And Now Bunnies!

Hiroh Kikai. "A woman who lives alone with her pet." 1974

Sometimes it's just serendipity. I went over to 535 West 22nd to catch up with some of my favorite galleries and guess what? Bunnies!

First stop was the Yancey Richardson gallery where they were getting ready to hang their Hiroh Kikai show, opening later this week. I showed a couple of Kikai's pictures in my "Sander's Children" show and like many photo people was relatively new to the work of this Japanese photographer who has been making deadpan and slightly odd street portraits since the 1970s. You can read and see more about the show here. While it's not in any way typical, I really liked the picture above as well as its title. (All Kikai's titles have that slightly strange Japanese to English idiosyncrasy.)

Photo by Laurel Nakadate

Photo by Laurel Nakadate

Next stop was Leslie Tonkonow and a new show of work by Laurel Nakadate. Mixing video and photography, I was particularly struck by
a pair of shadow pictures of which the above was one, as well as the coincidence of the bunny theme. There is also one extraordinary six minute video of the artist dancing in the desert to the strains of a Bruce Springsteen song. Beautifully filmed in the fading light of day, and with a sense that the artist is dancing herself into a trance, it has the visceral quality that makes good video/performance stand out from so much of the dreck that's foisted on us in the name of art.

Andrew Bush. From "Vector Portraits"

Sadly, no bunnies at Julie Saul where there is a strong new show of Andrew Bush's photos taken along Southern Californian highways in the 90s. I wrote about the work a while ago so you can read about it here.

And for a sneak preview of the Kikai show, here's a picture (below) of the work waiting to be hung. If you click on the picture you can just make out some of the images.