Images from June 13, 2009

The scene outside of the open house at Metal Concepts.

Grace Knowlton's big metal balls @ Metal Concepts.

On June 13, I returned to Beacon from the opening up at SUNY New Paltz.  First stop was the open house at Hermann Roggeman's Metal Concepts.  I then went went over - very briefly - Go North for Jaanika Peerna's opening.  The gallery was majorly packed, hot and stuffy, so I stepped in, snapped a couple quick shots and headed outside.  I'll return to check out the show in the next week or two.

Wall installation of Jaanika Peerna at Go North.

  

He's not part of the exhibition.

Gallery G as Ewok village.

From Go North, where I met up with my BLP (Bavarian Life Partner), we went over to Gallery G to explore the limitless pull of parental devotion.  Jesse Lebwohl-Steiner's proposal to his mom must have sounded like this: "OK Mom, I'm going to videotape myself shaving off all the hair on my body, then I want you to bathe me in milk, after you've massaged some egg yolks, and someone is going to videotape the whole thing." Such is the basis of Milk Bath, a work that invokes the Pieta while exploring the relationship between parent and child and the symbolic life of food.   The second video, Watermelon, again utilizes the physical character of a food to stand in for an emotional state and to illustrate that human compulsions and over indulgences are universal; the object toward which those excesses are directed is of marginal import.   Jesse is a foodie, and to see that food is such a central component of these two works is no surprise, nor is it the result of an unexplored choice of a prop. 

Jesse Lebwohl-Steiner x2 at Gallery G.

Watermelon Love.

An array of Jesse's polaroids in the exhibit Reflections and Cycles.

Above and below:  Collage, inside and outside of Open Space.

We then ducked in to Open Space briefly...here too, I didn't get to see the show, but did enjoy a rousing conversation on successful and insufferable artists as employers.

Some works inside the gallery at Spire.

The view outside the Pack and Paddle cum gallery space.

The next several images depict the exhibit of paintings by Todd Sargood and sculptures by Christopher Manning. in the former Pack and Paddle store.  The space is reminiscent of the old Collaborative Concepts space...but more raw.  It'd be a great space for ongoing exhibits.  It's for rent....$1800/month for somewhere between 2-3000 sq ft.