The Bruces Deliver

The Brucennial 2012, billed with some measure of self-effacement as "the single most important art exhibition in the history of the world," opened big last week, with visitors standing in light rain for up to 2 hours to get into the show's beer-fueled launch party at 159 Bleecker Street in the West Village. On view through Apr. 20, the freewheeling salon-style survey features works by nearly 400 artists, solicited by the quasi-anonymous group Bruce High Quality Foundation with backing from their dealer, Vito Schnabel.
 Read More

China Docks in Chelsea

Asian Art Piers, a new gallery dedicated to contemporary Asian work—predominantly from China—opens in Chelsea today with a two-person show by Pang Yongjie and Xia Guo (aka Xia Jinguo), Chinese oil painters currently little known in the West.

Pang (b. 1968) offers chubby, bow-mouthed figures stylized to a degree that the artist terms "abstract," in deliberate contrast to the more representational modes of Cynical Realism and Political Pop that made a global impact nearly two decades ago.
 Read More

Pictures of Mie

"MIE: A Portrait by 35 Artists," on view through Feb. 25 at Freight + Volume gallery in Chelsea, is one of the more unusual group surveys of the new season, and casts a fresh light on the venerable theme of artist and model. The show includes a few star artists (Alex Katz, Robert Frank), many who have stirred recent critical interest (Ryan Schneider, Kurt Kauper, Andrew Guenther, David Humphrey), one pop-cult figure (Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky) and several participants who, well-known abroad, are emerging in the West (Lin Yilin, Noritoshi Hirakawa, Qi Zhilong). Even more striking is the curatorial approach. The exhibition was co-organized by gallery owner Nick Lawrence with the portrait subject herself—Mie Iwatsuki, a Japanese-born model and independent curator who has lived in New York since 1999.
 Read More

Half the Sky: Chinese Women Artists in Philadelphia

How do Chinese women see themselves? How do female artists in China represent their private concerns, or register their take on a society undergoing rapid, mind-boggling change? Insights are currently available in Philadelphia, of all places, thanks to "Half the Sky: Women in the New Art of China," an exhibition featuring works by 24 contemporary Chinese women artists. Co-organized with the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC), Beijing, the show is on view through Nov. 13 at the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery at Drexel University.

 Read More