Keith Mayerson just opened his sixth solo show at Derek Eller Gallery.  Titled My American Dream, the show is a narrative series that consolidates Keith’s autobiographical experience with his political and spiritual outlook.  Keith covers marriage, family, New York City, rural America, James Dean, icons, death, the subconscious, storms, and what the mind sees.

Keith is the son of a psychoanalyst, the husband of a professor, a mentor to countless students and artists, and a brilliant painter.  My American Dream is a prismatic album of warm memories, cool observations, inward exploration, and cosmic wonder.  Marriage is a touchstone of Keith’s worldview, as it was for Kierkegaard, who described it as an essential stage in the metamorphosis of a maturing person.  For Keith, it also open ups new social dimensions: the family, the state, the country.  Husband as citizen; citizen as husband.  It is like naturalization for the mind (and heart).

Keith Mayerson, Husbands (Andrew and I), 2012

Husbands (Andrew and I), 2012 is the best window into this show (though Family, 2013 is the best seat). Keith and his real-life husband, Andrew, pose for a #selfie at their home in California, where they married before California passed Prop 8; that is, before church-driven forces spent a fortune to mislead the public into denying Constitutional rights to an unpopular minority. Times are better now. Since the show opened, two more U.S. states have passed marriage equality and one embraced civil unions. But more central to the painting, which Keith has described as his own private Jewish Bride, is how its beatific religiosity overpowers the secular topic. Keith and Andrew look graceful and splendid in a bond that no zealot, storm, nor communist menace could tear asunder.  A light that never goes out falls centrally upon them, the spectrally striated sky behind them seems to roil with volcanic murmurs, colors shift and shimmer, and space appears to rush toward us as Keith-Andrew hurtle across the universe.

From Keith's previous show: Our Wedding, July 22, 2008, Meadbrook, CA, 2010

That cosmic awareness makes an experience that is almost out-of-body in View from our Chelsea Window, 2012. The only thing real is waking and rubbing your eyes, and in this painting, it’s like waking up really late or really early.  Historical uncertainty.  An American flag, clewed up, halfway, like a rising eyelid, reveals a golden street scene. One could pause to admire how the vertical buildings outside square off with the horizontal window frame and will, or one could move on and consider the purple and intimate private space inside sheltered from the brassy public space outside.  And then we learn that on July 4th, Keith and Andrew layed in bed to watch the Independence Day fireworks outside their window, which actually does have an American flag as a window dressing. Two joined souls are sharing a bed, contemplating the long history that made this moment possible; they share a bed and a consciousness, looking together through one eye.

Keith Mayerson, View from our Chelsea Window, 2012

A theme that precedes the topics listed above is commitment, which is an ethical choice.  Most of the paintings in this show depict behavior and activity that require commitment.  Marriage is an obvious example.  Family, too.  Surviving in NYC is a commitment.  Painting is definitely a commitment.  Insistently looking inward is a commitment.  Researching James Dean could be a commitment, but it strikes me as obsession, which is a relative of commitment, but possibly younger.

Keith Mayerson Family, 2013

Check out How Things Are Made, curated by Sam Gordon, at Spot Welders.  Spot Welders is a busy post-production studio in a new space designed by 1100 Architects with custom furniture by Roy McMakin.  Sam Gordon is a busy artist with shows currently up at Feature, Inc and Printed Matter, as well as a curated performance series at NADA NYC called Contemporary Dancing.

How Things are Made, Alpha at Spot Welders

How Things Are Made examines “the processes artists use to make their work and how that may reflect meaning into the results,” according to Sam, whose recent work has combined layered fabrics, clothing remnants, and studio sweepings in abstract paintings.  The exhibition will unfold in three parts, a point that uncovers the “facture” of a curated show, alongside the entries in that show.

Guyton/Walker and Magic Flying Carpets of the Berber Kingdom of Morocco at Spot Welders

How Things Are Made, Alpha includes Katherine Bernhardt, Lucky DeBellevue, Daphne Fitzpatrick, Jake Ewert, Mariah Robertson, William Kentridge, Magic Flying Carpets of the Berber Kingdom of Morocco, Boro Textiles (courtesy of Sri Threads), Guyton/Walker (courtesy of Maharam Digital Projects), Stuart Sherman & Takeshi Murata (courtesy of EAI).

Magic Flying Carpets of the Berber Kingdom of Morocco

Jake Ewert’s painted pizzas are a highlight, as are Daphne Fitzpatrick’s photos and her 3D-printed pipe miniature.  Katherine Bernhardt’s paintings interact beautifully with the Moroccan carpets arranged throughout the studio.  And Stuart Sherman’s diagrammatic performances on video embody the theme of the show.  But everything in this show is terrific and I’m seeking an internship at Spot Welders so I can see Lucky DeBellevue’s dreamcatcher in daylight, every day.

Katherine Bernhardt at Spot Welders

Lucky DeBellevue and Jake Ewert at Spot Welders

A key precedent to the show is Peter Kubelka’s infamous beer commercial, described this way:

“In 1957, Peter Kubelka was hired to make a short commercial for Scwechater beer. The beer company undoubtedly thought they were commissioning a film that would help them sell their beers; Kubelka had other ideas. He shot his film with a camera that did not even have a viewer, simply pointing it in the general direction of the action. He then took many months to edit his footage, while the company fumed and demanded a finished product. Finally he submitted a film, 90 seconds long, that featured extremely rapid cutting between images of dimly visible people drinking beer and of the froth of beer seen in a fully abstract pattern.”

Daphne Fitzpatrick at Spot Welders

A Pop Up “Souk” and opportunity to tour the exhibition takes place Friday, May 10th, 3-6pm at Spot Welders, 44 East 32nd Street, 5th Floor.

All of the above images are by Steven Probert!

Swing State is a group show in a temporary space that curator and dealer Jane Kim has opened on Hester Street.  The show “embraces our world of uncertainty” and captures “the gray area that thrives between extremes.”  Although its electoral college nomenclature seems a few months late, it’s actually quite timely.  For example, we all know by now how a few democrat senators voted against their party, sinking new and reasonable gun legislation, possibly fearful of the next election.  Meanwhile, hear the accelerating rhythm of republican senators switching over to support marriage equality.  Or less politically, there’s this week’s “Grasshopper” rocket, which SpaceX successfully launched straight up and then straight back down, with a few seconds of apparent floating?  (Left and right, next launch?)

Jane Kim Gallery

Hence, Swing State “looks at the middle state between two places, whether in presidential elections, or in the creative states where the middle ignites ideas that are sometimes vulnerable and full of doubt.” The show features some frequently exhibited “fixtures” among our artist peers, and while some connections between them seem established, others strike me as surprising.

(l-r) Lisa Beck, Steve diBenedetto, Fabian Marcaccio, Tamara Gonzalez in "Swing State" (IMAGE: Tom Powell)

For example, Steve diBenedetto and Fabian Marcaccio have chosen awesomely grotesque, dense images that evoke violence and isolation; Marcaccio “swings” between painting, printing, and sculpture.  They also exhibited together in a 2009 show that deBenedetto curated at David Nolan Gallery.  Nearby, Thomas Nozkowski and David Shaw, combined, open up new possibilities.  Here, Shaw exhibits a painting, instead of his sculptures built from natural wood forms, but this painting and those wood sculptures harmonize with Nozkowski’s floor sculpture, Untitled. Both combine natural, earth-derived materials with manufactured, recreational elements. And the Nozkowski sculpture here hasn’t been seen since he showed it in 1976 at the legendary Betty Parsons Gallery.

Thomas Nozkowski, "Untitled," 1976

Another surprise was the trio of sculptures by Joanne Greenbaum that look like viscera and entrails after the Phagwah Parade. The flexibly architectural abstractions I’ve seen of hers at D’Amelio Terras were always energizing, but I’d never seen her sculptures – a “swing” across media?  They strike me as more tightly wound and pent up than her paintings, layered and beaming palimpsests in which spaces are often open fields. Here, spaces are tightening channels.

Joanne Greenbaum sculptures (IMAGE: Tom Powell)

Jane Kim is no stranger to the Lower East Side. Her previous gallery, Thrust Projects, was based at 114 Bowery, before most of the LES stalwarts.  Thrust Projects exhibited artists who were increasingly in demand – R.H. Quaytman, Carrie Moyer, Ben Butler – and artists well established (Amy Sillman, David Humphrey, Lisa Yuskavage).

The gallery also features a “book hub” with printed material about the Swing State artists.

What is Matthew Chambers doing to painting?

Matthew Chambers at Untitled Gallery

In his fourth solo show in NYC, he exhibits 62 (or so I counted) upright paintings, tightly tiled edge to edge in two rows. One is made from overlaid strips of wood, and another is made from old T-shirts; all are 4×8 feet, standard size for building materials, like plywood. Hundreds of smaller paintings, prints, and drawings are bundled into books of canvas and paper. He seems to be a rapacious devourer of both abstraction and representation, but more of a fast eater than a relishing gourmand. That is, the show moves fast.

Matthew Chambers at Untitled Gallery

His quotidian interests include pets, food, liquor, ads, other art and art shows, himself, his materials, jokes, and fun. He claims to paint without wearing his glasses, which offers a theory to rival the possibility that he paints naively on purpose. Or it’s a nod to Renoir: When Renoir tried new glasses to correct his vision, he exclaimed: Bon Dieu, je vois comme Bouguereau! (“Good God, I see like Bouguereau!”).

A Matthew Chambers book at Untitled Gallery

Chambers says that each painting is a frame in a visual story that can be re-written infinite times. TO think of a painting as a “frame” invokes his former occupation as an M.F.A. student in filmmaking.

A Matthew Chambers book at Untitled Gallery

“Painted with remorseless gusto and installed cheek to jowl,” wrote Roberta Smith in her review of his 2009 show. “Robust and grim: painterly with an overload of Conceptual attitude.” But this show seems to bring all-inclusive range. The paintings, drawings, and prints are variously funny (his self-portrait in floating hearts), clever (a pineapple forming from a diagonal grid), tender (a baseball snug in a glove), and rad (an abstract pattern that looks like snakeskin) but sometimes kind of self-satisfied and insider (ads for other shows and/at the Mandrake bar). We have to acknowledge, given what’s in front of us, Chambers’ intentional message of constant production and vast output. But what about reservation, rumination, and reflection? Does everything make it out of the studio? Is each painting meant to have a disposable quality?

A Matthew Chambers book at Untitled Gallery

What I took away from this show of uniformly scaled paintings is a leveling sensibility. All the paintings begin and end the same size, they sample eclectic image banks, and nothing is too silly, not even a skateboarding banana. But if everything is valid, then Matthew Chambers can’t lose. Isn’t painting at its best when it’s risky?

Feet on the Ground

Tonight at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, SVACE instructor Ofri Cnaani debuts Seven Words, a multimedia installation featuring original, live-mixed video!  The work combines the music of Haydn with prints from the Museum’s collection.  The artist writes:

Screen simulation of "Seven Words" by Ofri Cnaani

“Seven Words formed into a piece about reading and writing—translating times and eras, languages and cultures—and the various toolboxes used to create and transform meanings. While the piece revolves around a moment of an extreme physicality, ecstasy, and final surrender, I was looking at more nuanced, metaphorical visual moments that capture the core idea of transformation and generate a conversation between those who write culture and their readers.”

This concert will be live-streamed from the Met’s website.