detroitarts: December 2006

top 13 of 2006

I tried to edit the list down to top 10 but unlucky 13 is what I felt was appropriate and important to sum up the year of art in Detroit. The more I look at art and travel, the more I believe that Detroit has a lot of talent and can compete with the likes of ny, la, and miami. Detroit still might be far off from being nationally recognized but the determination and support within in the artist community will be how Detroit can make a name for itself.

Below are my top picks for the year of '06 in no particular order:

MOCAD finally had its grand opening! I think we were all holding our breath to see this happen. Too bad we have to wait till April for the next installment.

Kristin Beaver's first big solo show at Meadowbrook. Great break-out show for this wayne state grad...if this was in ny or la, her show would have been sold out!

Cranbrook graduate show...always a good one!

BEAUTY/SUBLIME/INTENSITY at ann arbor's best gallery: Gallery Project

The opening of Paul Kotula's new space: Paul Kotula Projects. (Above the departed Revolution gallery.)

RICHRICHRICH: what can I say, this alternative space was great and has since inspired others to embark upon similar adventures. (see detroit industrial project below)

The most talked about show: Josh Smith at Susanne Hilberry Gallery

Graem Whyte and Faina Lerman at Cass Cafe: this show, if placed in a white, empty gallery would have been even better but the pairing still made for an excellent exhibition and probably didn't get as much attention as it deserved.

James Stephens at Lemberg

Sculpture??? at Meadowbrook: included a couple of my favorite artists, Blake and Ewing.

Performance art at Marygrove College...come on...how often do we get to see performance art in detroit?

Can I borrow Your Spaceship? at CAID: great curation and group of recent grads, including blakeman and ballen.

OK, so Dana Schutz at MOCA Cleveland wasn't a detroit event but it definitely was an amazing show and, after all, she did give a lecture at ccs and is originally from Livonia.

Thanks for all the support. See you in '07.

My new computer!

My new computer might not be as fancy as this one but it does the job! I will be out of commission for the next couple days while the elves at the mac store transfer data. Wish them luck!

Damien = bad curator?

It looks like some people don't have nice things to say about damien's curation and collection at Serpentine Gallery.

"Damien Hirst's obsessive collecting could prove the death of his own creativity...As a collector, he has crammed far too much of the work into the space. Trusting his artist's eye, he has decided not to place labels within view of the actual pieces. But the series of minuscule captions at floor level is near impossible to read, and when you do bend down to see them, the descriptions fail to specify what materials the works are made from (often a fascinating clue to their meaning). While some of the connections between works are well made, others are glib or trite: an orange painting by Francis Bacon is placed next to an orange painting by Richard Prince."

Last look at miami...

I just wanted to share the last of the miami pictures. Miami seems like some distant, bizarro memory now! These are from the wynwood art district which feels like a combination of chelsea's art district mixed with a tropical ghetto. I predict that this area will only build up more and more. This is also a good place for artists to break into because it is still more low key than the ny art scene.

heehee...

Carlos Betancourt "The Cut Out Army"

Ivo Vergara "Cerebral Architecture"

mark bradford
Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

good bye miami, see you next year -

Surviving the holidays?

Hope that no one's holiday celebration ended like this!

MATHILDE TER HEIJNE "Mathilde, Mathilde", 2000, Single channel DVD, 4 minutes 29 seconds. Check out this gallery...it has a lot of good stuff!

merry xmas!

Santa Claus
Robert Cenedella

faina lerman @ motor city

Ann "Stewart's" holiday tips...

#195, plastic pond, 2 x 4's, dresses, Christmas tree, string, ribbon, cable, concrete block, acrylic yarn, acrylic and oil paint, plaster, hardware.

So what do you do with all that decoration after the holidays? Why not make a found object sculpture! Yale graduate Jessica Stockholder did something like that. It is funny, before I even looked up where she went to school, I thought to myself, "this has to be yale material - very mike smith-like!"

Real Letters to Santa....in RDW

(So I got to write a letter to santa or any made up or real person, deity or spirit and this is what I came up with. I might have also written a real letter to santa asking for a new iBook but maybe mr. koons will be extra generous!)

Dear Jeff Koons,

I know that the art world isn’t fair but I would like to believe that hard work pays off — I mean, you didn’t make your success by being only an excellent salesman, right? (hee, hee) I know I might not be completely clean when it comes to hearing Detroit art scene rumors but I have given everything, even MOCAD, a chance this year — despite my sour glances! My greedy wish is that you could put in a good word to some L.A. galleries for me. I also thought that you could release some of your art factory workers so that they could make my art while I slip away on a European vacation. I don’t have a chimney, so I will leave some paintings on the porch for your people to distribute to West Coast galleries. I would also ask you to say that Detroit is the best city to buy art from. Our artists are just a good as those in N.Y., L.A. or Berlin! I promise to be a good little art kid next year, too!

Thanks,

Ann

WOUND for the holidays...

Ann "Winfrey's" favorite things!

Buying art for someone else is pretty difficult and often too expensive for the holidays so why not support the best detroit designer team in town! Wound is a great new label that has really taken off and is now in stores like the Detroit Fashion Incubator , Incognito, Shine, and Revive. I already have three shirts - and they make great gifts! It is wonderful buying clothing knowing where the $$ is going - not to some giant corporation with sweatshops in china :)

The shirts sell for 35$ in stores but if you mention this blog in an email to them, they'll give you 5$ off at the studio only, so 30$ total. Not bad at all!!...now go get your presents now!

info@woundsofsarah.com

woundsofsarah.com

myspace.com/woundsofsarah

kim dorland

I thought that I might see a lot of dana schutz in miami but can't recall seeing one piece by her, but I did see an artist very similar. Kim Dorland, a working artist in Toronto, makes large intensely and sometimes fluorescent paintings of people mostly in the woods. The surface has the same quality of bright underpainting popping through and sparingly chunky texture and paint glops of dana's paintings. These two ladies are also similar ages and both attended grad school - dorland at York University, Toronto and schutz at Columbia, ny.