We started our First Friday art tour before anyone else last night. We were at the MAG savoring the last hours of the Matisse show and I don’t mean his grandson’s pottery. No one draws like Matisse. No one gets as much form and expression in line. Matisse is the master. Your very last last chance to see what I’m talking about is Sunday when the show closes.
This morning’s paper has an item that really isn’t news to those who live here. Despite being one of America’s most livable cities we are ranked third on the list of poverty rates in large metropolitan areas, just behind Detroit and Cleveland. Like I say, not news, but it came the morning after taking in “Upstate Girls” by Brenda Ann Kenneally at Visual Studies Workshop. Kenneally has secured a Guggenheim grant to continue exploring and visually docmenting the how and why of class inequity in America. A meaty project. Take a look at her photos.
In Synecdoche, Katherine Keener, playing Philip Seymour Hoffman’s wife, painted these mildly disturbing miniature pictures and at her openings everyone had to use magnifying glasses to view the art. I was reminded of that bit of absurdity last night at RoCo where the 6×6 show opened. Each piece, limit of six from each entrant, is six by six and every piece is 20 bucks with all proceeds going o Rochester Contemporary. But this year they go food to ceiling. You can hardly see the ones up top but hang. There were signs scattered about that read, “Ladders Available Sundy.”
Ladders Available Sunday.