Amuarys and Roselyn Grullon are proud children of the Bronx. Their remarkable clothing brand, “Bronx Native”, is an homage to their hometown. I spoke with Amaurys about the initial concept for Bronx Native, the ideas behind their iconic clothing line, and the future of the Boogie-Down (Bronx) in general. DB: Let me get right to it. What got you started …
Brooklyn Says OY! Brooklyn Responds YO! Deborah Kass at The Brooklyn Museum
Artist Deborah Kass’s monumental sculpture OY/YO was a phenomenon when it was first installed on Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Main Street lawn in 2015. Three years later, the groundbreaking work returns to Brooklyn, as part of a public art activation at the Brooklyn Museum. Joining text-based work by other Brooklyn-based artists—Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Hank Willis Thomas—OY/YO has been installed outside …
Kenny Scharf and Malia Scharf Create Art for the Masses
Malia Scharf would often wear clothes splashed with psychedelic pop-art designs, and when her friends would ask how they could get one, she would have to reply that they were one-offs, leftovers, as it were, from silkscreens created by Kenny Scharf, her artist father. Malia, who is a yoga teacher as well as a filmmaker, convinced her father to change …
Warhol, Bowie, and Basquiat Walk Into a Bar…The Mudd Club, by Richard Boch
“There was one of the two bathrooms upstairs that was the larger of the two, I call them men’s and ladies but they were really unisex, one just had a larger mirror. Did people shoot up in there? Yes. Did people do coke in there? Sure. Were quaaludes sold in there? Definitely. The other bathroom, if I was in there, …
When Your Gravity Fails and Negativity Don’t Pull You Through, or, Good Medicine for Bad Vibes
Ever walk into an art gallery and felt harmony, serenity, and the presence of a strong force for good? At Paradigm Gallery, artists Dennis McNett and Alex Yanes, with their allegorical totems and spiritual adumbrations, hope to envelop viewers in the warmth of their mellow vibes, through the medium of the collective unconscious. A number of the pieces are in fact …
Anthony Bourdain Was a Friend of Mine
Anthony Bourdain was not a friend of mine. In fact, some of those who know me well thought of him as my bête noir. I thought of him as my bête noir. But I didn’t know the man. I had read his piece, “Don’t Eat Before Reading This”, in the New Yorker in 1999, and it had resonated with me …
Leah Guadagnoli Just Wants To See You Underwater
Someone once wrote that New York City was a place that could destroy you by simply ignoring you (okay it was me). But being ignored is not an option when one produces work for public consumption, so artists allow themselves, nay, insist upon, the public and private flaying that often accompanies their entrée into the New York art scene. But …
Master of None’s Eric Wareheim is a Master of Wine
Eric Wareheim is a funny fucking guy. His gangly, goofy looks have propelled his comic adventures into SpaceX territory on groundbreaking shows like “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!”, while his endearing kookiness has helped make season two of “Master of None”, Aziz Ansari’s Netflix hit, an absurdist journey of deranged sanity and brolicious indulgence. Wareheim is truly silly, …
Dangerous Rhythms, Latin Jazz, and TJ English’s The Corporation
Best-selling author TJ English’s epic new Cuban true-crime thriller, The Corporation, is about to be made into a Leonardo DiCaprio-produced, Benicio Del Toro-starring Hollywood feature film. A frenzied bidding war produced a rumored seven-figure deal that was reached based on a 100-page proposal before the book was even written. TJ is celebrated for his studies of the Irish mob, including …
Darkness on the Edge of Town, a Frieze Recap
Highlight of the Day! Won’t you join me in the Pettibon Zone? (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Nudes! Nudes! Nudes! (Ladies Edition) Richard Diebenkorn, Untitled (Reclining Figure), 1966/George Condo, Showgirl, 2008/Joan Semmel, Double Take, 1991 Jordan Nassar’s Embroidery Installation at Anat Ebgi Gallery I want artwork that reflects ME. Literally! This fair is making me hungry. Is that toast? Somebody …
I Came, I Went, I Came Again! Frieze Flutters and The Uncle Jerry Show
Nothing is free in life, in the end you pay for your pleasure with pain, heartache, and decay. Consider the art fair, a dinosaur whose fossil was unearthed and resurrected, Jurassic Park-like, on Randall’s Island this week, and whose lumbering stride threatens to trample everything that fails to hightail it out of its path. So come, go, and come again …
’77 Music Club
After Kendrick Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize, the Washington Post blubbered that “Kids aren’t starting garage bands” anymore, and “Electric guitar sales are down 30 percent over the past decade!” Rock and Roll is not dead, former Rolling Stone writer Marc Weingarten declared, but it “continues to lose traction with anyone under 40,” and “it seems unmoored from its commitment …
“Tough Love” in The Bronx
“The Bronx used to mean, ‘be careful’,” said John ‘CRASH’ Matos, owner of the gallery, Wallworks, in the South Bronx. “If you were born and raised in the Bronx, and you were anywhere in the world, people would look at you, like, hmm, with a little hesitation. But it’s a special place.” Matos was a seminal figure in the New …
The Colors of Jen Stark
As one slips slides and careens in and out and down the rabbit-hole of LA artist Jen Stark’s hallucinogenic work, one is reminded of Alice in Wonderland’s fall into that almost never-ending burrow. “Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time to look about.” And like Alice, who grabs onto objects, …
Everything Is For Sale!
It has been said that the pleasurable sensation one gets from eating great food begins not with the mouth but with the eyes. If that is so, then La Mercerie, a new French boîte on a quiet cobblestone street in Soho, will have you feeling good the moment you walk in. One might say that this is by design, because …
Mass Murder and The Resistance. | Peter Williams
Artist Peter Williams is just not having it. In his one-man show, “With So Little To Be Sure Of”, at the CUE Art Foundation Gallery in Chelsea, the work, with titles like “Mass Murder”, “Sandra Bland”, and “Untitled (Pig on Pig)” screams off the canvases like a man who has been flayed. The police officers portrayed by Williams do nasty …
Prizefighter
A chill, late November rain falls on a dark cobblestone street in New York City’s fashionable Meatpacking District, where the Renzo Piano-designed Whitney Museum dominates, a glittering symbol of the moneyed art world’s move downtown. Less than two blocks away, outside the aptly-named Ft. Gansevoort, an art gallery on the beachhead of some of New York’s most exclusive real estate, …