tagged with: GalleryBeat Media

I rarely attend these museum parties anymore but I wanted to see this show, "150 Diverse Black Males", and be in a crowd where I really didn't know anyone. Turns out I knew about two, and met more, but I was an observer to another part of art culture that was a complex video/doc driven black male experience mash. I really wanted to see what, and who, were a part of producing this ambitious project of identity.

The GalleryBeat live talk show, COOKING WITH GALLERYBEAT, avoided the skillet again by not cooking with strange fruit. We performed at the Brooklyn Museum's architectural futurama, the Rubin Pavilion on October 6th, 2011 as part of the museum's Thursday Night Series. Guests for this show were Mercer St. Medical's Dr. Daryl Isaacs, ArtNews Chief Editor Robin Cembalest, Upright Citizens Brigade's Ann Carr, World artist man/wife team Spencer and Kristin Bowler Tunick, and BM's main event artist, Sanford Biggers.

ARTIST BRIAN ALFRED - Interview 1 > 5 mins

A few years back, he started to do well as an artist, first with New york art dealer Max Protetch, then Mary Boone, and then to London's mega gallery, Haunch of Venison. You can see his work on his website paintchanger.com. His work is a very distinctively skillful blend of painting, collage, and digital images that early on, focused on landscape but I first know him for his portraits that I saw in Mercer St. Medical, and worked back through his output to the work he is best known for. He was admired by his peers, known for extreme focus on his subject, a relentless work ethic and was approached by New York art dealers before he graduated. He'd encountered real interest for his work real fast, and deservedly so. The influences on his work run from Hokusai and Japanese woodblock print art to Warhol and Ruscha but of course there's more. (he grew up in Pittsburg PA) His work is clear, precise, and had gone though a palpable change since 9/11. It has, in many ways become neo-Orwellian.  more »

Here's the card. The line-up. The locator map. Curated by Henry Sanchez and including Phil (Brainpan) Beuhler, Carla (RunningDear) Gannis, Eve Andrea Laramee, Eto Otitigbe, then around the block to Curator Sanchez. Mash that landscape, boys and girls! Now if the L rain is running on Saturday the 5th... The equivalent of a good review is 'preview', and I say do the preview, so do it.

While many in the hoch-kunst elite and it's hopefuls would rather turn a blind eye (the other is tone deaf) to the union-busting attempts at the lower wage scale employees of Sotheby's - the online art zine HYPERALLERGIC seems pretty busy looking at the not pretty picture of big ticket art, and producing content on it's discontents. I'm liking it. I recommend it, even if one of it's sponsors is part of the problem.

Odd Nerdrum, the Norwegian artist sentenced to two years in jail for tax evasion, won’t be allowed to keep painting in prison. He’s appealing his sentence, but if it stands, the 67-year-old Nerdrum will have to leave his brushes and easels behind.

Newspaper Aftenposten reported that the Justice Ministry has stressed that convicted prisoners aren’t allowed to continue their business activities while held in custody. For someone like Nerdrum, who has lived off income from sales of his artwork, his passion for painting will thus conflict with regulations governing prison terms.

It’s different for other convicts, who have been allowed to paint, read or conduct approved hobbies as a means of passing the time in jail. Aftenposten noted that convicted robber Johnny Thendrup, for example, sentenced to 13 years in prison for the commando-style NOKAS heist in 2004, took up his old hobby of painting while his case was pending. He has since continued to paint while incarcerated at the Ila prison for high-risk criminals outside Oslo.  more »