Move over vaporetti — there’s a new barge in town. Slated to gracing the banks of the Grand Canal in Venice over the past five days was a project by The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, entitled “Commercial Break.” The exhibition is organized by Neville Wakefield, a contemporary art writer prolific curator globally. Powered by POST Magazine, “Commercial Break” considers itself to be a provocative architectural intervention in a city where no advertising is traditionally displayed. Unfortunately, as Artinfo reported, the city pulled permits a few days before and the videos were instead screened at the project’s Bauer Hotel party. The woman behind the “GCCC” is Dasha Zukhova, girlfriend of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich; it is the institution’s second project in Venice.  All videos are now viewable on the exhibition’s website.

Among videos featured is one by  Richard Phillips, starring Lindsey Lohan.

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Brendan Fowler with Joel Mesler and Carol Cohen (Spring 2011), via Untitled

Currently on view until April 3rd is Brendan Fowler’s show Brendan Fowler with Joel Mesler and Carol Cohen (Spring 2011), at Untitled,  located at 30 Orchard Street. As its title indicates, the show consists of work  that plays with art exhibition techniques. Fowler’s show is only the fourth since the gallery’s opening in September, where his work was included in the inaugural exhibition. Untitled is the reincarnation of RENTAL Gallery,  whose owners, Joel Mesler and Carol Cohen, wanted to open a new space with a different set of goals. As Cohen told Art Observed at Untitled’s opening, the gallery’s goal is to “give more stability to the Lower East Side…not necessarily an art gallery district, but a way of seeing galleries. A place that can be professional without being in Chelsea. We want to give everyone more access to the gallery world.”

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UNTITLED Gallery opening, 30 Orchard Street, September 12th, 2010. All images by David Al-Ibrahim for Art Observed unless otherwise noted.

On the evening of September 12th, New York’s Lower East Side was bustling with gallery openings celebrating the onset of fall exhibition season. One of the most exciting events that night was at 30 Orchard Street, where Rental Gallery reopened its doors in a new location under the new name UNTITLED. Formerly located on the sixth floor of a building on East Broadway, UNTITLED’s sleek, recently-renovated pencil tower, designed by Andrew Ong, offers a fresh and more accessible ambiance.

Joel Mesler, gallery owner, with Rashid Johnson, exhibiting artist.

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From “White Noise,” a group show at the James Cohan Gallery.

The James Cohan Gallery is hosting “White Noise,” a show that incorporates pieces by various artists that focus on silence.  Can one write silence? portray it in art? Is silence merely the absence of sound or an entity in itself? These are among the questions which the performance artists, painters, photographers, installation artists, and video artists of “White Noise” confront, in an exhibition that features an additional four new works specially commissioned for the show.  Nick Cave, Simon Evans, Brendan Fowler, and Fred Tomaselli present exhibition-specific works, alongside those by well-known artists Laurie Anderson, Robert Morris, Joseph Beuys, Yoko Ono, and more.

Related links:
James Cohan Gallery : WHITE NOISE
Exhibition of Sounds to be Looked at and Objects to be Heard at James Cohan Gallery [artdaily]

Jack Pierson, “Silence,” at James Cohan Gallery.

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