We Went to Soho: Soho Art and Vietnamese Food

by Corinna Kirsch and Whitney Kimball on April 23, 2014 Reviews

Install shot, Pieter Vermeersch

Install shot, Pieter Vermeersch

Pieter Vermeersch (through April 27th)
Team Gallery, 83 Grand Street

Whitney: Corinna had said these were like James Turrells for somebody who can’t wait for the light to change. Yep.

Corinna: Haha. Let me explain that a bit for those who haven’t seen the show. Vermeersch makes these paintings that atmospherically fade from light grey to brilliant purple; each painting is like looking at a James Turrell orb. But now you can do it all at once! You don’t need the element of time that Turrell does in order to track those subtle changes.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about the show.

Install shot for Metabolic Morphology

Install shot for Metabolic Morphology

Takashi Horisaki and Nina Horisaki-Christens: Metabolic Morphology (through May 16th)
Recess, 41 Grand Street

Corinna: What you don’t see everyday when you walk into a gallery is an artist right there on the floor in front of you, pouring out plaster from a Trader Joe’s container onto a latex thingee. We chatted with Takashi for a little bit; he’s been in the process of making work in the gallery since the opening. So Recess looks more like an artist’s studio than a white cube right now.

Whitney: I like that about Recess’s model of putting the artist residency in their storefront space. We learned more from that thirty-minute conversation with Takashi than we would have from a press release, and as a result, I cared a lot more about his project.

That’s a good thing, because it’s a complicated piece; the artists are interviewing various people from the neighborhood about Soho’s past, and Horikashi is making latex casts of nearby buildings. When the piece is finished, visitors will brush past hanging latex columns; as they move the pieces of architecture, that will trigger the audio interviews which they’ve gathered from Soho residents.

Corinna: I’m not sure how much you can tell about the project on the latex casts alone; if anything, it seems like the current exhibition is just one node of a larger research project. I left wanting to know more about some of the old Soho locations that were cast, namely the Flux House  at 80 Wooster Street, a co-op developed by artist and sometimes real-estate developer George Maciunas.

Sau Voi (Image courtesy of Yelp)

Sau Voi (Image courtesy of Yelp)

Sau Voi 
101 Lafayette Street
What’s on view: Lotto tickets, banh mi, and untranslated DVDs straight from Vietnam

Corinna: Damn, I love this place. The banh mi is yummy and cheap, and while you’re waiting for your sandwich to be made, you can take a gander at all the Vietnamese CDs and DVDs for sale. When you’re out looking at art in Soho, you’ll never ever need to go to Subway or Dunkin’ Donuts again!

Whitney: Totally. $4.75 for a big sandwich! And while browsing the CDs I believe I might have found the Vietnamese version of Jaimie Warren, the rapper Tuấn Anh.

Tuan Anh (Image courtesy of http://www.nguoi-viet.com)

Tuan Anh (Image courtesy of http://www.nguoi-viet.com)

Comments on this entry are closed.

Previous post:

Next post: