Jan 19
lindsayrgwattNYC, Random Art, conspiracy
Just down the street from us is Madison Square Park. It’s a lovely little park that is surrounded by heritage buildings (Flatiron, Met Life, New York Life) and is home to the Shake Shack. It’s also notable as one of the few sites in the city that promote public art. In 2007, they featured sculptures by Roxy Paine. I quite liked this one (Conjoined):
Right now they’re featuring the work “Untitled (Tree House)” by Tadashi Kawamata. Here’s a shot:
Since I’ve recently been writing about apophenia (our tendency to see patterns everywhere), I thought I’d explore our tendency to see conspiracy theories everywhere. This art consists of tree house by an artist who likes to wrap things in pieces of wood (check out the link above). But why tree houses? And what if they weren’t really tree houses, but meant to be duck blinds? After all, this is a park and it’s got pigeons and they’re the rats of the sky and nobody likes them…
So now we’ve got a park full of duck blinds. But who’s going to go hunting? Well, the timing of this installation just happens to overlap the inauguration of Barack Obama – and the end of the Dick Cheney era. And everyone knows that Dick Cheney is a great hunter, so maybe the park is celebrating that Cheney’s out of office by creating this installation. So now the trust running this park hates all Republicans and is a tool of the Democratic party.
Now of course all of this is crap. It’s just a piece of work by an artist in the park. But I’d like to think that this is how conspiracy theories begin…
Jan 03
lindsayrgwattNYC, Random Art, best, photos
If you know me, you know that I love taking photos. Since I’ve wasted a lot of people’s time by making them pause to take photos, I thought I’d share some of my best shots from 2008. Here they are in roughly chronological order. Note that WordPress seems to be doing some sort of horizontal compression, so you my have to click through to each photo for the full effect.
This one is the only ‘best’ photo to come from my iPhone. I’m hoping that in 2009 there will be more great iPhone pics:
The following image was taken at Fort Tryon, at the cafe in the park. It’s a beautiful place for brunch and they get great light:
One of my favourite New York activities is walking around the town. If you make it down to Red Hook, there’s a scrapyard just between the BQE and the Gowanus Canal. The five year old boy in me could spend hours there just watching:
This is Tom Savage ripping it up at Whistler. It’s hard to tell, but he’s wearing a beautiful negligee as it was his stag:
While walking around the Robert Fulton houses near our apartment, I happened to catch someone feeding the rats of the sky:
If you visit New York (as you can tell, it’s kind of my muse), you should head over to Long Island City and take a look back at the city:
Last year I went to Dublin to see my bro graduate from medical school and was mesmerized by the city at sunset:
One of the artistic highlights of last year was seeing the Olafur Eliasson exhibit at the MOMA’s PS1. He had erected a giant rotating mirror in one room; this kind of captures the effect:
Right around the corner from there you find the graffiti haven of 5 Ptz:
On the Fourth of July I snapped this pic while watching the fireworks. It was raining, so take a close look at the tops of each of the buildings – everyone is holding an umbrella:
I’m trying to get better at macro photography. Here’s a shot of a lily:
I tried to take an HDR shot of some flowers I had, but it didn’t turn out. However, one of the shots was following:
While visiting the New Museum I leaned over the railing and noticed this little scene below on one of the adjacent tenement rooftops:
One day Wen & I set out to walk the entire length of Broadway (we started at the Bronx and made it to 85th). In Washington Heights we went past the High Bridge water tower, and it just happened to be open to a few photographers that morning. We tagged along and I got this photo of the Heights and the GWB:
And finally, one last photo. The Guggenheim reopened this year and here’s a shot of their entrance way:
Nov 15
lindsayrgwattNYC Art, Chelsea
Sometimes New York pulses with an energy unlike any other city I’ve seen. Today has been one of those days.
Wendy and I got up this morning and went to our local cafe, Le Bergamote, for the best ham & cheese croissants in town. The place was packed and the weather outside was furious – the wind was literally whipping the leaves off the trees:
We decided to hit up some galleries, starting with Pace Wildenstein to see the Richard Avedon exhibit. The exhibit was almost exhausting in its scope: it contained photos of a shocking number of influential people from the 20th century. From Bob Dylan to Marilyn Monroe to Dwight Eisenhower.
Literally, across the street the Matthew Marks gallery was exhibiting the latest work from Andreas Gursky.
Two blocks away, on 24th, Fredericks & Freiser had a show by Zak Smith. If you’ve never heard of Zak Smith, I suggest you take a look at his portfolio. It bursts with colour, detail and creativity; one wall of the gallery was covered with dozens of minute detailed drawings characterizing his history (which, by the way, is as colourful as his art).
A second room in the gallery contained all the drawings from On The Road of Knives – a project between Smith and two other artists whereby they mail drawings to one another in an ongoing story (check out the link for the chronology).
A block further, on 25th, the Yossi Milo Gallery was showing Lise Safarti’s retrospective of photos she took in Russia while living there from 1991 to 2000. It’s a complicated mixture of decaying factories, traditional wooden architecture and homosexual boys. These may sound like three things that should never be juxtaposed, but Safarti creates a touching portrait of a nation going through profound changes post the collapse of communism.
As if this all the art wasn’t enough to overwhelm, there was more going on outside.
Underneath the High Line, a 3 ton steel sculpture you could walk through had just been installed.
The sky was clearing, meaning that fog could be seen tearing across the rooftops of building.
And on the corner of 24th and 10th, the largest crane I’ve ever seen was being used to take down a the crane and it looked as if the construction workers were literally walking in the sky:
Like I said, sometimes this city just crackles with energy.
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