THEY SICKEN OF THE CALM WHO KNOW THE STORM
Fridman Gallery, New York
Thursday, January 16th - Feburary 15th, 2014
THEY SICKEN OF THE CALM WHO KNOW THE STORM, opening on Thursday 16th, at the Fridman Gallery on Spring Street, features (the great) Greta Alfaro, Julia Chiang, James Clar, Richard Garet, Naama Tsabar, Dustin Yellin and Pryce Lee. The disturbing work from this superfine array of talent has been assembled by the renowned independent curator, Maureen Sullivan.
Greta Alfaro has been ruffling feathers for sometime now by feeding animals and filming them at her trough. In Octu Occuli (In a blink of an eye) is particularly brilliantly unsettling. A desaturated video feast set upon after sometime by vultures. If no animals were hurt in the filming of that wtf? Were they edible wine bottles I saw? Currently based in London, Greta Alfaro's resumé reads like that of the hardest working woman in showbiz. Most recently was a solo show staged in Japan. Seeing her work in New York should be a thrill alone worthy of a chilled night out since there's nothing as unnerving as this on the street right now - well excepting that Devil Baby video scam maybe.
Seems that Sullivan has assembled this particular throng unsparingly.
Aside Alfaro another, possibly London based, artist I can find out not much about is Pryce Lee. It's like she/he took a name off a gravestone, art detectives. No wikipedia entry, no website information, an enigma bar a tiny instagram montage. I've looked. You'd think he/she didn't want publicity, yet a slice of one of Pryce Lee's images accompanies the collateral material for the show so someone knows somebody who knows something more than me.
Pryce Lee brings a new 7-piece shattered mirror work created specifically about an incident in the city - the 2012 Empire State Building shooting. Capturing the randomness, violence and fragility of life for the innocent bystander, Lee's work reflects us - destroyed and whole.
Shattered mirrors of ourselves are beautiful and Gun Crime as art is exhilarating and very difficult and merely looking at a low-res image on the gallery site makes me feel vulnerable. After this Lee will probably rate a Macklemore rap-ture on the appropriateness of bullets in any context in Art. Meanwhile of course, despite Macklemore's concern, I remain in the thrall of guns no matter when they do their worst. How shamefully I can recall drinking a tumbler of methadone and being ignored while waving a revolver around inside a Pomona bar, or the time on the 91 freeway a driver tapped the side window of his car with the barrel of his Glock as he passed me by because, well I was a bad driver in front of him. Or how my last girlfriend was taken away at gunpoint. Death, delusion it's never not nearby.
BTW. On Pryce Lee's Instagram page, more birds. A Goldfinch smashes into an illuminated exit sign. Kafkaesque for sure. The NSA wire trapping a chirpy nations and there's no escaping it. Maybe. You'd have to ask him. Or her.
Julia Chiang only seems to offer respite.
THEY SICKEN OF THE CALM WHO KNOW THE STORM is an unmissable opportunity to see a finely curated collection in one space and time. Probably shouldn't miss it if you're about.
Fridman Gallery,
287 Spring Street, New York
646.775.6406
Opening Reception January 16th, 6-9pm
Hours Tuesday, Saturday 12 - 6pm.
More info on the Fridman Gallery website or on Facebook
image on this page Pryce Lee from the Anonymous Gallery
