frosch&portmann (53 Stanton Street, New York) presents One For The Road, an exhibit of work by Edie Nadelhaft and Yanik Wagner. There will be an opening from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, April 12, 2018.

The title refers to the mixed-blessing of the USA's car dependence. Pieces range from picturesque back roads to freeway overpasses. The idea of motion is ever present as is a notion of melancholy that comes with the monotony of the daily grind and the anonymity that our automotive lifestyle sometimes brings. The title of the exhibition comes from the 1943 song by Johnny Mercer One More for My Baby (and One more for the Road).

by Patrick Ogle

Tania Khoury's interactive performance pieces--Gardens Speak and As Far As My Fingertips Take Me were traumatizing and moving during Miami Art Week 2017.

Describing these does not do them justice.

Gardens Speak, in particular, is far more than the sum of its parts. Participants are given a card, with a name in Arabic and then brought into a room with gravestones in dirt. You then climb into the dirt and have to dig down until you can hear talking. The voice, the name on the card and on the grave marker, is an actual person killed in Syria at various points in the nation's recent history. They tell you their story.

The piece is much more than the description above. It was a profound experience of the sort you rarely get from any art of any sort. It brings you, as much as is possible, into the life and death of a real human being. You walk away feeling for them.

As Far As My Fingertips Take Me brings you the experience of a recent Syrian refugee. You listen while a tattoo artist draws the story on your arm. Less disturbing and not traumatizing though this is , the tactile part of it is moving. Your arm is placed through a hole in a wall. While you can feel, you cannot see. This mirrors how we empathize with refugees; we can see what they go through, we can empathize but we really cannot experience their lives in a meaningful way.

Find out more about the artist at taniaelkhoury.com.

I asked Khoury one question--what does she want US to take away from her pieces. It is a nuanced response. She doesn't feel she important in her work, ergo she did not want the video to be of her.

Fridge Art Fair Brooklyn is, once again, at the NU Hotel (85 Smith St, Brooklyn) May 2-6. 2018. The fair has new curators
and this year's them is The Tonya's Tasty Triple Axel Icebox Cake Edition, featuring Ziggy's Stardust Powdered Donuts (New York Edition #6). This is an odd juxtaposition but the Brooklyn Museum is showing the wonderful David Bowie Is exhibit.

The Fair also features Eric Ginsburg's Greatest T.V. Pets Hallway of Fame (worldoferic.com) and a Pop Up Fridge at Van Der Plas Gallery (156 Orchard St.).

Curator Natalie Fisk (natalielomeli.com) is joined by special programming curator, Liz Publica, editor at ARTpublika Magazine (artpublika.com).

There will also be a screening of the documentary of A Charmed Life, about New York performer, Daniel Booth.

Find out more at fridgeartfair.com.

Monica Jahan Bose's latest exhibition runs March 31 to April 21, 2017 at  Civilian Art Projects (Washington D.C.). There will be a reception from 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday, March 31.

Jahan Bose's work is often part performance, part installation and always have a point, are always aimed to enlighten and educate.

This exhibit includes new paintings that arise from a number of performance and climate art actions. The title comes from a Bengali song.. There have been recent performances in Miami, Washington DC, Honolulu, Paris and Katahali Village (Bangladesh).

All of these performances used the coconut as a symbol of climate resilience. This new symbol uses the artist's use of the sari. Her "performance pieces" are not just art but community activism.

This exhibit is accompanied by a new publication, Rising Up to Climate Change: Storytelling with Saris. This is funded, in part, by a grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (part of the NEA). Bose's pieces employing sari's have been ongoing for many years.

In addition to the opening there will be a Sari Workshop & Sing-A-Long at 1 p.m. Saturday, April 14 and an Artist Talk/Closing Reception at 3 p.m. Saturday April 21.

photos by Boyd Ogle II

Galerie Rother Winter (Wiesbaden) showed work by Rainer Gross at Art Miami 2017.

Find out more at the gallery website,  www.rother-winter.de/de.

photos by Boyd Ogle II

Arthur Roger Gallery (New Orleans) showed work by David Bates, Lesley Dill, Holton Rower and Luis Cruz Azaceta at Art Miami 2017.

There is a fairly solid chance this gallery was one of the first you saw when attending Art Miami. This is unfortunate for the galleries to follow since the quality of the diverse work they showed is remarkable.

The Unicorn Gallery (Milan) showed work by  Previtali Paolo and Asbel G. Dumpierre at Aqua Miami 2017.

The gallery is directed by Anna Gnocchi, a Milan native. They operate not only in Milan but in Miami and Buenos Aires. Find out more my clicking on the gallery name above.

AC Contemporary (Buenos Aires) showed work by Yuki Yamamoto at Aqua Miami 2018.

Yamamoto was born in Argentina, spent her youth in Japan and now lives in Chile. She majored in art restoration at the Catholic University in Santiago. It is a fascinating major for an artist in that it implies a long term commitment to art--and art beyond her own. She was employed restoring art for a period. She worked for ten years in restoration.

It is difficult to imagine a more intensive and extensive career foundation for any fine artist. Imagine the attention to detail required to do the work and how much you learn about composition in the process. And, of course, restoration is done on work in a variety of styles and media.

For the past decade Yamamoto has devoted herself to painting. Her work reminds of some art of the Caribbean. Much of her work resembles these pieces but is on canvas.

You can see more on the artist at www.yukiyamamoto.cl.

Aureus Contemporary (Rhode Island) showed work by Erik Ritter at Aqua Art Miami 2017.

Ritter refers to his art as Dejunked. He creates using the plastic flotsam of our throw-away society. Each piece is a collection of odds and ends that might have easily wound up in a landfill but instead become intricate, beautiful pieces of art.

Find out more about the artist HERE.

Exhibit A (Corning, NY) showed work by Robin Whiteman at Aqua Art Miami 2017.

The artist has worked with clay since she was a pre-teen. She has a bachelors from Rochester Institute of Technology's School of Crafts (in Ceramics). The pieces here are porcelain but without the "shine" we usually expect. She does other sorts of ceramics as well. You can see more of her work at  www.robinwhiteman.com.

Such delicate and lovely works sold for (generally) just a bit over $2000 each. Which seems like something of a deal.

The pieces are heavy with symbolism and mythological portents and beings. Some you can perhaps suss out for yourself but for others it would probably require crawling into the artist's brain.
 
Whiteman's work has been shown since the mid-90s. She lives and works in the Finger Lakes area of New York State, which means she lives near some good wineries as well.