003 Summer Group Show Round-Up
Miranda July, Jean-Pierre Villafañe, House Parties
But First
Of course, I launched this thing and then have been absolutely slammed at work, but it’s August and a lot of galleries are just straight up closed. So what’s been going on the last few weeks? We threw a house party!1 Was a lot, and for a few beautiful hours our house had never been so clean, but was so so fun. Saw and loved the Brian Eno doc. Who knows what AI will bring, but some of it will be weird and wonderful. Caught the last two bar seats at The Odeon one night when trying to get out of the rain. Went to Philly for the first time! Still haven’t been to the beach or the pool across the street from my apartment2. Turns out yes, you can walk into Red Hook Tavern if you go at 10pm on a Sunday and get the very nice hostess. Quick trip back to Nashville. Checked in on a friend’s cat named Turtle. Had an absolutely perfect dinner at Roman’s. Finally saw Challengers. A return to Gage and Tollner, and I’m sorry, how did I miss the first time that the walls were not wallpapered, but upholstered?? Other things too, but on to the good stuff!
Summer Group Shows Round-Up
It’s that time of year when people that have those job things aren’t able to see much art because galleries are open Tue-Fri 12-5. Or they closed early that day, or for all of August suddenly. Happy for the people who work there though, I do remember relishing the 20hr work weeks.
I managed to sneak away one afternoon, but only got through Tribeca. It is what it is! These were my favorites.
I never miss an opportunity to see Alison Elizabeth Taylor’s wood inlay pieces. So incredible. There were actually several nice pieces in this show about dogs, including one by Hilary Pecis3
A nice surprise running into Francesca Mollett’s consistently beautiful work.
I was very pleased to discover Marin Majić’s work in the same show, I wasn’t familiar, but really look forward to seeing more in the future.
Loved seeing these Virginia Overton pieces in a more intimate setting after seeing her install at LGA4. How beautiful would these be in someone’s home?? In an entry way or over a dinning room table? A subtle showstopper.
Love Kris Knight’s work. These pieces weren’t on my list for the day and I was so excited when I stumbled upon them.
Absolutely obsessed with this tiny 8x10 painting of marble slabs from Jesse Ng. So perfect. Exquisite colors.
So so so thrilled to finally get to see one of Polina Barskaya’s paintings in person and it did not disappoint. I’ve been a big fan of her work for awhile. An edgier, more personal Alice Neel.
Jean-Pierre Villafañe
A few weeks ago I started my day at Charles Moffett even though logistically it made no sense. I was just dying to get to Playtime the latest body of work from Jean-Pierre Villafañe. It’s so fun, so sexy, so good. An after-hours office bacchanal. The repetitive imagery, the melee of limbs. I loved the consistency of the palette, the recurring orange carpet, geige walls, grey pants, and black and white patterns. Underneath the office-as-circus surface there is the suggestion of something more sinister, power or lack there of. The bodies are active, but faces are stoic. There’s just so much going on in these paintings.
Raised in Puerto Rico and based out of New York, Villafañe trained as an architect at Columbia University and Savannah College of Art. A background very much at the forefront in the overly dramatized vanishing points present through out the show. Very active paintings. Beautifully detailed paintings. And I’m reverse Google image searching for the many pairs of killer shoes right now.
Reading up on him afterward I realized he did the murals at Cecchi’s, which I’d been meaning to go to already. So booked a res ASAP and went to check them out. Also gorgeous, so vibrant. The series of the murals created for the restaurant were based on the seven deadly sins and they are spectacular. I need a mural in my dining room.5 The show at Charles Moffett has since closed but you can see his many murals at Cecchi’s anytime. A great date spot. H and I had a lovely evening there. I can’t find the article now, but somewhere the designer of the restaurant was describing the vibe she wanted to JPV and she said she wanted it be so sexy that people ended up having sex in the bathroom. Very here for that vibe.
Three Books
All Fours by Miranda July
Oh Miranda July, I should like you so much on paper, but I might be done trying. I did like this book more than her others (not wild about her movies either.) How does her work, which is so sexual and filled with desire, always feel twee and not hot at all? I think this books is supposed to be scandalous? See this FT piece on not reading contemporary lit.6
Try by Denis Cooper
Nearly got whiplash picking this up after All Fours7. It is staggering how dark it is. A Little Life x10. And many people say this is the one in the series where Denis Cooper “lightens up”! Oof. I started it on the subway, my mouth hanging open. And read the rest of it in one sitting. I haven’t been that affected by a book in a long time. So many books from the 90s were transgressive in their own time, but compared to what comes out now?? I couldn’t imagine any one publishing this today. You can google to get the gory and depraved details, but basically the worst things you can think of. Even so, I’m glad it exists and I’m glad I read it. It’s good to be pushed to the edge of what you think you can handle sometimes. Might be a minute before I finish the series.
The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century by Olga Ravn
What a little gem. She started as a poet which makes so much sense, considering her liberal use of white space and also her economy of language. So much happens in so few words, if you’re not paying attention for a sentence you’ll miss something huge happening very quietly.
Humans and humanoids are aboard the Six Thousand Ship. An incident has happened and HR is collecting the reports from various humans and humanoids. Each page is a different person’s account or thoughts on what happened. A brilliant premise that is executed perfectly. I think i need to read it again, there’s so much there and I just devoured it too quickly.
This novel began as assistance to a project for Lea Guldditte Hestelund, writing some descriptions for pieces of work in her show and then she developed those writings further into this novel. Photos from the exhibition here. These are the objects the employees are referring to and describing in the novel.
And lastly
Was 128k deep in the Oasis queue at 4am Saturday morning. When I finally got through the queue 5hrs later there were like 20 tickets left, you click on them, put them in the cart, error, have to unclick the tickets you selected, try to select other ones, those also gone until all are sold. It felt like a bunch of ghost tickets being sold. Between Oasis insisting that tickets resold above face value will be canceled, (I don’t see how they reinforce that.) And Ticketmaster upping the prices midsale, I mean, what chaos. I wasn’t really paying attention to the whole Ticketmaster fiasco during the Taylor Swift bonanza, but it doesn’t seem like they got it figured out at all.
All the variables are finite, I don’t see how this is so complicated. Someone build a better app. This would be my suggestion.8
So much art coming up this week! Openings every night and fairs all weekend. I can’t wait to be absolutely exhausted, brain fried, and struggling to sentence.
What new artist did you fall in love with in a group show this summer?
What are you most excited to see this week? For me I think it’s Hilary Pecis at David Kordansky, Amie Dicke at Anat Ebgi, Anthony Cudahy at GRIMM and Hales, Robin F. Williams at P.P.O.W, and Cindy Bernhard just announced she’ll have a piece at Long Story Short and I can’t wait to see one of her’s in person.
Follow along on Insta to see what up I’m up to in the moment! @jennymontgomery_art
It was stressful, and not very fun being a host. Even thought it was lovely to look across the room and see so many friends all together in our home. I apologize to everyone that i walked away from in the middle of a sentence to answer the door or greet someone, I felt very manic that evening. Not normally my vibe. Immense respect for the people that make it look easy. I am not yet one of those people. Maybe an annual thing?
I have been in this pool exactly one time. There are rules and strange times that I can never quite remember and apparently the obstacle of googling them is just enough to make sure i never do it.
Whose show at David Kordansky I can’t wait for this week!
You can see her LGA install at the gorgeous new Delta terminal next time you’re there.
First must acquire a house that includes a dinning room.
I try not to read anything written in the last 5 years and let time filter out some of the shit for me. When you consider that by your 30s you will only read about 1500 more books, if you read about 30 books a year and live till 80, I can’t waste a book! I already won’t get to read all the books I know that I want to before i die, not to mention the ones i’ll continue to discover every year. But occasionally you want to be able to comment on the moment! Enter All Fours.
If you thought All Fours was shocking or scandalous, Denis Cooper is definitely not for you.
The problem is you have to do two things at once, get the tickets and select where the tickets are. Apparently it’s difficult to do both of these things efficiently at high volume? So let’s split it up. Tour details are announced. You log in to your account and select the number of tickets you need, and if you intend to compete in the Battle Royal section of ticket sales or will be a Civilian. The tickets are divided in two groups. 50% for Battle Royal, 50% for Civilians. At the predetermined release time you return to the website to be launched into the queue. When both sections for Battle Royal tickets and Civilian tickets are filled you are then alerted immediately if you have made the cut or not. If you’ve made the cut you know you have guaranteed tickets. You just don’t know where your seats are yet.
Next step, settling the Battle Royal tickets among those who made it through the first queue. You pay a fee to play (an additional $50, $100, something of significance). There will be a betting timeframe, auction style where you financially compete for your place in the queue for seat selection. Once the betting window has closed whoever pays the most gets first choice to select seats, on and on down the list until all of the Battle Royal tickets (50% of total tickets in the stadium) have been assigned. There would be a time limit to make selection of course, this could take awhile but these massive concerts are all 10months out so who cares.
Then tickets are assigned at random for the remaining 50% of tickets to the Civilian ticket holders (in the quantity that they requested and those seats are together.)
Those who want to pay more to get the seats they want can, those that just want to be there can pay face value and get the seats that are assigned to them. By the time i got through the queue i was at the point of “any tickets, i don’t care,” as I assume many were.
Boom. Someone go make a billion dollars.