Look, if you had one shot

or one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted, one moment: Would you capture it or just let it slip?

I am creating illustrations by tracing a single line. (Suguru Mikami)

Illustration by Suguru Mikami

Do you remember Talitha?

Of course you do. You never forgot her extraordinary beauty. I know she intoxicated you. You found her in the streets on a cold night in January. She had missed the last bus, it was late and she didn’t have any money for a taxi. She was chilled to the marrow when you brought her to our apartment and I was wondering. Wondering about how generously you had taken that girl with you and I saw in you that you had done it because you are human.

This girl was not afraid, she thanked you and hugged me as if I was a friend whom she had met again after years. Then she sat at the table with us. I set the table and she lit up candles. She was asking us questions and told us stories. Stories about her journeys to far away places with names that I had never heard before. She told us about God, who appears in stones, about warm waterfalls, about big, black men who always wanted to touch her hair and about all the colors she had tasted above the roofs of the red city.

You could not take your eyes off her lips while she was talking and you laughed about her. Not to ridicule her, no, you laughed heartfelt. I drank wine and over the rim of my wineglass I looked at you and Talitha, I drank very slowly and then put the glass back on the table. In the seconds that your laughter lasted it made no difference if I existed in your life or not. It did not matter which color my skin was or what it felt like. In this moment I realized all of that. Talitha. How strange. One name I remember.

Artwork by Magdalena Cornford

on the inside

A twilight implosion into a lightening delight:
A comet descends from scoring a white arc into a dark fall.

CITY OF SHADOWS, ST. PETERSBURG

Life is pain, life is fear, and man is unhappy. Now all is pain and fear. Now man loves life because he loves pain and fear. That's how they've made it.

Life now is given in exchange for pain and fear, and that is the whole deceit. Man now is not yet the right man. There will be a new man, happy and proud.

He for whom it will make no difference whether he lives or does not live, he will be the new man. He who overcomes pain and fear will himself be God. And this God will not be. (Fjodor Dostojewskij, The Possessed)

Photography Alexey Titarenko

I don't want to lose you, Puppet

From Russia with Love.

Я с ума по тебе схожу

И всё время хочу повторять

Я люблю тебя, слышишь, люблю

Photography Nikolay Bakharev

CARLA GANNIS, Everything That Rises Must Converge

Personal Mind Reflections

On Exhibition

At

Pablo's Birthday

526 Canal Street, New York

Resistance, Liberté!

You need to grow up, they say. Grow up.

Their eyes sniffle all over my body and their noses try

to steal the truth from me. I hide. I have to. I never will grow up.

Not the way they want me to.

You have to grow up, they say

while their echos slowly die away in the distance.

Photography by Michael Chelbin

Mario Schifano 'Senzo Titolo"

Andre Lanskoy Composition

streetart Lower East Side

Andy Warhol "Think Rich, Look Poor."

'Macs' by Yana Toyber

The Eclipse

I stood out in the open cold
To see the essence of the eclipse
Which was its perfect darkness.

I stood in the cold on the porch
And could not think of anything so perfect
As mans hope of light in the face of darkness.


Richard Eberhart

'The Box' Lower East Side

"The book I begin to write is in her eyes" Photography by Derrick Leung writing by Mark M. Whelan

the smell of bergmot drifted across the gardens swirling and twirling in invisible plumes of perfume until they were inhaled by the girl sitting next to me and yes she looked at the fountain and she looked
                                                                 

 

at him watching her and as she breathes in the delicate and distinct aroma she notices me watching her and the book I begin to write is in her eyes and it took me back to the tribeca grand hotel and the tea diffuses into the water reaching out to the confines of its cup in clouds of colour.  

I can't afford NY..image by Yana Toyber extract from Mark M. Whelan's short story 'Escapism'

Next morning he woke up late after an uncomfortable night sleep in his dirty sheets, unrefreshed, unwashed and somewhat slightly dazed. He awoke tired and empty and as he came to realize that the blur in front of him was actually his room. It was quite a large room in the projects yet was always cold and damp, he had tried to disguise the yellowed walls with posters of bands, girls and graffiti. Despite his attempts to improve the room he could not spend much time in there awake and straight; it barely saw the sun and the ceiling was low... the room was like a claustrophobic prison cell. The furniture was equally tatty; there were two chairs, a broken office chair that he had managed to recover from the street on Rivington right next to The Box and a brown seventies fold up chair for guests, a teak style finish desk next to his bed that supported his dusty stereo and a wooden pallet roll that was used to house thick underground cables had been converted into a television table. By the window lay a mattress without a base which served as a makeshift sofa and as a bed. He slept on it as if it were a sofa, fully clothed on many an occasion. The mattress was old and the springs had been depressed by his form over the years like a foot print in the snow, underneath the mattress was encrusted with stains from both his body, drink and food. Despite his bed being soiled, the room was not untidy, the few possessions that he had were carefully laid out, his c.d.’s were stacked alphabetically and his magazines were pilled on top of one another chronologically. It was a place where he existed, not lived..because this was not living, it was survival.

Georges Mathieu composition

Marija Pavlovska

The NYC-based Macedonian artist Marija Pavlovska was born in Skopje, Republic Of Macedonia in 1975. She holds a Masters Degree in Painting from the  Academy of Fine Arts in Skopje, Macedonia and has had 20 solo exhibitions and more than 100 group exhibitions in Europe and the USA in Vienna, Paris, Skopje, Nuremberg, Sofia, Belgrade and New York. Her work is held in private and public collections worldwide, including embassies, museums, galleries and libraries. etc

Her work is in a modernist / minimalist expressive tradition of early 20th century  Eastern European / Russian artists like Wassily Kandinsky and American artists such as Robert Motherwell, Cy Twombly and Franz Kline. Critics have described her work as having "a strong personality" which "translates her topics of choice into pictorial language that demonstrates a quietly powerful eloquence"

Often her work reflects painting as a battlefield, where light and darkness fight and the result is unpredictable, one sees the lightning bolts of ideas at work, as they are being worked out. This sort of simultaneous image "Process / Result " dialectic lies frozen in space, galvanising the viewer to actively participate in the image creation themselves by way of investigation, inviting myriad readings within a given theme.

Space Invader Art

Space Invader: Lower East Side and Brooklyn

Girls of Nevada by Yana Toyber

IPSA DIXIT: Marina Abramovic's Manifesto

On the 8^th of December, Marina Abramovic (1946) received the “Lorenzo il Magnifico” prize at the Florence International Biennale of Contemporary Art.

During the ceremony, the famous Jugoslavian performative artist held a conference - debat with the present audience about her career and her future plans (in 2012 she’s opening the “Marina Abramovic Institute”, focused on the art of performance) and read what she presented as her Manifesto (recalling how all main art movements from the XX century had had theirs and expressing the urge for a new one in current times): as you might not expect this is not a technical document about performance (the kind of art she masters) but rather a Decalogue about what an artist’s conduct of life is supposed to be.

She explained it was composed by roughly writing down everything coming out directly from her heart, basically with no rational brakes to the flow of thoughts and feelings.
The structure is built upon different focal points – probing different aspects of an artist’s life – faced one by one in different paragraphs, all ending with an obsessive three-lined refrain.

Some of the themes can be considered traditional, such as the importance given to a deep self-exploration – the key to bring to life universal artworks along with the line “artist is Universe”; or the quite sensible yet obvious statement “an artist should not kill another human being” – probably strictly connected to her historical background, Jugoslavia; again the suggested attitude about self-control, mandatory with the artworks and almost forbidden in private life.

On the other hand, new fundamental issues were introduced to those more common elements, adding unusual possible readings of the contemporary art scenario.

First of all, she spoke about suffering.
Suffering and its psychological implications are considered the main engine of the artistical process. An artist is supposed to suffer in order to create the best works and reach the necessary changes to evolve oneself.
But this is history, we all kind of know.
The further step Abramovic took, debating this point, is the distinction she marked with mental illnesses such as depression, strictly considered as an obstacle to artistic production itself.
She firmly stated how depression is a clinical disease and must be medically cured and treated . Depression has nothing to do with the art world and, along with that, an artist cannot be affected by it, while intended to create art pieces.

From here, the dissertation flows to the theme of suicide, openly mentioned and condemned:

“An artist should not commit suicide
An artist should not commit suicide
An artist should not commit suicide”

This is the obsessive refrain at the end of the paragraph opened with the line: “Suicide is a crime against life” .

Her takes on Death are carried on in the last parts of the Manifesto: she explains that an artist must earn the necessary awareness of his/her own mortality and let it lead him/her to a serene departing from this world. Leaving detailed instructions, an artist is also supposed to precisely organize his/her own funeral in advance, as the last art piece before one leaves, she says.

Other interesting personal contributes were about love-life (answering to some questions from the audience she explained how, after having experienced two 12 year-long love relationships with other artists, she got to her statement “an artist should not fall in love with another artist”)and the close connection between art and eros, since sexual impulses are the most genuine, natural and powerful energies animating life.

More like a personal, intimate and volontary confession rather than an artistic statement , the reading of this Manifesto confirmed the charismatic role Abramovic still embodies in contemporary art world, the voice of a woman who is not afraid to speak out.

Author: Cristiana Bedei

Photo: via re-title.com

Banksy on Lower East Side

Собачье сердце

"У-у-у-у-у-у-гу-гу-гугу-уу! О, гляньте, гляньте на меня, я погибаю! Вьюга в подворотне ревет мне отходную, и я вою с нею. Пропал я, пропал!"

Streetart Lower East Side

Pierre Soulages, Peinture

Pierre Soulages perd son père en 1924. Dès son plus jeune âge, il est fasciné par les vieilles pierres, les matériaux patinés et érodés par le temps, l'artisanat de son pays du Rouergue et ses âpres paysages, particulièrement les Causses. Il a tout juste huit ans lorsqu'il répond à une amie de sa sœur aînée qui lui demande ce qu’il est en train de dessiner à l’encre sur une feuille blanche : un paysage de neige. « Ce que je voulais faire avec mon encre, dit-il, c’était rendre le blanc du papier encore plus blanc, plus lumineux, comme la neige. C’est du moins l’explication que j’en donne maintenant. » il peint de façon rapide et colorée tout en restant dans les teintes plutôt sombres ,il donne de grands coups de pinceau en formant un esprit de rage tout en montrant précision et poésie, d'une certaine douceur, il peint concentré mais une expression de bonheur vient s'ajouter à la tache de rage qui ressort sous une symphonie de couleurs pures (rouge blanc etc)sur un fond sombre, cela exprime une sorte de rage dominée par le bonheur de vivre, une sorte de combat foudroyant entre un mental désespéré et coléreux contre un mental de bonheur, un jardin de floraison de joie.

À douze ans, son instituteur l’emmène, avec sa classe, visiter l’abbatiale Sainte-Foy de Conques, où se révèle sa passion de l’art roman et le désir confus de devenir un artiste. Il accompagne dans ses recherches un archéologue local et découvre lui-même au pied d’un dolmen des pointes de flèches et des tessons de poteries préhistoriques qui entrent au musée Fenaille de Rodez. Il reçoit aussi le choc émotionnel des peintures rupestres des grottes du Pech-Merle dans le Lot, de Font-de-Gaume en Dordogne, d’Altamira en Cantabrie (Espagne), puis de Lascaux en Dordogne (découverte en 1940).

Il commence à peindre dans son Aveyron natal avant de « monter à Paris » à dix-huit ans pour préparer le professorat de dessin et le concours d'entrée à l'école des beaux-arts. Il y est admis en 1938 mais il est vite découragé par la médiocrité de l'enseignement qu'on y reçoit et retourne à Rodez. Pendant ce bref séjour à Paris, il fréquente le musée du Louvre et voit des expositions de Cézanne et Picasso qui sont pour lui des révélations.

Il est mobilisé en 1940 mais démobilisé dès 1941. Il s'installe en zone libre, à Montpellier, et fréquente assidûment le Musée Fabre. Réfractaire au STO en 1942, il passe le reste de la guerre auprès de vignerons de la région qui le cachent.

En 1946, il s'installe dans la banlieue parisienne et se consacre désormais entièrement à la peinture. Il commence à peindre des toiles abstraites où le noir domine. Il les expose au Salon des indépendants en 1947, où ses toiles sombres détonnent au milieu des autres, très colorées : « Vous allez vous faire beaucoup d'ennemis », le prévient alors Picabia. Il trouve un atelier à Paris, rue Schoelcher, près de Montparnasse.

À partir de 1948, il participe à des expositions à Paris et en Europe, notamment à « Französische abstrakte malerei », dans plusieurs musées allemands, aux côtés des premiers maîtres de l'art abstrait comme Kupka, Domela, Herbin etc. En 1949, il obtient sa première exposition personnelle à la galerie Lydia Conti à Paris ; il expose également à la galerie Otto Stangl, de Munich, à l´occasion de la fondation du groupe Zen 49. En 1950, il figure dans des expositions collectives à New York, Londres, Sao Paulo, Copenhague. D'autres expositions de groupe présentées à New York voyagent ensuite dans plusieurs musées américains, comme « Advancing French Art » (1951), « Younger European Artists » (Musée Guggenheim, 1953), « The New Decade » (Museum of Modern Art de New York, 1955). Il expose régulièrement à la galerie Kootz de New York et à la galerie de France à Paris. Dès le début des années 1950, ses toiles commencent à entrer dans les plus grands musées du monde comme la Phillips Gallery à Washington, le Musée Guggenheim et le Museum of Modern Art de New York, la Tate Gallery de Londres, le Musée national d'Art moderne de Paris, le Museu de Arte moderna de Rio de Janeiro etc. Aujourd'hui, plus de 150 de ses œuvres se trouvent dans des musées. En 1960 ont lieu ses premières expositions rétrospectives dans les musées de Hanovre, Essen, Zurich et La Haye. De nombreuses autres suivront.

De 1949 à 1952, Soulages réalise trois décors de théâtre et ballets et ses premières gravures à l'eau-forte à l'atelier Lacourière.

En janvier 1979, Soulages en travaillant sur un tableau ajoute, retire du noir pendant des heures. Ne sachant plus quoi faire, il quitte l'atelier, désemparé. Lorsqu'il y revient deux heures plus tard : « Le noir avait tout envahi, à tel point que c'était comme s'il n'existait plus ». Cette expérience marque un tournant dans son travail. La même année, il expose au Centre Georges-Pompidou ses premières peintures monopigmentaires, fondées sur la réflexion de la lumière sur les états de surface du noir, appelé plus tard « outre-noir ».

Il est l'une des personnalités à l'origine de la création de la chaîne de télévision Arte.

Entre 1987 et 1994, il réalise 104 vitraux pour l'église abbatiale de Conques.

Il est le premier artiste vivant invité à exposer au musée de l'Ermitage de Saint-Pétersbourg, puis à la galerie Tretiakov de Moscou (2001).

En 2006, une Composition de 1959 est vendue 1 200 000 euros chez Sotheby's.

En 2007, le Musée Fabre de Montpellier lui consacre une salle pour présenter la donation faite par le peintre à la ville. Cette donation comprend 20 tableaux de 1951 à 2006 parmi lesquelles des œuvres majeures des années 1960, deux grands outre-noir des années 1970 et plusieurs grands polyptyques.

I art NY at ART BASEL MIAMI

A look at "Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective" at the Metropolitan Museum

He could light up the day with his wit and generosity; he could equally well plunge it into gloom; and part of the excitement of being with him lay in not knowing for long which way it would go. It was fascinating to watch such sudden changes and contradictions within one person...Bacon could not be pinned down. The closer you got to him, the more likely he was to turn nasty or simply disappear -- to go through a wall into a life where you could not follow.

– Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma

Streetart Lower East Side

"I have no interest in going to school" photograph by Yana Toyber

"I have no interest in going to school at all. I like what I do here and I think I'm going to do it as long as I can. We have women here in their 40's who do just as good as I do and I'm 23 years old"

White Dots 1 by Derrick Leung

White Dots 1 from derrick leung on Vimeo.

XIAO SE: Instinctive Reality - November 18 through December 10 2009 at Eli Klein Fine Art

XIAO SE: Instinctive Reality - November 18 through December 10 2009

Date:
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Time:
6:00pm - 9:00pm
Location:
Eli Klein Fine Art

Eli Klein Fine Art is proud to present the first solo exhibition in the United States of Xiao Se, a talented and unique new force in Chinese contemporary art.

Xiao Se’s technically masterful paintings draw on imagery from both the Eastern and Western artistic tradition. This exhibition showcases a body of work which presents Xiao Se’s observations of present day China in which traditional heritage, a communist past, and modernity coexist. His work is deeply influenced by Western masters, often imbuing Western or religious figures with Chinese characteristics, or surrounding them by typical Chinese scenes and traditional symbols.

While Political Pop and Cynical Realism remain the best-known contemporary Chinese art styles in the West, many of the works of influential painters who have emerged since the mid 1990s do not conform to a particular movement or style. These artists, as compared with their predecessors, are not as concerned about the Cultural Revolution or personal self-analysis, they focus on the present-day realities of a rapidly shifting society. Xiao Se is one such artist who grew up in the tumultuous aftermath of the Cultural Revolution and has lived through an era of sweeping economic and cultural liberalization initiated by China’s Open Door Policy. His paintings reflect this background and provide a means and space through which he makes sense of the tension between tradition and modernization.

His body of work presents a diverse array of artistic influences and motifs, including Northern Renaissance, Chinese quotidian themes, and Surrealism. Notable in his paintings are bizarre objects including scrambling nudes, flying fish, pairs of eyes, apples made of gears, and boxes. The presence of the absurd as well as an overall mocking tone provides more than just amusing escapism and allows a temporary hiatus from reality within the pictorial space. He is able to laugh at the world through his paintings, and his humor allows a victory of amusement over daily fears and anxieties.

Xiao Se was born in Beijing and graduated from Central Academy of Art and Design. The exhibition will be on view at Eli Klein Fine Art from November 18 through December 15, 2009. The artist will be present at the private reception on November 18th.

For Public and Media inquiries, please contact the gallery at (212) 255-4388 or info@EKfineart.com.

肖瑟个人展览
2009年11月18日至12月10日



艺莱纽约画廊很荣幸能够展示中国当代艺术界才华出众的画家——肖瑟在美国的个人首展。

肖瑟技艺高超的绘画同时秉承了东方和西方艺术传统的意象。这次展览展示了一组代表萧瑟对当前中国——传统遗产、共产主义的过去和现代性共存其中——的观察的超现实主义绘画。他的作品被西方大师所深刻影响，从而通常将中国特色赋予西方或宗教人物，或者将他们置身于典型的中国式情景和传统符号之中。

当政治波普和愤世嫉俗的现实主义在西方依然是最响誉的当代中国艺术风格，许多在20世纪90年代中期涌现出的重要画家的工作并不依照特殊运动或样式。这些艺术家们与他们的前辈相比，并不关心文化大革命或个人自我分析，而是关注着一个飞速变化的社会现实。肖瑟就是这样一位在文化大革命喧嚣的创伤中长大、并且经历过中国开放政策创始的经济文化自由化时代的艺术家。 他的绘画反应了这个背景，并且提供了他理解传统和现代化之间紧张状态的手段和空间。

他的作品表现出艺术性影响和主题的多样陈列，包括北欧文艺复兴、中国每日题材和超现实主义。他的绘画中值得注意的是怪诞的物体，包括不规则的裸体、飞鱼、眼睛、由齿轮制成的苹果还有盒子。那些荒谬元素以及总体上嘲弄的风格，使得这些作品不仅仅是有趣的逃避现实, 并在画面空间之内从现实中分裂出一个临时的间隙。他能通过他的绘画嘲笑这个世界，他的幽默让笑声战胜了每日恐惧和忧虑。

肖瑟出生于北京，从中央艺术设计学院毕业。 这次展览在11月18日至2009年12月15日期间将会在艺莱纽约画廊展出。 艺术家本人将会出席在11月18日的私人招待会。

公众和媒介若欲询问，请与画廊联系：(212) 255-4388 或info@EKfineart.com.

white bike brooklyn

"I think of myself as a therapist" Photograph by Yana Toyber

" I think of my self as a therapist, helping people get through the tough times in life. They shouldn't judge me for what I do because there are a lot of different people that do a lot of different things for a living."

Streetart Lower East Side

Street art Lower East Side: Kate Moss

Stop all the clocks

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message She Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

She was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
W. H. Auden

space Invader Art

http://www.space-invaders.com/

JAMES CRABB R.I.P

Is really sad he will not be at the funeral tomorrow. James Crabb was a person who brought tremendous joy to many peoples lives. I learned so much from him in our twenty year long friendship(even how to ride a motor bike and blow smoke rings). His tremendous sense of humour and industrious nature serves as testimony to the quality of his character. I will really miss him more than I can possibly express in words...

HOMELESS

Living under the shelter of a storm,
Behold the life of a beggar born,
Trudging down road that a child once skipped,
Holding trousers up with string coarse and fabric ripped,
Cracked black finger tips dipped in pockets empty
That carry stones instead of coins aplenty,
Nowhere to go yet everywhere to stay,
Another closed door to greet the day

At night the floor comes hard on the shoulder pressing flat the soft skin,
The night offers little sanctuary for those who can't make it in.

Mark M. Whelan

Streetart Lower East Side

Lower East Side street art: Angelina Jolie

Erin Fetherston at Michali Fine Art Gallery

Erin Fetherston

Kafka and Facebook

"Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested by hundreds of facebook questionaires." Franz Kafka-Whelan 2009

Peter Doig in his own words

Peter Doig draws from the collective unconscious main symbols
of New York  City, gathered together in this painting. 
Buildings from Empire State to Rockefeller, Statue of Liberty,
dark sky, yellow  cabs designing an unbroken line closing 
street to other cars. 
 
« My paintings of this period were very much inspired by NY 
(which  provided so much at that time). 
Amazing how these things survive... 
It was inspired by a story of a guy who lived in a cardboard
box on Bowery just south of Houston. He told me how he had 
killed his wife and her lover when he caught them in bed 
together‐ formerly he had worked in early computers trade. 
He had a nice girlfriend although they both drank a little
too much... » Peter Doig, August 09 
 
Peter Doig designs a decorative line on yellow cabs and 
twinkling windows in the buildings as a Gustav Klimt reference. 
Another historical allusion to Edward Munch Expressionism 
appears in  desperate human attitudes of the composition
such as in "The Scream". 
Peter Doig uses Andy Warhol Pop Art colors and Roy Lichtenstein 
cartoons drawings, adding a caustic humor in his historical
 sources,giving in this painting beyond a first comic viewing
, a feeling of alienation. 
The acid palette and a permanent reference to Gustav Klimt
decorative patterns is a recurrent allusion in his work.  
 
Regenerating painting style digging in past classical 
references and deeply inspired by contemporary preoccupations,
Peter Doig appears asone of the very best living artists 
and will make a deep impression in Art History. 

poster art

The Just

A man who, as Voltaire wished, cultivates his garden.

He who is grateful that music exists on earth.

He who discovers an etymology with pleasure.

A pair in a Southern café, enjoying a silent game of chess.

The potter meditating on colour and form.

The typographer who set this, though perhaps not pleased.

A man and a woman reading the last triplets of a certain canto.

He who is stroking a sleeping creature.

He who justifies, or seeks to, a wrong done him.

He who is grateful for Stevenson’s existence.

He who prefers the others to be right.

These people, without knowing, are saving the world.

By Jorge Luis Borges

Translated by A.S. Kline

Back to Heaven

I'll go back to heaven again.

Hand in hand with the dew

that melts at a touch of the dawning day,

 

I'll go back to heaven again.

With the dusk, together, just we two,

at a sign from a cloud after playing on the slopes

 

I'll go back to heaven again.

At the end of my outing to this beautiful world

I'll go back and say: That was beautiful. . . .

By Ch'ŏn Sang-Pyŏng

 

 

Translated from the Korean by

Brother Anthony of Taizé

Desires

Like beautiful bodies of the dead who had not grown old
and they shut them, with tears, in a magnificent mausoleum,
with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet --
this is what desires resemble that have passed
without fulfillment; with none of them having achieved
a night of sensual delight, or a bright morning.

Constantine P. Cavafy (1904)
Translated from Greek

Street Art Lower East Side and beyond..close to Michali Fine Art

Artwork around the vicinity of Orchard St. NY, NYC 10002

Footprints left behind,
singing of your existence-
death in every step.

Erik Haber

We are all the same distance
from the sky.

Erik Haber

Peter Doig: Art's Superstar.

Peter Doig is one of the few artists that are still progressing in the actual context.
Indeed, in June, two of his works were sold at Sotheby’s and Christie’s London for respectively 3,360,147 USD (2,057,250 BP) and 4,973,983 USD (3,009,250 BP).
Another of his works was sold in May at Christie’s New York for 4,674,500 USD.

Investing on one of his painting is a safer investment than any other in the long term: the progression of his quotation is sure since museums (including in 2008 a major retrospective at the Tate Britain, at the Paris Museum of Modern Art and the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt) and a few lucky collectors immediately snapped up his works.
Furthermore, in 2007, White Canoe, 1990–91, has been sold for 11.3M USD (5.7M BP), which is the highest price ever paid for a work by a living European artist, to a Russian buyer at Sotheby’s London.

Peter Doig, who is only 50, is a pioneering artist whose work has charted a new direction in contemporary painting.
He always changes style and aims at sharing his everlasting creation :

“I don't think my paintings are reactionary in the way they look back. I hope they are about looking forward. I believe in the future of art, but not necessarily in the way it is told. I find a lot of work done 100 years ago more forward looking than what was done in the last ten years.”

There are the words that couldn’t be twice said,
He, who said once, spent out all his senses.
Only two things have never their end –
The heavens’ blue and the Creator’s mercy.

By Anna Akhmatova
Translated by Yevgeny Bonver

Flirtation

still
smile
beckon
for my rapt
attention dripping
over the rim of unspoken
polite beauty taken by another, engaging
tickling wit undressing the innocence of our conversation, yet we stand apart.

Dave Nordling
7/31/2007

Private viewing: Hedi Ferjani and Scot Thompson

HEDI FERJANI & SCOT THOMPSON
The meaning of life
June 5th ‐ July 31st, 2009

Private presentation of the exhibition in presence of the artists.

Cocktail Reception
Thursday, June 18th, 6-9pm


MICHALI FINE ART GALLERY and Mark M. Whelan invite you to the private presentation of the exhibition “The Meaning of Life” by the New York based artists Hedi Ferjani & Scot Thompson.
The exhibition draws a parallel between two extreme, yet, complimentary visions of existence:

On the one hand, Hedi Ferjani extols the superficial and barbaric nature of the human condition.

On the other hand, Scot Thompson exults the cycle of molecular transformations from dust to shape and vice versa.

Both address the transient nature of existence and remind us of Apollo's assertion in T.S. Eliot's seminal 'The Waste Land':

"I'll show you fear in a handful of dust."

The show will be recorded live and transmitted on the channel :
http://www.livestream.com/artnewyork

For further information, please contact maude@michali.us / 212 966 5153

Marketing Director: Mark M. Whelan
m.whelan@emeraldcommunicationsgroup.com

MICHALI FINE ART GALLERY
Maude Michali
45 Orchard street
Between Grand and Hester
New York NY 10002

Tuesday to Sunday: 10 am - 7 pm

Gallery 212 966 5153
Cell 646 530 3351
Fax 760 466 5153

As for beauty I am not a star
There are others more beautiful by far
But my face, I don't mind it
For I am behind it
It's people in front get the jar.

Iris Murdoch

HEDI FERJANI & SCOT THOMPSON The meaning of life @Michali Fine Art

HEDI FERJANI & SCOT THOMPSON
The meaning of life

June 5th ‐ July 31st, 2009
Opening Reception: Friday June 5th, 6‐9PM

MICHALI FINE ART GALLERY is proud to present "The Meaning of Life" an exhibition of works by New York based artists Hedi Ferjani & Scot Thompson, on view from June 5th through July 31st, 2009.
The exhibition draws a parallel between two extreme, yet, complimentary visions of existence:

On the one hand, Hedi Ferjani extols the superficial and barbaric nature of the human condition.

On the other hand, Scot Thompson exults the cycle of molecular transformations from dust to shape and vice versa.

Both address the transient nature of existence and remind us of Apollo's assertion in T.S. Eliot's seminal 'The Waste Land':

"I'll show you fear in a handful of dust."

The show will be recorded live and transmitted on the channel :
http://www.livestream.com/artnewyork

MICHALI FINE ART GALLERY
Maude Michali
45 Orchard street
Between Grand and Hester
New York NY 10002

Photograph courtesy of © Derrick Leung

Is Contemporary Art the place where meaning goes to die? Ask Hedi Ferjani

According to many post-modern thinker's, meaning is no longer fixed, static or contingent. In Hedi Ferjani's work we see the iconoclast's lament for the loss of meaning with these grave stones; however, he juxtaposes what is absent by making the referent present....interesting work...




Andy WARHOL, Damien HIRST, Jeff KOONS....who's next? Hedi Ferjani?

A Dream of Trees

There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees, 
A quiet house, some green and modest acres 
A little way from every troubling town, 
A little way from factories, schools, laments. 
I would have time, I thought, and time to spare, 
With only streams and birds for company, 
To build out of my life a few wild stanzas. 
And then it came to me, that so was death, 
A little way away from everywhere.

There is a thing in me still dreams of trees. 
But let it go. Homesick for moderation, 
Half the world's artists shrink or fall away. 
If any find solution, let him tell it. 
Meanwhile I bend my heart toward lamentation 
Where, as the times implore our true involvement, 
The blades of every crisis point the way.

I would it were not so, but so it is. 
Who ever made music of a mild day?

Mary Oliver

Glass

When you are so hot

You melt, I want to blow you

Into a bottle.

You're a work in progress.

Cradle

I'd cradle you

As the base for a corded telephone;

You wish you were cordless,

Resting wherever convenience finds you.

Manindar P. S. Suri
(from his third chapbook, Poetry My Wife Hates - Third in a Series)

The Orange

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange

The size of it made us all laugh.

I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—

They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange it made me so happy,

As ordinary things often do

Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park

This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.

I did all my jobs on my list

And enjoyed them and had some time over.

I love you. I’m glad I exist.

Wendy Cope, “The Orange” from Serious Concerns.
Copyright © 1992.

Maturity

A stationary sense...as, I suppose,
I shall have, till my single body grows
Inaccurate, tired;
Then I shall start to feel the backward pull
Take over, sickening and masterful -
Some say, desired.

And this must be the prime of life... I blink,
As if at pain; for it is pain, to think
This pantomime
Of compensating act and counter-act
Defeat and counterfeit, makes up, in fact
My ablest time.

PHILIP LARKIN
1951

A Paint Pot Memorial

New York is hot
Like a Dali clock

Bowery Mission

Living under the shelter of a storm,
Behold the life of a beggar born,
Trudging down road that a child once skipped,
Holding trousers up with string coarse and fabric ripped,
Cracked black finger tips dipped in pockets empty,
That carry stones instead of coins aplenty,
Nowhere to go yet everywhere to stay,
Another closed door to greet the day,

At night the floor comes hard on the shoulder pressing flat the soft skin,
The night offers little sanctuary for those who can't make it in.

Mark M. Whelan

Peter Doig in Manhattan inspiration

Various sources assert that Doig creates many of his scenes from photographs. According to an article in W magazine, Doig notes that the places he has lived and spent time often are incorporated into his work; however, only as an afterthought. He often depicts scenes from unusual angles, and incorporates unorthodox colour combinations and even has been said to bring in a sort of indie film perspective. These tactics all contribute to the heightened moment that Doig’s work exudes, just as our own memories try and hold on to moments of significance as well.

LES the heart of the Art scene

The emerging East Village art scene of the 1980s invented new forms of cultural and economic linkages between the avant garde and urban space. For many the East Village art scene was "about making an ‘art movement’ seem more real by anchoring it to a concrete physical area." The first galleries were makeshift exhibition spaces started by artists or their friends in apartments and eventually in storefronts. This rapid growth and decline may be accounted for by the international wave of art speculation and investment that was fueled largely by the profits from the finance and producer services growth sector.

The increasing national and international media spotlight on East Village subculture presented the public with new ways of perceiving the landscape of dilapidated tenements and trash-littered sidewalks and streets. While the images and symbols of urban decay remained the same, their representations and attached meanings shifted from fear and repulsion to curiosity and desire. Real estate developers were quick to capitalize on the interest in the cultural scene, issuing in an arts-driven phase of redevelopment. However, as prices rocketed the art scene shifted to the Lower East Side and today we even saw galleries such as Michali Fine Art on 45 Orchard Street opening in March 2009, signifying that the area is one of the key locations in the New York art scene.

Collect LES Highlights

Artlog Lower East Side Art crawl

MICHALI FINE ART GALLERY is delighted to participate to the Artlog Collect LES'09 on Saturday, April 18th.

Join Artlog for Collect LES, an art crawl through the Lower East Side's burgeoning art community. Coordinated by Artlog in partnership with the LES Business Improvement District, Collect LES includes 28 galleries and the New Museum.

Schedule:

4:00 - 6:00pm $2 off admission to the New Museum’s Triennial "The Generational: Younger Than Jesus," including a private curator-led tour for Collect LES ticket holders from 4:00 - 4:45pm. Space is limited- RSVP TourRSVP@newmuseum.org

6:00 - 8:30pm Gallery crawl

8:00 - 10:30pm Reception at The Sixth Ward (Garden), 191 Orchard St, New York

9:30pm - Late After party at Gallery Bar, 120 Orchard St, New York

From the Bowery to East Broadway, over a thousand art enthusiasts toured the neighborhood galleries during last year’s event. This year will be no less spectacular! Enjoy free wine, beer and liquor and special offers at local businesses as you tour the Lower East Side’s galleries and Phillips Art Expert’s selected urban art locations.

Buy tickets and find more information at http://artlog.com/collectles. This is a 21+ event.


Kimiko Yoshida @ MICHALI FINE ART GALLERY
Marry me!
March 21 - April 26, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 21st, 6-9 pm

Self-portraits, brides of the world, and Descartes

Through a series of self-portraits taken during the last seven years, the Japanese photographer Kimiko Yoshida embodies the brides of the world.

Subverting the stereotypes which pertain to tribal minorities and segregation, she challenges the search of narcissism: she seeks erasure: erasure of the origins. Borrowing from the precept of Descartes “Larvatus Prodeo”(`I come forward masked’), and like an Ovidian tale, transforms into an African, an Indian, an Egyptian, a Russian, a Tibetan… alluding to the condition that we live in the globalization of goods and images, exceeding the possession of a fixed identity by mixing cultures, religions, rituals and references. She crossbreeds, she hybrids, she metamorphoses.

Her approach is a search for the truth: what is true, is what is real. In accordance with Rimbaud, to her the individual is multiple: “I is another”. The identity does not exist, only identifications are tangible.

Kimiko Yoshida changes and she wants to disappear into some almost monochromic representations. The face melts into the unit of color and the tribal object she borrowed, a treasure from the past that is now preserved in a museum, is revealed. This technique evokes the Japanese tradition of the doran, a white painting used by the geishas and the maïkos to erase any characteristic of their face. On the contrary, in Occident, the make-up is used to beautify, to call attention to oneself, to hide the defects. The artist hopes to approach the concept of the woman instead of the female ideal.
Everything is in the obliteration, the minimalism, the detachment. Contrary to her contemporaries, she does not look to appeal for pathos.

Changing masks infinitely, without geographical or temporal consideration, she oscillates between figuration and abstraction, showing the plurality of being as much aesthetic as philosophical. Suggesting 'I am not the one I show. I have to take the risk to stand aside.'
This purification which worries Kimiko Yoshida turns meaningful when she entrusts “all that’s not me, that’s what interest me.”

Maude Michali

The art of Kimiko Yoshida is currently exhibiting at Michali Fine Art, 45 Orchard St, New York, 10002

Inanugural exhibition of Kimiko Yoshida

The inaugural exhibition of Kimiko Yoshida at Michali Fine art attracted art scenesters, bankers, diplomats and the usual suspects.

Michali Fine Art Opening

Finally, Michali Fine Art opens Saturday. Thanks to Liz-n-Val for coming in today. Look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

Highlights of Armory Show 2009

She is in Diane Von Fustenberg collection. She is in the Veuve Clicquot collection also. Will I find one at the Armory? What, you may well ask? The prized jewel from Kimiko Yoshida's "Marry Me!" collection...

NY Art Scene: East Village to LES: from Makeshift to Michali Fine Art Gallery

The emerging East Village art scene of the 1980s invented new forms of cultural and economic linkages between the avant garde and urban space. For many the East Village art scene was "about making an ‘art movement’ seem more real by anchoring it to a concrete physical area." The first galleries were makeshift exhibition spaces started by artists or their friends in apartments and eventually in storefronts. This rapid growth and decline may be accounted for by the international wave of art speculation and investment that was fueled largely by the profits from the finance and producer services growth sector.

The increasing national and international media spotlight on East Village subculture presented the public with new ways of perceiving the landscape of dilapidated tenements and trash-littered sidewalks and streets. While the images and symbols of urban decay remained the same, their representations and attached meanings shifted from fear and repulsion to curiosity and desire. Real estate developers were quick to capitalize on the interest in the cultural scene, issuing in an arts-driven phase of redevelopment. However, as prices rocketed the art scene shifted to the Lower East Side and today we even see galleries such as Michali Fine Art on 45 Orchard Street opening in March 2009, signifying that the area is one of the key locations in the New York art scene.

Michali Fine Art Gallery to open 45 Orchard St, NY

The finest modern and contemporary art from the Americas, Europe and Asia. If you love culture, you will love this...

A New York conversation..happens all the time

 To surround ourselves with good people and true friends7:45pmT

it makes so much difference when you have wonderful friends! you are a great friend if you are going to visit your friend, though ....

wait a sec, don't you study or work???
7:46pmM

I work

haha

I finisished my MA 10 years ago!
7:46pmT

ok

MA, Master of arts, I presume
7:47pmM

yes, indeed
7:47pmT

I finished mine too

i mean my home grown MA with my two friends from Hermitage
7:48pmT

anyway, you will destruct yourself, sometimes things look different from the distance and you may go back to each other, i thought you were good together with #####:)
7:48pmM

the hermitage is exceptional

no..we will never speak again

i missed my best friends funeral because of her
7:49pmT

please, you never know, i hope people do think and admit mistakes and reconcile, it is the best end
7:49pmM

sadly I am not big enough to forgive that
7:50pmT

you will gorw:)))

grow:))
7:50pmM

as it affected not just my family many of our friends from my village

yes, indeed...but this I can not forgive

it hurt my f's mother that I couldn't be there

that's not something I can never feel comfortable with

considering it was motivated by malice
7:52pmT

may be, it was not malice? i am sure oyu know better, i am just tryingto see it i na better light? :):)
7:52pmM

thank you, I appreciate that
7:53pmT

Sorry, I shoul dnot have been that forceful i my opinions...

I am sure you know it all better...
7:53pmM

in this case the best thing is that we are apart

I have never known such viciousness, betrayal and treachery

therefore the best course is to walk away and not look back
7:54pmT

I felt like that today about my ex too and I am trying so hard to not think that way because my anger kills me, and I don't want it to destroy me:)))
7:54pmM

somethings are only supposed to be beautiful for a short time

like a flower blossoms

but then dries and dies

and just leaves a husk
7:55pmT

but is it beautiful then?

may be it had an appearance of it only?

though, you are right, flowers ar beautiful no matter how long...
7:56pmM

well a flower is beautiful while it gasps for life then when its dead is to fragile to survive and can only turn to dust

love can not survive all things

it has to be nurtured

and cared for

and understood

or at least an attempt to make it work
7:58pmT

yes, I agree, love is art
7:58pmM

its a special language that neither is fully fluent in

however the gesture and effort is what counts
7:59pmT

love is art....

too bad i need to go, >>>>>...I woul dlove to chat with you again, when are oyu goinf to be in *****?
8:00pmM

couple of weeks

thank you for the company and conversation
8:00pmT

until then you are in New York?
8:00pmM

yes
8:00pmT

just work put it all behind:)))
8:01pmM

exactly

find a new field and that rare wild flower

until then work work work
8:04pmT

i think it is good to settle into yourself, to find and heal yourself then you will be fresh to see the wild flower:)

no???
8:05pmM

for a time I shall find myself again in my friends
8:07pmM

my days of entertaining romance are over
8:09pmT

yes, you should take a break and enjoy friends, arts, nature:))) spend time at the Soho or Tribeca grand hotels
8:09pmM

indeed
8:10pmT

be well

sad to see oyu so dissapointed, find forgiveness:)))) and you will be happy yourself
8:12pmM

thank you...sometimes one can find a place of comfort and in time I hope to forget