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Art Culture Featured NYC

Tix on Sale for Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure Exhibit

Poster/design: Christopher Makos

Tickets are on sale now for the much anticipated Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure exhibit, opening April 9, at RXR’s Starrett-Lehigh Building in West Chelsea.

The exhibit, which will span over 15,000 square feet, will feature over 200 never before and rarely seen paintings, drawings, ephemera and artifacts. All of the work comes from the family’s collection. Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure© will also feature recreations of his NYC artist studio on Great Jones St. and the Michael Todd VIP Room of NYC’s iconic Palladium nightclub for which Jean-Michel created two paintings.

Charles the First, 1982, The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Licensed by Artestar, New York


The family commissioned internationally acclaimed architect David Adjaye to be the exhibition’s designer. He is the founder of Adjaye Associates, which operates globally, and designed The National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, DC. The exhibition’s identity has been created by Abbott Miller of visionary design firm Pentagram. He has previously collaborated with cultural clients including the Guggenheim Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Metropolitan Museum. Rizzoli Electa will release the accompanying book, also titled Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure©, to coincide with the exhibition. The book was authored by Jean-Michel’s sisters Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux and his stepmother Nora Fitzpatrick.

The address of Starrett-Lehigh Building is 601 W. 26th Street. Tickets can be purchased at kingpleasure.basquiat.com Follow on the exhibit’s Instagram page for more.

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Art

Chinon Maria at the World Trade Center

Chinon Maria at World Trade Center

Artist Chinon Maria at the World Trade Center’s New Gallery

“CREATING PUBLIC ART in the World Trade Center has been one of the most humbling and emotional experiences of my life,” says Colombian-born street artist Chinon Maria at the World Trade Center

Chinon has four large-scale murals that call the World Trade Center home. Her latest, One World, Our Childrenwill be placed at the future site of 5 WTC and features faces of nine refugee girls from around the globe. Maria asked 1,500 children from 40 countries to mail drawings and descriptions of their dreams for the future, which she incorporated into the mural, with the help of 350 local student volunteers.

Drawing Inspiration Worldwide

“I like to think New York has a place for all these cultures, and all these ideas that I love from all over the world,” Chinon explains. “My artwork is vibrant, colorful, hopeful with an underlining message of unity, healing, and social activism.”

Chinon’s high-energy work has been comissioned for public spaces around the world, and always within her preferred medium—public domain.

“Public art is so important to me, that accessibility, you can’t put a price tag on it,” she says. “It has the ability to actually change space with positive reinforcement and the resurgance of hopeful attitudes.

Taking It Home to New York

“While new projects take her to Mexico and beyond, it’s in lower Manhattan where she feels most at home and spiritually connected.

“In Downtown, you can walk on any block and at any moment you can see people from all over the world and that’s, for me, really inspiring as an artist.”

Art’s transformative power is especially meaningful to Maria’s downtown work., as she aims to positive contribute to the area’s rebirth.

“Art has a power to bring together people from different cultures to identify with a piece of work, to enjoy a piece by just being able to see it on the street and getting the community involved,” Chinon says.

Murals at 4 World Trade Center

To do just this for 4 World Trade Center, Chinon wanted her mural to depict the rich history of New York City in an inviting way, and also sat down with children from the community to talk about the future of the city.

“It was not only 9/11, the tragedy that happened here,” she says. “There were so many other things that have made this city what it is today—good and bad—so I wanted to make sure we could honor that through a piece of artwork.”

“To end it on a hopeful note, I worked with community children to say the future of New York City is going to be bright, and beautiful, and filled with diversity and color.”

Visit the work of artist Chinon Maria at the World Trade Center at wtgallery.com/chinon-maria

Categories
Business Culture Entertainment Music NYC

Making Waves

Blonde Records’ Founder Rebecca Autumn Sansom (first left) Seeks Inclusivity with Wavy Awards.

OCTOBER 23RD, 2021 MARKED THE FIRST EVER WAVY AWARDS SHOW, the name making  a play on digital audio WAV files. The show is  a celebration of “historically excluded talent,”  including musicians that are women, members  of the LGBTQ+ community, and persons with  disabilities. As each presenter took the stage at  Abrons Arts Center, they leaned into the mic and  described themselves — their hair color, outfit, or  personal aesthetic — for blind audience members  and nominees. The awards also featured two  American Sign Language interpreters who  took turns interpreting the speeches and  performances. For the brainchild of Blonde Records Founder Rebecca Autumn Sansom, The  Wavy Awards marked an ending, as well as a new  beginning, in her career.  

Sansom never intended to get into the music  industry. She considers herself a “filmmaker  trapped in an artist’s body.” She was at Stanford  doing performance and theater when she met  “M the Myth,” an artist, collaborator, and then undergrad. “I’m a filmmaker, so I’m drawn to  captivating subjects. So really, I would just film  these people. And then I realized after helping  M with their music video campaign for ‘Let’s Get  Drunk Anyway,’ that cheerleading artists, filming  them, and encouraging their careers is a job  called management.” She formed Blonde Artist  Management in New York City, named after  Marilyn Monroe, with whom she identifies and  felt might have lived with different support and  management.  

For five years, Sansom ran Blonde Artist Management. This past year she also founded  and ran Blonde Records and Blonde Music News, a weekly NYC music podcast. The Wavys were a big step for Blonde and its mission, but  also for Sansom, who is the first to recognize her  own privileges and those whose lack of privilege  often leaves them out of the spotlight.  

The Wavy Awards was always going to be a pivot point for Sansom. “The Wavys was going to be my last grand gesture,” says Sansom, “and then I was going to gather information and see what the next steps were for Blonde.” 

Wavy Awards 2021. Photo by Stephanie Aguello.

The ball started rolling in December 2020,  after a year of weekly Blonde Music News episodes. “I told (my team) about this idea and how we have enough people, enough artists to have a pretty robust pool to glean  from.”  There were eleven people at the first meeting. Then the team started expanding, with partnerships with organizations like Rampd  (Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities), local news website Scenes from the Underground, and Shira Gans from the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment. By the time the event actually happened, Sansom and partners were staring down a full house. 

The response was overwhelming. The Wavys have gone from a one-off event, into an annual awards show. It helped Sansom find a new direction; she will continue to support her coterie of artists, but the Wavy Awards has become her flagship effort. Blonde Music News, for example, has rebranded as Wavy Music News. “New York is the creative capital of the world and draws a lot of diversity,” says Sansom, “I think creating accessible spaces is the most important thing we can do right now, with the momentum that we have.”

In addition to the Wavys, Sansom has a film, Reckoning with the Primal Wound, coming out in 2022. It has already been accepted into seven film festivals. DT

For more information on The Wavy Awards, visit thewavys.org.

Categories
Culture Living Music

Glow Up

SHINE ON The PAC's translucent marble walls will light up from the inside at night.

SHINE ON The PAC’s translucent marble walls will light up from the inside at night. Photography by Luxigon.

The Perelman Performing Arts Center will bring beauty and closure to downtown.

IN THE WAKE OF THE SEPTEMBER 11TH ATTACKS on the World Trade Center complex, great architectural minds gathered around the devastation to rebuild. Nearly 20 years later, their plan is coming to fruition. The Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center, or PAC, will mark the final construction effort in the decades- long project.

The building, a massive cube wrapped in translucent marble and laminated with insulated glass, will let in sunlight during the day and emit a visible glow from internal lights at night. The inside will feature three modular theater spaces and a rehearsal room, all with movable walls and seating, capable of 11 unique configurations to accommodate audiences of 99 – 1200 people. With the last steel beam placed this summer, the PAC is looking to host its first performance in 2023.

“I think it’s extraordinary,” says PAC Creative Director Bill Rauch, “that there was an impulse to include arts and culture as part of the rebuilding, and we kept that impulse alive and nurtured it.”

The PAC was a cornerstone piece of the original 2003 recovery plan. The project was designed by the Brooklyn-based firm REX, replacing the earlier choice of Frank Ghery, in collaboration with theater designer Charcoalblue and executive architect Davis Brody Bond. Rockwell Group is handling the design of the restaurant and lobby space. The planners hoped that it would be the cultural lynchpin of the World Trade Center, helping to redefine Lower Manhattan as a cultural destination.

“In the planning for the recovery and rebuilding of the World Trade Center,” says PAC president Leslie Koch, “[former] Mayor Bloomberg articulated the importance of integrating the arts into a vision for Lower Manhattan as a dynamic 24/7 neighborhood with workers, residents, and visitors.

“Now,” Koch continues, “18 years after the World Trade Center plan was adopted, Lower Manhattan is thriving, with tens of thousands of residents, media, and technology firms joining the financial anchors of New York City and literally millions of visitors. As the city emerges from the pandemic, the Performing Arts Center, with Mike Bloomberg as our chair, will again be both an icon and a catalyst of New York’s resurgence.”

The PAC is also dedicated to reaching out to the community, both locally and citywide. They hired Jenna Chrisphonte as their Director of Civic Alliances, charged with cultivating relationships with community-based organizations and groups, marginalized populations, and community officials across all five boroughs. They also hope that the building can be a resource to the local community. The first level will be accessible to the public, open until midnight every night. It will feature a cafe and bar, lobby area, dance podium, and performance art space, the latter two of which will periodically have free performances.

Rauch hopes that PAC will be a symbol of its surroundings and of human resilience.“Whether the art is tragic or joyful, all the work that we do is in celebration of humanity,” he says. “There’s a reason why [the PAC] glows from within.” DT

For more information, visit theperelman.org.

Categories
Art Culture Featured News

David Byrne’s ‘How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic’ Exhibit Opens at Pace Gallery

David Byrne's How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic exhibition runs at Pace Gallery Feb. 2-March 19.

David Byrne’s How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic exhibition runs at Pace Gallery Feb. 2-March 19.On the wall, Human Content.

David Byrne, lead singer/songwriter for The Talking Heads, and currently starring on Broadway in the smash musical American Utopia, continues to keep busy, exploring different art mediums. During the pandemic, Byrne created a series of drawings, that are featured in a new book out Feb. 16, A History of the World (in Dingbats): Drawings and Words (co-authored with Alex Kalman) . In conjunction with the book release, Pace Gallery presents a collection of Byrne’s work in a new exhibit, How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic, open Feb. 2-March 19.

David Byrne, Hot Bread Delivery, 2020.

The exhibit incorporates Byrne’s pandemic doodles, along with a collection of playful, thematic tree drawings from the early 2000s, and a selection of chair drawings from 2004-2007. The ‘dingbat’ doodles made during quarantine, were a means for Byrne to cope with boredom, anxiety, and isolation, offering a way to express hope, desire for connection, a bit of wicked sense of humor, and the power of community.

Of his tree drawings, Byrne has described them as ” faux science, automatic writing, self-analysis, satire, and maybe even a serious attempt at finding connections where none were to exist. And an excuse to draw plant-like forms and diagrams.”

David Byrne’s Girl Head Chair drawing.

Of his surreal chair drawings, Byrne has said, “Maybe they are portraits, maybe self-portraits, maybe portraits of my interior state. Maybe they are also possible practical furniture design. Maybe all of the above at once.”

On Monday, Feb. 7, at 7pm, Byrne with speak with documentary filmmaker John Wilson at Pace Gallery. The conversation will later be shown on HBO. Tickets to the event are sold out, but it will be live streamed.  See more details about the program here: https://www.pacegallery.com/events/how-we-learned-about-non-rational-logic/.

Pace Gallery is located at 540 W. 25th Street. For more information, visit pacegallery.com.

Categories
Entertainment Events Living

The Greens Teams with West Side Comedy Club, Hosts Comedy Shows

Mark Normand
Mark Normand

Reaching out on behalf of The Greens with exciting new programming in partnership with West Side Comedy Club! Starting Wednesday, February 2, the famous NYC comedy destination will be popping up at Pier 17’s indoor rooftop bar to serve up laughs accompanied by seasonal cocktails and delicious bites. Run by Felicia Madison, a comedian and manager who translates her fun, intelligent humor into an atmosphere where comics love to perform and where audiences love to laugh, the West Side Comedy Club shows will occur every other Wednesday and host 4-5 NYC based comics during each show.   

Located at the Seaport on The Rooftop at Pier 17 overlooking the Lower Manhattan skyline, The Greens is a destination dining experience that features 32 custom-built 10’ x 10’ private dining cabins, community cabins, and The Greens bar, where the comedy shows will take place. Complete with intimate lounge seating, toasty fireplaces, and a well-stocked drink selection, The Greens bar is the perfect setting for a night of laughs and good company.

Shows will occur every other Wednesday from 7:00 – 8:30pm, starting February 2, 2022; lineup of comedians includes: 

Mark Normand
Mark Normand

Wednesday, February 2: Ashley Austin Morris, Eagle Witt, Jocelyn Chia, Mark Normand and Adam Gabel 

Wednesday, February 16: Black History Month show (artists TBC) 

Wednesday, March 2: Artists TBC 

Wednesday, March 16: Artists TBC

Wednesday, March 30: Artists TBC 

Wednesday, April 30: Artists TBC

Reservations required. Tickets are $15 (21+ only.)  An a-la-care menu will be available, and all cocktails are $12

For more information, visit thegreens.pier17ny.com