Can You Hear Me Now?

Recommendations for the coming week; Unspecific Fear of the Future Invades Chelsea art scene

What: Sweet Paprika
Location: The D Lounge (near Union Square)
Date Friday’s; Check the web site
Cost: $5
Bohemian Factor: Low
Geek Factor: Just enough of us to get the obscure jokes.

What: Chelsea Art Galleries
Location: W. 25th and W. 26th Street
Date Mondays-Fridays in Summer
Cost: FREE
Bohemian Factor: High
Geek Factor: Low

It looks to be a good week ahead for the bohemian on a shoestring!

I’m excited to discover Sweet Paprika, at $5, a chance to hear some talented comics (a happy proportion of them female) in a low-key atmosphere. Not every punch line is a bull’s eye, but the freshness of the talent and lack of artifice, in addition to an intimate atmosphere, makes for a ridiculously good deal. Paprika host and comic Ophira Eisenburg was flying solo the night I came (she usually teams with Allison Castillo) but she definitely held her own. And drinks for under $10! I felt like I was in Brooklyn.

And as long as I seem to be unable to disassociate myself with robots, puppets and comics (no doubt some suitable combination of all three will show up sooner or later), I have to plug this workshop tomorrow at 6th and B Gardens in Alphabet City, where wanna-be illustrators can learn how to draw their favorite comic book characters. I do so wish I could come, just to see who shows up, but alas, I will hopefully be another event, attending my first Warm Up at PS 1, in Queens.

Tomorrow night is also The Tank’s three-year anniversary party. Their mission of providing creative, affordable public events and a creative environment for artists “engaged in the pursuit of new ideas” is admirable, and their mercurial acquisition of new locations in the hellish NYC real estate market is truly Herculean. I dropped by their Chashama digs not long ago for a little comedy and found myself singled out by the singer/comedienne at the microphone. Hey, what girl doesn’t want to be the target of a vulgar serenade?

For those who ever have weekdays free, I recommend several Chelsea art exhibits that seem to offer a great deal of whimsy, but are apparently inspired by the artists’ tempestuous premonitions of our imminent doom from commercialism, tourism, imperialism, and other evil things yuppies tacitly condone. While I confess that the connection was not always intuitive, the three shows were much more along the lines of thoughtful, provocative and silly than just plain “downer.”

I first saw Saya Woolfalk’s fuzzy, tentacled creations at the 2004 Scope Art Fair, resembling the kinds of made-up species that are used to host children’s edutainment. For the video now on display at CUE Art Foundation, she puts actual people into these costumes and then films them performing choreography that could simultaneously be warfare or uninhibited sex. Intriguingly, it’s an interracial couple, but we can only tell by their hands. The artist’s states that her work illustrates the “commoditized representations of desire,” and perhaps that’s why it’s a little creepy to project malice onto these creatures, with all their floppy body parts. They do seem vaguely familiar, either from a fabric softener commercial or an 80’s cartoon or a Stephen Spielberg movie, it is just hard to say.

The undercurrent of malice was definitely more detectable at the Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, where “Montezuma’s Revenge” is intended to showcase rifs on tourism and the inclination of, presumably Western society, to fetishize the exotic. According to the press release, “the longing for paradise has been transformed by manipulative industries,” and while that certainly was evident in many of the photos, I couldn’t help but fall for the enormous jellyfish hanging from the ceiling. Although the exhibition copy warned that these guys “convey an anxious tone, despite their tactile and luminescent qualities,” I couldn’t help but think that they would make a great apartment accessory for parties, if I had $20,000 to spare. Hey, here’s a great opportunity for one of those “manipulative industries” – perhaps they can talk to the artist about a licensing agreement?

I knew on my first go round that the artists participating in the James Cohen Gallery’s “A Brighter Day” exhibit had some weighty issues on their minds, although “collective anxiety” wouldn’t necessarily have been my first choice for the underlying theme. (Although, I supppose, not a bad idea to tap into everyone's doom-and-gloom, given the most recent implosion in the Middle East) The work presented is certainly cynical, but more in the smart-ass vein, than the nihilistic one, so it's not always clear whether or not these pieces are delivering an urgent admonition about a grim future or just toying with us by self-referentially dismissing their own value. (One amusing print on the wall bears the following text in multihued colors: “When I Am Happy I Will No Longer Have To Make These.”)

There is other text, including a bench made by the ubiquitous Jenny Holzer (I won’t give away the message inscribed in it) and a wall that sports “I Deserve Less” scrawled over and over again, presumably from an over-privileged adult succumbing to ennui. But my favorites were the visual pieces – a colony of mushrooms, growing more alien and menacing with each new vertical layer; a living room wall with high brow accessories showing missing pieces, as if they’ve been violently ripped apart; an untitled work that invokes a wild configuration of what could be body parts or machinery; and well, a sort of cell phone demon camouflaging in a tapestry created by two filmmakers from London. I am definitely not doing justice in my descriptions, but believe me, if my cell phone started making that kind of face at me, I’d succumb to “collective anxiety” as well.