Frankly? Within this huge amount of spaces, exhibits, galleries, artists and museums, I´ve to confess that there is a lot of artistically worthless, superficial, self-fulfilling garbage on display. Yes, considering the multitude of art shown and artists based in this town, the average quality of contemporary art´s exhibitions is not that convincing. But without being super pessimistic I´d like to point to some great shows I´ve seen those days.
Finally I made it to one of the most promising and seemingly exciting galleries in Bushwick - CLEARING. I didn´t get disappointed, but was really surprised by the clear performative statement of the French artist Lili Reynaud-Dewar´s exhibition I Sing The Body Electric.
To see Hans Schärer´s over 100 paintings entitled Madonna at the Swiss Institute in Soho, a governmental representational institution with a quite contemporary open-minded approach, (also concerning the talks, lectures, and performances they organize) was really a pleasure.
The 3o year old(!) Postmasters Gallery in Soho surprised me with the group exhibition this is smaller than this one staging 28 sculptures and objects by young emerging as well as highly established artists and revealing quite specific and currently underrepresented perspectives.
La Mama Galleria last weekend showed four performances under the title again! again! again!. Two or the pieces, performed by quite young artists, completely caught me. Sara Grace Powell in the role of a CEO gave us a humorous but well researched and further invented insight into the possibilities of art supporting companies targeting the market driven art apparatus. Sophia Le Fraga´s anti-play UND3RGR0UND L0V3R5 was strongly pointing to contemporary´s youth culture surrounding human interactions via the medium of smartphones and so called social media, what was unusually funny!
Last but not least, yesterday opened Eva Kot´átková´s solo exhibition ERROR at the gallery of ISCP New York. The czech artist presents her research and performance related objects, installations and video developed during her artist residency at Bohnice mental hospital last fall.
OK, it´s just great to explore New York´s neither starting nor ending art and culture productions :)