Day off from fabricating in LIC so i was on a mission to see some exhibitions/stuff. My first line of attack was to see the Andy Monument at Union Square. I had heard of this temporary sculpture by listening to WFMU(http://wfmu.org/) and The Dusty Show where Clay Pigeon attended the unveiling and interviewed the folks in attendance.(this show is archived at http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/CP and was aired on March 31st)
The Andy Monument is by artist Rob Pruitt and has a lot to do with his original interest in coming to study art in NYC. It is also interesting to note that the figure reproduced in The Andy Monument is a digital scan of Cincinnati based art collector Andy Stillpass. A monument to two Andys.
I was a little shocked at the pitted finish on this chrome statue. High quality metallic finishes are very hard to achieve and costly so maybe it wasn't in the budget.
After taking in the Andys i made the near fatal mistake of eating a kabob off a street venders cart. I should have stuck with the always safe knish but no. The crazy thing is i knew it tasted a little off while i was eating it but was too hungry to let it go. This was about 10:45 am
So, with a poisonous little hunk of meat in my stomach i made my way to The New Museum on Bowery. (http://www.newmuseum.org/ )The exhibitions that i most wanted to see were Lynda Benglis and George Condo who both had their own separate exhibitions occupying roughly two floors each. The painter George Condo's show was a powerhouse of weird imagery and technical range. It even included some sculptures of heads that were finished with a metallic gold which oddly reminded me of The Andy Monument and briefly the toxic kabob. i tried to put that out of my mind immediately. I continued through to the Lynda Benglis exhibition.
Huge mounds of multicolored urethane foam, mammoth spills of running paint, cooled molten mounds of lead and brass, phosphorescent avalanches of foam splashing from the walls all seemingly vomited from the same exhaustive notion projected by the artist's imagination. A very impressive show indeed.
On to Penn Station to meet with Eddie Machete 2P.M.
Eddie and i take the subway back to Union Square and hoof it to the east village. Along the way i come closest to parting ways with the kabob- nausea for an intense couple of minutes and then a return to the general queasiness. We are on a mission to sit down at Niagara over on Avenue A. This place, i tell him, is where a really cool artist named Ted Riederer sometimes tends bar and it would be nice to hang out there. When we arrive at Niagara Eddie is immediately taken in by the Joe Strummer mural on the side of the bar.
We go in for a few beers and find Danny Sage of D Generation tending bar. We have conversations about Joe Strummer, Joey Ramone and his days touring with Social Distortion. Danny also tells us that D Generation is primed for a come back.
Later in the east village we find a place to grab a slice of pizza ( this actually banishes the problems of the kabob probably because that was the only food i had eaten all day) it is now about 5P.M.
We come across a cool shop called Obscura Antiques and Oddities which is right up my alley- strange medical stuff, natural objects like wasp nests, paper mache masks, skulls, preserved human heads, etc. I have a conversation with the shop owner and promise to do business with them from Florida where many a strange thing may be had.
We head back to Long Island City, stop into the L.I.C. Bar on Vernon Street and get into a passionate four way argument about Norman Rockwell & abstract expressionism with a printmaking student, biochemist and poster shop owner from Philadelphia- a nice way to end the day.
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