ArtBUZZ: March 18-March 25, 2010
Courtesy of Pierogi
WILLIAMSBURG
Pierogi: “Jim Torok: Portraits and Clowns”
Opening Reception: Friday, March 19th, 6-8pm
Jim Torok is known for both his photo realistic, miniature portraits and his narrative storyboard, cartoon-like paintings, both based on acute observation. His portraits are generally of ordinary people he knows- artists, friends, neighbors- they are small studies of fact and plainness. His cartoon works are simultaneously hilarious and sobering, innocently optimistic and cynical, because they state so plainly what us known but most often left unsaid.
Mr. Torok’s portraits are compelling studies that range from objective, life-like representations of real people, to entirely subjective, spontaneous abstractions. At first glance these two bodies of work appear completely unrelated, but they have a real and fortunate co-existence.
Black & White Gallery: “Julian Montague: Secondary Occupants Collected & Observed”
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 20th, 6-9pm
A site-specific installation occupying both the indoor and outdoor spaces of the gallery, and included multiple aspects of animal/architecture engagement. The point of departure for the work is an investigation of the way animals (vertebrate and invertebrate) play a part in physically and conceptually transforming interior spaces into exterior ones. For this project, Mr. Montague collected and analyzed the types of insects and other pests that move into abandoned properties. Both the indoor and outdoor portions of the installation will feature graphic icons of animal occupiers suspended by a network of long white strings attached to elaborate maps and diagrams of houses and buildings in the indoor gallery and a rotting garden shed in the outdoor gallery.
Norman Mooney, Wall Flower No. 1, 2010, Cast aluminum with pigment, 6 feet diameter. Courtesy of Causey Contemporary.
Causey Contemporary: “Norman Mooney: Wall Flowers”
Opening Reception: Friday, March 19th, 6-9pm
This exhibition features new wall and floor sculptures by Irish artist Norman Mooney- who uses bright colors in place of the grays, blacks, and whites he previously worked with. Wall Flower No. 1, measuring six feet in diameter, is an explosion of pollen yellows. The piece consists of over 500 aluminum castings, all projecting outward four feet off the wall.
Mr. Mooney is inspired by the larger experience of the natural world, and his attempt to understand the joy, wonder, and beauty one experiences when feeling the first rays of the sun on your face in the morning, the explosion of color bursting from a flower, or the etherealness of seeds floating in the wind. Formally, Mr. Mooney challenges the viewer to evaluate their place in the natural world and to engage them in a larger intuited reality.
BROOKLYN HEIGHTS / DOWNTOWN
BRIC Rotunda Gallery: “A Wild Gander: Artists from the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective”
Opening Reception: March 24th, 7-9pm
A Wild Gander features Chitra Ganesh, Mala Iqbal, Jesal Kapadia, Yamini Nayar, and Divya Mehra- five New York-based artists. The title of the exhibition is drawn from Joseph Campbell’s collection of essays, The Flight of the Wild Gander, which references the Sanskrit concept of the paramahamsa, an enlightened spiritual teacher who transcends the mundane, just as geese are able to transcend the earth through flight. This sage also feels at home both on water and on land, analogous to a person who adeptly negotiates disparate geopolitical cultural codes. The artists taking part in this show do so, reflecting the complex issues that frame South Asian identity, whether based on gender, media representations, or politics.
