Exploring Chinatown Art Galleries...

so today we're gonna check out some art galleries in chinatown and i love what this restaurant is done having these little socially isolated booths it's very uh inspiring and a lot of what you'll see now in new york and this is the first exhibit that we're checking out and i will say one of the easier to find galleries in chinatown we're at marinaro gallery and this is an exhibit by the artist hannah whittaker hannah has two types of art in this exhibit she has these photographs that you see here as well as some sculptural lamps that are down in the basement and i don't know a lot about photography but i will do my best to describe that these photos are single exposures that are shot with a digital camera and she utilizes techniques that she picked up while being a commercial photographer except that she wanted to take out this sort of idealism and overly airbrushed female that's usually depicted in the media and show the full human form so wrinkles and hair etc and these works are impactful and almost a little controversial in my opinion because they straddle the line between art and design and i feel like photographers are always on the edge of that more so than other mediums but it's it's cool to see her directly play with this by doing things like hand painting the sides of these canvases and these bright colors [Music] now we're heading down into the lower level of marinara gallery what i call the basement and her works in the basement depart from the portraiture that we saw above but they still include her characteristic uv printed images as you can see in the hands pointing here and the arms as well as the heads on the left and she combines these pictures with patterns which is still mixing in more of those design elements that i mentioned above and you can see here in the corner of the basement are lamps and this was her first foray into sculpture and she was inspired to create these lamps because of this situation frankly that we've all been in for the last year you know being indoors being sad she wanted to literally bring some light into the dark and this was why she named the exhibit lifelike as a representation of all that over the past eight months we haven't been living to the fullest and that we've been living a life that's only a resemblance of our past life [Music] so i never actually realized that marinara had a sub basement the level below the lower level where we just were it's it's never been open when i've been there before but this space has been dedicated to jag projects aka curated space by jesse aaron greenberg and the show down here is titled honest gravy which in the press release states it's a showcase of new work made with immediacy and impulse without direction or deadline but rather with curiosity and compulsion and i kind of translated this to be a show of things that the curator finds interesting or cool to look at however i do think there are some gems down here a lot of these artists are fresh out of art school most notably for me even though this one on the right looks so much like the kim dingle show that i went to if you go and look back to my post about tribeca gallery hopping i don't maybe you can see some similarities there but i thought this piece was particularly interesting it's by an artist named marissa takal and this is another favorite of mine along with some ceramic pieces that she did but these are by the artist astrid terrazas i hope i pronounced that semi-correctly [Music] sorry if this part of the video makes you a little bit dizzy it makes me dizzy too but i wanted to give a little bit of a behind the scenes look at what it's like to find and actually venture into some of these uh chinatown galleries this one particular is super super hidden um you have to walk up five flights of stairs the entrance is a little bit challenging to find but we're on our way to lubov gallery which is a fun space and definitely has some great hidden gems [Music] this exhibit at lupo gallery features two works by marcia pells that were made 20 years apart and the work that you cannot fail to notice here literally takes up the entire main gallery space is titled fallout necklace and it was created in 2018. if you look closer you can see she's featured on this crown different world leaders you can see trump on there on the left no surprise as well as vladimir putin emmanuel macron angela merkel and kim jong-un to name a few and overall she's asking the question how many suffer today from leadership's frightening impotence to hoard and consolidate wealth and power in the name of nationalism the second piece that we see in this room is titled pieta and it was created 20 years prior in 1998 and this piece still questions the concept of power as you can see in the tall dominatrix like boots and corset and gloves and it ties together the work that we just saw of the giant crown by asking us to consider from whom do we expect compassion and who fails to deliver is it our leaders our mothers prostitutes criminals what do you think [Music] i hope you all put on your big kid trousers today because all of these shows are pretty heavy uh we've been living through pretty heavy times but this is an exhibit by mira shore titled tipping point and this whole collection of works in this exhibition started with this one painting that says which we'll see right here what kind of art will we make under fascism and the exhibit which is a series of paintings from 2017 to 2020 is her response to this question [Music] while a lot of artists have felt inspired to create more politically driven work during this time history and politics have actually always been central themes in mira's work and overall the exhibit captures the emotional rollercoaster that she's going through which i'm sure we can all relate to you know at times she's feeling very hot or passionate or outraged by the political and humanitarian crises that have been happening over the years and at other times she's feeling cold or almost depressed frankly by questioning you know what does it mean to be an artist at the possible end of history you know it's the far end of the other spectrum [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] this is another semi difficult to find gallery in chinatown i always think i'm honestly wandering into a restaurant when it's really the lobby for the elevator that leads to this really beautiful bright gallery and this is downs and ross and this is a group show titled when above and there wasn't too much context given about this show in the press release but honestly i was just so excited to see works by anna park as well as ivy holdman and i really love these bright works by lauren quinn as well [Music] here's a great shot of both an ivy holdman work on the left and an anna park charcoal work on the right i almost called it a painting but that's not true and yeah i just love the details and the contrast and anna park's works and there are two in the show one in this back room and then one in the front room which we got a little peek of when i panned the camera over [Music] [Applause] [Music] and our final gallery of the day is actually not a chinatown gallery so i'm sorry for misleading you all with the title but this is james cohen and it is on the border it's in the lower east side so it wasn't too far of a walk from the chinatown galleries but we are here to see yinka shonibar's exhibit of four of these incredible child sculptures [Music] the theme of this exhibit is global warming and ninka is using child figures to make us more aware and potentially have more empathy for how our actions of today will impact our children's tomorrow and as you can see he's replaced the children's heads with globes to replace any ideas of race or separation to really say this impacts everyone [Music] shinka is known for using his art as a commentary in general and culture and particularly his african culture having lived in nigeria for many years and as an artist with a tie to nigeria he was often questioned like why he didn't create quote unquote authentic african art so he really plays with this thought throughout his practice mostly by using this brightly patterned waxed cotton fabric that we see all of the children dressed in [Music] these are fabrics that are thought to be authentically african but they're actually of indonesian origin and they were mass produced by the dutch and sold in vast quantities across africa so through by using these brightly colored fabrics that everyone thought were authentically african thinkers really questioning what it means to be authentically african in his work [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Mary Lynn Buchanan

Views: 20,631

Keywords: Marinaro Gallery, Lubov Gallery, Downs & Ross Gallery, art gallery, art, art exhibit, emerging artist, james cohan gallery, lyles and king, Anna Park, Ivy Haldeman, Lauren Quin, Yinka Shonibare CBE, Marsha Pels, Mira Schor, Hannah Whitaker, Jordan Barse, Brian Belott, Marisa Takal, and Astrid Terrazas

Id: 2YRd1oBXJoo

Length: 17min 40sec (1060 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 13 2021