NIGHT GALLERY

Stills from the Braddock Light Show at Unsmoke Artspace.

BRADDOCK LIGHT SHOW

Unseasonably warm temperatures this weekend made Friday evening one of those dreamy occurrences that for all intents and purposes make Pittsburgh ground zero for unpretentious artistic culture. Unsmoke Artspace, a converted Catholic school in the heart of Braddock (and right across the street from United States Steel’s Edgar Thompson Plant) opened up two floors and a large outside space (complete with the most primitive of art, a pit fire), to an assortment of installations and performance that revealed themselves in places of discovery that made the entire exhibit a kind of gleeful treasure hunt as one roamed around the grounds. It reminded me in no small part of the 1998 Horsehead show at Magnuson Park in Seattle that left a profound impression on me as one of the more magical art events in my lifetime. This evening is a close second.

C. KLEID PRINTS AT THE EVER-WONDERFUL A.I.R.

Week one: C. Kleid mixes ink to match color laser proof for her David Sedaris poster. Week two: Laying down the black overprint for sublime results as a marching band rehearses in the room next door.

BRADDOCK

About 4 miles south of where we live in Wilkensburg is Braddock, a once-thriving steel town that with the demise of the mills found it’s population dwindle down to somewhere under 3,000. From the right angle Braddock looks like another riverside mill town, busy, determined, salt of the earth. Yet it’s really something of a strange and beautiful artifact, a post-apocalyptic vision with blocks of empty storefronts, filled with the remains of their occupants, collapsing in on themselves with their own sad neglect. So bleak is the impression it’s small wonder the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road had some filming done here. Unless otherwise informed, one could easily overlook it’s hidden history of French-India war battles featuring the future president George Washington and the country’s first Carnegie library, complete with empty basement pool that once hosted splashing aquatic enthusiasts. It’s a haunted place, of memories and people who once tread it’s sidewalks in happier more economically viable times, where now it’s no surprise to see a drug deal or feel the urge to stay away as night falls. Now artists have moved in, promoting a revival through art and the promise of cheap studio space, and their work pops up in hidden places, like the plastered image by Brooklyn-based artist Swoon who's done some work here. The same library mentioned above hosts a dedicated ceramic studio in it’s former public bathhouse, and the two enthusiastic gentlemen who run it are active participants in the ceramic water filtration project promoted by Potters For Peace, manufacturing these simple, effective devices for shipment throughout the world. Braddock demands repeated visits and a closer look.

LIFE ON MARS

Like some love affair you never get over, I was a bit afraid to be away from my dear Metropolitan Art Museum or new friend MoMA, left alone in Pittsburgh to fend for art amongst the raw expressions of youth and rough gallery spaces. Life On Mars, the Carnegie Art Museum’s 55th annual international easily dispelled such silly kid fears. Major cities tend to get the focus for large curated events, and being in New York I was somewhat spoiled, skipping or dismissing shows for whatever reason, knowing something just as large and unruly would come along I could hem and haw about having enough time to see. Never take what you love for granted, it can be taken away from you in a moment’s notice.

To be honest, we actually arrived at the Carnegie Musuem complex intending to see the Titanic exhibit, only to find that particular complex was located elsewhere in town. I purchased a membership as an act of conviction, and it’s a hell of bargain for $100, which includes four museums, Art: Science, Natural History and the Warhol.

Cool spacious interiors of museums on hot summer afternoons are not to be taken lightly. We stayed put and went to the international. Eventually I would have found this out, but I was pleasantly surprised to see Mike Kelly and David Shriegley while falling head over heels for Matthew Monahan’s tremendous foam and mixed media sculptures. Thomas Hirschorn’s eerie artificial cave or cardboard, foil, tape and other media has got to be the high point for most given how spacious and interactive it is, even if they can’t make sense of it.

It’s a huge show, and in all honesty most of the time I prefer overwhelming, when it comes to art there’s satisfaction too much. Thank god for the robber barons.

DAMIEN HIRST

As much as people are down on Damien Hirst for being anything from a rip off artist to unimaginative wanker, I can’t seem to get enough of the guy, given I’m drawn to the more grotesque aspects of his craft: though I think even if he’s copping ideas he’s still rather clever and can get a nice rise out of people. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living was installed on loan to the Met a few months ago and I’ve spent the last to weekends contemplating this thing. I had the good fortune to see the Turner Award retrospective at the Tate while in London which featured some of his work, including Mother and Child, Divided, that was so heavily guarded I couldn’t sneak a single photo, and was offending or disturbing to just as many people there as the shark was at the Met. The reactions to his work are just as fascinating as it’s visceral nature.

DUANE HANSON

A retrospective of some of his work from the 70s at the Van De Weghe gallery has this kind of fascinating quality that his work seems to take on after a few decades have passed. There’s a sense of the era here that’s eerily immediate in a way most things only seem like artifacts, as if these are actualy people somehow teleported from the past into this century. I don’t understand how waxworks exist when fiberglass sculpture like this is infinitely more superior in its realism.

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

Wasn’t even on my list of things to do, but stopped in on my last day and was transfixed by the names, Mary Shelly, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and the most amazing portraits of W.H. Auden and Aleister Crowley. Photography not allowed.

THE BRITISH MUSEUM

These days, when I visit the Museum of Natural History in New York I make a point of going to see one room, once exhibit, whether it’s the meteorites or fossils or North American mammals because that’s about all I can comprehend, all one should comprehend at one sitting. So if you have only two hours at vast and impenetrable archive at the TBM, it’s pointless to pretend that you’ll actually digest what you see. Therefore the highlights: The Rosetta Stone, the mummies and Lindow Man and a bit of Roman and Egyptian art. The main exhibition, The First Emperor, was sold out weeks in advance, admitting people only with timed entry.

It's the little things you remember the most though, and The Lewis Chessmen were absolutely charming.

LEE MILLER

I’d never heard of Lee Miller (23 April 1907 - 21 July 1977) until I saw an exhibition of her work at the Victoria and Albert Museum the second day I was in London. The striking former model from Poughkeepsie, later turned photographer and WWII photojournalist, was something of a magnet for attracting some of the early and mid-20th centuries’ most fascinating personalities, the kind of rich and varied life of tragedy and triumph seemingly born in the right time and place.

Oddly enough, A phenomenal camouflage exhibit at the War Memorial Museum had a small display (above) featuring the artist Roland Penrose’s contributions for the effort during the WWII, Roland being her lover and future husband, she, obviously his muse at that point.

JOSEPH BEUYS: FELT AND FAT

On entering the massive grand Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, it’s somewhat amusing (yet understandable) to see a crowd so enamored with Doris Salcedo’s brilliant rock-wall casting Shibboleth, an essentially incomprehensible crack that runs the length of the structure that would be difficult to interpret as a metaphor of racial divide without a comprehensive artist’s statement—this being the case for much of what’s stored here and elsewhere in galleries of the modern persuasion. Signs posted warning people to stay alert testified to those who had already found a way to hurt themselves in blissful exhibit interaction.

What’s fascinating about travel and visiting galleries in other countries is seeing exhibitions containing pieces I’ve seen elsewhere, whether here in New York or back in Seattle. Here at the Tate a retrospective of Louise Bourgeois contained pieces Cara and I had seen in 2006 on a day trip to Dia: Beacon, where Bourgeois is part of the permanent collection. Also on hand was a new acquisition, Deluxe, by Ellen Gallagher I had seen a few years ago at the fine Henry Art Gallery on the University of Washington campus. All this making up for the confounded, pretentious mess of a group show World as a Stage that found most spectators walking through faster than a midtown crowd speeding by a gauntlet of panhandlers on a street corner.

Finally, Piero Manzoni’s Artist Shit (1961) in person.