by Larry Walczak
On Sunday October 15, I visited the “DUMBO art under the bridge festival” that had been underway since Friday, the 13th with installations, sculptures, performances, exhibitions and hundreds of open studios by neighborhood artists. This was tabbed as “the 10th annual” festival and with clear skies expectations were high in terms of attendance.
Chambliss Giobbi (www.chamblissgiobbi.com) hung his work in “the apt. of a friend” at the luxurious 50 Bridge Apt. building. Giobbi, who has a studio on East 26th in Manhattan took the opportunity to hang several of his new works & told me on Saturday alone over 150 people visited with him despite the fact Bridge Street is located away from the heart of this annual festival.
Giobbi’s pieces are a kind of portraiture of the grotesque as he “finds icons of the subculture” and photographs them in four hour photo sessions that produce 500 pictures and ultimately 3000 prints. He then rips away at the prints creating heavily layered collages of all sizes. He is currently producing 3D wall images (featuring various grafitti tagging art-marks) using an epoxy sculptural material called magic-sculpt & some of these were on display that afternoon. He has completed a body of work in the past on the Williamsburg biker known as “Indian Larry”. He was showing new pieces on the personality known as “enigma” (not to be confused with the X-Men character of recent movies). His upcoming subjects include performance artists Penny Arcade, Annie Sprinkle and actor Fisher Stevens.
Mixed in with the studios of art were a shocking pink acting troop called “PLOUF” The not so ugly ducklings adding silly humor as if they were the wandering quintuplet children of HR Puff and Stuff and the Cosmetic Baroness Mary Kay – scary but playful. Their cruise performance of “public transportation disorders, extreme emergency procedures and…love” is strictly for followers of goofy theatrical performances and those looking for water bound cures of boredom.
Speaking of “public transportation disorders” festival viewers had the opportunity to spot Gretchen Vitamvas and her “squadron of straphangers adorned in subway camouflage” who invaded the F Train on both Saturday & Sunday. Other ongoing performances included Mary Coble’s “Marker” where the artist stood in the stiff cool breeze of the Fall afternoon shirtless allowing viewer/participants the opportunity “to write on the artist’s body derogatory words that have been used against you or slurs that you have used or heard used against others”. In a side entrance to Triangle Arts Association (www.triangleworkshop.org) I viewed the performance “picture yourself dead then remember you are alive” by the three Brazilian Sisters (braziliansisters@gmail.com) , Dizzy, Paula & Gisele Kohatsu, three Japanese-Brazilian sisters from Sao Paolo, Brazil. Through a ritual that includes a created environment with music, the sisters lead volunteers down a walk to an awaiting open coffin. Here participants lay to rest complete with roses and have themselves photographed before being taken away and lead out back to life. In the evening at the corner of Jay & Water streets I viewed Paul Clay’s (www.fictive.net) “Dumbo Comic”, a series of large projections commenting on the gentrification of the Dumbo artist’s neighborhood by “working with the structure of the comic book and the giant billboard”. Although Clay admitted to “never really reading that many comic books” his use of photographic images coupled with word balloons worked well in delivering humorous narratives that at times drifted into the overtly political.
At the open studios at 55 Washington St. I visited with Joan Grubin (www.joangrubin.com) who creates beautiful abstract “paper sculpture and fragment paintings” of colored papers, tape and staples. Her most recent “Dervish” is a stunning wall piece utilizing acrylic paint on color-aid paper strips circling off-the-wall at various levels. She uses florescent lights of her choosing to give off soft color tints that often create the illusion of paint directly on the wall.
Well-4
Chul-Hyun-Ahn
Also at 55 Washington I viewed the “visual echoes” of artist Chul-Hyun Ahn. These boxes were coolish, optical illusions that through mirrored repeats lead the viewer to infinity. Corporate art buyers could have had a field day here. These hard-edged boxes of repeat imagery would embelish any hugh office building as well as an exhibition space. His piece “Well-4” was a favorite.
Down the street at 33 Washington I viewed Ben Marxen’s (www.benmarxen.com) monitor incorporated abstract paintings. In his painting “parallel universe”, listed as, oil on plexiglas/mixed media the central image in the work somewhat resembles a blood vein, in fact, is constantly moving and flowing, like a cross between non-objective painting and a health/science display. Using a kind of computerized video these “paintings’ are about four inches deep as to hold the hardware needed to create such an illusion. Some of the movement in these “live” paintings mimic the brush stroking of abstract art giving them a conceptual dimension a viewer may not initially connect with. There is a kind of gimmick here but Marxen who is interested in painting, graphic design and video has the technical facility to make these new works captivating.
Micki Watanabe is part of the Smack Mellon studio program (www.smackmellon.org) at 25 Washington St. She creates “containers” that are like pop-up books that, when opened, produce a structure of a building from her own mythology. As an artist she was enthusiastic about the open studio experience and dealing with onlookers for three straight days. She said “I had dreaded being open (to the crowds of Festival Under the Bridge) but in the end with lots of people viewing & interacting with my artists books like kids” it turned out great. Watanabe did an open studio at the festival last year but maintains that a lot more “non-art” people came this weekend with over 500 going through her studio on Saturday alone. This is when the open-studio idea works best, artists getting both interaction and feedback & Watanabe's work was one of the standouts of the day.
In closing I recalled a statement from the eight page brochure handed out throughout the weekend. “The annual art under the bridge festival is the largest field for experimentation in public space art by emerging artists in the United States”. For those interested in participating in next year’s festival contact the d.u.m.b.o. arts center (dac) 30 Washington St. at 718-694-0831 for proposal guidelines (decisions are usually made in August). For those tiring of Chelsea mega-galleries and want to spend time in one of New York City’s “vital” art neighborhoods consider this weekend as a refreshing Brooklyn getaway from the art market across the river.
