Report from the East Village Slouching Toward Avenue D Hot on the heels of Neo-Express jonism and graffiti comes East Village art, complete with its own galleries, bohemian ambience, social controversies, and mix of painterly, political, conceptual and cartoony styles. Below, two veterans review the scene. BY WALTER ROBINSON AND CARLO McCORMICK. he art world has done it again. With no warming 10 speak of, a new avant-garde has een launched, a new genera- ion of artists all the more remarkable for having arrived with its own net- work of new galleries (more than 25) and even its own art neighborhood— the East Village. The magnitude of this shift of the art world’s attention, this sudden expansion of the art scene, is astonishing. Moreover, it comes on the heels of the previous international market and esthetic sen sation provoked by Neo-Expression- ism and graffiti art—both such phe- nomenal arl-market successes that you'd think anyone who ever wanted a painting would have bought it by now. Taken as a package, the East Village art scene is so much’ “ready-made” that it seems uncanny, a marketing ‘masterpiece based on felicitous coinci- ences, Besides having its own artists, neighborhood, art press and distinc- tive gallery names, the East Village scene has its own day (Sunday) and {edt hve Ftaars Tx Je ‘tallpsintig and tve communi maa Sind Stree ad Avenue B Below: Graft by Richard Hambleton ond thers onan unused ety market building Sehirse Avenue and {00h Stree. ‘Both photos Andreas Sterzing. its own gallery architecture—small tenement storefronts, with no back room and no storage. The area is compact, only a mile or so_from Sofio, and already celebrated for its many’ ethnic restaurants and bou- tiques. And as for ambience, the East Village has it’ a unique biend of pov- erty, punk rock, drugs, arson, Hell's Angels, winos, prostitutes and dilapi- dated ‘housing that adds up to an adventurous avant-garde setting of considerable cachet The story of the East Village’s new- est bohemian efflorescence (following by only a few years the punk rock scene there, which had its own picto- rial component, presented as “New York/New Wave" at PS. I in 1981) can also be read as an episode in New York's realzstate history—thet is, as the deployment of a force of gentrty- ing artists in lower Manhattan's last sium, In light of Manhatian’s tight housing market, the arca may be en- tering the final’ phase of its historic role as home to successive waves of poor immigrants. Indeed, gent tion, and the ariis’s function in it, has ‘become a controversial issue in local polities. The young artists and artis man- qués who moved to the area three o- four years ago certainly dida’t plan to Change the neighborhood's character oor establish a new art scene. Low rents and a multi-ethnic street culture were the East Village's attractions, the art scene that followed was an unex- pected bonus. Last summer, after a year and a half of incubation, press attention and sales began to take off to the surprise of almost everyone. In effect, the area's artists and. dealers became accomplices in an unspoken conspiracy to forge a collective identi- ty and to use it as a marketing tool. Although the East Village is easy to delimit geographically, the art. pro- duced and exhibited there is hardly homogenous. It can be separated, in fact, into a number of different esthet- ic tendencies that individually are closer kin to art made elsewhere than to each other. The East Village also includes different groups of artists with, independent histories (eg. the graffiti artists, the artists associated with Collaborative Projects) and gal- leries with distinctly out-of-the-neigh- borhood orientations (showing only Europeans, for example, or artisis whose work first appeared uptown or in SoHo). What we have here is not a simple new style but rather a “r Yention” of the art world in all its variety hc East Village art scene be~ ‘came the hot topic of New York’s '83-84 art season, at least among fans of emerging artists, Along with an increasing ‘quantity of shows on its own turf (inTete Revels installation a 1%, 1983, ‘pray examen tl, 4 Dy 10 fet. Below: Fab Five Freddys Fun Man, 1983, ‘enamel on canvas, 4by 4 fet Fun Gallery, Farura 2000: Untitled (Globe, 1983, spray enamel Dalated directly on Brick wal (and since Sesiroyed), cx. 8 0930 Inches. SLX. ‘bore: Crash by Crash, 1983, spray ‘enamel en eanvan 8 by SO inches SX. ie Zephyrs mae op enamel an Shy tee "ton Caen sd. bars and nightclubs as well as galler- ies), East Village art began 10 appear at established galleries in Tribeca, SoHo, uptown, and even in Europe. The two largest surveys, at Artists Space and P.S. 1, were coincidentally mounted at the same time (in Janu- ary) and both included 51 artists, though only 17 names appeared on the rosters of bath shows. These iwo exhibitions provided an introductory sampling of the new art, conveniently gathered at single sites which are, of course, two of the oldest alternative spaces.’ These surveys didn’t pretend to provide curatorial assessment; rather, they were mutual. ly gratifying exchanges of accredita- tion between old and new avant-garde institutions, Ironically, it was the al- ternative space, with its government Graffiti shares elements with other East Village art: an obsession with trademarks; motifs from pop culture; an adolescent love for dramatic imagery. support and noncommercial preten- sions, that was conferring its impri- matur on avant-garde activity in a commercial setting. (It_will be inter esting to see whether Reagan's NEA takes note of this particular episode of public funding of the private. sector ‘The East Village art scene, incidental- ly, suits the Reoganite zeitgeist re- markably well; its private, economic entrepreneurship coincides so closely with Reagan administration attitudes that one almost expects to hear a ref ference to the new art scene in a presi- dential anecdote.) The show at Artists Space, called “New Galleries of the Lower East Side,” was organized by Helene Win- ef, once the director of Artists Space and now co-owner of the commercial gallery Metro Pictures. Winer’s show featured work by three artists from each of 17 East Village galleries though she installed the show, it was Winer’s new colleagues who selected the art, in a kind of curatorial subcon- fracting that underlined the initial priority of attention the art world gave 10 the galleries themselves. East Village noncommercial spaces (Ken- keleba House, ABC No Rio and the East Village ’84 painting space at PS. 122, all of ‘which predate the commercial galler- ies) were excluded, as were those gal- leries that “after several tries could not be found or were not open.” The 17 included CASH, Christ- minster, Civilian Warfare, Executive, 51X, Fun, Tracey Garet, Pat Hearn, con East 10th that mounts solo shows fora night or two. These two altemative-space exit tions. were toppers to a glut of group shows, temporary alliances of young artists which are but one resnlt of the struggle for visibility. Most_of the group shows in or from the East Vik Wall Mural doac in early 1582 by Lee Quinones forthe Allen Bays, ‘focal gang on Alen Street eld Houston, "Te reflects fer view of ‘the woeld more than ny own." the aie said, Pho Andress Strain. International With Monument, Gracie Mansion, Nature Morte, New Math, Orsi Domani, Piezo Electric, PP.OW., East 7th St. and Sharpe. (Other galleries in the neighborhood, most of which opened only recently include Area X, Art City, Art_and Commerce, Caidoz, Facchetti Burk, La Galleria, Max, MO David, M-13, Public Image, St. Mark's Gallery, Sen- sory Evolution, Lily van der Stoker and Virtual Garrison.) “Limbo” (curated by the authors at P.S. 1) was also casually selected—in most cases, the artisis or their dealers picked works for the exhibition. The show was a “retrospective” of all the artists who had displayed work at the Limbo Lounge, a small storefront bar lage wore simply organized. rather than curated, and named either gener- jcally (such as “Art fiom the East Vi lage") or thematically (e.g. Gracie Mansion's “Hot” last summer) While the titles of a recent series of group shows at the East 7th St, Gal- lery (“Underdog,” “Nightmare” and “Twilight Zone") suggested a Lower Fast Side slum ambience 2s. well 2s clichés describing the young artist's stato of mind, theso titles in fact weren't intended to describe the work in an esthetically meaningful way. As Rick Pool, the painter who curated these shows, put it, “The artists, they'll do anything. You give them a show called ‘Shit in a Road’ and ‘they'd paint pictures fori.”East Village °84 ABrief Chronology fhe frst of the new commer cial galleries to emerge from the rubble of the punk rock scene was Fun Gallery, which opened in the fall of 81 on East 10th St,, the East Village's version of West Tnstallation view of Sharpe Gallery's na From right to lel, works by Arthur Gonea Mapptetherpe, Broadway. The gallery's most promi- nent figure from the start was its director, Patti Astor, a leading lady of the New York underground film scene (Underground U.S.A. and Wild Siyle are among her credits). With her platinum hair and torch-singer style, Astor was as capable of attracting the ‘media's imagination as any gallery owner ever. According to Astor, Fun was a commercial gallery because “T just wanted a place to show art and didn’t want to bother with filling out grant forms.” Fun started with a small circle of grafiti artisis and neighborhood resi- Gents captivated by the liveliness of ehewo culture. With the same street sensibility 4s Fashion Moda in the Curse, Ken Goodman, Panel South Bronx, Fun held openings that were minifestivals of the slam arts, featuring rap music and break-dancing along with the graffiti paintings exhib- ited on its walls. In the next two years, Fun gave birth to the Lower East Side careers of such artists as Jean Michel Basquiat, Fab Five Fred- 0m, Sol Image," Sept. 15- Oct 15, 1983. "Mark Dean, David True, Michael Oterse ‘Robert ede. ‘Robin Winters ané Robyn dy, Futura 2000, Keith Haring, Kiely Jenkins, Lee Quinones, Kenny Scharf and Dondi White. The East Village's next new gallery vwas 51X on St. Mark’s Place, founded by artist Rich Colicchio a few months after Fun opened and also featuring grefiti art. Recent exhibitions there have been of work by Judy Rifka and Avant, a group of five young painters who formerly made collaborative, generic abstractions. Calicchio, though not 2 graffiti artist, also showed his own fashion-illustration- like New-Wave portraits that captured the stylish look of the punk rock scene. Around its second birthday, SIX went private, renaming itself Muzeam 51X and exhibiting 2 semi-permanent selection of works by artists who have shown there. Colicchio made this moye to allow more time for his own work, but it's also an ironic comment ‘on the scene's institutionalization, “We were street artists and these were sirvet galleries,” he says. “Now it’s all business.” His farewell gesture was to mount a “dilapidation show,” hanging art works along with tacked-up bro: ken plasterboard and wor linoleum. “I considered breaking the toilet and installing drips from the ceiling,” he said. ‘The two galleries that surfuced next ‘were Nature Morte and Civilian War- fare. Coincidentally opening on the seme day in March 1982, and each run by a pair of young artists, the two galleries occupy different positions on the esthetic spectrum, Nature Morte, founded by artists Some East Village art characteristics: self. parody; small works that reflect tenement studios as well as a rejection of machismo; bargain-basemont pricing; @ lowbrow, not altogether ironic taste for kitsch. ‘Alan Belcher and Peter Nagy, is the East Village’s first. obviously Post- modernist gallery (since joined by In ternational With Monument and CASH), exhibiting the kind of self conscious photographic work, for ex- ample, that plays with the con gruences and contradictions between art-world and mass-culture esthetic codes. The gallery also has an ironic appreciation of discarded esthetics. “Our fantasy,” the co-ditectors said, “is to have retrospectives someday of Op Art _and psychedelia.” Nature Morte has held solo shows by Greich- en Bender, Joseph Nechyatal, Richard Milani, Joel Otterson, Stephen Parri no and a show of works on paper dy Thomas Nozkowski curated by Jo- seph Masheck. The two directors maintain they will never have @ sta- ble. “It's okay with us if the artisis we show Tun offto SoHo or 57th St” Civilien Warfare, opened by Alan Barrows and Dean Savard, specializes in a kind of cerebral, media.in- fluenced painting (though its rosterdoes include two sculptors). [t shows pop-expressionist painters (Richard Hambleton, Luis Frangella, Judy Glantzman, Huck Snyder),” artists, whose work responds to the urban imagery of the Lower East Side (Da- vid” Wojnarowice, Greer Lankton), and_ others, including South Bronx denizen John Fekner, ‘Almost all of Civilian’s painters have painted on some type of urban salvage: Wojnarowicz on trash-can lids and supermarket posters, Sayder ‘on discarded windows, Glantzman on found pieces of plastic, Jane Bauman ‘on old records, Hambieton on metal Marlboro signs. A number are also “antipainters,” using paint but deval- uuing their technical ability by using stencils (Wojnarowicr, Fekner, Bau- man) or painting like an amateur (Wojnarowiez). Frangella, with his professional illustrator’s touch, is an exception. yacie Mansion, with partner Sur Rodney Sur, opened in ‘the spring of 82 and quickly became the embodiment of the spirit of the East Village. Initially billed as the “gallery for the viewing at-close range of intimate works of art by lower Manhattan artists” and sub- tiled “Loo Division”—the gallery doubled as the bathroom of Gracie'’s ienement apartment—its first. three shows were of photographs by T. Greathouse, paintings by Stephen Lack, and ‘work by mail artist and portrait painter E.F. Higgins. The Loo Division established some of the East Village scene's halimarks: self-parody; small works that reflect a rejection of machismo as well 8 tencment-apart- ment studios, bargain basement pric- ing; a lowbrow, not altogether ironic taste for kitsch, ‘Afier her landlord, reacting to the crowds at her openings, put @ halt to her apartment shows, Gracie moved briefly to St. Mark's Place, where she mounted “The Famous Show,” an ex- fravoganza featuring almost 100 art- ists and profiling the new art of the neighborhood via portraits of its resi- dents. Its immense popularity played an important port in galvanizing a sense of local identity among area art- isis, and the mob-scene opening, com- plete with doorman, attracted consid- ‘erable media attention. In the spring of 83 Gracie Mansion moved to her current, rather bucolic location on East 10th St, at the northeast end of Tompkins Square Leltforght Abe Stength, 198% oon paper 40 by 2 inches (ecutive Gallo) z Four Satea’s Raine Mla: 1983 plat yl on board 92 6p So tochas P.O.) and ‘Hope Sandroy’s Mme, 1985, black-and-vhite phetopraph, 24 20 inches (Ogg Donen) Zeke Berman: Table Study from the “Current ‘Arch Conney: Easy, 1982 Event sries, 142. Oggi Demat. mixed Imedlums,1Siches high. Fan Gallery.Thierry Cheverney:'The Mysterious Island, 1954, Alon canvas, 82 By TO inches. Pat Hearn Galery, George Condo: Untitled, 1983, 011 ‘on catvas, Pu Hearn Galery ofp ‘Leftto righ: Jonathan Elis’ The Brunt 198i, achicon cas Oy 8 Inches st Dream, 1983, olfon plaster on metal, 71 by 26 by 9 inches; Mita's #35, ted sculptures by Craig Colenan, 1983, copper and move, 109 fe Mark Kostabi- Upheaval, item canras, 48 by 361 Peter Schayf Bathrs, 18sec on paper ‘ireannas 57 by 8d inches Pat Hearn GaleryPark, where she has since introduced the art world to multi-media artists Rodney Alan Greenblat and Rhonda Zosillinger, among others. Among Gracie’s specialties are shows that re- style her gallery floor-to-ciling, in- ‘cluding wallpaper and, often enough, furniture. (One group’ show featured coordinated couch-and-picture sets by six artists.) In the spring of "83 the East Village also welcomed. two more galleries, New Math (on East 12th) and Piezo Electric (below Houston at Clinton and Stanton). New Math directors Mario (at 20, the area's youngest deal- er) and Nina were aifectionately de- soribed by one of their colleagues as “totally oblivious and completely hap- py.” an assessment that indicates the spontaneity and casual attitude that originally characterized the East Vil- lage art scene, and still describes New Math. Their esthetic portfolio has in- cluded a group art-and-fashion show, One of the more curious ‘enclaves in the scone is an entire group of artists intent on recapitulating the visual motifs of Surrealisin. Scandinavian expressionism (Kiel Enk Killi Olsen), Miroesque painting (Mita), toremlike sculpture of wood and copper sheet (Craig Coleman) and computer graphics and painting (Bar- ry Bridgwood) Piezo Electric (a scientific term de- fined as “oxhibiting charges of elec- tricity induced in a crystalline sub- stance by the application of pressure") run by Doug Milford and Lisa McDonald, and to date has shown fs- Urative painters with a taste for sex and melodrama (Keiko Bonk, Philip Pocock, Louis Renzoni) and. pop- expressionists (Stephen Lack, Richard Hambleton and Ellen Berkenblit), The gallery recently moved seven blocks Uptown to the more convenient East eth St. By the summer of ’83, the East Vil lage had become home to seven new commercial galleries. When the New York art world closed down for July and August, the East Village stayed open. It was at this point that the East Village art scene was invented. Early coverage came in the form of “human interest” stories and pseudosociologi- a East Village ’84 cal examination of shifts in neighbor- hood population. More serious critical attention came from the area’s own critics—Nicholas Moufarrege, for ex- ample, The lively social scene—there was, and still is, some art event almost every night—along with the surprise attention of collectors and cu- ‘Stephes Pollack: Isl of Death, 1983, cline Stet by Wnchen: Pa Hearn Galery rators (Jack Boulton, curator for Chase Manhattan, Patterson Sims of the Whitney Museum and Lowery Sims of the Metropolitan were carly visitors) had created the art world’s newest monster. Last fall saw the opening of the rest of the gallery con tingent.Louis Renzoni with Niacin, 1984 Photo Philip Pocock: lorry Cheverney (right) with dealer Wid and Wonder i hont of Cher ‘Mansion Gallery “Hot (Part 1,” ‘Bobby G and cht. Photo © Peter Bellamy, 1983.East Village ’84 The Clan Warfare tale, op fh lt Niche Frmnblion Michael Spel Fane Braman, Cre ‘Mario and Nina of Nem Math Stephen Lack n bis sted. Gallery. Phow rie Krall. Photo Philip Pocock.The Second Wave jhe newer galleries were not necessarily formed solely by area artists to mount shows of their friends’ work. A number of dealers who live outside the neigh- borhood, including Deborah Sharpe and Tracey Garet, opened better-look- ing and more businesslike galleries with their own stable of artists, some of whom had never set foot in the area. Both Sharpe and Garet opened in the fall of 1983, Sharpe with a group show that included works. by Chia and Clemente, and Garet with shows including work by her brothers Jedd Garet and Dana Garret, as well as by Louise Bourgeois and Alice Neel, Garct’s expressed intention was to create an “uptown salon” atmo- sphere, Since September, Sharpe has shown figurative artists “who make what East Village art can be separated into a number of different esthetic trends that individually are closer kin to art made elsewhere than to each other. could be called extended selfpor- traits—work that embellishes a cen- ‘tral figure with props and pictorial atiributes for an overall effect of Iyri- cal subjectivity. This group includes ceramic sculptors Arthur Gonzalez and Michael Lucero (Sharpe has called them “new Neo-Primitives") and painters Michael Ottersen_ and Pamela Wye; other artists showing in the gallery include Mark Dean, Peter Drake and Cheryl Laemmie. MO David, a recent arrival (Janu- ary '84) was previously based in San Francisco and is still primarily con- cerned with artists from California. Its first exhibition was photo-documenta- tion of performance pieces by Stelarc, who suspends himself in the air by means of numerous hooks through skin, Mike Osterhout, director of MO David, explains: “There was no mar- ket for what I was showing in San Francisco; I was there for two years and really gave it a shot. The East Village is the best place to expose new art today. Its audience is more open- ‘minded and willing to buy.”fi i Sai Sat Do Cures 288, ian dved nbrie eck pane! 7 ee Becheshy eet Photo Wolfgang Sache Right, atop: black and ‘Tosh Nechvnals “Grace Under Pressre ‘Sores 1964 11 by dls Nacare Move Mite: Bony Bridweod s/t 1983, enamel ncanvas,3Uby 3B inches. Now Math ostor: Jane Basman's The Batman, 1945 enamel on metal, 250) 30 inches Chitlan Warlare. Other outsiders include Facchetti Bure, which opened this winter on East 1th St, and is showing Euro- peans, One of 10th Street's newest galleries, Area X, which opened in Tate March, is run by Bobbie Sioux Goldberg, who worked for five years for uptown dealer Terry Dintenfass. P.P.O.W. was founded last fall by Penny Pilkington (who is English) and Wendy Olsoif. Their exhibitions to date have been varied: Sue Coe’s bit- ing, international political expression- ism; Tod Miner's. Minimalist-parody sculpture; Larry Silver's painterly ab- stractions; Paul Markus's apocalyptic urban expressionism; Paul Benney's psychological dream-realism. This fall the East. Village got_its ‘own photography gallery, Oggi Do- mani, opened by long-time neighbor- hood’ resident Tim Greathouse and fellow photographer Lamy Lofredo. ‘Oggi has shown a range of nondocu- mentary photographers: the staged studio tableaux of Zeke Berman, Phyllis Galembo and Jimmy DeSane; portraits by Hope Sandrow and Greathouse; the “found” architectural reflections of Leora Laor. Sandrow’s work, for example, disrupts tradition- al paitemns of vision that are a photo- graphic given. Rarely taken face-to- face, het portraits utilize extreme shooting angles, double images result- ing from reflections and camera mo- tion; they also focus on atypical ana~ tomical terrain, The East Village now has a video gallery too—Art and Commerce; it ‘was opened in the fall by Bert Ball, who formerly ran a weekly video se- fies at the Red Bar on First Avenue as well as the “discotheque” in the basement of PS. 1. After premiering with a painting installation by David Wojnarowiez, Ball has gradually moved his activity into video; he cur- renily represents Michel Auder and has shown Dara Bimbaum as well 2s Juan Downey.Mike Bidlo's recreations of works by (Irom lft) Schnabel Kandinsky, Ups Warbol Brancash Dachan sed Polocl Grace Mansion ‘Mike Bi Chichen Eery Pounds alc Over Evry Couch, 198, Richard Hambleton Romane: and Cataronhe 1904 from ‘Sofa/Couch’ at Grace Mansion. Photo Palip Pocock ‘ceslicon canvas, 46 by 28 inches, Plea Etecri.he East Village picture was completed, geographically if not chronologically, with Pat Hearn’s opening in December 83 on East Sixth St. and Ayenuc B afler extensive renovations of a com- pletely wrecked corner building. Her relatively large space (1,100 sq. ft.) is, at present the easternmost comme; cial gallery, and is particularly stylish, complete with glass bricks, tortoise- shell tiles and a miniature, cactus-dor- ted “sculpture garden’ in one comer: No East Village gallery has a clearer esthetic disposition than Pat Hearn, who has found, apparently without much difficulty, an entire group of ariists intent on recapitulating the vi- sual motifs of Surrealism. Some, like George Condo, make works in almost direct imitation of Dali_ and Magritte; others, like Peter Schuyff, take up new positions on Surrealism’s stylistic spectrum (his paintings could fit in somewhere between Tanguy and Ba- One of the scene’s most sensationalist figures is Mike Bidlo, who recreates others’ works and reenacts < events from their lives. ziotes), Heam’s March show consisted Of elaboratively framed. cliché.verre by Stephen Pollack, who incorporates, updated notions of Surrealist. icono- graphy—the mystic isle, gargoyles, go- Jems, magic castles, intestinelike masses—and extends it with images of imi Hendrix or dinosaurs. Thierry Choverney (who is Hearn’s husband and did most of her gallery renovation) has previously shown wild, cartoonlike paintings of bizarre storybook scenes in group exhibitions in other East Village galleries. His new work, scheduled for May at Pat Hearn, consists of more carefully painted Utopian landscapes featuring fantasy castles set in the distance This “movement,” which we might as well call Neo-Surrealism, can be found elsewhere in the East Village {as well as internationally); it appears, to represent a rediscovery of the un- conscious and dream imagery much as Neo-Expressionism seemed to reas- Sect the individuals vital subjectivity Other_newer galleries more closely follow East Village traditions. Using East Village 84 Peter Nagy: The $-HHout Day, 1983 black-und-rhite Nerox copy, 11 by 8° ioctes. Nature Morte,absurdly low prices as their signature -s atraction, CASH Gallery offs. ts clients 2 selection of original paintings = 3 byt coowners, Tom Brecon and Oliver Wasow: these range from busi ness-card to posicard-size works and are priced from 25€ to $5. Such sim- ple, quickly made works affirm (with tongue in cheek) the cash value of the ae artist's slightest effort. CASH offers at the client an art experience framed as 4 r th irreaatbly speculative investment Ba tnd exploits the common fascination er with the irrational price fluctuations ofthe avant-garde market. This stress on marketing is also a trademark of Steven Style’s Sensory Evolution Gallery, which opened in carly 1984 on East 6th St.; each artist Artistic recycling is itself subject to ironic commentary: recon Bendre 1,18, pH sre onan pl 669 ST ae fn the oor Gf Mien Beleber 7 Peter Nagy, Joe! Otterson and Gretchen Bender, symbols are $ ripped from their contexts and placed in a kind of conceptual nature morte. Alan Belener: New Freedom, 1284, color slide Both works this page Natare Morte. in group shows consigns pieces to the gallery on a three-ticred price. scale. $50, $250 and $500. Sensory is also known for giving many newer artisis their first chance to exhibit in exuber- ant group shows with titles like “Car- niyal” and "Muscle Beach.” Executive Gallery, named after a brand of heroin and wedged in on East 10th between Nature Morte and Garet Associates, is directed by Arch Connelly, who shows his own pearl studded, free-form furniture at Fun Gallery ‘down the street. In a typical enough case of East Village eclecti- ccism, Executive combines a taste for second-hand American mass-pro- duced furniture of the “40s and "50s with art that ranges from the homo- erotically idealized figuration of Ahbé to the Neo-Surrealist sculpture of Jon- athan Ellis to portrait busts of pigs by Debby Davis. Executive owner Rob- ert Loughlin will show his own paint- ings—portraits of policemen exclu- sively—at Garet in May. Debby Davis's sculpture of pigs, shown at Executive in February, rep- resents 2 conjunction of the artist's postmodernist inclinations with a cul-tural idiosynerasy of the neighbor- hood—pig’s heads are prominently and, to outsiders, jarringly displayed in area carnicerias. A” photographer who has worked as a nurse (Davis says she found the pathologies. she encountered more interesting than rhursing’s samaritan motivations), she regards her sculpture as 3-D photogra- phy and says “it’s about what’s food and what's not food.” Destabilized Sciences ind of epistemological balanc- ing act, combining two contra- dictory orders or systems in one work, is a common gam- bit in art seeking a deconsiructive effect. Barry Bridgwood’s elegant paintings of pseudomathematical for- ‘mulae, for example, frame an uncer- tain logic within a hedonistic sensibil- ity. Bridgwood renders what appear to be simple equations by scratching 2's and o's, with an almost dyslexic hand, into @ wet, richly built-up surface of shiny enamel, The two different sys- tems oppose each other; in the end the abstract thought represented by the equations submits to the sensuous esthetic of the paint, Kiki Smith, who vill show at Piezo summer, is known for her vers tility; she Mmekes films, installations and | manages collaborative artists’ ventures, as well as making paintings and sculpture. In her eariier paintings she set medical and biclogical images (of teeth, severed limbs, vital organs, ganglia, mucus) in floating patterns on ‘monochromatic grounds, to achieve @ kind of castratory or cannibalistic dec- oration. Her newer paintings place single image—a skeleton, a swarm of ants, a pair of ascending feet, a mans hand on his genitels—on ll, door- sized sheets of tie-dyed muslin. These ‘works juxtapose the forbidden with the ominous: the ultimate form of mindless, populist abstract design with morbid images of psychological and physical disintegration. These paintings effect a displacement of at- tention, viewers find they can accept the gruesome images but object to the tie-dyed backgrounds Joseph Nechvatal’s recent show of photographs at Nature Morte used his trademark imagery—a feld of linear, visual “static,” veiling faint line draw: ings of businessmen, weapons, car- toons, street and family life—rephoto- graphed in projection upon portions ff naked bodies. His intention is to depict a controntation between two East Village 84 antagonistic aspects of society by lite ally projecting the products that result from corporate ideology onto the naked, asocial human body, and in turn sensualizing the information in the drawings. Jane Bauman’s current paintings are on pieces of sheet metal about the ‘Joel Otereon: Madonna Kachina, 1983, mixed rains, 29 by 13 inches. Nature Morte. size of a large cafeteria way. Their surface is covered first with an ersatz expressionist field of splattered and splashed color, then dotted with a few stenciled images that make up an iconography derived from contempo- rary products: according to Bauman, in her work an empty folding chair represents the alienated self, an SX-70, camera the individual ego, and the number sevea stands for rebirth. She is constructing a commodity symbol- ism that fights for a human space within today's submissive consumer culture. ‘The Borrowed Esthetic fhe East Village participates in ‘the eclecticism of today’s av- antegarde—the Pat Hearn art- ists’ specific embrace of the sty- listic qualities of Surrealism is 2 sali- ‘ent example. One of the scene’s most sensationalist figures is Mike Bidlo, who accompanies his disconcertingly convincing, full-scale recreations of Pollock's paintings with enactments of scenes from the Pollock legend (ic, urinating in fireplaces). Even. Clement Greenberg admired Bidlo’s Pollock at the Terminal Show in Brooklyn, not- ing that Bidlo had gotten not only Pollock’s “handwriting” but his more difficult-to-master layout as well. Bid- Jo's imitations seem to remove Pol- lock from high culture and tum his style into simple, lively decoration. He has since gone on to recreate Schnabel piate paintings as well as textbook examples of several carly modemist works. This outright plunder of recent art history is paralleled if not exactly matched by other artists’ lifting of images from popular culture—images which may be themselves steeped in nostalgia, like Richard Hambleton's ‘bronco-busters and Marlboro cow- boys, or Rhonda Zwillinger's painted postcard scenes and imagery from movie fan magazines of the "30s and “60s. Still other painters adopt stylistic flourishes identified with their prede- cessors: Stephen Lack’s brushstrokes have an energetic trajectory similar 10 Franz Kline’s; Christminster Gallery founder Stephen Alijan uses a Bei nard Buffetesque drawing style for his pasiel-colored architectural elevations. Ina similar vein, Meyer Vaisman, artist and co-owner of International With Monument gallery, recently showed his own photographic reitera- tions of 19th-century painting motifs, such as clouds from a Constable land- scape. In. these elaborately framed ‘works, individual stylistic elements of pastoral Romanticism are made to re- semble sheets of transfer letiering from the graphic aris, This artistic recycling is itself sub ject to ironic commentary, particu-Rhonda Zollinger: Soda Sippers, 1983 oflon masonite with sequins, by 51 inches. Gracke Mansion. larly ai Nature Morte, Alan Belcher’s dark brown clay model of a softball, ing, demon sirates “primitive Pop. the artist, Peter Nagy’s “adism” con- sists of mock-up art_magazine ad pages, with his name inserted as artist for dealer, using the galleries’ distin tive typefaces. Joel Otterson makes sculpture that poses as fragments fom a future archeology: a chunk of semifossilized earth preserves. sticks, stones and a bottle of blue Nehi soda. Soft drinks are not normally the color ‘of Windex. Commenting on this work, Oterson ironically wailed, “T can't tell what's eal anymore.” Much of Nagy’s and Belcher’s work focuses on the equivalence of trade- mark images, whether from “high” or “low” culture—corporate logos, brand-name consumer products, art- works that sum up whole stylistic pe- rods, These symbols, ripped. from their specific contexts, add up to a kind of eonceptuzl nature morte, pop- lating the mind's tabletop with a grab bag of references to the past and present, Nagy"s charts and time-lines plot out correspondences between Such sign systems, as in Invellectual History, a museum floorplan in which fart historical departments are matched with corporate insignia Another artist making her presence felt in East Village Postmodernist cir- Louis Renaoat Eya, 1984 olla linen, Phy 42 Inches. Pezo Electric. cles is Gretchen Bender, who early this year had a solo show at Nature Morie and organized a recent group show at International With Monu- ment, Bender is moving away from her previous traffic in art-world trade- marks (juataposed excerpts from work by Salle, Longo, Lichtenstein, Penck and others)—in’ part, she says, as a reaction to the hopelessness that such appropriation implics. The work she assembled for the show at Interna- tional, like her own newer pieces, is in the auldaciously outré field of comput- er graphics. I seems that computer art has much to recommend it: as a technoeratic, futuristic language, redu- cible to a string of simple commands and diversely used by television, Pea- tagon weapons systems and now home hobbyists, computer-generated imagery should be a key to art in the age of electronic reproduction. Wheth- ef the art world will accept such imag- ery, which looks the way you might expect it to, remains to be seen. The Recovery of Melodrama number of East Village painters specialize in a figuration that re- lies on the sentimental conven- tions familiar to us from soap opera: however artificial and stan- dardized these conventions have be- come, they are still quite evocative. Inusing them, these artists are actually sinere, reaffirming that which is usually dismissed as cliché Rhonda Zwillinger's sensibility sug- gests both @ romantic, girlish enthu- siasm and a Postmodem affection for ‘American kitsch, Her imagery—sun- sets, people kissing, stars of stage and seicen—is often overwhelmed by gar- ish frames handcrafted from oversized sequins, shells and mirror shards This embellishment can be regarded as parodistic, a homemade “folk” cel- bration of conventional sentiment. ‘A typical Keiko Bonk painting fea- ‘tures the tropical night, complete with moon, palms and breaking surf, as a stage for a couple embracing or es- A number of East Village painters—such as Rhonda Zwillinger and Keiko Bonk— ‘Specialize in a romantic JSiguration based on the conventions of soap opera, thus reaffirming what is usually dismissed as cliché. tranged. Other works represent dream narratives, laid out in the form of nar row vertical scrolls, with more com- plicated characterizations and symbol- ogy. Her paintings employ an utterly conventional romantic iconography, drawn from the imagination rather than directly from secondary sources, to suggest a belief in the inresistible irrationality of emotions and the im- mediacy of carnal desire. Louis Renzoni’s paintings cite both film noir sources and voyeurism: dark, spooky pictures of people cloaked in shadow, seen through a window, caught midway in uncertain deeds better kept hidden. His subjects are psychological loneliness and isola- tion, the figure in a crowd, psychotic sexuality, the murdered lover, they capture some of the hysterical expres sionism of Francis Bacon. Painted without line and with blurred edges, Renzoni’s pictures imply an impair- ment of vision that is a metaphor for ‘the sense of emptiness they convey. In Paul Benney’s monochromatic, gray paintings, pale, overlapping images are coaxed from the murky ground of photosensitized canvas; the effect resembles filmic treatments of eee sia, Hoda——— East Village 84 nightmare or psychosis. His images are both religious and vulgar, as though they were the dreams of a Jesuit tempted by the flesh or hounded by evil. In The Three Graces, a tio of carvlers sings with beatific faces actually taken from in- flatable sex dolls aul Benney: Seen, 1983 oi! and phovo-chemieal on Expressionism—Generic and Otherwise pressionism in the work of Fast Village artists is usually exploited as 2 graphic style in the service of other, more complex ideas, Sue Coe, an artist who is well known for her ferocious politi- cal illustrations, uses an expressionist style to dramatize social violence and political oppression. On the other hand, Huck Snyder's paintings of in- fants at the moment of birth, many rendered upside down and with a date and time noted on the painting, illus- trate an almost theological concept of birth as a passage from innocence 10 suffering, Richard Hambleton, like a number of younger painters, was known until recently for his public, hit-and-run work. His life-size “lurkers,” splat- tered, menacing figures, were slopped unas, Ale by S4inches. PP.O.W. up on walls and in dark corners on city streets. The gestural accuracy of the body language was. remarkable The work was not likable but it was effective; glimpsed out of a comer of the eye, it gave you a start, followed by al sense of Ielief As a sadistic exploitation of urban fear, they were right on the mark (and soon provided the ground for graffitoed retaliation, as others deactivated them with an tonnac, Bugs Bunny faces and other flippant additions). Since Hambleton has been working on canvas, other aspects of his style hhave come to the fore: a crude use of the generic expressionist _splatter- stroke as an elementary pictorial unit and a taste for banal pop imagery (the Halloween black cat, rodeo scenes, anonymous crowds). Though some of this work echoes his earlier invoca- tion of the urban ominous, he is cleanly tying 10 keep other options open as well. Stephen Lack’s tabloid expression- ism takes its subjects from U.S. trash culture—wresting magazines super market tabloids, TV crime reports his work shows a painter's celfindulgent reveling in morbid curiosity. Lack renders car crashes, Hitler’ kissing children, the boy who shotguaned his parents. But his painting isn't so much expressionism as it is a but lesque of that style, With their sloppi- ly energetic. brushstrokes, ragged un stretched edges and pieces of tape and —_ East Village art is bardly homogeneous—it is not a new style but rather a “reinvention” of the art world in all its variety. ——— plastic hanging off the surface, his works have the forlorn look of a kit- ten that's fallen into the fishbowl, His adolescent enthusiasm—toward his topics as well as his work's execu- tion—is infectious, and helps effect the distancing that gallows humor re- quires. It's telling that one of Lack’s most cherished possessions is a wax model of his own head exploding, a relic from his role as a lead in that gruesomely ridiculous splatter movie Scanners, Philip Pocock, known for his pho- tographs of the '1970s urban renewal murals on the Lower East Side (pub- lished as The Painied Illusion with a text by the late Gregory Battcock), recently showed a group of “Ciba- chrome paintings,” works done in the darkroom directly in the color emul- sion. Luridly hued and st ly akin to Chagall, Pocock’s work takes the sexual imagery of toilet-stall graf fiti and invests it with a sensual exu- berance. Dan Asher's expressionist primitiv- ism represents a double rejection: of artistic sophistication and of the dis- torted values of the modern world, His portraits, crude depictions of ab- original man, have the general look ofSue Coe: Defend Youselfte Death, 1982 iked medins anpaper St Wier POW. ‘Above lett Philip Pocock Day. 198% photo-chemicals on Cibaehrome paper, 8 by 10 inches. Right Dan Asher’ oan of Are 19830 pactalon canvas, 609 241 laches Both Pros Plectris Ellen Berkenblit: Untied, 1984 oil an linen, 8 inches Square, Pez Bleck shrunken heads and are emong the few examples of East Village expres- sionism that are convincing as gut physical acts. He draws these faces in ollstick with a frenzied line that itself is a cathartic release of energy, resem- bling the way a disturbed child would use crayons, Luis Frangella, who is somewhat older than his East Village peers and hhas an established reputation in his native Argentina, makes paintings that are expressionist in scale and brushstroke but otherwise Postmod- emist. He paints as though following the dictates of an academic figure drawing course, Frangella first crafis small plaster sculptures, rough-hewn Neoclassic in aspect, of torsos and heads, and then he repeatedly renders these models in paint, often at very large scale. The paintings combine a number of formal and stylistic refer- ences: the initial Beaux-Arts “casts”; a geacric expressionist brushstroke that — Expressionism in the work of artists like Sue Coe and Luis Frangella is a graphic style in the service of other, more complex ideas. carries line, plane and color at once; and a loosely woven, painterly Cur bism that recalls @ neatened-up de Kooning. Some of his more recent paintings, such as the “Eros” series shown at Civilian Warfare in’Febru- ary, place male and female torsos t0- gether and imply an clement of inter- Personal drama as well Ellen Berkenblit’s studiously worked paintings are small, less than a foot square. She has devised a por- trait characteroloy evocative of the dreams. of childhood (ponies, boy- Kings, talking fish, monkey people) sand accompanied by an array of sym bolic marks and signs (roses, x's, black eyes, grimaces). Though car- toonish in’ delineation, her creawres are expressionistically’ pointed and carry emotional conviction; some of her paintings are sweet, some comical, some angry and frightening in what ‘adds up to an anthropology of feeling Grawn from memory and imagine tion. Berkenbli’s work sheds adult ra- tionality, achieving @ psychological re- alism through a strategy of naive.DONTUKETHIST™) Bau ¢ = ia ‘Deoty Pars: Une 1983 lon cast of ral Pi tiby 8 inches: eet Cal Alan Greenbiat ‘and museum board, 3709 P ie ‘A selection of Greer Lankton's Glo sculptore Civitan Warfare.Cartoons and their Kin he widespread invasion of the ‘avant-garde by @ host of car- toonlike figures can be seen the East Village as well, notably in the work of Rocney Alan Green- blat. The cartoon category stretches to encompass other familiar positions, from caricature to a kind of ever mannequinism, and also could ine clude much graffiti ar. Rodney Greenblat’s style is direcily cartoon-based, resembling nonmacho kid’s comics like Litife Luly or Rit- chie Rich. Like Kenny Scharf, Gree blat has created a roster of characters ‘who are probably alter-egos—there is some. physical resemblance—and transforms. everything he touches, “Rodneyizing” furniture, clothes and appliances. Though Greenblat’s “car- tooniverse” shares some of the pseu- do-Surrealism of Scharf's otherworldly primordial soups, it is more elegantly drawn and more evocative of child- hood, if only because his vision seems more innocent, it is the day side to Scharf's night side. Greenblat’s work demonstrates (like much other art, cartooalike or not) what has been called the Peter Pan syndrome: it links art with the mag cal qualities of childhood, presumably in order 10 touch thai part of us which never grows up. This type of work suggests the continuing power of infantilism in adult consciousness, the appeal of an (imaginary) simpler world, and posits the studio as murse- ry. With Greenblat in particular, such work locates not only memories of an actual childish sensibility but the adult's nostalgic conception of it. I's extremely easy stuff to like, as the art world has found out. If Greenblat’s sensibility is basically childlike, Rick Prol’s cartoon expres- sionism,” rendered with an emphatic Outline and bright flat colors, is teen- age in its existential hyperbole. Pro!’s expressionist everyman has every thing: typically, he sits in a tattered suit on a toilet, corpse draped over Top: David Wojaarow incalato Artand Comunere, eaturag his "Gaggng bull” ‘ana works rom bis supermarket food-prlee poster series Photo Andreas Ster2ng _Midele: Bobby G's Blecticed, 1983, land gtumiam paint on ean ‘34 by 56 nchex. Photo Philip Pocock. Bottom: Keith Haring and LA 2s Avenve “D’ 11989, gration wallet Avenue Dand Houston Stree. Photo Andreas Sterzighis shoulders, a knife suek in his neck, intestines spilling into his lap, " seating & Grtaod leer ene @ fenmy hat East Village 84 a ay a a (ero cansider tis gureas parody Representing the mannequin ten- dency, the kind of diagrammatic figu- ration that identifies types rather than individuals (cf Keith Haring and Tom Otternes), is Mark. Kostab, 0 painter from California whose New York career (continuing at Semaphore Galley in SoHo in May) begin in Ext Village group) saa: His work features black-and-w! renderings of faceless, androidike figures in situa- tions suggestive of contemporary life, ievas brararcomal ol arursiia thd acl Hi paintings inchide dkincais of what could be called appliance sym- The cartoon category in Fast Village art encompasses other familiar positions —from caricature to a kind of everymannequinism— and also could include much graffiti art. Kiely Jeahios: Vailed, 1983, mised mediums, 16 inches: Pho Sunnie Rainey bolism—portable ty's, Walkman ra- dios, toasters—and historical refer- ences that range from Leonardo to Schlemmer to Jedd Garet and Tom Ottemness. Kostabi’s artistic persona, by the way, is as crafted as his paint. ing. His ingenuous embrace of promo- tion, commonly thought to be an inte- gral’ component of any new artist's marketing tactics, is indicated by some of his one-liners and aphorisms. Mark says, “My middle name is ‘et’ and “Change my last name to ‘up.’ Also, “Use multiple ventriloquism: do not Use the mouth but make everyone say the name,” ‘Two East Village sculptors work in cartooning’s close relative, caricature, and apply it to distinctly inner-city visions. Kicly Jenkins’s dioramas in- clude urban scenes populated by b- boys (break dancers), dusters (PCP smokers) and working-class. boozers, treated with a sharply satirical eye. His last show at Fun Gallery con- sisted largely of animal caricatures, featuring a vulture perched on a SoHo ledge and a rat ina garbage can that should grace the mayor's desk. Greer Lankton’s exquisitely crafted, Jane Dickson: Frsking, 1983, of! stuffed cloth dolls are more grotesque Sick oncanras, 90 by 40 inches Christy Rupp: Rubble Rais, 1980, ie-size Sanerete atom actus rick rupbiethan comic caricatures. Her work is a lexicon of sordid female characteriza- tions—the fat lady, the old crone, the Siamese twin—a cast of human aber- rations that populate both real and fictional dramas and seem particularly at home in the circus of slum life While both Lankton and Jenkins use subject matter that is decidedly urban, it only occasionally refers specifically to the Lower East Side; for another group of artists, the neighborhood’s decay and social problems play a more central role. The Burning City Jno Lower East Side was one ‘site for the “anti-alternative- space” movement that started in the 70s, was publicly funded and included Fashion Moda (founded in 1978), ABC No Rio (1980) and Group Material (1981). With their di- Tapidaied ambience and doggedly sloppy presentation, these spaces. re- flected the surrounding slum condi- tions and anticipated the style and content of much of the art now ap- pearing in East Village commercial wallerics, ‘At least two artists affliated with these spaces have made eloquent use ‘of a basic ghetto materisl—the ubi- quitous brick that is the residuc of demolished tenements and symbolic of urban decay. Tim Rollins and his South Bronx students made single bricks into painted models of burning ———$—————— Whereas Tom Warren and Bobby G celebrate the local population in portraits, artists like Anton van Dalen and Jane Dickson focus on street scenes buildings, and Christy Rupp used clumps of bricks as base clements for a series of life-size concrete sculptures ofrats. Portraits of black and Hispanic neighborhood residents by _John Ahearn (in the Bronx) and by Bobby G and Tom Warren (on the Lower East Side) represented a celebration of the local “alien” population, and their Introduction into art as proper sub- jecis. Bobby G places his subjects on the stroct, hanging out or, like drug addicts, forever waiting. Warren func- tions like an itinerant commercial photographer, setting up @ poriable photo studio to take black-and-white pictures of passersby (usually charging $1 for a print); at No Rio this process produced a cross-sectional neighbor- hood portrait, a series of simple pho- tos of neighborhiood residents that re- calls August Sander's prewar project ‘of photographing members of diverse German social strata This documentary tradition is fur- ther exiended in the work of Jane Dickson and Anton van Dalen, wo artists who focus on neighborhood street scenes rather than individuals. Jane Dickson's paintings of New York fal night begin with a black-painted canvas and are suffused with a specif ically urban neon light. She depicts the world of authority and its break- down: cops and muggers, drunkards and pimps, as well as regular citizens fon the sticet—what you might see from a tenement window. Van DalenEast Village 84 has produced a series of slumscapes over the past decade that feature the area immediately surrounding his stu- dio on Avenue A. These works, using a vocabulary of stenciled images and figurative wood cut-outs, are peopled by prostitutes and junkies and use local icons like stripped cars, burning Tl wo rir Mats Weng torn S Ha Isr eaanas hy ata buildings, Great Danes and pigeons. David Wojnarowicz has also used the burning building image in his stenciled street graffiti, though it is only one clement in an iconography drawn from the tabloid media, litera- ture and politics as well as from Low- er East Side street life. His subjects run from muggers and junkies to Rea- gan as nuclear cowboy, from Genet masturbating in prison to Caribbean animal totems. His work has its Iyri- cal side, though much of it makes explicit social statements through the juxtaposition of two images: two sail- ‘ors with two slabs of meat, for exam- ple, in Going Off to War Wojnaro- Wier is also 2 poet and rock performer (with 2 band called “3 Teens Kill 4"), and his credentials include a role in organizing a guerrilla art exhibition in a dilapidated building on a Hudson River pier last spring—complete with an opening busted by the police. He also made an unsolicited contribution to the 1982 “Beast” exhibition at P.S. He rrern Petes ball Cour With Autobiographical Poem by Miguel iter, coment ot Are, New Yorke I: Ncockabunnies”—live roaches, with glued-on rabbit ears, that made 2 fleeting appearance in the galleries, Martin Wong is a kind of Postmod- ernist folk chronicler of Lower East side alleys and vacant lots. His melan- choly paintings of sium rubblescapes are obsessively done, brick by brick, and are often framed with a painted ‘wooden border. These works usually include a star-chart sky with labeled constellations and @ legend (drawn from New York Posi headlines) painted letter by letter in deaf-and- dumb sign language. Wong’s work algo includes painted portraits of characters from Chinese history and folk tales, and straightforward render- ings of Chinatown business signs, ike Chinese Laundry. In. For My Pito, he has filled the sky of an empty tene- ment landscape with the text of Mic guel Pinero’s poem of the same title, a Tambling love sonnet of deranged aF fection that captures the dislocated sensibility ofthe neighborhood The Vandal's Art fhe visual art form most di- rectly associated with the in- ner city is graffiti, which during the *70s seemed to have a life separate not only from the art world but from all of mainstream culture— it was viewed by many as a true ver- nacular avant-garde, Graffiti shares Poverty, punk rock, drugs— East Village artists and dealers have forged this avant-garde setting into both a collective identity and a marketing tool. many of the stylistic elements seen in East Village art—an obsession with wademarks (“tags”), the use of motifs borrowed from the comics and pop culture (custom-car design in particu- lan), an adolescent taste for dramatic, lowbrow imagery. The “writers” who have emerged in aboveground cahibi= tion spaces have developed their work fon canvas in a number of different directions. Johnny “Crash” Matos, who exhib- ited ‘at 51, has formalized his “tag filling in the letters with different dec- orative schemes and using the canvas ‘edges to crop them, an effect that sug- gesis the unsteady motion of 2 mov- ing vain. Zephyr embellishes his swashbuckling calligraphy with figural ‘omament (Mad Magazine's spy char- acter, a city skyline, a rearing cobra); he also showed a painted alphabet and his tag in Japanese at Fun in Feb- ruary. Both Fab Five Freddy and Futura 2000 are known for their rap music as well as their painting, which now bears little resemblance to typical sub= way graffiti, Fred has always bad a taste for Pop art (one of his trains has. a row of Campbell’s soup cans); his new work, shown at Fun in January, was candy-colored paintings of fruitbowls, still lifes and cartooned por- traits. Futura 2000 is the movement's lachist, a master of the graphic possi- bilities of spraypaint, his horizontal abstracts suggest a cross between a sci-fi cosmos and field painting, Lee Quinones, who now shows at Barbara Gladstone in SoHo but has ‘many street-works to his credit on the Lower East Side, is developing his own spray-painted, expressionist figu- rative style. Lee’s propensity, even on the tains, was toward works that made political or moral statements: some of his new paintings read as epi- sodes in a morality play whose hero is ‘young urban dropout. 3-D Graffiti mong_all this (mostly) painting, the East Village has had apart in birthing a new mode of sculpture: 3-D graffiti There are at least five practitioners of the form: Linus Coraggio, who bolts rusted steel constructions, sometimes adorned with profane graffiti, to sign- posts in the street (and who came up with the “3-D graffiti” name), Ken Hiratsuka, who chisels mazclike pat- cerns direcily into the sidewalk, nota: bly outside the Life Cafe at East 10th and Avenue B; Chip Spear, who leaves brightly painted automobile tires outside afea galleries and restau- rants; David Fina, whose cardboard- and-stuffed-trashbag dummies were found tied to a chainlink fence on Houston St., among other spots; and Ted Rosenthal, who also bolis his pieces to signposts—in this case, painted metal sculptures of flying sharks, exploding briefcases, winged penises and the like. Rosenthal recently made the news—and may have legal charges pending against him—alter an a- larmed observer reacted 10 one of his sculptural interventions with a call to the bomb squad, who say he’s a pub- lic nuisance, This kind of publicity is familiar and recalls the early days of subway graffiti, The Daily News re- ports that he's told his dealer, Gracie ‘Mansion, to double his prices. So it goes in the East Village. a Kuthors: Walter Robinson i an arist and critic tne has recently shove at Metre Pietares, Ple- n'Elecirc and the Kamikaze Club he bas Grell “af the ast Village Exe, Carl, McCormick tx a writer on art for the Bye and fae Sew York Beat, parttive assistant at Ghacie Mansion 2nd Fal Brom gallertes, and ‘rganizer of seme 40 shov's mers. nightclubs, Git galeries x montber of which facleded Wal terdobinson, ‘Ted Rosenthal Single Shark Bomb, 1983 ‘elded and pelted steel balled toa street Sion. Photo courtesy Gracie Munson.