In the oversaturated sea that is the New York City art scene, Canada on the Lower East Side somehow manages to stand out — way out. Due credit should be given to the gallery’s innate fearlessness and to-hell-with-it attitude but bottom line, Canada has a knack for culling some of the best talent around. To critics’ delight, this summer’s Homunculi brought the alchemical mythologies and freakishly skilled talents of Allison Schulnik, Ruby Neri, Matt Greene, and Matthew Ronay out to play. And just last week the gallery hosted Slummer Nights, a 4-night collaborative spectacular organized by Sadie Laska that took the most magical elements of a variety show, underground music festival, and art opening and threw it all together for one rousing good time. Canada’s resident artists offer more of the same. From Joe Bradley’s rudimentary Superman logos to Devendra Banhart’s imaginative, oscillating creatures and Sarah Braman’s found furniture installations, there’s an underlying sense of innocence, determination, and makeshift playfulness embedded in every artist Canada represents. Not to say that the gallery is all fun and games. There’s plenty of provocative, slightly off-kilter work to go around. Just ask Phil Grauer, one of the four owners/partners behind it all.
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Chances are you’ve never heard of Brion Gysin, an artist who for forty years literally did it all. Not only did Gysin paint, write, perform, and compose poems, he did it all simultaneously, experimenting and redefining as he went. Nowadays, this kind of multi-faceted, genre-crossing talent is rare. But the rebellious British artist, born in 1916, was seemingly born to invent — fusing the un-fusible in art, culture, and language.
     New York’s New Museum is finally paying Gysin the respect he deserves with a new show, Brion Gysin: Dream Machine. Though Gysin was a shaping force of collage, sound works and uncategorized collaborations up until his death in 1986, Dream Machine is the first stateside retrospective of his work. Curated by Laura Hoptman, the exhibition is well wrought and includes more than 300 drawings, books, photo-collages, paintings, films, slide projections, and sound works. A daylong poetry marathon will be held on September 25 with John Giorno, Anne Waldman, and Monica de la Torre among others. Most thrilling, however, is the show’s eponymous centerpiece, an original, working Dreamachine, also known as the trippy, flickering light sculpture that stimulates trance-like visions when your eyes are closed. Conceived with the help of mathematician/computer whiz Ian Sommerville, the machine projects light at a frequency corresponding to alpha waves in the human brain during wakeful relaxation. This piece is exceedingly notable because it represents the culmination of everything Gysin believed in and worked for: to free images from their representation and by extension, alter the way people see and think.
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On June 26, New Yorkers, art followers, and lovers of the purely weird finally got their answer to the question: What Happens After Deitch? Come what may, intentional gaps and accidents aplenty, the show goes on — at the Hole gallery on 104 Greene Street in SoHo. Run by Kathy Grayson and Meghan Coleman, both former directors of the newly defunct Deitch Projects, the Hole has valiantly stepped in to fill the fissures left behind by their iconic predecessor with experimental art shows, events, a book store and all-around mayhem. First up is the aptly named Not Quite Open for Business, a conceptual group show of unfinished work by twenty-plus artists including the likes of Barry McGee, Aurel Schmidt, Rosson Crow, Jules de Balincourt, and Terence Koh. Each artist almost gave it their all for the gallery installation, fearlessly designed by Taylor McKimens. Nearly-there poems, long-neglected art, broken symphonies and other half-realized ideas; how come no one thought of this sooner? PLANET spoke to Kathy Grayson about how it all (sort of) came together.

Can you tell me a little bit more about the show? The inspiration seems clear enough, but what pushed you to think of it as a viable idea?
The idea of showing unfinished work popped into my head first. But the fact that I knew Taylor McKimens could tackle a really blockbuster installation design sealed it. Just showing unfinished work wasn’t enough, the space had to be designed by an artist and the only person who could have done it was Taylor.
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Mike Stilkey’s home is full of books. And though he most certainly collects them, it’s not a habit that stems from reading frenzies. The thousands upon thousands of hardcover books he obtains from libraries, garage sales, and publisher’s back stocks are used to paint on. But hold on, it’s not as simple as it sounds. Before he even thinks of dipping his brush in paint, Stilkey arranges the books (spines out) into tall, free-standing stacks, which he then uses as the most moveable canvas in the world.
     Hot off the success of a seminal installation at the Corey Helford show in the U.K., Art from the New World, his new show, Reminiscent is a series of book sculptures for the inaugural exhibition at the new Hurley’s )( Space Gallery in Costa Mesa, California. For the show, Stilkey created two 10 x 12-foot murals, one painted with the image of a wan man playing the piano, the other a portrait of a woman. Each mural took roughly 5,000 recycled books to construct.
     True bibliophiles may cringe at the notion of wasting a good read for artistic purposes, but Stilkey’s reverence for the written word is evident. By meticulously collecting, stacking, and eventually painting down the spines of these lost books Stilkey is saving them from the dubious fate of a sealed cardboard box or library dumpster.
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Unconventional is a term that pops up a lot whenever Steve Lazarides is mentioned. Rather than limit himself, or the artists he represents, as strictly street, urban, or graffiti, he’s adopted the word “outsider”: an overarching term that encompasses a myriad of implications and techniques. Over the past four years, the forward-thinking gallerist has not only lived up to this term but done so with outstanding success — three thriving galleries, a slew of sold-out shows, and a growing roster of innovative artists that are literally becoming household names as I write.
Following the indelible roar generated by Banksy’s Barely Legal show in 2006 and the Outsiders show in 2008, it would have been easy to assume that everything Lazarides produced from then on would follow the same winning formula. Yet he has continued to push boundaries, take risks, unearth wickedly good talent, and make outsider art media savvy, all while snubbing art-world standards.
     The mogul’s latest endeavor is a four-month stint in an 8,000-square-foot venue in the consumer-driven heart of Beverly Hills. Opening with the gigantically talented David Choe in April, followed by Eurotrash on June 9, the plan is to unveil a new, unique exhibit each month.
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For the Hammer Project’s current exhibition, German-born artist Friedrich Kunath has created a realm of comi-tragedies based around middle-aged men struggling to reconcile their imagined lives and unmet desires with the sharp reality of a mediocre existence. Employing as many mediums as he could (drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, even a neon sign reading “I am Goodbye”) Kunath chose to let his ideas spread out. Both walls of the lobby stairwell at LA’s Hammer Museum are filled with a hodge-podge of work in assorted sizes. The installation peaks with a series of soft, colorful washes overlaid with thin line drawings and silhouettes of nondescript men climbing staircases into eternity, slumped anxiously over an office desk, or popping stunned out of a jack-in-the-box, briefcase in hand. Each solitary male character appears slightly dazed or lost, caught midway between the world’s external confusion and the banality of everyday routine. Like a Saul Bellow character desperately proselytizing the meaning of life to an empty apartment, Kunath’s men are in the process of a tumultuous transition.
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Seems you can’t move an inch anymore without running smack dab into the words ‘street art’. Increasing media exposure and growing acceptance of the method as a legitimate art form has generated an onslaught of new discussion about the crossover medium. As more art and design schools, magazines, and distinguished institutions like the Tate Modern jump onboard, the need for real information increases. Beyond the Street is Gestalten’s comprehensive response to supply this new demand.
     More of a manual than a coffee table book, the behemoth is comprised of 400 pages of in-depth interviews and full-color photographs. The book is smart, slick, and poses the long overdue questions burning in everyone’s mind. What makes street artists tick? What kind of implications does their work have on the urban landscape? Will the genre’s freedom ultimately trump the commercial art world? One hundred global power players in street and urban art are highlighted here including Wooster Collective, Shepard Fairey, Jonathan LeVine Gallery, Agnes B, and Juxtapoz Magazine.
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Floria Sigismondi is the real deal. Born in Italy and raised in Ontario, Canada, Sigismondi is a 21st century Renaissance woman who has spent her career bridging the gap between film, videos, music, and photography. Her new film, The Runaways, premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival, garnering immediate buzz and critical accolades from around the globe. Although the multi-disciplinary artist counts music videos for The Dead Weather, David Bowie, Interpol, and Björk as past projects, The Runaways is her first feature film. Deviating from the stark, surrealist dreamscapes she’s known for, Sigismondi captures the feverish rise and descent of the 1970s all-girl teenage rock group (which featured Joan Jett) with style, awe, and sensitivity. Here’s an exclusive peek with the rising director.

What initially drew you to The Runaways and made you want to tell their story through the language of film?

I was intrigued by their age and how young they were in the world of rock and roll, touring with virtually no parental guidance. I focused the story on Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, because they were completely different people coming together for the same goal. They were breaking new ground.
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Let’s face it. For every movement, there’s a counter-movement — even in the graffiti world. It appears that the ubiquitous spirit of graffiti in urban areas has finally spawned a new generation of taggers, with one major difference, however: these new deviants prefer to wield cleaning materials rather than cans of spray paint.
     In past decade, Reverse Graffiti (an art form that removes dirt, dust, and decay rather than adding paint) has experienced something of a mass migration across the world. Crafty examples can be found on everything from filthy car windows to highway tunnels and exit ramps. Huge projects along with small outbursts have exacted equal exposure in places like San Francisco, São Paulo, the UK, Israel, Germany, and Amsterdam. Though the majority of clean graffiti artists cite environmental concerns and/or political issues as their muse, even big-shot companies like Microsoft and Smirnoff have gotten in on the action, sensing a hip new method of advertisement.
     The movement, which traces back to British artist Paul “Moose” Curtis, the self-titled “Professor of Dirt”, is currently enticing new disciples in South Africa. Martin Pace, a student living in Durban, modified Moose’s technique in his own neighborhood for a final school project. Using a metal scrubbing brush instead of a high-pressure water hose, Pace etched a fifty-five-foot timeline of Westville’s architecture into a freeway wall. Since then, Pace has recruited a few of his buddies, formed a group called Dutch Ink, and continues to hit the streets, leaving beautiful organic murals behind.
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Break out the old Singer, fiber art is back. Sewing meets its urban counterpart in San Francisco-based artist Steve MacDonald, whose fervid creativity is made manifest in the unlikely medium of stitching and needlework. Even on a good day, embroidery and pop culture make strange bedfellows, but in the deft hands of MacDonald (aka Ramblin Worker) it just works. Combining typography, painting, and sewing with a bold and graphic aesthetic, each illustrative piece is like an eccentric home-ec project gone wonderfully awry. MacDonald cites folk art, fantasy, mythology, urban settings and Japanese nature scenes as just a few of his influences, making his own landscapes something of a limitless fantasy world. Obsessive attention to detail (did you notice all the different trajectories of stars in the sky?), tongue-in-cheek humor, and the strange recurrence of roaring tigers render the handmade intricacies all the more refreshing. More than ever in an increasingly digital age, where some fear nostalgic methods could be going the way of the dinosaur, or in MacDonald’s case, the way of the dragon.

The Last Dragon opens at the Fuse Gallery in New York on April 24 and runs through May 15.
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