September 2005 Archives

In Lydia Lunch's bio, Paradoxia, the transgressive artist details her existence in the desolate wasteland that was SoHo during the early 1980s. Squatting in an abandoned building where the electricity had been turned off since Kennedy's assassination, Lunch constructed bizarre set designs in the store front window using discarded mannequins, dead flowers and odd trash she would find on the street. Artists like Lunch are responsible for resurrecting the once shitty neighborhoods like SoHo and DUMBO, inhabiting them when even rats took off, and then building the ruins back up to something once again livable only to get the boot when the neighborhood begins to thrive. What a difference twenty years makes.

Miss Van and the Power of the Pin-Up by Lauren Cerand

"I am doll parts/Bad skin/Doll heart" - Hole, Doll Parts

"I like it when it shocks people." - Miss Van

It would make sense that an opening for an exhibition of the sexy, sloe-eyed, pretty girls packing some serious action and otherwise known as Miss Van's poupées ("dolls"), would be...swelteringly, sizzling, hot. In more ways than one, naturally. Downtown denizens turned out in force for the debut of Don't Be Shy at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in Chelsea, where a fresh and fierce array of her twee temptresses is on display through October 8.

Now based in Barcelona, Miss Van earned her stripes on the streets of her native Toulouse - a city in Southwestern France that is home to a world-famous graffiti scene - where she set the standard for her peers and discovered an early affection for ruffling feathers.

Opening this month at Zito Studio Gallery on Ludlow Street is an exhibit of new works by Joe Heaps Nelson in which the painter offers up subversive little slices of Americana.

Cheerleaders. Milk! Corn! Beef! Eggs! Pork! The jubilant teens proudly offer produce grown on their home turf. Bulldogs. Little friends with distorted faces that loyally sit at the end of the Barcalounger waiting for its owner to wake up from a carbohydrate induced coma and offer a little TLC. Highway rest stops. Filler' up and while you are at it, get yourself a bacon, egg and cheese McGriddle! Mmm! Wooly mammoths...well, see for yourself. Joe Heaps Nelson's view of American life is taken straight from the source. His imagery, derived from various sources ranging from old catalogues to photographs he has taken himself, is a window that reveals both the excitement and the banality of life in the heartland.

The artist collective known as CUM* have an approach to street art that would make Hustler Publisher Larry Flynt extremely proud. Finding their way onto the exteriors of very public buildings are wheat pasted images of coquettish brunettes flashing onlookers, women on their knees dishing out some oral, and preening pin-ups seducing passerbyers. Taken at face value, unsuspecting civilians might be offended by the nature of the work, perceiving it as nothing more than the continued exploitation of women. But in a time when mass media advertising is all too heavily borrowing from the porn industry, can fingers really be pointed at someone for crossing the line when the line itself is already so blurred?