Claudia Eve Beauchesne is an art historian, writer and curator. She is currently curator of programming at Formats in Montreal, Canada, and is working on a non-fiction book about the East Village art scene of the 1980s. Her writing on contemporary art, cinema and popular culture has appeared in NY Arts, Packet, Kolaj, I Love Bad Movies, and Come on Down. Here are her selections:
1. Generator at Audio Visual Arts (AVA), New York
An exhaustive and well-deserved homage to Gen Ken Montgomery’s Generator, New York’s first sound art gallery which existed in the East Village and then in Chelsea from 1989 to 1992.
2. Dave Hardy, A House with Gates at Regina Rex, Brooklyn, NY
Large vinyl wall hangings and precarious sculptural constructions made of discarded pliable foam, glass, cement, wood and furniture. The most innovative use of found materials this year.
3. The Perfect Nothing Catalog at Ongoing, Brooklyn, NY
A nomadic installation somewhere between a store, a curatorial project, a situationist intervention, and a relational aesthetic project. Uncategorizable and inconspiciously sophisticated.
4. John Dante Bianchi: Dislocation Point at SIGNAL, Brooklyn, NY
Large white relief panels created through a process of erosion and degradation, combined with white fiberboard sculptures that appear oxidized; almost iridescent. A fresh take on monochromatic abstraction.
5. Shaq Attack! At BOCA Gallery, Montreal
A conceptual online advertising campaign using Google AdSense to target a product (a customized work of art) at a single individual: Shaquille O’Neal. A smart (and funny) critique of internet-mediated marketing.
See top 5’s from other NY Arts contributors here.
