! ACT UP NEW YORK: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis, 1987 – 1993 looms as the knockout show of the season, timely in its compelling politics, while the mainstream political pendulum swings back to the right, picking up more corrosion and slime in its grave trajectory, and while same-sex marriage and DADT are on the verge of revolution. The press release claims that this show “will offer an occasion to consider the ongoing role alternative arts organizations continue to play in defining the cultural politics of their time.”
On September 12th, Eleven Rivington debuts with SVA alum and faculty member TM Davy, who opens his first, and well-deserved, solo show. TM’s repertoire includes paintings on a variety of supports, including bedsheets and pillowcases, of his domestic life. The sexual imagery is explicit, but only because of his gift for picturesque candor, and not because he is desperate for cock-shock. Moreover, TM’s formal rigor, vast vocabulary, and masterful craftsmanship justify every peep in his show.
And in October, SVA faculty member Keith Mayerson opens his fourth solo show at Derek Eller Gallery. Keith is a painter’s painter, but he is more importantly an artist’s artist, and an artist’s curator, having recently organized NeoIntegrity: Comics Edition at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, including more than 200 artists from almost every mode of distribution: syndication, self-publishing, art gallery, underground, and basement hermitude.