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Archives for January 2011

Reality Bites: The Too-True Art of Andrew Ohanesian

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“Montana, 2010,” a walk-in cooler with display doors was installed at English Kills Art Gallery, last spring. Photo courtesy of Andrew Ohanesian

Artist Andrew Ohanesian stands in his recent installation “Untitled (Jetway), 2010,” presented at Famous Accountants. Photo by Eric Ryan Anderson

Andrew Ohanesian doesn’t just create art; he creates art that passes for reality. The 30-year-old Bushwick transplant—when he isn’t working at his “day job” as studio manager for NYC-based new media artist Jon Kessler—is busy in his studio (site of such detritus as a working stove, piles of raw lumber, a man-sized safe, and dismembered mannequins), plotting out how to best create his next, accurately textured, convincingly lit, art installation that feels, looks, and smells so real, it blurs the boundaries between art and life.

“Mandies” was a fully working, fully-stocked (Bud on tap!) bar that he installed last fall at Bushwick’s art gallery-cum-boutique ARCH Collective. (You’d sit on the bar stool, admire wall-to-wall wood paneling, drink to your heart’s content, then step out into the bright lights of the gallery and wonder how in the hell you got there.)

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Third Term for NYC Mayors Is Not a Charm

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The day Mayor Bloomberg began his third term, he said, “Conventional wisdom holds that by a third term, mayors run out of energy and ideas. But we have proved the conventional wisdom wrong time and again, and I promise you, we will do it once more.”

But now that Bloomberg is one year into his third term he might want to rethink that statement. The year began with reports that he directed $51 million in public and personal subsidies into a museum project led by Democratic mayoral rival Bill Thompson’s wife, dumping $2 million of additional city funding into it in the middle of the mayoral campaign.

Then it was disclosed that for the second year in a row, the mayor had quietly pumped more than $1 million into the state’s Independent Party without disclosing it as part of his own campaign spending. The party promptly turned around and gave $750,000 of the money to a shell company associated with key Bloomberg operatives.

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Williamsburg / Greenpoint Loft Dwellers Prevail, For Now

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Jim Fleming of the book press Autonomedia, and longtime resident on the storied South 11th Street in Williamsburg, testifies at last night's Loft Board hearing.

At the conclusion of last night’s special hearing in Manhattan on a proposed amendment to the Loft Law that would make it more difficult for many loft dwelling artists to qualify for protection under the law, Loft Board member Chuck DeLaney thanked the people who packed the chamber, the great majority of whom were loft dwellers who’d come to testify against the proposed rule.

“You were very effective today in making clear to the Board how important this is to you,” said DeLaney. “The Loft Board is going to defer this discussion and table voting. We are going to extend the comment period and possibly hold another hearing.”

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