Who needs the Armory, anyway?
On March 10, 18 Bushwick gallery spaces will open until 10 pm for the neighborhood’s seventh Beat Nite art crawl.
Curator Jason Andrew organized the biannual event to coincide with the city’s mammoth art fair and draw some of the crowd across the West River toward artist-run galleries.
And this year, several new art spaces including Cojo Art, Parlour, Botanic, Camel Arts Space, and Active Space are joining the mix with intriguing new work largely from neighborhood artists.
“The great thing about Beat Nite is that new galleries are always opening and it’s exciting when that happens,” said Andrew.
Touch down at AIRPLANE gallery on Jefferson Street, where cofounders Liz Atzberger, Kevin Curran and Lars Kremer present a show satirizing marketing materials for upcoming 2012 blockbusters, including The Dark Knight Rises, Django Unchained, Men in Black III, and two Abraham Lincoln and two Snow White movies.
Be sure to stop by Deborah Brown’s gallery, Storefront Bushwick on Wilson Avenue to see new paintings from Martin Bromirski, Elizabeth Riley, and Rachel LaBine, Paul D’Agostino’s Centotto gallery on Moore Street, which features an unusual cornucopia of Bushwick artists’ favorite things, and visit Active Space on Johnson Avenue to see what gallery director and new media artist Ashley Zelinskie has done with the place.
And at Andrew’s apartment gallery, Norte Maar, visitors can play with Curran’s lacquered sculptures of revolvers, shotguns, and rifles, part of his new exhibit of sculptures and drawings invoking memories of childhood play, alongside new spray paint works by artist Tamryn Gonzalez.
“I used to play guns all the time and the guns in the show are based on what I used to make as a kid,” said Curran. “People can pick it up and play with it. I encourage people to touch them.”
You’ll probably see most of the neighborhood’s artists bouncing around between the galleries too.
“Beat night is where you get to see everybody out for the night they might have been holed up in the studio for the last three months but they’ll be there, and the art looks fantastic this time around too,” said Bushwick artist Ben Godward.
Beat Nite 7. March 10, 6-10 pm. For info, visit www.nortemaar.org/projects/beat-nite-7
Reach reporter Aaron Short at [email protected] or by calling (718) 260-2547.
