We’re Going to Queens Tonight

by Whitney Kimball on October 24, 2013 · 4 comments Events

Rendering, Darren Goins' Flexible Public Art (Image courtesy of Darren Goins on Kickstarter)

I’m glad I made a few oversights on this week’s events post, because now I can plug some of my favorite emerging artists! After work tonight, two unlisted events happen to take place within blocks of each other in Queens. It’s a huge coincidence, because they’re both gonna be off the wall– and a requirement for people who want something fresh from the emerging arts community.

Darren Goins, Flexible Public Art and Performance
5:20
Under the tracks, 40th Street 7 train in Queens

Readers of our Bushwick Open Studios coverage may remember that we praised the shit out of Darren Goins (whose work we discovered there). There, he’d created a beautiful language of marine abstraction with tribal patterns, dust, and neon sculpture. But what I appreciate even more is his development since; rather than identifying a niche and sticking with it (which would probably be successful) he’s constantly exploring new territory.
Now he’s installed a public art gym under the 7 train in Queens. At rush hour, commuters coming off the 40th Street stop will encounter flexible sculptures and an “interactive public art sculptural workout area” inspired by Isamu Noguchi, Socrates Sculpture Park, and an East River workout area. It sounds like the “showtime” subway dancers with an MFA. It’s gonna be great.

Screen shot from Johnson Trading Gallery's site, install shot includes work by Fox, Stout, and Gerstley

“Snack Pack” at Johnson Trading Gallery
7 – 10 PM
47 42 43rd Street, Woodside, Queens

“Snack Pack” happens to be five blocks down from Goins’ workout session, so this should be an easy trip. I covered Johnson Trading Gallery last year just because the space is incredible: an enormous contemporary furniture showroom in an old 1940s movie theater, filled from wall-to-wall with furniture that verges on sculpture and painting. This includes a monolithic fort by Max Lamb; tables by Frank Lloyd Wright; and dozens of old chairs covered with Robert Loughlin’s signature “The Brute” portraits.

The mix-and-match style of Johnson seems to be the ideal spot for the Ken Price-Seapunk hybrid feel created by “Snack Pack”: Misha Kahn, Katie Stout, and collaborations between Stout and Sean Gerstley, who, I’m told, built a smaller gallery within Johnson Trading Gallery for the event. Their studio work and curatorial works (including Stout’s co-run gallery So What Space) often thrive from collaboration, so it should be a good in for a particularly lively emerging scene.

{ 4 comments }

GiovanniGF October 24, 2013 at 12:38 pm

It’s Sunnyside, not Woodside!

WhitneyKimball October 24, 2013 at 12:45 pm

You gotta take it up with them http://johnsontradinggallery.com

GiovanniGF October 24, 2013 at 12:49 pm

I must! Not only do I live in the neighborhood, I’ve got the Googles on my side! http://goo.gl/maps/7QIbm

WhitneyKimball October 24, 2013 at 12:53 pm

Touche.

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