Installation view of "Harvest Moon," with a work by Matt Sheridan Smith hanging from a tree, at 425 Oceanview Avenue, Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, New York, through September 11, 2011.
As the summer wound down and the impending anniversary of September 11 brought swaths of Manhattan to a near standstill, the mood remained breezy and laid back out in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, almost at one end of the Q line. The artist Ryan Foerster lives out there these days, down on Oceanview Avenue, and he organized a show surrounding his home out there, called "Harvest Moon," and another exhibition, "Photosho," in a back room.
A tall white sail hung from a tree at one corner of the property, a work by Matt Sheridan Smith. As Foerster told The Observer's Michael H. Miller, no one in the neighborhood bothered him about the work, but he weighted it down anyway, just in case it were to spill out into the street, blocking the intersection. Probably, though, there would be no problem if that happened. People drive seem to drive slowly out there.
David Schoerner
Six drawings by David Shoerner were held to a window's metal gates by small magnets. They harbored text — RED RIGHT RETURN. IN ONE PIECE WITH HER. SUMMER IN THE CITY — and they swayed in the wind. A black sheet of fabric by Elaine Cameron-Weir was rustling too, small metal rods clinking gently against another set of bars: one of the artist's trademark birdcages, shown at the Ramiken Crucible this summer, made into a kinetic sculpture and a sound work.
Shawn Kuruneru
Elaine Cameron-Weir
Over in a corner stood Zak Kitnick's rusted but not battered sculpture, readily identifiable as cast-off, scrap metal if not for the fresh, clean, screws he has fastened tightly into work. It's an aged, stolid ancestor of the dark, sexy, almost sinister metal works -- all black and polished -- that he has embedded in the walls of Clifton Benevento in SoHo through November 5.
Erik Lindman also showed a variation on more familiar work, reengineering the crosses that he's made recently from wooden stretcher bars, which he showed in the two-week Richard Aldrich-curated "Addicted to Highs and Lows" at Bortolami in April. He has switched here to metal shelving brackets. It's a work of pure, old-time religion, hand-crafted design.
Installation view of "Photosho," at 425 Ocean Avenue, with Leigh Ledare work at left
Front: Lukas Geronimas; back: Zak Kitnick
Left: Hunter Hunt Hendrix and Erik Lindman; right: Robin Cameron
Ben Schumacher and Erik Lindman
Grayson Revoir
Jacob Kassay
Washed out, beaten and faded were the operative terms for the shows, which are also words that one could apply to the neighborhood. They would also apply to much of the work of Jacob Kassay. As he has in some recent group shows, Kassay has backed off of his intense silver-plating, opting for just the lightest touch of that element against a black field. It results in almost a golden haze, the realization of nostalgia. It's also a great move in a more minor way, as a response to dealers who are reportedly flipping his works in direct proportion to their shininess.
I'm dreaming, one day, of a gigantic museum exhibition in which Kassay's silver monochromes are ordered into one gigantic silver rainbow, one full silver spectrum — stretching from barely there to full-on, full-throttle chrome. This one is going to be pretty near the dark end. Will people believe that it was once hanging next to a gas meter, a sun-baked Kyle Thurman painting, and a roughed-up Lindman, out in Brighton?
Left: Kyle Thurman; right: Erik Lindman
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