Will Kurtz Exhibition: "Extra F**king Ordinary" at Mike Weiss Gallery

Dancing Girls

Will Kurtz
(Mike Weiss Gallery Email Circular)

Ever since I became minimally involved with the art scene in New York City through getting to know Terrance Lindall, and especially since becoming one of the founding committee members of the Williamsburg Circle, I seem to have gotten onto several art e-lists, thereby adding to my daily pile-up of inbox emails to delete, though I always check them first to see if any of the art being exhibited appeals to me.

I received several emails from the Mike Weiss Gallery recently calling attention to an exhibition of Will Kurtz's sculptures, but being put off by the exhibit's title, "Extra F**king Ordinary" (literally spelled out in the original), I initially ignored the photos of his work. Or tried to. But they caught my eye. Maybe the energy in the photo above shows why. I finally took a closer look this morning and really liked his sculptures, which he forms from old newspapers.

Kurtz describes the process in this twelve-minute video. He explains that he was trained as an architect (though a landscape architect), which might account for his interest in structure, for his sculptures, due to their wire frames, look as though they have bones. He doesn't just wad up newspapers and paste them together to see what emerges. Rather, his creations suggest a deep concern for classical form. He tells us in the video that he makes the naked image first, then applies the colored pages from newspapers for the skin and everything that we see on the surface, which tells me that he's a sculptor with a concern for the appearance as well as the form, and in his art, the surface acts as a collage in which various images are brought together in fascinating ways, such that the closer one looks, the more one sees.

For those readers in New York City, you have until this Saturday (February 18, 2012) to visit the exhibition:

Mike Weiss Gallery
520 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011
Gallery Hours: Tues-Sat 10am to 6pm

Everyone else will perhaps have to be satisfied with images from the Mike Weiss Gallery itself.

Or from reviews: Maria Teicher's "Inside the Studio"; Hyperallergic's "Weekly Art Rx"; Look Into My Owl's "Will Kurtz"; Romanblog II's "Will Kurtz"; or Structure and Imagery's "Will Kurtz."

Or get to Googling . . .

Art: "The Underbelly Project"

Substandard Dining Table

Installation by Jeff Stark

Photo by Katherine Lorimer

(Image from The New York Times)

Well, this is something you don't see every day, an underground artshow closed to art critics, art dealers, auction-house representatives, and the public, according to author and art critic Jasper Rees in "Street Art Way Below the Street" (New York Times, October 31, 2010). Even the artists are unknown, or known only by pseudonyms:

That’s because the exhibition has been mounted, illegally, in a long-abandoned subway station . . . . The show's curators, street artists themselves, unveiled the project for a single night, leading this reporter on a two-and-a-half hour tour. Determined to protect their secrecy, they offered the tour on condition that no details that might help identify the site be published, not even a description of the equipment they used to get in and out. And since they were (and remain) seriously concerned about the threat of prosecution, they agreed only to the use of street-artist pseudonyms.

Prosecution for what?

[T]he legal risks were obvious. Charles F. Seaton, a spokesman for New York City Transit, described such incursions as "trespassing, punishable by law," and said "anyone caught defacing M.T.A. [Metropolitan Transportation Authority] property is subject to arrest and fine." Beyond that, [the two artists] Workhorse and PAC [who organized the project] worried that given anxiety about terrorism in the subway, a large-scale, long-term project like theirs might even lead to more serious charges.

Okay, I see why the artists want to protect their identities, but what about the writer, Mr. Jasper Rees, and his two-hour tour! Isn't that also trespassing? Why is he not worried about punishment? Grey Lady immunity? Or is he out of the country, back in merry old England? Don't we have an extradition treaty with the Brits?

While we consider that conundrum, let's ease our mind's eye by clicking over to "The Underbelly Project" itself, or for a slide show courtesy of the New York Times, or for a webpage of images courtesy of the LTV Squad.

Of course, we'll be crossing a line . . . and may be arrested by the images.