I told you earlier to go. Here is my gallery of photos of the work. All but one were still there when we reached them.

Joe just called to let me know that this time there is a map, because he has spread the work across a number of blocks. The endpoints are West 16th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues and Tenth Avenue between 26th and 27th Streets. Every location has a map showing the location of the other works. We have go out and see them now.

Here is the last post I did on one of his installations two weeks ago. James did one too.

Photo from the last one:

I hope to be celebrating, not drowning my sorrows, on election night. I actually hope we know who the "winner" is that night, and that they don't put NYC under martial law.

I know of two lists of election night events:

• From Joy Garnett, a list of exhibitions related to the election, which includes some election night events
• From culturebot.org

I also know of parties at White Box, Exit Art, in Manhattan, and Four Walls Projects at Supreme Trading in Williamsburg.

Also, Not in Our Name is gathering at Union Square, 5-10.

Let me know if you hear of any others, and where you're planning to be on election night.

I previously mentioned Julian Montague's appearance in the summer group show at Black and White.

I just found out he has a web site, and the Stray Shopping Cart Project has its own web site. The project is a kind of taxonomy of shopping carts as they're found away from their original locations. You can see it at Art in General through November 6.

When I wrote about her show earlier, I hadn't realized she had a web site. She has more images and details on her website, www.echoeggebrecht.com.

I don't get it. To me, caring about who wins a baseball game is like screaming "Yeah! Coke beat Pepsi!" They're all corporate brands.

From John Perry Barlow

Following our forays during the Republican National Convention, many in our DanceMob declared that dancing in the streets had been so much gosh-darned fun that it would be a good thing to do even without a targeted political motive.

[Image from Jo Miller]

Another event this weekend is the open studios event at Elizabeth Foundation on West 39th Street.

Saturday, October 23, 2004 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Sunday, October 24, 2004 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm

The first annual Mott Haven Artist Studio Tour happens this Saturday and Sunday. It also includes performances, video, and music. You can get there via subway. If you can go to PS1 or Williamsburg, which are only one stop from Manhattan, don't let that be your excuse.

Now that Foxy Production mentioned their new exhibition on their web page, I can mention it as one of my picks.

Despite the Sun: Jimmy Baker, Gail Stoicheff and Yuh-Shioh Wong

We blew it by not seeing Yuh-Shioh Wong's solo show at ATM, so we're looking forward to this one. Love her!

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Also, I screwed up by not mentioning Type A's opening at Sara Meltzer tonight. I'm losing my organizational skills for the openings calendar as it gets more popular. Go see their show! Disclaimer: we own some of their work. In fact, we were the first people to buy a Type A work.

There are a lot of openings the next few days. My picks:

Today, Thursday

Larissa Bates, Attack/Rescue of the Little-Tiny-Babies, 2004
gouache and acrylic ink on paper
20 by 14.25 inches

• Larissa Bates at Monya Rowe -- see James.
• Also in Chelsea: Kahn and Selesnick at Yancey Richardson. This time the duo's premise is that the 1960s astronauts land on the moon and find a group of Edwardian astronauts.
• If we weren't planning to be at Monya Rowe, we would go see Cary Liebowitz/Candyass at Triple Candie's slide show/lecture series. It starts at 7.

Friday

• Brady Dollarhide at Jessica Murray - her new Chelsea space
• Seonna Hong at Oliver Kamm 5BE
• Election at American Fine Arts (West 22nd, no web site I think)

Saturday

All in one building at 547 West 27th:

• Helen Verhoeven at Wallspace
• Katarina Wong at PH

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Note: If the gallery web site hasn't been updated, it's not getting listed. I made an exception for the exceptional American Fine Arts.

Read this to learn what I'm talking about.

Go see Photo-Op, by Conrad Cummings, next week. It's being presented on October 28-29. We went to a performance with excerpts, but the whole thing is being done on those days. For the visual arts crowd, your reason to see it: James Siena wrote the libretto.

Here is a video from the performance we attended. I recommend going to 21.5 minutes in to hear "By keeping things exactly the way that they are..." and 29 minutes in to the Purcell-meets-Gilbert-and-Sullivan aria "Would you die for me?"

Joe Ovelman did one of his guerilla art walls in Chelsea early this morning on Tenth Avenue between 22nd and 23rd Streets. We photographed it around 5pm.

I'm sure James will have something up soon about it. We have both written about/photographed earlier actions. See: 1, 2, 3.

I wish this had happened while we were in Portland!

Macro/Micro. Maybe it's my economics degree causing me to use such words, but that was in my thoughts after I left Echo Eggebrecht's smart painting show at Sixtyseven Gallery. It's the first show in their new space on 27th Street since moving from Williamsburg.

The paintings range in size from 18" × 18" to 36" × 48", but I remembered them as quite large. I don't think they reproduce that well in the images on the gallery web site, as there is a high level of detail in them. I had the gallery give me a CD of high quality images so I could provide some details.

The first one is Snake in the Grass (2004) , acrylic on panel, 24" × 36."

You can't easily see the interesting details, like the quality of the grass around the garden hose and the amazing needle-point-like fabrics on the clothes drying rack. Even with detail shots I have trouble getting my point across, but here goes.

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I'll just do one more, but go see her show for the real thing. The last day is November 6th.

Stars and Stripes, 2003, acrylic on panel, 18" × 24"

Detail:

One last note. I attended the opening of the show, and the gallery had a big stack of press releases with the checklist on back available. Kudos to Ron and Claire. I hate going to openings and having to fight for information!

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Updated: I added one more detail image supplied by the gallery.

I wrote about the show a couple of days ago. It has been extended a few days, until Sunday the 17th. Click here and use discount code "LYNCH" for $17 tickets.

We saw The Civilians' Nobody's Lunch last Thursday, and I've been remiss in not writing it about it sooner.

A play at the place where Andy works, recommended by both Choire and me? How could you miss it? Besides, for the visual arts readers of this blog, the cast includes Alix Lambert.

I mentioned it earlier, but that was before we had seen it.

I think it is still more of a work in progress than Gone Missing, but that isn't really a complaint for a work from a group like The Civilians. Heck, I saw Wooster Group's "To you, the birdie" three times in various stages of completion.

The theme of Nobody's Lunch is epistemology -- how do we know what we know? The stories range from what we get when the cast cold-called every Jessica Lynch in a phone book anywhere in America, to the... spirit channeled by one of Damian Baldet's characters who says alien creatures feed on our fear and love the world America has created. In a strong cast, he really stands out with a brilliant performance in the piece.

There is plenty of humor in the work, but there are also moments that made me pretty emotional. Christina Kirk's character that tells us of her childhood experience in a cult is chilling. KJ Sanchez gives us part of an interview with her 73-year-old mother, and when it's followed by Baron Vaughn singing "I want to die for something", I will admit James and I got a bit teary.

In addition to a brilliant cast, Michael Friedman's songs really stand out. I don't have to tell anyone who knows me that I hate conventional musicals, but there are ones like Hedwig or Urinetown that I do like. Generally, they are ones with clever music that sounds as if it's aware of what's happpened since 1940 in music, and that has some political content. Michael's lyrics are very smart, and when he pulls a line into a song that you heard a character speak earlier in the evening, it adds additional depth. He writes in a number of styles, and one of my favorites in this one is the Song of Progressive Disenchantment, performed by Caitlin Miller. As you might guess, it's in the style of a Brecht/Weill song, such as Surabaya Johnny. It's also hilarious.

I have information on discount tickets to see it:

Special 2-for-1 tickets to NOBODY'S LUNCH available until 10/14 (10/7 and 10/10 excluded). Special price available ONLY through PS 122 box office:
212.477.5288. Offer subject to availability. Use code: LUNCHFOR2

That Gone Missing link above is a post of mine that includes some MP3s of earlier songs by Michael.

Champion Fine Art is now in Los Angeles, Culver City to be precise. Their first show, curated by Matt Johnson, opens October 29.

They both close Saturday, so get on over there. Yancey Richardson is on 22nd Street in Chelsea.

Mitch Epstein's show, titled Family Business, documents the collapse of his father's furniture and real estate business in Holyoke, Massachusetts. It also becomes a document of the collapse of small businesses and old city downtowns. A number of the images would be moving without the background story, but they're devastating as soon as you know it.

Flag, 2000, 30 × 40 inches, Chromogenic Print

Warehouse, 2000, 50 × 60 inches, Chromogenic Print

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Appropriately, the other show is Oraien Catledge's Cabbagetown, with images from his book of the same name. Catledge photgraphed the people of Cabbagetown, a small, impoverished milltown not far from downtown Atlanta. The images are from the 80s, but look like WPA photographs of sharecroppers during the Depression.

[images from the gallery's web site]

I said I was going to write about a new young artist at Schroeder Romero, but James beat me to it.