For this week’s “Wet Paint in the Wild,” artwork from Mesa, Ariz., made it all the way to Great Jones Street in Manhattan for Brad Kahlhamer’s first solo exhibition with Venus Over Manhattan. The works—energetic paintings made on bedsheets—”fuse references to Plains Indian winter counts, pop-cultural graphics, and the radical openness of Manhattan’s post-punk scene,” according to the gallery. But enough with the press release speak, let’s see how the opening went from the eyes of the artist himself. —Annie Armstrong
Venus Over Manhattan, 39 Great Jones Street. Happy to be back in my ancestral art grounds right off the Bowery. I love this name.
In the studio, I always have a couple of guitars at hand. This is my 90s Dobro, with a sharp, twangy sound that draws out into the drawing’s reverberating line work.
The other week, I was walking down Grand Street. I was picking up geranium flowers, my mother’s favorites, which are easy to grow. I stopped to catch a few minutes of the Knicks game at an outdoor street sports lounge.
Lovely Day is a neighborhood staple on Elizabeth. I’ve known the owner, Kazusa Jibiki, who has a very agreeable dog and plays the piano. I have often found refuge in the basement bar.
I am at the opening of the TEFAF New York at the Park Avenue Armory. I was happy to see “American Horse” in the booth with Venus Over Manhattan. It was painted on the gravel backyard of the artist residency for the Tucson Museum of Art in the historic barrio district. It was unexpected to see it showing at TEFAF.
Over the years, I’ve made a number of these figures. Populating my studio and home. One is on the window at Venus Over Manhattan. Their flagship “Bowery Nation” is going to be on view as part of the TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Contemporary Art Collection in Madrid, Spain, opening in July.
The week leading up to my own exhibition offered no end of artistic amusements. Here’s my friend Kel enjoying a light moment at an uptown private viewing for this season’s Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibitions. “Sargent and Paris” and “Superfine” are must-sees!
It can be daunting to walk into the gallery on installation days. The previous show is being wheeled out, and the new work is in various stages of unwrapping to the sound of boxes and bubble wrap. The anticipation is high. Thankfully, the gallery has a plan.
Several works were brought over from the Mesa, AZ studio; they were exposed to the elements of the desert. Seeing them so domesticated and coddled as they enter the gallery is unreal. Most of the works in this photo were painted on bedsheets, which I sometimes fly in a carry-on to several artist residencies. The portable bed sheet draws inspiration from Plains Indians’ Winter Counts that traveled on horseback in a parfleche bag through the Great Plains, the purpose to document significant historical events.
This is the view from the gallery’s reception desk. This desk is a social anchor for the artist to peruse the sign-in book and meet visitors—a water hole for the creatures to gather. The drawing beyond the desk is “Birds are Talking,” the exhibition’s title.
I like the challenge of doing large work, and luckily the gallery is suited for it. Check out this little hidden notch they have in the white cube, for just such occasions.
Here we were calibrating the space between works with Venus Over Manhattan partner and director Anna Furney who is not only brilliant but very hands-on.
Here I am in the valley of the giants, aka, my paintings. Last April, I drove through Monument Valley in northern Arizona, the Navajo Reservation, and stopped to draw along the way. I had an idea to paint a canyon of heroes. I feel I’ve explored this, to some degree, with this show.
Among all this Venus Over Manhattan’s owner Adam Lindemann had an opening at his home uptown. The show is called “Urhobo + Abstraction,” and it pairs African sculpture from the 19th century with Black postwar abstractionists like Richard Mayhew and Norman Lewis. It’s now open to the public, and I do recommend it!
Here’s me, Adam, an Urhobo sculpture and a work by Ed Clark.
And then it was opening night for my own exhibition on Great Jones Street. Here Eve MacSweeney directs another photoshoot with Adam.
Opening night was packed. In this photo you can make out Eva Mayhabal and Robin Cembalest, but there were too many familiar faces to count.
The urban tribe came out. Over the years of living in New York City, I’ve encountered many Natives coming and going, from the 80s on. More recently, in light of the art world and academic acceptance, Native presence has expanded and is claiming New York. To the far left, there’s Norman Akers, a featured artist in the traveling exhibition I co-curated with Dan Mills, “ Exploding Native Inevitable,” currently at the Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, Nebraska. Far right is Anthony Two Moons, we made a journey to a Sun Dance near Green Grass, South Dakota.
The opening night reveal. The two hours flew by.
In addition to the Native contingent, I was happy to see a number of downtown painters who came out, like Richard Phillips, Fred Tomaselli, and Dan Mills to name a few. You can see Andrew Edlin in this photo, who at times I play guitar with in his gallery backroom on the Bowery.
Here I am with Gilles Heno-Coe, one of the people I enjoy talking to about everything art. The fellow with the tote bag is Zachary Fischman, Venus Over Manhattan director, who like Anna worked very hard on this show.
Here, I am inspecting the Bowery Hotel table setting for a proper dining experience.
Adam delivered the first speech of the evening, our dinner’s opening remarks.
A little while later, I took my own turn, acknowledging the faithful.
But the toast of the evening was the great Phong Bui, Publisher and Artistic Director of The Brooklyn Rail, who recited the poem “Eating Poetry” by Rumi, complete from memory. My favorite lines were the last ones: “And even if you eat my poems while they’re still fresh, you still have to bring forward many images of yourself./ Actually, friend, what you’re eating is your own imagination. These are just a bunch of old proverbs”
I am back in the studio in the Bushwick territories. Mostly a cultural container that features my collection of taxidermy that I use as occasional models. I bought a wood training rifle at a swap meet, an additional artifact for my working library and rotating gallery.