~UNDER THE VOLCANO vs GAME OF THRONES ? THE PLAYERS . .
‘UNDER THE VOLCANO’ vs GAME OF THRONES ?
if you go by body count, per capita – then, ‘UNDER THE VOLCANO’ . . . wins.
it’s t-r-u-e !!
of course, there’s only 3 main players in ‘UNDER THE VOLCANO’, and the 2 old kings are down, but CRACKULA still sputters on, presiding over the raw and often, thorny underground.
against the dark, she gathers an ever-growing army around her . . .
lead by a new generation of indies, and an in-house band of the fraternal ‘order’.
but who knows ?
maybe her own ‘tongue-in-cheek’, will bring her down ?
though, she’s really liking that . . CERSEI LANNISTER actress, LENA HEADEY got to use a ‘body double’ !!
some people are just born to be behind the camera, not – out in front.
some people are just born to ‘write’ – under a ‘persona’, esp street artists.
back on the far-flung turrets of the mainstream, the art scene remains every bit as gory, as ever.
while back here at home, street art, is no longer the darling.
and Muddguts is down.
it looks to be more a battle of the art schools, than a battle of the . . wills.
the young armies ?
YALE vs COLUMBIA.
and I, CRACKULA . . .
personally nominate ELI BROAD as the pretentious, and brittle . . art world HIGH SPARROW.
social media has transformed the playing field, and the established art realm, with it’s doubled-down choke-hold on so many dreams and ambitions – better be warned.
‘change’ – gathers like horsemen on the horizon.
LONG LIVE CRACKULA. LONG LIVE THE POWER OF ‘IMAGINATION’ vs the MARKET BRANDING of a few old men.
LET THE NEW AGE – ART GAMES . . . BEGIN.
here’s a brief scorecard, for those who were unable to make the show & read the posted bios:
SIMON CERIGO . . .
at the inaugural opening of his SIMON CERIGO GALLERY, 202 AVENUE A, EAST VILLAGE. it was Nov 15, 1985, and, he was all of . . . 33.
PHOTO: NANCY SMITH
SIMON CERIGO was born in Paris, France in 1952. He emigrated with his Greek-born parents to Montreal, Quebec, CANADA in 1958, when he was 6. Simon died after a sudden illness in Jan 2013. he was 60.
He received a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal in 1979, where he was already known as a collector of both fellow student work, and within the gallery scene proper in Montreal, purchasing exclusively photography work, which was a very rare thing to be doing at the time. He also collected comics, big time. and indie music. Joy Division.
Simon was a studio assistant to Canada’s foremost abstract, color field painter at the time, GUIDO MOLINARI. The new painting of JULIAN SCHNABEL and DAVID SALLE is what lured him to New York, where he arrived in the summer of 1982, never to look back.
Simon quickly became a colorful fixture on the art scene, attending as many openings as he could with unstoppable passion. Through the years he gained a reputation as an art maven, but not many knew he was a painter himself.
His artist statement from June 5, 1987:
“To be an artist in this age of materialism is the height of Romanticism. My paintings are first of all about ‘being’. I am not interested in technical categories, such as, abstraction or figuration. My main concern in painting is to ‘live in paint’. Painting for me is a way to talk to myself and the world. My work incorporates toys, not only because of my own fascination with them, but because I feel that on a sublime level they reveal something about the particular civilization they belong to.”
DAN ASHER . . .
at his opening, ‘Bird of Prey’, GBE@PASSERBY, NYC. Oct 15, 2005, he is 58.
PHOTO: NANCY SMITH
DAN ASHER was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1947, moved to NYC in the late 70s, died April 23, 2010 after a long struggle with cancer. he was 63.
Immediately after, if not during high school, Dan took off and followed BOB MARLEY on tour and in Jamaica taking black & white photographs, which decades later were purchased by the Bob Marley estate, and are now regarded as a remarkable legacy of the time.
Dan then came and settled in New York City, where he hung out at the now legendary Red Bar, where he met Simon Cerigo in 1982, and they became life-long friends. At this point he began working in very free-handed, gestural and expressionistic oil stick on paper. He had a solo show at Club 57 in 1982, and a solo show at the Red Bar in 1983.
Simon had started his own gallery at this point, SIMON CERIGO GALLERY, on Ave A, in the East Village, and he gave Dan one of his earliest solo gallery shows there in 1986. Dan went on to show extensively in New York, LA, and Europe. One of the main galleries he was represented by was GALERIE AUREL SCHEIBLER, KOLN. By 1997, TOMIO KOYAMA GALLERY, TOKYO, was showing his work in Japan.
Dan also had a deep passion for indie music, and made several documentary videos based on his favorite bands, and musicians. Vic Chestnut.
NANCY SMITH . . .
with one of her vintage quilt repair projects, photographed in a park on the Lower East Side, in 1998, making her 47 at the time.
PHOTO: SIMON CERIGO.
NANCY SMITH was born in 1951 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She met Simon Cerigo in the MFA program at Concordia University, in Montreal in the early 70s. Nancy and Simon both shared an avid passion for contemporary art, and the art market in general. Simon was the first person to buy and collect her work. At the time she was working in watercolor, and doing large scale, ‘mythical’ figurative charcoal drawings on paper.
Also drawn by the energy in NYC, Nancy arrived here in Oct 1982, never to look back. She partnered in the behind-the-scenes admin of the SIMON CERIGO GALLERY, as well as in their on-going art collecting and ‘flipping’, which is how they supported their family. Kate was born in 1986, and Theo in 1988. They lived and worked in a gritty storefront on Rivington Street, right off the Bowery. 5 Rivington, East Storefront. Nancy had a solo show at the gallery, and her works on paper were included in several of its group shows.
At some point in the 80s, inspired by the many flea markets that used to be all over the Lower East Side, she developed a life long interest in restoring, by hand, vintage American quilts.
Like Dan Asher, Nancy was always into photography, except while Dan documented indie bands, and far-away places, Nancy was more more interested in documenting what was going on around her in the art scene close to home. Twenty years later her photos on the art scene began to be published on artnet.com: ‘Art Lovers New York – Photos by Nancy Smith’, 2002-2004.
While Walter Robinson, artnet’s venerable editor at the time, branded her: ‘artlovers’, you can thank Charlie Finch, artnet’s most colorful scribe for bestowing . . ‘Crackula’ upon her, a well-earned nickname, it is.
Nancy left artnet in 2005, to start her own ‘indie’ website, artloversnewyork.com – which she still runs, with a focus on the underground, and new talent.
Nancy was hired as a quilt collection consultant by JOSH HARRIS, of JUPITER and PSEUDO dot.com fame, in the late 90s which led to her being part of his million dollar ‘QUIET’ Millennium art party / social experiment / 24-7 surveillance wired project, 1999-2000. She is one of the many hardcore, downtown indie artists featured in the documentary, based in good part on raw surveillance footage from ‘Quiet’, that resulted 7+ years in the making, in the internationally well-received & critically acclaimed . . ‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’, a full length film directed by ONDIE TIMONER, and winner of the grand prize documentary, SUNDANCE 2009.
. . . BIO-TEXTS BY KATE CERIGO.
‘Under the Volcano: Simon Cerigo, Dan Asher, Nancy Smith’. June 6 & 7, 2015. 169 Bowery, NYC.