KAMIAR’S MONTHLY REPORT

DECEMBER 2020 | NEW YORK EDITION


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Showing Up: Art’s Healing Potential

This month, Kamiar’s Monthly Report takes a trip stateside where we find our Gallery Liaison, Brian Fee. Read on for creative insights and mask etiquette as Brian takes a deep dive into the vast New York City art landscape.

Donna Ruff, The Subject Speaks Its Own Importance, Rick Wester Fine Art

Donna Ruff, The Subject Speaks Its Own Importance, Rick Wester Fine Art

Timed entry in 30-minute increments, reserved in advance. QR codes posted outside that you scan to take a self-check health assessment prior to entry. Temperature readings that involve staring into a mirrored screen, akin to that photo scan during immigration at the airport, only far more high-tech. Hand sanitizer and disposable masks at the offer. Embarking on a gallery “parkour” in New York is quite different in the midst of the pandemic. And yet, once I was several galleries in, pings of normalcy washed over, coupled with an assured sense of exhilaration and peace. When experienced in-person, art compels, and art heals. It has been great to be back in it!

I planned my routes via the aforementioned online appointments, contacting gallerist colleagues, and even the Instagram DM. I had not been back to West Chelsea, nor the Lower East Side gallery hub, since the eve of Covid-19, so I had no idea if I would be greeted by a ghost town or business as usual. In the end, it was more the latter, albeit with everyone “masked up”.


Director/Curator Danny Baez and Brian Fee pose by Joiri Minaya’s work in The Privilege of Getting Together at Regular Normal.

Director/Curator Danny Baez and Brian Fee pose by Joiri Minaya’s work in The Privilege of Getting Together at Regular Normal.

Danny Baez — aka @dannylowgram, co-founder of Art Noir and MECA Art Fair, busy curator at large, and among the most genuine and sweet people I know in the scene — has been hint dropping for weeks now these studio visits on Instagram, each entitled “The privilege of getting together.” It was only very recently, when artist and dear friend Joiri Minaya reposted Danny’s visit to her studio that I realized, “hold up, Danny’s building a show!” And there it is, The Privilege of Getting Together, inaugurating Danny’s space Regular Normal on the Bowery.

In addition to Joiri there are strong works by Xiomara Martínez, Larissa De Jesús Negrón, Na’Ye Perez, Walter Cruz, Bony Ramirez (who is in a concurrent solo show at Thierry Goldberg Gallery), and more. Spending time in this space amongst these great young artists, with Bony holding court as Danny and I chopped it up, I felt the exhibition title very present and true: in times like these, getting together and experiencing art together is a gift.

Xiomara Martínez, from The Privilege of Getting Together, Regular Normal.

Xiomara Martínez, from The Privilege of Getting Together, Regular Normal.

Bony Ramirez, from The Privilege of Getting Together, Regular Normal.

Bony Ramirez, from The Privilege of Getting Together, Regular Normal.


Titus Kaphar, Twins (2020), Gagosian Gallery

Titus Kaphar, Twins (2020), Gagosian Gallery

Arriving to West Chelsea and its perennial/perpetual construction work, I took in Nina Chanel Abney’s joyous solo show The Great Escape at Jack Shainman’s 20 Street location with the gallery entirely to myself. Her idyllic scenes of Black folks grilling, cycling, gardening, and just living peacefully together is a balm and a blessing against the crippling reality of white supremacy in the United States.

Titus Kaphar’s solo From a Tropical Place at Gagosian’s 21 Street gallery is fraught and tense, featuring Black mothers embracing and protecting the haunted absence of children within a vivid, apocalyptic suburban backdrop.

Over at Ethan Cohen Fine Art, Virginia-based Mexican artist and DACA recipient Raul De Lara traces his autobiography and immigration to the United States over 11 years ago in wood and mixed materials, in I Wake Up in a Foreign Country Every Day.

Donna Ruff installs a gripping portrait of the Southern U.S. border crisis and refugees’ plight, interspersed with historic texts from the Federalist Papers, in The Subject Speaks Its Own Importance at Rick Wester Fine Art. Slag Gallery features a great group show This Is Not Enough, curated by Sophie Olympia Riese, that includes LaTonia Allen, whom I know from HMAAC/Houston Museum of African American Culture and her subsequent SVA/School of Visual Arts graduation show. Rico Gatson opens a color and geometric triumph, Ghosts, at Miles McEnery Gallery, in concert with his ongoing Icons series of Black cultural beacons.

Victori+Mo shows this excellent and interactive new media suite by Michael Gittes, entitled Purgatorio, which opened purposefully on Election Night and concludes on the eve of Inauguration Day 2021. Considering the visual harmonies on offer and the results of this election, this builds some hope for the future.

Nina Chanel Abney, from The Great Escape, Jack Shainman Gallery

Nina Chanel Abney, from The Great Escape, Jack Shainman Gallery

Raul De Lara, 28 Years Later (2020), Ethan Cohen Fine Art

Raul De Lara, 28 Years Later (2020), Ethan Cohen Fine Art

Celine Mo, director of Victori+Mo, operates the control panel to Michael Gittes’ immersive audio-visual presentation, Purgatorio

Celine Mo, director of Victori+Mo, operates the control panel to Michael Gittes’ immersive audio-visual presentation, Purgatorio


Marie Watt, Turtle Island, Marc Straus Gallery

Marie Watt, Turtle Island, Marc Straus Gallery

The LES is a more chill affair overall.

Foley Gallery recently installed a new group show in their gallery windows, including small totems by b and a lush painted and collaged composition by Bradley Castellanos, whom was one of the artists Foley presented at VOLTA New York this year.

Frosch&Portmann is showing Eva Lake’s latest photo collage series Cactus Flowers, which follows the Portland-based artist’s participation in previous VOLTA Basel fairs.

Meanwhile Marc Straus marks Marie Watt’s magnificent solo debut, Turtle Island, comprised of grand textiles, meticulous beadwork, and sculptures exemplifying the “Skywoman” of the Iroquois origin story.

Eva Lake, Cactus Flowers, Frosch&Portmann

Eva Lake, Cactus Flowers, Frosch&Portmann


Jean Katambayi Mukendi, from Quarantaine, Ramiken

Jean Katambayi Mukendi, from Quarantaine, Ramiken

Gallery-going in Brooklyn, my home, is always an adventure and I planned a purposefully diverse route over the course of one sunny Saturday. I began in the industrial divide between Ridgewood/Maspeth and Bushwick, amid recycling plants and wholesale distributors of work shoes, lighting fixtures, and the like. Ramiken showcased a lush body of pen on paper Afrolampe works by Congolese artist Jean Katambayi Mukendi, which the artist created entirely in quarantine at his home studio in Lubumbashi as he was unable to travel to the States to work here. Ramiken heads to Miami for a seasonal pop-up in the Design District next, and I am keen to follow their progress and “visit them” virtually.

Nearby, Selena’s Mountain reopened their space with Rebel Irreverence, an amazing and interdisciplinary show by my dear friend Tamara Santibañez, after offering their space to Tamara for a two-month studio stay to realize this body of work. I have clocked over 20 hours in Tamara’s chair as a tattoo client, plus countless more spent in their studios and socially, and this exhibition of intersecting heritage and subculture — Mexican-American, queer, punk, fetish — is both sensitive and sublime. Selena’s Mountain is participating in Future Fair’s Holiday Market through mid-December.

Finally, I moved over to Bed-Stuy, among the handsome brownstone blocks, to Ivy N. Jones’ gallery Welancora, to immerse in Aisha Tandiwe Bell’s second solo at the gallery, AKIN. Welancora is participating in UNTITLED, Art.’s upcoming OVR fair in December, marking this among the gallery’s first art fairs, and I believe it is a good move to draw more attention to brilliance going down every day in Bed-Stuy.

Welancora Gallery director Ivy N. Jones and I reflect upon Aisha Tandiwe Bell’s solo show AKIN

Welancora Gallery director Ivy N. Jones and I reflect upon Aisha Tandiwe Bell’s solo show AKIN

Tamara Santibañez, Sombrero and Jacket, in Rebel Irreverence at Selena’s Mountain

Tamara Santibañez, Sombrero and Jacket, in Rebel Irreverence at Selena’s Mountain


Gallerists employ multiple strategies as they have pivoted to survive and even thrive in this new normal. Some have brought ArtLand into the fold to add a VR experience to their installations, providing viewers an outlet to be present and “feel” themselves in the show. Others have added chat features with clients prospective and known, akin to that of viewing rooms in online art fairs.

The LES Gallery Night occurs monthly now since the autumn, with extended hours for participating galleries, and even with capacity limits and social distancing at play, art-lovers can still do that “art parkour” routine. I will be more present in the weeks and months ahead, as the city continues to adjust, heal, live with “this thing”, and move on toward a brighter 2021.

Text and images: Brian Fee

Follow @kammaleki and @voltaartfairs for more art insights.


 

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