Jack Smith, Art Crust of Spiritual Oasis (Installation View), via Art Observed

Currently on view at Artists Space in New York, artist Jack Smith’s adventurous, ground-breaking oeuvre is the subject of an ambitious, expansive two-floor exhibition exploring his work in the 1970’s and 80’s.  Smith’s work sits at the core of much of the American underground’s creative output of the last quarter of the 20th Century, uniting a group of artists invested in the eerie and weird, the surreal, and the abject as strategies to push (or even antagonize) the viewer’s understanding of their format, and the world around them. One can easily see the impact of Smith’s work in John Waters’ filmic output, or Mike Kelley’s sculptural and performative riffs, to name a few. Smith’s work was equally influential in its do-it-yourself mentality as it was for its sheer ability to create worlds and populate them with a swirling, surreal cast of characters that seemed to work both as surrealist escape and autobiographical interpretation of the world of Manhattan during the post-war years.

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Soho nonprofit gallery Artists Space will temporarily suspend exhibitions while it sorts out a dispute with its landlords over construction work.  “The underlying agenda is to bully us until we move out,” says gallery executive Stefan Kalmár. “But that is not going to happen.” (more…)

Bernadette Corporation – Still From Get Rid of Yourself (2003), Via Artists Space

Over the past decade and a half, the loosely defined art collective of Bernadette Corporation has moved from underground fashion line and party promoter, to film producer, to editor and publisher of a variety of magazines, books and novels. It is currently based in New York as a collaborative with three principal members, Bernadette Van-Huy, John Kelsey and Antek Walczak. Challenging contemporary creative identities and consumer politics, the group has time and again subverted the traditional practices of art and art exhibition.

Bernadette Corporation – Only She Could Be Other (2011), courtesy Artists Space (more…)