Alfredo Jaar: The Sound of Silence vs Three Women

Good evening contemporary art lovers!
To the Parisians who can't be in NY next week (shame on you it's the Armory Show!! you should be here) here is a very interesting exhibition organized by the Kamel Mennour gallery in collaboration with "L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts". The Sound of Silence is shown at the Beaux-Arts' yard and Three Women is hosted by the gallery "rue St Andre des Arts". Alfredo Jaar is a Chilean artist, architect and film maker who was born in 1956. He lives and works in New York.

Over the past thirty years, he was focusing on how one can see and think an image. His technique evolved but his works follows the same guideline:  questioning on political violences, social exploitation, resistance and activism. his work is one of the strongest engagements in contemporary art such as Boltanski's one or Haacke's one. According to him, a work of art must go above the simple aesthetic pleasure and has to take risks. That's why he treated many subjects such as: the silence imposed by Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile, the destiny of Vietnamese boat-people in H, the Rwandan genocide, the "buried workers"in the brazilian mines... His goal is to link together the artist's search with political questions and moral ethics.

Unfortunately History doesn't tell if he's related to the electro Dj Nicolas Jaar who also lives in NY and used to live in Chile...

Harif Guzman!!

Good evening contemporary art lovers!

To all of you who love hanging out at Don Hills or all other Rock’n’Roll places, you have to know this guy!! Harif Guzman, a Venezuelian-born artist who lives and works in the City. He’s the one who painted Don Hills’ walls. His work, extremely seductive, very sensual, full of jokes and pornographic connotations totally matches with the New York underground art scene. A perfect mix with street art and graffs that rejects the “glamorized bohemian that floods downtown Manhattan”.

Funny and crazy at the first sight, his work is definitely deeper and more intense. He ridicules some “cliché” that make our society kind of frivol even stupid sometimes. Look at the Karl Lagerfeld’s picture: he’s represented between two huge penises! Provocative and authentic, his work is the reflection of the way he lives, works and thinks. Drinking beer and listening to rock'n'roll music in his loft downtown was a very cool experience! Paintings, sculptures and installations are all over the place. Can't wait to see the new studio...

Love is dead!! Rock'n'Roll baby...

Will Ryman's roses blooming on Park avenue

Good afternoon contemporary art lovers!
Since little while, Park Avenue was transformed into a huge rose garden. 38 roses, some reaching 25 feet in high, are growing on Park Avenue. They are made by Will Ryman, a native New Yorker artist best known of his large-scale figurative sculptures based on urban scenes and outsized flora.

Paul Kasmin Gallery and the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation turned this project into a reality. A reality which is kind of absurd: pink and red roses seem to symbolize calmness and tranquility but NY is definitely not a untroubled city! It looks like Alice in Wonderland! you are lost in the middle of a fantastic and unreal garden. Ladybugs, beetles and bees are almost bigger than us...

Exhibition runs til May and thanks to those who organized: feeling of summer in the middle of winter...