The kind of art I create is for and about people. I'm focused on the "performance of self" and all of the people, places and things that inspire, inform and transform our respective performances. It's fitting that art that has "regular" people as one of its core motifs be exhibited in a so-called non-art setting. So on July 29 my new solo exhibition called This is Urban Pop: An exploration of the performance of self in 3 movements opens at Chi Chiz Bar in Greenwich Village. The show is a prospective of 3 bodies of work that are currently nearing completion. The movements are as follows:

Movement One - Meet: Black Power/Black Pride/Black Pop (BP3)- This movement features paintings and digital work from my Red, Black and Green and Pin-Up Girls series. These works are essentially ruminations on what it means to be African-American and exploring our place in American history, the objectification and celebration of women and the ways we find to "escape" the madness of daily life.

Movement Two Greet: A Portrait of The Life - A Portrait of The Life features selected images from the on-going portrait series and forthcoming documentary film of the same title which chronicles the African-American LGBTQ community. For this show I selected primarily male and transgender images, but the completed series will feature a diverse cross-section of the community including couples in long term relationships, iconic performers and entrepreneurs, and wonderful human beings from diverse backgrounds and genders.

Movement Three Skeet: Skeet - Skeet explores the performance of self as it relates to expressions of physical desire and features imagery from the forthcoming fine art 'zine called Skeet. The purpose of the zine is to stimulate open and irreverent conversation about life, love and the pursuit of physical and emotional pleasure. I've shot a few images for the publication which launches this fall and some of this work will be on display.

Though it sounds like alot, it's actually a tight little show that you can take in during a briefly visit. Think of it as a very tasty appetizer sampler. When you add in great drinks, a feel good vibe, great music and a diverse and lively crowd it makes for a very unique art experience. Come check out the show and come chill with me during the opening reception on Saturday August 7 from 6pm until 9pm. These is NO COVER charge and there will be happy hour drink specials. Oh yes and the most important detail of all...THE WORK IS FOR SALE! (I am a Pop influenced artist after all and in the words of one of my fave artists Andy Warhol "business is the best art of all"). So make it rain!!!!

Ricky Day : This is Urban Pop!
July 29 - September 8, 2010
Chi Chiz Bar 135 Christopher Street, New York - (212) 462-0027
http://www.chichiz.com/

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

Leor Grady is an Israeli-born visual artist, working and living in NYC.

Interdisciplinary in nature, his site-specific works explore themes of home and identity politics. Through drawing, installation, and video art, he subversively reposition everyday objects, concepts and experiences to imbue them with poetic meaning.

The materials and techniques he uses are for the most part simple and basic. The works created are reflective environments within which he can explore the dynamics of the personal and the public, between an individual and another.

His work has been shown in the US and abroad, at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, Rush Arts Gallery, Exit Art Gallery and Center for Book Arts in New York City, as well as in public and private collections and in various publications.

My favorite work by Leor is "In Order of Appearance",3:35min,single channel video,2006

It's a short video list of people in order of their appearance in his life. It follows the cinematic format of credit scroll, concluding with credits to cities, places and times.

The piece is currently on view at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian institute in DC. Check out a review of the piece here

Check out Leor's website at http://www.leorgrady.com

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

PARISIAN LAUNDRY
SUMMERTIME IN PARIS EXTREME PAINTING
JULY 23 – AUGUST 28 2010

info@parisianlaundry.com

“Summertime in Paris’, Parisian Laundry's annual summer exhibition remixed this year under the semblance of the city wide ‘Extreme Painting’ project. The exhibition brings together six national and international contemporary artists focusing on where paint is used as potential both in 2 and 3D work. Alongside this survey will be a showcase of recent acquisitions from the Tedeschi Collection featuring an international selection of contemporary artists.

GALLERY 1 Survey of the gallery's artists and guest artists installed as a project by Director Jeanie Riddle including works by BGL, David Armstrong Six, Valérie Blass and Jennifer Lefort as well as invited artists Justin Stephens and Montreal premiere of NYC based artist Cordy Ryman.

BUNKER Recent Acquisitions from the Tedeschi Collection including: Abbas Akhavan, Karin Davie, Lotte Geeven, Kirk Hayes, Gregor Hildebrand, Julian Opie, Reinaldo Sanguino, Cordy Ryman, Franz West & Tal R.

For more information please visit www.parisianlaundry.com

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

Join MARY as we make over the Home Sweet Home bar into a gay hip-hop paradise.

Mary Literary Quarterly, in conjunction with the Rashawn Brazell Memorial Fund, will be serving up a night of hip-hop inspired mayhem. We will be kicking it old school, new school, and even pre-school st...yle if we have to!

Hip-hop artist extraordinaire, LastO will be performing a special set, and DJ Black Female Executive will be spinning head-bobbing beats.

All proceeds from the event will be donated to the Rashawn Brazell Memorial Fund, a 501(c) incorporated non-profit that provides merit based college scholarships to college-bound NYC students of color committed to the fight against racism, sexism and homophobia.

Sunday, July 18 from 6-9pm
Home Sweet Home
131 Chrystie Street
between Delancey & Broome
New York, New York 10002

Attire: Wu-tang/Roxanne Shante Realness.
Suggested donation: $10.00

Rashawn Brazell Memorial Fund
http://www.rashawnbrazell.com/
Contact:
info@rashawnbrazell.com
The Rashawn Brazell Memorial Fund aims to establish a sustainable tribute to Rashawn that promotes critical thought about the impact of violence and intolerance, particularly upon queer communities of African descent. Through this endeavor, we seek to empower future generations of activists and scholars by providing financial support and mentoring opportunities.

Mary Literary:
Contact: William Johnson
email: maryliterary@gmail.com
http://www.maryliterary.com/
Mary is a literary journal dedicated to showcasing Queer/Gay writings of artistic merit.

LastO:
http://www.myspace.com/whoislastoffence

Photo: Curtis Bryant @moose-hunters
Model: LastOSee More

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

Zwelethu Mthethwa: Inner Views brings together three series by South African photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa (b. 1960). “Interiors” and “Empty Beds” document the domestic lives of migrant workers around Johannesburg, South Africa, while “Common Ground” focuses on the shared experience of natural disasters in urban areas, featuring houses in New Orleans, Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina and on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa, after wildfires.

(Lauren Kelley - Lindy Train)

(Ahuja Mequitta - Generator 2010)

(Valeria Piraino - With Pen in Hand 2010)

In this year’s installment of the much anticipated Artist-in-Residence exhibition, Mequitta Ahuja (b. 1976), Lauren D. Kelley (b. 1975) and Valerie Piraino (b. 1981) display diverse projects in a range of media, all visually addressing the construction of history and memory. Ahuja makes lush paintings in which mythological warriors and demigods move between landscape, self-portraiture and abstraction; Kelley crafts stop-motion animations and sculptural installations telling stories of material and emotional excess; Piraino repurposes family artifacts to create installations drawing attention to the frames that shape experience and memory.

The Studio Museum in Harlem

144 West 125th Street
New York, New York 10027

Tel: 212.864.4500
Fax: 212.864.4800
Hours:

Monday Closed

Tuesday Closed

Wednesday Closed

Thursday 12 PM-9 PM

Friday 12 PM-9 PM

Saturday 10 AM-6 PM

Target Free Sunday 12 PM-6 PM

The Museum is closed on Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day.

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

THE NEW GRAND TOUR

Extended through July 30, 2010

NEW YORK, NY, APRIL 30, 2010- BRYCE WOLKOWITZ GALLERY is pleased to announce the opening of The New Grand Tour, curated by Amanda Bhalla Wilkes. The original concept of the grand tour was born in the late sixteenth century when it became fashionable for young aristocrats to visit the great cities of Europe such as Paris, Venice, Florence, and Rome, as the culmination of their classical education. As rail and steamship travel became more accessible, the practice flourished and served as an educational rite of passage for Englishmen, Germans, French and Americans alike. The goal of The New Grand Tour is to revive, re-invent, redefine, and change the old concept by venturing well beyond a voyage for the privileged elite. Instead, The New Grand Tour would become a mechanism for a group of unique and talented artists to interact with foreign cultures in an appreciative and organic way, rather than simply as voyeurs.

Beginning on October 20, 2007, Young Kim was joined by Deanne Cheuk, José Parlá, Rey Parlá, Rostarr and Davi Russo for thirteen days of travel in the Far East. They began in Shanghai heading for the remote Yunnan Province, in search of the mystical city of Shangri la. With James Hilton’s novel, Lost Horizon as their guide, their journey took them through the beautiful valleys, rivers and lakes between the border of Yunnan Province and Tibet, through the Mei Li Snow Mountains and eventually to Beijing. While on this journey, each artist created new works within their respective medium, inspired by the places they visited during their travels.

This wide-ranging body of work, now showcased in The New Grand Tour exhibition, brings together a diverse group of voices united through their individual and collective experiences on this tour, which reflects both the visual and sensory inspiration they encountered in the many destinations of this shared travelogue. From Suitman’s humorous snapshot portraits of Tsitang school children to José Parlá’s densely layered paintings the works in this exhibition show how materiality and subject intertwine to make an image of their journey. Deanne Cheuk’s meticulous drawings and colorful watercolors inspired by the Shangri La landscape take us there. While the free form calligraphy in Rostarr’s graphic paintings and filmmaker Rey Parlá’s exploration of narrative storytelling through his unique process of distressing and treating celluloid negatives reflect the visual and written, much like the Chinese character as word. Photographer Davi Russo’s snapshots of the sights and sounds he encountered on the journey give a raw and immediate sense to the overall experience.

*Catalog available

For more information please contact Amanda Wilkes at amanda@brycewolkowitz.com or (212) 243-8830.

Our mailing address is:
Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery
505 W24th Street
New York, NY 10011

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

Cordy Ryman: Scrapple
July 17 - September 4, 2010
Opening reception Saturday, July 17, 6 - 8pm
Conversation between the artist and Sue Graze, Executive Director of Arthouse at the Jones Center, begins at 7pm

Lora Reynolds Gallery is pleased to announce our first solo exhibition of new works by New York based artist, Cordy Ryman, entitled Scrapple. Rooted loosely in minimalism and abstraction, Cordy Ryman's paintings and sculptures address elements of architecture with rich texture and a unique color palette. His intuitive and spontaneous process is propelled and determined primarily by the characteristics of his media. Manipulating materials such as wood, metal, Velcro, Gorilla Glue, staples and scraps from his studio floor, Ryman's assemblages convey his hand in physical and humorous ways.

A departure from traditional archetypes, Ryman's paintings possess bold sculptural surfaces and forms. In Devil Dog, Ryman hinges together two roughly cut blocks of recycled wood leaving them angled and agape at the center. On the outward surface Ryman has applied splotches of white paint to reveal the wood's inherently crude texture. The minimalist white also emphasizes a lone, residual, bent nail enflamed with a coat of red paint. Ryman considers even the back of this work, as it dons a vibrant shade of jade - casting a green glow against the white gallery wall.

Cordy Ryman: Scrapple will be on view at Lora Reynolds Gallery, 360 Nueces, Suite 50, Austin, Texas 78701 from July 17 - September 4, 2010. GALLERY HOURS: Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00 am to 6:00 pm. For further information please visit our website, www.lorareynolds.com, contact Emma Cole at 512.215.4965 or emma@lorareynolds.com.

Image: Cordy Ryman, Elephant Ocean, 2010, acrylic, enamel and wood glue on wood, 18-5/8 x 16 x 3-7/8 inches

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

The only public receptions and book signings will be on San Pedro's 1st Thursdays Art Walk Nights, August 5 and September 2, 2010 from 7-11 PM ADULTS ONLY (18 and over) "Filthy Fifties Frisco" can also be seen by appointment. Please call, 310.833.3633 or flazhalley@aol.com

Flazh!Alley Art Studio is located at 1113 S. Pacific Ave., Suite B, San Pedro, CA. Park in the large city parking lot behind the Ramona Bakery at Pacific & 11th Street. Enter Flazh!Alley from the alley, of course.

www.flazhalleystudio.com

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

Brandon Anschultz and Nicole Mauser
July 16 - August 14, 2010 (opening reception Friday, July 16th, 5-8pm)
Curated by Natalie Popovic Schuh

Carrie Secrist Gallery is pleased to announce two upcoming exhibitions featuring the work of Brandon Anschultz and Nicole Mauser. These will be the first solo exhibitions in Chicago for both artists.

Dismantling into discrete parts the fundamental elements of formal painting -- chromatics, substrate, composition, dimensionality and presentation -- Brandon Anschultz pays homage to the medium's essential capacity for beauty while challenging every traditional approach to producing it. Paint is directly applied to canvas, then partially removed and pressed against another canvas, creating a wholly new impression. That imprint, in turn, creates another -- removing that particular product even further from its expressive source: the artist's hand. An all-over hue is built by layering multiple coats of flat paint; that meticulous and complex color is disrupted by the chance marks of imprinted paint, the whole canvas then reversed to reveal the otherwise hidden, incidental residues that bled through the raw fabric surface. Canvas is removed entirely from its frame to form sculptural pieces that have both a painterly presence and a slightly disorienting three-dimensionality. By the continual excavation of the medium's potential for novelty and the artist's ability to subvert his own expertise, the work ultimately discloses the simplest of motives: that of immediate, visceral pleasure. In Anshcultz's work, the lushness and tactility of paint continually walk the line of formalist restraint and something rawly and agitatedly subversive. (By Jessica Baren)

Nicole Mauser's approach to abstraction stems from an aim to create tension between the materiality of the painted surface and the constructed image it contains. As she builds paintings through the addition and subtraction of marks, Mauser is careful to allow the process of it's making to remain. While constructing these surface images she maintains an awareness of each painting's objectness, leading to a sense of being able to physically navigate the layers of the finished picture plane. By combining this use of abstraction with an interest in narrative, Mauser seeks to break down distinctions between the organic and synthetic, system and intuition, space and light, abjection and desire. Trespassing through these fields, the painting process becomes a search for form and meaning, both for the artist as its maker and for the viewer.

Brandon Anschultz was born in Judsonia, Arkansas and currently lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri. He received his BFA from Louisiana Tech University and his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. Stick Around for Joy, a solo exhibition at Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis is currently on view. Anschultz has had recent solo exhibitions at the Center of Creative Arts, White Flag Projects, and Philip Slein Gallery in St. Louis; @Space Contemporary in Santa Ana, California; and Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York. Recent group exhibitions include Front Desk Apparatus in New York; Monte Vista Projects in Los Angeles; the Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis; the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, Missouri; The Dolphin Gallery and Urban Culture Project's La Esquina, in Kansas City and Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall, Taipei, Taiwan.

Nicole Mauser is a recent graduate of the MFA program at the University of Chicago and has a BFA from the Ringling School of Art in Design, Sarasota, Florida. Mauser has had recent exhibitions at DOVA Temporary, Chicago, IL and at the Arts Incubator of Kansas City. Mauser is the recipient of the Student Fine Art Fund University of Chicago, Grant for Berlin painting research, has studied at Centre pour l'Arte et la Culture, IAU Aix-en-Provence France and was included in the New American Paintings, issue #76, Midwest Region Competition, Curated by Raphaela Platow. Mauser has participated in the Urban Culture Project Residency in KCMO was recently chosen as a Post-MFA Teaching Fellow at The University of Chicago, which begins in 2011.

A reception will be held at the gallery on Friday, 16 July, from 5-8pm. For further information please call the gallery at 312.491.0917, or email at info@secristgallery.com.

Brandon Anschultz, Blue, White and Camo (Reverse), 2010, oil on raw canvas, 52 x 42 inches

Nicole Mauser, Herringbone Homunculus, 2010, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 x 1 inch

ClampArt
www.clampart.com

521-531 West 25th Street
Ground Floor
New York City 10001
646.230.0020 T
646.230.8008 F
Gallery hours:
Tuesday - Saturday,
11:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

Lolene-Rich from Ricky Day on Vimeo.

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net