GAYLETTER

You know how the end of year Parson’s show is where you’re gonna find the next superstar fashion designer? Well this is like that but for art. To be more specific it’s for the next generation of photographers at Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. And my projector is part of the show! Let me explain. Elliot Brown Jr., who has photographed for our magazine and website, is one of the students showing his work at this exhibition. His presentation is apparently pretty elaborate because he needed 3 projectors to show it (and one of them is mine). I’m excited to check out the show (and make sure my projector is still working). In total there’s 19 students exhibiting their work. On Thursday, March 24, at 6:00PM the school is hosting an opening night reception where you’ll get the chance to see their work and meet the students. Show some support — you never know the talent you might discover!  —tom

It’s no secret to long time readers of GAYLETTER that we’re fans of Mx Justin V. Bond. Hell, we’d go to the opening of a Duane Reade if Justin was going to be there. We are so damn excited for this show that opened last week. It was originally staged in London in 2015 at the Vitrine Gallery. It features a collection of watercolors, sculptural installation, video, and performance. The show coincides with “Mx America” at Joe’s Pub, in which Bond explores “ways of seeing and being seen.” The show sounds like it’s full of surprises. Justin will even occasionally show up in person and appear “within the designated “step and repeat” space with customized wallpaper, red carpet, and velvet rope, wearing a pink silk dress designed by Frank Masandrea.” Please make every effort to see this art show, and also go see Justin perform Mx America at Joe’s Pub. V is one of the most electrifying, brilliant, hilarious and unique performers out there. We can be cunts a lot of the time so you know when we speak this highly of someone, we mean it!  —tom

I briefly studied the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in school, but I got a real education on him (like many people) from reading Patti Smith’s wonderfully juicy, and well-written autobiography Just Kids. The book is essentially a love letter to Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in March of 1989. Maplethorpe, like Patty, was a talented artist, and an even better social climber. There was no one of note from the late 60’s and the early 70’s that these two didn’t find a way to meet. Their blatant opportunism is what surprised me most about the duo, but it makes sense, no one does well in NYC without some hustle. This Friday, a pop-up installation opens in NYC, and runs in tandem with the premier of the HBO documentary Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures debuting on April 4th. “This is the first feature-length documentary about the artist since his death.” It’s a fascinating look at his work and his life. We suggest you head to the pop-up to get a first hand look at some of his photography. “The installation will feature some of Mapplethorpe’s most famous works projected onto the side of shipping containers in Flatiron North Plaza, and a digital gallery of his more personal works — as well as a commentary from Mapplethorpe himself.”  —tom

Last week I went to the opening of the Brooklyn-born photographer Arlene Gottfried’s ‘Bacalaitos & Fireworks’ with my friend Chris at Daniel Cooney Fine Art — we both loved it. Previous to this show I was not familiar with Arlene’s work, I went because of the image on the flyer. She’s been around for a while now and has been creating amazing work even before I was born. “Gottfried’s work has been printed in several publications including The New York Times Magazine, Fortune, LIFE, and The Independent in London, as well as exhibited at the Leica Gallery in New York and Tokyo and at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.” And now she’s in GAYLETTER. The body of work we saw focuses on the Puerto Rican community of New York City from the 1970s to today. The gallery is having an event on April 2nd, where Arlene is going to be in attendance, I can’t wait to meet her — Yes Latinos!!! The photographs are candid, colorful, honest, raw, beautifully composed and powerful. Photographers with her talent don’t come around that often, Arlene’s work is very satisfying.  —Abi

I avoid going to Times Square as much as possible — the fact that people choose to hang out there on New Year’s Eve is mind boggling to me — so going there for an event that lasts just 3 minutes sounds like the right amount of time to be there. Times Square Arts has partnered with Moving Image to curate a month long GIF performance each night in Times Square. Mountain Light/Time by Lorna Mills is a 3 minute GIF of a sunrise over a mountain. It will play from 11:57 to midnight, every night for the next month. It doesn’t say which of the hundreds of screens it will play on, but I have a feeling it will be all of them. This is a great opportunity to see Times Square like you have never seen it before. Get in, get out. You really don’t need to be standing in that hell hole for any longer than 3 minutes.  —tom

A few weeks ago I received a very nice invite in the mail with large, die-cut type announcing Jack Early’s latest show at Fergus McCaffrey. I got so excited, I was like wow, that’s cunt! It just makes such a difference when you receive something in the mail worth keeping. I am also excited because we are big fans of Jack Early’s work. We featured him in our printed publication (issue 2), go read the amazing interview. We are obsessed with daddy Jack! Mr. Early has been around for some time which the press release reinforces with these random facts: “He and Tim Gunn go way back and he hung out with Grace Jones at the peak of her partying career.” This exhibition opens on February 18, don’t miss the reception from 6:00PM-8:00PM. His work is all about exploring his childhood “from roughly 9-12 years old, and all the memories that come before that.” Jack incorporates into his large scale paintings the wallpaper that his mother let him pick out during as a kid. Keep an eye out for the popsicles and his vintage porn paintings!  —Abi

White Box NYC gallery is one of our favorite galleries in downtown NYC. It helps that it’s mere steps from Abi’s apartment, but proximity is only one of the reasons we love them. The shows they put on are always provocative, thought provoking and often humours. Their latest #MakeAmericaGreatAgain is a group exhibition of “diverse media that will run during February and coincide with the initial Democratic and Republican primaries.” There’s sooooo many people in this show we simply can’t list them all, but trust, there’s some good ones. The name for the show is obviously taken from Senor Trump’s prez campaign, but their goal is to hijack it for something more positive. They’re asking people who see the show, and others around the world, to upload images or texts with the hashtag #makamericagreatagain onto their social media. If enough people do that the hashtag will no longer only be  associated with fat, white Americans with guns. Thanks art!  —tom

Judith Bernstein is a feminist artist whose work can be seen in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art. She is “best known for her erotic drawings and graffiti art. During the beginning of the feminist art movement, Bernstein was a founding member of the cooperative feminist A.I.R. Gallery in New York.” Mary Boone gallery in Chelsea is showing some of her drawings of giant screws that also look like big, hard, black dicks. They’re very interesting to look at. The gallery has been showing this work since Jan 9, in an exhibition titled Dicks Of Death. It’s curated by Piper Marshall, a young, and very stylish, curator who has been featured in W and Vogue magazine and sort of looks like a 1970s styled Amy Adams. The term “Dicks of Death,” is a “Marine nickname for the processed beef franks included with beans, is so termed for its foul taste and similarity in appearance to male genitalia. The offensively flavored and phallic shaped food is Government Issue, served to soldiers in ready-to-eat rations. Bernstein lifts this term to zero-in on the war-time phallus and to show us how aggression and patriotism is institutionally packaged to fuel political conflict.” Check out the show before it closes in a couple of weeks. Those dick screws along with the other phallic artworks are very Instagrammable.  —tom

The Canadian artist Zachari Logan is back in NYC for a residency at Wave Hill at their Winter Workspace Program. During his time here, he has a few things coming up and we are gonna tell you about one you shouldn’t miss. Just to give you some background on Zachari, his drawings are amazing and a lot of his work deals with “the intersections between masculinity, identity, memory, and place.” In previous work, related to his current practice, Logan investigated “his own body as a site of exploration...” In this early work he used to be really into himself, naked and often flaunting his massive penis. Now I think I got the attention of some of you. He will be giving a talk at the New York Academy of Art this wednesday, January 27th at 1:00PM. He told me that he’ll be discussing: “the narrative and material shifts in my work away from the exclusive pictorial use of the figure (my figure), to an engagement with the queer embodiment of space, landscape and nature, where ideas of my body as ever an ever-present catalyst, explore intersections between masculinity, identity, memory and place.” Sounds deep, just don’t forget to show the peen!  —Abi