February Art Guide - New York

Recommendations of what to see in the New York art scene this month by our local guide, Maya Yadid. Discover even more on a private tour.

I.

Exhibition: Ebecho Muslimova
Artist: Ebecho Muslimova
Venue: Magenta Plains
Dates: Through February 11th, 2018

Ebecho Muslimova is a New York-based artist who’s making strikingly graphic paintings and drawings spotlighting an alter ego named “Fatebe”, Muslimova’s a grinning, portly figure minimally rendered in sweeping black lines. Fatebe finds herself in various impossible situations like a genie inside a jar of coins and gagged by a stack of quarters, or poised as Narcissus over a pool of still water while folded into the angles of a laundry drying rack. Using minimalist, black and white graphic lines, Muslimova uses the female body as a malleable, expressive form to do with roasting shame and anxiety on a spit, every curve glistening. 

II.

Exhibition: Layota Rubi Frazier
Artist: Layota Rubi Frazier
Venue: Gavin Brown Enterprise
Dates: Through February 24th, 2018

Gavin Brown Enterprise in Harlem is showing a solo exhibition of artist and photographer, LaToya Ruby Frazier. Through photography, video, and performance Frazier explores social justice and cultural changes in America. In Frazier's own words: "Through photographs, videos, and text I use my artwork as a platform to advocate for others, the oppressed, the disenfranchised. When I encounter an individual or family facing inequality I create visibility through images and story-telling to expose the violation of their human rights." 3 bodies of work are presented in this show, Including Frazier's best-known body of work, The Notion of Family (2001-2014), which is an exploration into her family, her hometown, and her own experiences through landscape and portraiture in the deindustrialized steel town of Braddock, PA. 

III.

Exhibition: William Eggleston
Artist: William Eggleston
Venue: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Dates: February 14th until May 28th, 2018 

“Los Alamos,” the most famous body of work by William Eggleston will be on view at the Met. “Los Alamos,” which was created over a nine-year period, documents Eggleston’s journeys through the American South and West using color film for the first time in the history of fine art. 

The exhibition includes color studies made during numerous road trips with his friends Walter Hopps and Dennis Hopper—to New Mexico, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Las Vegas, and elsewhere, as well as photographs of the social and physical landscape of the Mississippi delta region, which remains the artist’s home.

Take a tour in New York to discover more!

New York Art Guide - December

I.

Exhibition: David Hockney
Artist: David Hockney
Venue: The Met
Dates: Until February 26th, 2018

A retrospective of David Hockney at the Metropolitan Museum that explores 60 years of massive and diverse work by the great English-American painter. The show includes works from the early 60’s when Hockney was as a student at the Royal College of Art in London, His most famous paintings of L.A. leisure and good life scenes painted flat and geometrical. Collages from the 70’s and 80’s influenced by cubism are also included in this show and last but not least- his recent painting large, vibrant scenes of the Yorkshire countryside and his California garden that nod to the works of Van Gogh, Munch and Matisse.

II.

Exhibition: Whiteout
Artist: Erwin Redl
Venue: Madison Square Park
Dates: Until March 2018

This immersive art installation is made up of hundreds of transparent globes illuminated by white LED lights that are suspended two feet off the ground. The lights  are programmed to flutter in an odd way. Erwin Redl is an artist that uses LEDs as the main medium of his work. Redi was born in Australia and is currently living in the United States. His work includes installations, videos, graphics, computer art and electronic music.

III.

Exhibition: The Holiday Train Show
Venue: Bronx Botanical Garden
Dates: Until January 15th, 2018

The Holiday Train show at the Botanical Garden is truly something you won't forget. Every year, the garden celebrates its collection of crafted trains that chug along a nearly half-mile track followed by 150 miniature of NYC landmarks. Established in 1891, The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) is a National Historic Landmark that's 250-acre (100 ha) site's verdant landscape supports over one million living plants in extensive collections.

Take a tour in New York to discover more!

New York Art Guide - November

I.

Artist: Various Artists
Exhibition: Performa 17
Venue: various locations around New York City
Dates: Until November 19th, 2017

Performa is a performance Biennial held in NYC. Every other November, Performa Biennial is spread all over the city, featuring performances by acclaimed artist from around the world. This year, Performa will be focused on the use of live performance as central to artistic practice in African art and culture, the intersection of architecture and performance, and the hundred-year legacy of Dada. During Performa we reccomend seeing the Berlin based artist Kris Lemsalu in collaboration with NY based musician Kyp Malone and shows by Bryony Roberts, Mabel O. Wilson, and The Marching Cobras of New York.

II.

Artist: Jimmie Durham
Exhibition: Jimmie Durham: At The Center of the World
Venue: Whitney Museum
Dates: Until January 28th, 2017

Jimmie Durham, born in texas in 1940, has long claimed to be Cherokee but that claim has been denied by tribal representatives. Durham was active in different African American and Native American civil rights movements in the the 60’s and 70’s. In the late 70’s he turned back to art, moved to Mexico and then to Europe, where he lives and works to this day. He is described as having "made a career of being Cherokee with no known ties to any Cherokee community", although he was raised with Cherokee as a first language.  

Durham often combines organic materials, found objects, and text to reveal Western-centric views and prejudices hidden in language, objects, and institutions. At the Center of the World, will Trace 120 works in sculpture, drawing, collage, photography, video, and performance.

III.

Venue: Jane Hotel
113 Jane St, New York, NY 10014

A great match to your Whitney visit is this beautiful gem a the heart of Greenwich Village. The Jane Hotel is the inspiration of the the beloved Was Anderson’s Movie- Grand Budapest Hotel. Rumour has it that Anderson rented a room there for a whole year to study this magical place. It was originally established in 1908 as a hotel for sailors. The hotel boasts a colorful history, having once served as lodging for the fortunate survivors of the tragic demise of the Titanic! The Jane Hotel has a “secret” ballroom bar and a rooftop bar, serving high-end cocktails. This is a great spot to chill after an exhausting museum visit and enjoy the luxurious design of the place.

Take a tour with Maya in New York to discover more!

New York Art Guide - October

I.

Exhibition: Modigliani Unmasked
Venue: The Jewish Museum
Dates: Until February 4th, 2018

The exhibition puts a spotlight on Modigliani’s early drawings. They were made shortly after he arrived to Paris in 1906, when the city was still roiling with anti-Semitism after the long-running tumult of the Dreyfus Affair and the influx of foreign emigres. Modigliani Unmasked exposes the ways Modigliani responded to the social realities that he confronted in the unprecedented artistic melting pot of Paris.

Amedeo Modigliani, Head, c. 1911. Modigliani Unmasked at the Jewish Museum

While you're at the Jewish Museum make sure to stop for brunch at Russ and Daughters!  It's a New York institution and one of the most delicious spots in the city. This traditional, family-owned, New York Jewish-European deli, specializing in smoked fish, caviar, fresh bagels and other delicacies.  Russ & Daughters at the Jewish Museum, is the 3rd location in addition to their original deli at Houston Street and a restaurant on the Lower East Side. 

Russ & Daughers at the Jewish Museum

II.

Exhibition: Generation Wealth [Retrospective of Lauren Greenfield]
Venue: ICP (International Center of Photography)
Dates: Until January 7th, 2018

The retrospective of photographer Lauren Greenfield at ICP encompasses 25 years of her documentary photography.  This show reflects stories about corruption, beauty, body image, fantasy, competition, and excess. It was originally shown at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles and has now made its way to the ICP in New York City.

Generation Wealth, Lauren Greenfield

Generation Wealth, Lauren Greenfield

Join our public art tour in Chelsea on October 14th or schedule a private tour with Maya to discover more!

Background to the Chelsea Art Scene

For the past 20 years, Chelsea has remained a designated area for true art lovers. 
It is in this particular moment that Chelsea has become the center for contemporary art in New York City, while the neighborhood is going through a massive face lift and things are always changing.

The famous wild art scene of the 60’s and 70’s in NYC was based in Soho—at that time it was considered the industrial area for businesses like import/export houses, textile houses and “rag trade” clothing stores.

Artists began to move to Soho mainly because of it’s big loft spaces and cheap rent. 
Artists like Philip Glass, Twyla Tharp, Nam June Paik, Meredith Monk, Chuck Close and Frank Stella were of the few that helped create and shape the ideal situation which made Soho a nexus for creative activity at a very magical time in the 1960's. SoHo became the focal point which represented the hip, avant garde scene of the time.

Not long after, artists concentrated the area and marked it as a hip neighborhood in NYC, Soho was announced to be the “art district of new york” and what started as an organic process of art imigration, continued to be a real estate target for “art oriented” commercial businesses.
The rise of rent and change of atmosphere in the  Soho of the early 1990’s meant that galleries needed to find themselves a new home. 

This  leads us to the Chelsea art scene... 

Today, the art galleries of Chelsea are located in a small zone near the Hudson River where shipping containers used to get stored. It still feels like a secret location—an isolated art bubble that is somehow being protected from the neighborhood’s gentrification process.  With more residential spaces and tourist destinations surrounding it (like Chelsea Market, The High Line, etc.), Chelsea still maintains a good balance of the native New York scene and a tourist-friendly environment.

Considered to be the most updated center for main discourses in the international art world, expressing a wide range of innovative ideas and outstanding techniques, Chelsea is currently home to more than 350 galleries, institutions and independent art projects. It has some of the most important art galleries today, representing the most acclaimed artists from around the world.

When looking at Chelsea, one will see how it has evolved and still remains a hip and fun location. Most importantly, Chelsea is definitely the place to be to engage with the contemporary world of art!

- by Maya Yadid