David X Prutting/BFAnyc.com The Hole’s dinner for Dior Vernis.After blurring the line between art and landscaping, The Hole is now bending the boundaries between art and food. Last night, the Bowery gallery held a dinner party that introduced attendees to the medium of “pour painting,” and this summer, The Local has learned, it will open a pop-up “artist cafe,” cheekily dubbed Hole Foods.
The pop-up cafe is in part the vision of The Hole’s founder, Kathy Grayson, who described herself as an arm-chair restaurant critic and food blogger. “I had never seen an artist-designed restaurant, only restaurants with a few sad paintings on the walls,” she told The Local. “I thought that the artists I represent are all interdisciplinary and are capable of doing not just painting and drawing but sculpture, video, design, installation, furniture, you name it.”
On Wednesday, the Meatball Factory temporarily closed on 14th Street and Second Avenue so that Brooklyn-based artist Joe Grillo could install a mural on its walls, ceilings, and floors. Read more…
Photos: Tim Schreier
It’s The Hole’s most ambitious installation yet: With funding from an unlikely patron – Playboy – the Bowery gallery has transformed into a fecund, fragrant landscape complete with a bridge and lily pond in the back corner. The indoor recreation of Monet’s garden in Giverny was partly inspired by performance artist and longtime East Villager, Kembra Pfahler, best known as the lead singer of the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black.
At a preview of the exhibit earlier today, Ms. Pfahler, looking vaguely occult in black eye makeup and a hood, sprinkled potpourri over a cluster of flowers that had been transplanted from Long Island. “I’ll learn to water them,” she promised, “because I do not know a thing about plants. Being in this garden last night was the first time I’ve been around plants like this.”
Not exactly true: in August 2011, Ms. Pfahler traveled to Giverny, France, to be photographed by E.V. Day in Monet’s famous garden estate, where the photographer best known for exploding couture was enjoying a residency. Read more…
