Ray Caesar Book
While I was in NYC over the summer, I went to visit my brother's recording studio, Dubway, near the Chelsea district and I took a tour of it before heading off to galleries. You can take a virtual tour of it here.
I made my way over to the Ray Caesar show at the Jonathan Levine Gallery (link of exhibit). It was everything I hoped it would be. The large pieces were really impressive. They had vintage sci-fi presence. Some of the smaller works were more painterly, using digital brushstrokes (almost Degas-like) and there were some line drawings, too. All works were like Victorian/1960's hybrids with perversely punked-out, ironic narratives. He used red lipsick-colored accents a lot in his compositions.I found myself stopping to gaze at finely-tuned details in each work and enjoying his sense of humor. What an imagination! And now I have his new book. It came a few days ago and it was worth the wait. Designed and produced by Mark Murphy and available at his site, it is a beautiful piece of art itself and I will savor the contents.
I made my way over to the Ray Caesar show at the Jonathan Levine Gallery (link of exhibit). It was everything I hoped it would be. The large pieces were really impressive. They had vintage sci-fi presence. Some of the smaller works were more painterly, using digital brushstrokes (almost Degas-like) and there were some line drawings, too. All works were like Victorian/1960's hybrids with perversely punked-out, ironic narratives. He used red lipsick-colored accents a lot in his compositions.I found myself stopping to gaze at finely-tuned details in each work and enjoying his sense of humor. What an imagination! And now I have his new book. It came a few days ago and it was worth the wait. Designed and produced by Mark Murphy and available at his site, it is a beautiful piece of art itself and I will savor the contents.
That same day in NYC, I also stopped in at the Joshua Liner Gallery for the Jeremy Fish and Josh Keyes shows. I was impressed by the ambitiousness of the Jeremy Fish pieces with their exotic frames with companion-piece sculptures. Josh Keyes' paintings were beautiful in execution and design. I got to meet Joshua Liner that day as well...lovely space and nice people at this new gallery in Chelsea. And, as a bonus, I stumbled into a small space nearby with two Morton Bartlett photos and a Henry Darger drawing!
I have more stories of NYC. I went to 3 or 4 different gallery districts. I will save them for another time.
