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I have just returned home from what seemed like a fleeting three-week visit to our project space in New York. David Krut Projects is fearlessly situated amongst three hundred other galleries in Chelsea on the Lower West side, just a few minutes walk from the elegant Hudson River. Here, galleries with chic glass frontages, outlandishly share the street with auto repair shops and assorted wholesalers. The main art feature on West 26th Street is the handsome building at No 526 where, on the eighth floor, I was warmly received by David Krut, Gallery Director, Kate McCrickard and Manager, Laura Gencarella. Fittingly, our space shares a floor with an artist’s studio and the highly regarded IPCNY: the International Prints Centre, New York.

No time was wasted before I was introduced to the established, New York-based artist Suzanne McClelland, whose show STrAY was in its last week of exhibition. McClelland had worked intensely with Kate and Laura to mount an intrepid installation in a range of materials as well as design and publish an accompanying artist’s book. Prints, photographs, drawings and video installation together illustrated the ways in which language can be used in situations of both internal and external conflict. As source material the artist had used a series of twelve, Found Poems by American civil war poet and relative, George Garrett, resulting in a highly personal show that solicited a lingering and careful consideration from the viewer.

(above) STrAY by Suzanne McClelland

This was followed by an enormously well attended group show that opened on the 7th June. HOMEGROWN, curated by Renee Riccardo, featured 18 emerging artists and art collectives from New York, Seattle, Miami, Los Angeles and Boston. Installing the show with the artists allowed me to spend valuable time with many of them. Riccardo selected works based on ‘homegrown’ practices such as collage, quilting, crochet, embroidery and assemblage. For a list of the participating artists and their works click here. Installation artist, Jasmine Zimmerman was of particular interest to me, as her site-specific elastic band artwork seemed to engage the most effectively with the space and audience. Zimmerman has three shows scheduled for July in New York and her website is worth taking a look at click here.

(above) Installation by Jasmine Zimmerman
Crochet work by Anne-Francoise Potterat’s
Wall-hanging by Lee Tusman

Meeting with the talented Mike Houston and Martin Mazorra of the Brooklyn-based woodblock collaborative Cannonball Press in order to familiarize myself with the breadth of their work and to plan for their journey to South Africa in August was an essential aspect of my visit. When Oppikoppi Productions approached David Krut Projects in Johannesburg to collaborate by adding a visual element to the music festival, Cannonball Press immediately came to mind. Founding members, Houston and Mazorra produce oversized woodcuts in incredibly obsessive detail as well as large scale sculptures, using imagery such as pirates, snakes, rats and a demolition derby. A range of these works will be available to view in their exhibition at David Krut Projects, Johannesburg in August. For the Oppikoppi festival they have created a 30 metre snake that will be paraded on poles through the festival crowd. Click here and see the Oppikoppi site for more on the activities that they will be involved in during their stay. I was also lucky enough to attend one of Mazorra’s lectures at the Parsons School of Design where he introduced a group of printmaking students to the history of graphic type-setting in American poster art and potential of the letterpress. I also had a chance to sneak around their limitless workshop facilities at Parsons, an experience I wish could have been shared with our printmaker Jillian Ross.

(above) Cannonball Press: Mike Houston and Martin Mazorra

In search of a series of extraordinary digital prints by Eva and Franco Mattes from a series entitled, 13 Most Beautiful Avatars, Kate McCrickard and I set out to Brooklyn and were warmly invited into the specialist printmaking studio of Jean-Yves Noblet. Noblet has printed with the likes of Mathew Barney, Francesco Clemente and Kara Walker to name but a few. Italian artist collective, Eva and Franco Mattes (also known as 0100101110101101.ORG) created portraits of avatars, the customizable personas that people inhabit online in alternative virtual worlds. The popular online virtual environment Second Life seems to have taken the world by storm where participants can create and build their identities online as a living fantasy. We will be showing five of these beautiful portraits at our gallery space in Johannesburg in September.
Caption: Two Portraits by Eva and Franco Mattes from 13 Most Beautiful Avatars

Spring in New York also afforded me the luxury of slipping away from the gallery on a number of afternoons and into a host of ground-floor galleries and fascinating museums. A memorable afternoon was spent at the Paula Cooper Gallery where a panel discussion on the disappearance of the book review was chaired by editor of Book Forum, Eric Banks. Speakers included author Joyce Carol Oates, James Shapiro from Colombia University, Lindsay Waters from Harvard University Press and Jonathan Galassi, president of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. On David Krut’s suggestion I also thoroughly enjoyed catching the train up state to Dia: Beacon’s Riggio Galleries. Located on the Hudson River in Beacon, Dia occupies a 300 000-square foot defunct printing factory with a staggering collection of minimalist art.

Many long-term collaborative plans between David Krut Projects, New York and Johannesburg were set in motion during my visit. To mention just one exciting development - in July 2008 we will be taking a group show of contemporary South African artists to the project space for a summer show in New York. So without saying too much, I highly recommend that you watch this space.

(above) Upper East Side
David Lachapelle work at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery - Chelsea
Greek sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art

(above) Lucy Rayner, Laura Gencarella, Kate McCrickard

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