ART: Josh Azzarella

Josh Azzarella Untitled #23 (''Lynndied'') 2006


March 21 - May 17, 2008

Josh Azzarella
DCKT Contemporary
195 Bowery, ground floor
New York, NY 10002
Phone: (212) 741.9955

Hours:
Tuesday through Friday, 11am - 6pm
Saturday, noon - 6pm
Sunday, noon - 5pm

Unmaking icons and remaking history are the subjects of the first solo show by Josh Azzarella, currently on display at DCKT Contemporary's new Lower East Side gallery.

Appropriating some of the most famous images in the history of photojournalism and video reportage, Azzarella recontextualizes these images and forces viewers to confront their power by removing their historical significance.

In his re-working of the Jules Naudet video footage from 9/11 of American Airlines Flight 11, tragedy becomes a near-miss as his footage shows the plane flying harmlessly by the still standing towers. Another series of images based on the photographic evidence of torture at Abu Ghraib, shows Lynndie England and her fellow Army Reservists in their grotesque banality, with all traces of their victims erased.

The work, ultimately, is less about the image, than the importance of the historical moment. By removing the icon, Azzarella places the emphasis fully on the reality that the image re-presents.

--Jonathan Shieber

Posted by Short and Sweet NYC at 4/24/2008 09:30:00 AM 0 comments

THE ART WORLD: Rub Out The Word by William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs. Courtesy of Stellan Holm Gallery.

Stellan Holm Gallery
524 W. 24th St.
New York, NY 10011

The cult of personality that still clings to the early counter-culture provocateurs of the 1950s is in full swing at Stellan Holm Gallery, showing the late paintings, shotgun blasts, sketches and ephemera of junkie-beat-novelist hero William S. Burroughs.

There are some works of abstract beauty on display, especially in a few of the dark canvasses and textual paintings, and like everything else that Burroughs touched in the latter part of his life, it's all swaddled in a blanket of cool.

Of all the pieces, the shotgun paintings–effectively large blocks of wood shot with a 12-gauge–evoke most fully the sense of gallows humor that pervades much of Burroughs' written work, and they serve as a fitting homage to the mystique that helped to make him an anti-hero to generations.

Rub Out The Word by William S. Burroughs is showing at Stellan Holm Gallery until March 29th.

--Jonathan Shieber

Posted by Short and Sweet NYC at 3/13/2008 09:40:00 AM 0 comments