James Kalm brings art-heads along for a Sunday afternoon gallery crawl through the LES (Lower East Side). First stop is “Only Dancing,” an exhibition of paintings and resin sculpture by Australian artist Stephen Ormandy at Olsen Gruin. Like the slick unforgettable disco hits of the 1970s, these works are unabashed excursions into hedonism and pleasure. Using a range of colors that contrasts high keyed hues off subtle grays and earth tones, Ormandy plays with a limited set of forms but finds a satisfying vocabulary by shuffling his compositional elements like a deck of cards
With “The Speculative Gaze” David Baskin extends his research into the techniques and codes of product seduction and the line between kitsch and the sublime. Reflective surfaces and “bling” seem a common language that we’re submerged in these days like fish in water. But what do these “signifiers of value” mean when they are collected and indexed without regard to their place in the cultural hierarchy?
Kim Dorland presents “Same Old Future” his first New York show in four years at the Arsenal on the Bowery. Gone are the intentionally brash juxtaposed colors and audacious clumps of paint that garnered this Canadian painter critical attention in the last decade. These means are supplanted by a more constrained palette and a confident handling of subject. Still, there is a disquieting anxiety present in Dorland’s pictures of the Northern Forests, its dark myths, and the anonymous strangers who inhabit it.
James Kalm reviews Kim Dorland “North” in The Brooklyn Rail: brooklynrail.org/2008/05/artseen/kim-dorland-north
James Kalm Rough Cuts video: Kim Dorland "Ghosts of You and Me" at MIKE WEISS GALLERY.
youtube.com/watch?v=OG_z_PNQGDU
A musical introduction is provided by Adjuma @adjumamusic. This program was recorded on 11 and 14 March 2018 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side
