Rob Dougan

Furious Angels

Tom Sanford

9.15.08 Scheibeworld, 2008
flashe and goauche on paper

Adam Stennett

Can of Alpo in wood, velvet
and glass vitrine(signed). 2008.
edition of 12

Nine Inch Nails

Something I Can Never Have (still)

Canadian Mist

Karen Heagle
"Canadian Mist"
24 x2 4", 2008
acrylic on canvas

Nitin Sawhney

Letting Go

Karen Heagle

Vultures in Tree, 2008
acrylic and ink on paper
55.75 x 55.5"

Farewell beautiful Eartha

Eartha Kitt - C'est Si Bon (Live Kaskad 1962)

Venetian Snares

Vidaa

Portishead

Machine Gun vs NOISE

Susan Jamison

Lost Loves, 2007. Egg tempera and ink transfer on panel. 18 X 18 inches

Bent

Magic Love

Nick Cave, Kylie Minogue, and Shane MacGowan

Death is Not the End

Death is Not the End

Death Is Not The End
At 31GRAND
143 Ludlow St. NY, NY 10002
Saturday, December 20, 2008, 6-9 PM
Music by DJ Kid Magic

We’re sad to announce 31GRAND is closing after nine wonderful years. We’ve had a great run, and all the artists we have worked with have been such amazingly wonderful talented people. Please join us on this Saturday for the exhibition, Death is Not the End, to celebrate their talent and toast a sad farewell.

Death Is Not The End will be a ONE-NIGHT ONLY retrospective group exhibition; artists from all stages of 31GRAND’s past and present have been invited to choose one work to be hung. This large, diverse show will include assemblage, animated videos, drawings, photography, pastels, and paintings in a range of materials and styles. The result will not only be a unique demonstration of the amazing range of our artists and a poignant reminder of the past decade, but will also be a celebration—because friends making merry is how we would like to commemorate 31GRAND. We started out as a family and want to end as a family. The art and the artist are always what has been truly important.

Please join us for some reminiscing, some carousing, some art, and some old friends.

Artists include: Adam Stennett, Alessandra Exposito, Eric White, Barnaby Whitfield, Carol "Riot" Kane, Fanny Bostrom, Randy Polumbo, Francesca Lo Russo, Helen Garber, Jade Dylan, Jason Clay Lewis, Jason Cole Mager, Jason Weatherspoon, Jeff Wyckoff, Jeph Gurecka, Joel Adas, Jon Elliott, Anthony Pontius, Karen Heagle, Kristen Schiele, Kyle Simon, Lauren Gibbes, Magalie Guérin, Maureen Cavanaugh, Megan Leborious, Michael Anderson, Michael Cambre, Gina Magid, Michael Pope, MTAA, Nelson/Electric Chaircut, Orly Cogan, Paul Brainard, Rebecca Chamberlain, Sean McDevitt, Spencer Tunnick, Tim Wilson, Tom Sanford, Ursula Brookbank, and MORE

Run by owners and co-directors Megan Bush and Heather Stephens, 31GRAND opened in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 1999 and moved in July 2007 to our current home in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Over the course of nine years, we have shown painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, and video by local, national, and international artists. As one of the founding members of the Williamsburg Gallery Association, we have been committed to introducing the public to talented emerging artists as well as working with mid-career and established artists.

We apologize if you receive this email unwanted. If you would like to be removed from our list, please return this email with “Nick Cave” in the subject bar. Of course it’s all pretty moot, since this is our last show.

Image:
Barnaby Whitfield
Cute Overload II (thanks Michael-Anne Rauback!), 2008
22.5 by 30 inches
Pastel On Paper

VVV

VVV, Nos. 1 (June 1942)–4 (February 1944)
New York: VVV, 1942–1944
Serial publication, illustrated; 4 nos. in 3 vols.; H. (irregular): 11 in. ( 28 cm)
Purchased with income from the Jacob S. Rogers Fund (100.51 V98)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

During World War II "VVV" was one of the few journals being published that was devoted to the continued dissemination of Surrealism. Published in New York from 1942 to 1944, the journal was edited by David Hare with the participation of André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, and Max Ernst. In addition to discussions on the fine arts and poetry, the journal also featured essays on anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Each edition was illustrated with works by the most recognizable Surrealist artists of the day, including Ernst, Breton, Giorgio de Chirico, Roberto Matta, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Yves Tanguy.

Illustrated: no. 2/3, last page and back cover, Marcel Duchamp's "ready-made" of a female imprisoned behind chicken wire

Last week to catch "Stay With Me" at 31GRAND

Old Room, 2008, oil on canvas,, 10 x 10"

Maureen Cavanaugh
Stay With Me
November 13 – December 14, 2008
Opening reception: Friday Nov. 14, 6-9pm
31GRAND, 143 Ludlow St., NY, NY 10002

Bettie Page - Dec. 11, 2008

Farewell Bettie...you are much loved.

Black & White Gallery at Aqua Art Miami

Leigh Tarentino
Network, 2008
watercolor on paper
22x 30 inches

BLACK & WHITE GALLERY
Aqua Hotel / Miami
December 4 - 7, 2008
Preview / December 3, 7-10pm
1530 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach
ROOM 202

PRESENTS @ Aqua Art Miami:
Isidro Blasco
Liset Castillo
Grant Miller
Julian Montague
Jonas Pihl
Alicia Ross
Leigh Tarentino
Michael Van den Besselaar

ALSO AVAILABLE:
Mike Cockrill, Colette, Fanny Bostrom, Jeph Gurecka, Barnaby Whitfield

Maureen Cavanaugh

Ladies, 2008, oil on canvas, 40 x 50”

Maureen Cavanaugh
Stay With Me
November 13 – December 14, 2008
Opening reception: Friday Nov. 14, 6-9pm
31GRAND, 143 Ludlow St., NY, NY 10002

Madredeus

Ao longe o mar

Tord Boontje

Annabel

Nine Horses - Atom And Cell

Visuals: Shoko Ise, photographer/ video artist: epiphanyworks.net

Bent

Swollen

featuring Zoe Johnston

Colette

Colette as Countess Reichenbach from the mid-1980s

Alice Neel

Self-portrait, 1980

Tonight's going to be a big night!

Maureen Cavanaugh
Stay With Me
November 13 – December 14, 2008
Opening reception: Friday Nov. 14, 6-9pm
31GRAND, 143 Ludlow St., NY, NY 10002
image: Profile, 2007, oil on canvas, 40 x 40”

Hope everyone can make it!

Kool Keith as Mr. Nogatco

"Night Flyer" Music Video

Black Light Burns

Lie

This Friday at 31GRAND!

Maureen Cavanaugh
Stay With Me
November 13 – December 14, 2008
Opening reception: Friday Nov. 14, 6-9pm
31GRAND, 143 Ludlow St., NY, NY 10002

Stay With Me, an exhibition of new paintings and ceramic sculptures by Maureen Cavanaugh, opens November 13th 2008. In her second solo exhibition with 31GRAND, Cavanaugh presents a myriad of subtle contradictions in her lovingly expressive paintings and sculptures to define vulnerability, resilience, and strength.

Cavanaugh playfully fuses public and private using her distinctive style of depicting figures and objects against flat patterned backgrounds to join the interior self, family and friends alongside public icons such as Hillary Clinton and Britney Spears. The figures are posed in comfortable settings (i.e. Lake Geneva, Wisconsin a family gathering spot), exuding a luminous and vibrant perspective on intimacy. This idealized reality results in a prevailing harmony that feels at once familiar and elusive.

For the first time, the artist has included small ceramic sculptures. These intricate figures animate the subjects that populate the paintings. With the older woman playing cards and the youthful girl driving a convertible, humor is present. Cavanaugh uses this sculptural element to contradict the overt flatness of two-dimensional painting. Real flowers in a ceramic vase are juxtaposed with the still life paintings.

Paintings are assembled to create a tapestry of woven stories and ideas. What the artist calls her “compulsory paintings” are small studies that allow her to investigate subject matter on an intuitive level. Assembled together in a large-scale collage, the images include brightly colored still lifes of flowers, a twirling dancer, reclining girls, a dying plant. Like small, tightly cropped snapshots, they display a delicate fragility with the tender treatment of the subject matter.

Maureen Cavanaugh was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. She received her BFA from College of Santa Fe in 1999. Cavanaugh had a recent solo exhibition at Jackson Artworks, Omaha, Nebraska entitled, “The Past is Present.” Group exhibitions include “Art on the Edge” at the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, “Interested Painting” at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Gallery 400, “Contemporary Painting” at the Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine curated by Alex Katz. Her work is part of the permanent collection at the Joslyn Art Museum and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego - MCASD La Jolla. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Fennesz

Live at Lovebytes festival, Sheffield 2006

Standing In The Way Of Control

Roisin Murphy covering Standing In The Way Of Control by The Gossip on Transmission (October 6, 2007).

Congress Voting Independence
Begun by Robert Edge Pine and finished by Edward Savage, 1784–1801
Because there is no known image of the interior of the State House from the time of the American Revolution, the National Park Service used this painting by Robert Edge Pine and Edward Savage, during its restoration of Independence Hall Chamber.

Mary Beale

Mary Beale, self portrait
oil on sacking, 89cm X 73cm
C1675–80

Joy Electric

Monosynth


Quite Quieter Than Spiders

Happy Halloween!

Girl with Dragon 2007-2008
Gold leaf, acrylic on canvas, 48” x 36”

Jason Clay Lewis
Drop Dead Gorgeous
October 9 – November 9, 2008
at 31GRAND

Sam Taylor-Wood

I'm In Love With A German Film Star
Produced by the Pet Shop Boys

Shimon Okshteyn

Ashtray, 2008, Oil on mirror, 60 x 75 inches

Tricky - Council Estate


Rico + Tricky - mixed up faces

Anna Ternheim

No Subtle Men

An exhibition not to miss!

Shimon Okshteyn
Dangerous Pleasures
October 23 through December 6
at STEFAN STUX GALLERY
530 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001


Still Life with Pork, 2008, Oil on canvas, mirror, fiberglass with marble dust, 118 x 147 x 50 inches

This will be a great show and opening!

She'll Get Hers
new paintings
Karen Heagle

I-20 Gallery
557 W 23rd

November 1-Dec. 6, 2008
opening: Sat. Nov. 1, 6-8pm


"Vulture with Carcass," ink and acrylic on paper, 52" x 54", 2008

Jason Clay Lewis

d-CON Owl, 2008
d-CON packaging, plastic, foam, plaster,
18” x 12” x 7

Jason Clay Lewis
Drop Dead Gorgeous
October 9 – November 9, 2008
Opening reception: Thursday Oct. 9, 7-9pm
at 31GRAND

Thomas Brinkmann

It never was you

I warned you. Here's some more!

Here's the link for the full auction and bidding: blackandwhiteprojectspace.org/auction_bwps.html


Lot #19
Mike Cockrill
Two At Water’s Edge, 2007
Gouache on paper, 17.5 x 13.75 inches


Lot #24
Jeph Gurecka
Still-life Souvenir, 2008
Cast resin, automotive enamel, wire, 15 x 7 inches


Lot #8
Meghan Gale
Untitled (Saratoga Springs) #4, 2002
Gelatin silver print, cotton thread
11 x 14 inches, Unique, Unframed

Here's 3 more beauties from the auction

Here's the link for the full auction and bidding: blackandwhiteprojectspace.org/auction_bwps.html


Lot #20
Barnaby Whitfield
The Happy Albino, 2005
Pastel on paper, 30 x 22 inches
Framed


Lot #21
Fanny Bostrom
We Are Not So Small, 2008
Mixed media on paper, 24 x 30 inches
Framed


Lot #16
Adam Weekley
Voyeurs Series #1, 2006
Prismacolor marker and ink on paper, 13 x 21 inches
Framed

I'm going to be plugging this auction all week!

It's a great cause and honestly an awesome chance at getting your hands on some amazing art. The work is all up on display at Black & White Project Space in Brooklyn, so you have your chance! Get on over there, and see it in person.

Black & White Gallery is pleased to announce the first annual benefit auction celebrating the launch of BLACK & WHITE PROJECT SPACE for site-specific installations. All proceeds benefit the Exhibition, Artist Residency and High School Internship programs at Black & White Project Space. Black & White Gallery thanks all participating artists for their generous donations of artwork. The Silent Art Auction will continue on line until 6pm on October 18, 2008. It will resume on site at 7pm and close at 9pm on October 18, 2008 at 483 Driggs Avenue in Brooklyn, NY.


Lot #1
Jane Benson
Mirror Globe (Map of the World I), 2006

Paper antique world map, oil and mirror pieces
24 x 28.5 inches
Edition: 2/3
Framed
Min bid: $800

12 Rounds

Personally
Directed by Chris Cunningham

Tonight!

Two great shows to hit tonight!

Jason Clay Lewis
Drop Dead Gorgeous
October 9 – November 9, 2008
Opening reception: Thursday Oct. 9, 7-9pm
at 31GRAND, 143 Ludlow St. NY, NY 10002

image: d-CON Mary (detail), 2008, d-CON packaging, fiberglass, 61 1/2" x 24" x 18"

and also

Isidro Blasco
Shanghai At Last
October 9 - November 15, 2008
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 9, 6-8pm
at Black & White Gallery
The Chelsea Terminal Warehouse, 636 West 28th Street, Ground Floor, New York, NY 10001


Bund, 2008
C-Print on Museum Board, Wood
15 x 22 x 5 inches

Jason Clay Lewis

Girl with Octopus 2007-2008
Gold leaf, acrylic on canvas
40" x 46"

Jason Clay Lewis
Drop Dead Gorgeous
October 9 – November 9, 2008
Opening reception: Thursday Oct. 9, 7-9pm
at 31GRAND

Portrait of Mary Anne Talbot

by G. Scott, after James Green
stipple engraving, published 1804

Albrecht Durer

Knight, Death and the Devil (1513)
Engraving, 24 x 19 cm

Rob Dougan

Furious Angels

Jeph Gurecka

Jeph Gurecka - Shiny Bright Souvenir
up at 31GRAND (143 Ludlow St. New York, NY 10002) through October 5th
My Fathers House, 2008
75 x 36”, Molded and cast resin, and lights (detail below)

Schiller

i feel you

Phoenix
Taken from the Aberdeen Bestiary,
Folio 55v

James Jebusa Shannon

Magnolia, 1899
oil on canvas
71 5/8 x 39 1/4 in.
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jeph Gurecka

Still-life Souvenir, 2008
dimensions vary, cast resin, automotive enamel, wire. (detail below)
From"Shiny Bright Souvenir" at 31GRAND

Hans Albers

La Paloma (Filmausschnitt) 1944

Thanks Pet

Amon Tobin

Proper Hoodidge

Trentmoller

Take Me Into Your Skin (live)

Show to check out

Kate Kretz, "Thicket", 2008
gouache, collage, hair, medal on colored paper, 24 x 18".

I love Kate Kretz's work, and she's in a show opening this Saturday in Miami. If you're in the area, definitely check it out.

"Pushing the Envelope: New Concepts in Drawing & Painting" at Chelsea Galleria in the Wynwood district of Miami. Opening reception from 7-11 pm.
Chelsea Galleria, 2441 NW 2 Ave. Miami, FL 33127

Cornelia Parker

The Distance (a kiss with string attatched), 2003


Shared fate, 1998
Objects cut by the guillotine that beheaded Marie Antoinette

I saw an amazing show last night.

Alicia Ross' Sacred Profane is a smart, well executed, and beautiful exhibition. Highly recommend stopping by Black and White Gallery in Chelsea to see it. Runs through October 4th.


Motherboard_6 (A Chicken Waits for a Good Cock), 2008
cross-stitch on cotton

Rockwell’s a Surrealist, 2008
excerpt from mixed-media installation

Tonight!

Tonight's the opening of Jeph Gurecka's "Shiny Bright Souvenir". Hope all can make it.

image: My Left Nut, 2008
Taxidermy form, molded and cast resin, photograph, mounted on faux finished distressed wood panel

JEPH GURECKA
SHINY BRIGHT SOUVENIR
at 31GRAND (143 Ludlow St. New York, NY 10002)
September 4 – October 5, 2008
Opening reception: Thursday Sept. 4, 7-9pm

31GRAND is pleased to present SHINY BRIGHT SOUVENIR. Roughly based on Thomas Cole’s Voyage of Life painting series and 18th century Romanticism, SHINY BRIGHT SOUVENIR is a nautical passageway from the past, both in an art historical context and from feelings and expectations associated with the romantic period. Cole’s Voyage of Life (1840) series of paintings is the allegorical story of a voyager who travels in a boat on the river of life with an angel. This combination of the sublime with religious, philosophical, and contemporary socio-political themes is prevalent in Gurecka’s SHINY BRIGHT SOUVENIR.

Brought home by the traveler, souvenirs and tchotchkes function as physical manifestations of the memories associated with the journey. Likewise, history itself is a souvenir of the past that is glamorized and glossed over by indulgent radiance in the present. Gurecka finds humor and absurdity in how easily memory devolves into nostalgia, which in turn degrades into consumerism. For Gurecka, the souvenir is a hopeless projection and a representation of fear; in this, his vision accords with Nietzsche’s description of nostalgia as the longing for the past, the contempt for the present, and the fear of the future.

“The Voyage of the Crystal Symphony” shows the Crystal Symphony cruise ship retreating from the constellation Aquarius at its rear and entering the eye of a fantastic, sublime storm. Immanuel Kant talks about the sublime and how the safest way to the sublime is through the idea of the subsidiary venues, which for the contemporary traveler translates into our present day cruise lines, amusement parks, casinos, and video games.

In the wall relief, “Sleeper,” a siren floats along on a similar journey. Romanticism was loaded with mythic stories of the mystic relationships between men, women, and water. In their desperate loneliness, seamen believed that lighthouses were kept by sirens, who lived on rocky islands where they lured ships to their destruction. Similarly, the goddess of beauty herself, Venus, was born of vengeance: the severed genitals of Uranus, who was castrated by his son, Cronus, fell into the sea and fertilized the water from which Venus arose. As an amalgamation of beauty and destructiveness, perhaps the danger of Gurecka’s siren is her somnolent, latent wrath.

In the illuminated sculpture, “My Fathers House,” biblical, mythological and personal attributes contrasted with the artist’s homage to his birth father and their struggles for individuality. The softly illuminated cast Lincoln log house atop a rough, sinewy, trunk-like pedestal is both welcoming and subtly menacing. Here Gurecka melds the iconographically powerful image of the lighthouse—with its references to solitude, the sea, sirens, and the Christian symbol of divine guidance—with the struggle for autonomy.

Personal memory flattens into a collective and anonymous past: consumer culture takes advantage of a lack of awareness through mythologizing and fetishizing experience. In Gurecka’s cast sculpture of an SUV tire sinking into the gallery floor (“We Will Never”), this type of patriotic consumerism creates a falsely empathetic slogan.

In past work, Gurecka relied on the organic material and its relevance to the idea, a heterogeneous entity where the material was actually the host to the idea. In much the same way, Gurecka now deals with a very organic material in our natural world: plastic. Arguably, what once was nature/natural persists in the contemporary world, equally present in the dyad of city and country or in the contrived in-between; the simulacrum of suburbia is as manifestly “real” as other experiences.

Farewell Bill

Peanuts clip from "It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown"
Bill Melendez
November 15, 1916 – September 2, 2008

Lykke Li

Breaking It Up

More from the studio

Here's another peek into Jeph Gurecka's new show!





The Voyage of the Crystal Symphony (between the devil and the deep blue sea)
4' X 6', cast resin, automotive enamel, ceramitation, boat wax, fresh water pearls (the pearls are embedded in the shape of the constellation Aquarius), mounted on faux finished distressed wood panel

31GRAND is pleased to present SHINY BRIGHT SOUVENIR. Roughly based on Thomas Cole’s Voyage of Life painting series and 18th century Romanticism, SHINY BRIGHT SOUVENIR is a nautical passageway from the past, both in an art historical context and from feelings and expectations associated with the romantic period. Cole’s Voyage of Life (1840) series of paintings is the allegorical story of a voyager who travels in a boat on the river of life with an angel. This combination of the sublime with religious, philosophical, and contemporary socio-political themes is prevalent in Gurecka’s SHINY BRIGHT SOUVENIR.

Brought home by the traveler, souvenirs and tchotchkes function as physical manifestations of the memories associated with the journey. Likewise, history itself is a souvenir of the past that is glamorized and glossed over by indulgent radiance in the present. Gurecka finds humor and absurdity in how easily memory devolves into nostalgia, which in turn degrades into consumerism. For Gurecka, the souvenir is a hopeless projection and a representation of fear; in this, his vision accords with Nietzsche’s description of nostalgia as the longing for the past, the contempt for the present, and the fear of the future.

“The Voyage of the Crystal Symphony” shows the Crystal Symphony cruise ship retreating from the constellation Aquarius at its rear and entering the eye of a fantastic, sublime storm. Immanuel Kant talks about the sublime and how the safest way to the sublime is through the idea of the subsidiary venues, which for the contemporary traveler translates into our present day cruise lines, amusement parks, casinos, and video games.

In the wall relief, “Sleeper,” a siren floats along on a similar journey. Romanticism was loaded with mythic stories of the mystic relationships between men, women, and water. In their desperate loneliness, seamen believed that lighthouses were kept by sirens, who lived on rocky islands where they lured ships to their destruction. Similarly, the goddess of beauty herself, Venus, was born of vengeance: the severed genitals of Uranus, who was castrated by his son, Cronus, fell into the sea and fertilized the water from which Venus arose. As an amalgamation of beauty and destructiveness, perhaps the danger of Gurecka’s siren is her somnolent, latent wrath.

In the illuminated sculpture, “My Fathers House,” biblical, mythological and personal attributes contrasted with the artist’s homage to his birth father and their struggles for individuality. The softly illuminated cast Lincoln log house atop a rough, sinewy, trunk-like pedestal is both welcoming and subtly menacing. Here Gurecka melds the iconographically powerful image of the lighthouse—with its references to solitude, the sea, sirens, and the Christian symbol of divine guidance—with the struggle for autonomy.

Personal memory flattens into a collective and anonymous past: consumer culture takes advantage of a lack of awareness through mythologizing and fetishizing experience. In Gurecka’s cast sculpture of an SUV tire sinking into the gallery floor (“We Will Never”), this type of patriotic consumerism creates a falsely empathetic slogan.

In past work, Gurecka relied on the organic material and its relevance to the idea, a heterogeneous entity where the material was actually the host to the idea. In much the same way, Gurecka now deals with a very organic material in our natural world: plastic. Arguably, what once was nature/natural persists in the contemporary world, equally present in the dyad of city and country or in the contrived in-between; the simulacrum of suburbia is as manifestly “real” as other experiences.