The Lower East Side galleries are growing so rapidly that I’ve decided to designate them as L.E.S. “Cutting-Edge” tours, effective with my Sat. April 23 tour.  The only other tours that have received a special honor in their titles have been my monthly Chelsea “Best Exhibits” tours, alerting clients that Chelsea is the very best tour I offer.  Now I’ll also be touting the terrific edgy pulse of the Lower East Side galleries.

The reason for the “Cutting-Edge” designation is that the Lower East Side’s artists and gallery owners are younger on average than in any other Manhattan art neighborhood.  Therefore, they are more willing – and eager – to experiment with their art.  And with rents in the L.E.S. apparently lower than in Chelsea, the Upper East Side, and Midtown, the upstart L.E.S. galleries can afford to experiment.

Highlights of my April 23 tour will include: (1) a Lybian/ Pakistani artist’s animations of car explosions in the unstable Middle East, (2) a gay artist’s visceral abstract paintings using real blood layered in resin, and (3) a female artist’s photo portraits of the fringe element living in San Francisco.  These are just 3 of 7 extraordinary exhibits we’ll visit that day.

The first artist was born 32 years ago in Lybia to Pakistani parents.  He grew up in a military base in Tripoli, where he heard military aircraft practically every hour, hence his initial exposure to explosive-type stimuli.  Furthermore, his relatives in Pakistan experienced the fall-out from all-too-common car bombs.  While his paintings of car explosions are engaging, it’s his imaginative computer animation we’ll be seeing that better fits the “cutting-edge” label.

Gay artist Jordan Eagles will speak to our group when we visit his show of blood-infused works.  Eagles uses a self-invented process to permanently preserve the blood in acrylic plexiglass and UV resin.  When spot lit, the works become translucent, cast shadows, and project a glow onto the walls behind them.  To me, the layers of blood within each piece seem to embody the cosmos.  Let’s see how much of his process he ends up revealing to us.

One anomaly on this tour (for the Lower East Side, anyway) is a very upscale gallery whose main branch is housed in an Upper East Side mansion.  Nevertheless, its current downtown exhibit of photographs and videos of the fringe elements of San Francisco, Hollywood, and Las Vegas –  street performers, celebrity impersonators, and mercurial pretenders – is as fresh and daring as any show in the Lower East Side’s less established galleries.  The subjects are so captivatingly bizarre, you may end up making a return visit when our tour concludes.

Though the Lower East Side is now the rising star in the New York City art scene, Chelsea’s top status has in no way been diminished, and its designated “Best Exhibits” title stands intact.  Well, for the time being, anyway.

Rafael Risemberg, Ph.D.
Founder and Director
New York Gallery Tours