5 Sept 2008 to 5 Oct 2008
Hours : Thurs–Mon, 12-6pm
Jack the Pelican Presents
487 Driggs Ave
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
New York, NY
New York
North America
p: +1 646-644-6756
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w: www.jackthepelicanpresents.com
Openings: Friday, September 5, 7–9pm artist's reception Friday, September 12, 7–9pm grand opening
...Actually, he is a Korean Buddhist monk, and he is called only by his title, Sunim, which means teacher.* Arthur Cohen knows him by no other name.
The two met one night almost a year ago. A friend of Arthur's son had had a little bit too much to drink, and found himself in a bad way, late at night and alone on the street in Soho. Sunim had come to his aid, as Arthur tells it, "like the Lone Ranger," and brought him to the safe haven of Arthur's nearby loft. Soon, Arthur's son was visiting with Sunim regularly, and Arthur himself was intrigued.
At the time, Arthur was making comedic paintings about his struggle to get his 'aging' body into shape, in a follow-up exploration of the themes he developed in "The Avenger," his last solo show with Jack the Pelican, in 2005. In these works and in the gallery, you'll have the opportunity to see the husky climbing rope that he bolted to his studio ceiling and use to measure and dramatize his painful efforts at getting fit.
You'll also get to see gorgeous portrayals of Sunim.
We all have the son to thank for that. Not long after he began to bond with Sunim, he began telling him about the work. The monk was intrigued, and asked to pay him a studio visit.
Sunim is in great shape. Long daily walks and yoga see to that. And, when he entered the studio, he asked to have a go at the rope. It goes without saying that he was a natural, perfectly at home; and he put Arthur to shame.
One climbed, then the other. Things were beginning to get interesting. Soon, the New York Jewish artist (devoted to Borscht Belt humor) and the Korean monk (with a preferencs for koans) were playing together regularly, and Arthur asked Sunim if he could document it all. The result is these monumental paintings on display at Jack the Pelican.
On one level, this show, entitled "Now What?," is the coming together of two very interesting men from two very different back grounds, both 'teachers, in their respective fields. It is fascinating to see them learn from each other.
On another level, not to be taken for granted, it is the mastery and accomplishment of an artist who has been struggling with the intricacies of painting for 35 years, since he first appeared in the Whitney Biennial in 1973, to make a truly great painting.
Bravo to Arthur Cohen! He's done it. The paintings are breathtaking and brutally honest. Come see them and you will not be disappointed.
*The Teacher from http://www.fact-archive.com/encyclopedia/Zen
Because the Zen tradition emphasizes direct communication over scriptural study, the role of the Zen teacher is crucial. Generally speaking, a Zen teacher is a person ordained in any tradition of Zen to teach the dharma, guide students of meditation and perform rituals; in some cases, especially in modern western Zen movements, a person not ordained may be able to fulfill some or all of these roles. Part of the myth of Zen is "Dharma transmission," the claim of a line of authority that goes back to the Buddha. While this is mythic, particularly the Indian lineage, it becomes a historical fact within the formal Zen movement since the Middle Ages. All Zen teachers stand within one lineage or another.
Honorific titles associated with teachers typically include, in Chinese: Fashi (??) or Chanshi (??); in Korean, Sunim or Seon Sa; in Japanese: Osho (priest) Roshi (old master) or Sensei (teacher); and in Vietnamese, Thich adopted in place of a surname. Note that many of these titles are common among Buddhist priests of all schools present in the specific cultural context. Some titles, such as the Japanese sensei are also used beyond the Buddhist schools.
SIN-A-RAMA: An Alphabetical Ballad of Carnality DAVID SANDLIN
Openings: Friday, September 5, 7–9pm artist's reception Friday, September 12, 7–9pm grand opening
It goes without saying that Jack the Pelican is honored to present the latest and greatest from the renowned David Sandlin.
Who is David Sandlin? --The artist is genuinely too humble to give himself the credit he so hugely deserves...
So I will (or just read his CV)... If you don't know, it probably means you're young and not a student of art history, and it's time to get on board.
David Sandlin has long represented everything that is sacred to the New York artistic underground.
In striking contrast to the infamous 80s artist Chuck Connelly, whose rabid self-destruction led to years of alienation and obscurity until only recently, when the popular HBO artumentary The Art of Failure (yes, that was me) resurrected him as an under-appreciated "rogue genius" (but this was not my point of view)--Sandlin has been riding hard and strong in prestigious venues around the world, his vision steadily building in maturity and ambition.
In 2006, he enjoyed a museum mini-retrospective of his career in his native Ireland; and just earlier this year (2008), he exploded in Los Angeles with a fabled double-solo exhibition at important galleries La Luz de Jesus and Billy Shire Fine Arts.
Sandlin the bad boy grew up in the late 60s dodging bombs in Belfast--only to culture-warp at age fifteen over to bible-belt Alabama of the 1970s. He rose to artworld prominence in the East Village scene of the 1980s--under the auspices of the legendary Gracie Mansion. Artist and gallerist worked together with mutual devotion from 1983 through to his last solo show with her, in 2002, after she relocated to Chelsea (beautifully reviewed by Nancy Princenthal in Art in America—among other publications).
Sandlin's boozy blend of low comics and high art is at once a raunchy satire of American right-wing populism and a sober, provocative and conceptual exploration of cross-genre pollination. The artist has been written about extensively and continually over the years by many in the Who's Who of Art Criticism (if there isn't one, there should be!), and has succeeded even in piercing the wildest imaginations of good liberals everywhere with his comics and books, reviewed widely in prominent publications.
This from The New York Times Book Review , by Stephen Heller, December, 2003:
While the spirit of Vermeer is noticeably absent in David Sandlin's book An Alphabetical Ballad of Carnality, Hieronymus Bosch, William Blake, Gustave Doré and Walt Disney are present. Well, maybe Disney is a stretch, but this comically grotesque series of disturbingly funny tableaus about the upside of eternal damnation, filthy lucre and masochistic mendacity draws on the work of these greats in an orgy of brush and ink and color fantasy.
Worth noting: the drawings Heller's here referring to are continuous--they work in one long, unending strip. When the book was published, the series—as intended—was incomplete. Sandlin developed them for the purposes of publication as though he were creating a traditional comic--as line work, subsequently scanned and layered over with computer graphics. In a very real sense, the book affords only a partial insight into the work. The "apotheosis" would be his eventual presentation of the finished work, rendered more robustly and sensitively in watercolor. Indeed, this is where you get your Vermeer!
And this fuller work is what we present at Jack the Pelican in Sandlin's first solo exhibition with the gallery: "Sin-a-rama: An Alphabetical Ballad of Carnality." It runs 70 feet, continuously along all four walls of our 'back room;' and is surmounted by a parallel narrative frieze, which the artist has cut out of wood and backlit with the glowing colors of seediness.
A further work, hanging ominously over the entrance to his exhibition, is Sandlin's graphic sexy electric sign, greeting your approach. It beckons, as it warns, with the charm of sin.
On a deeper level, it might read, " Nel mezzo del camin del nostra vita." ("In the middle of the journey of our life." --the first line of Dante's Inferno.)
