Yada, Yada, Yada: A Seinfeld Exhibition
Sponge-worthy, close talkers, Festivus, yada, yada, yada — spout one of these famous Seinfeld lines, and you’ll quickly find other fans. “People spit them out all the time and relate it to everyday life,” says Billy Nainiger, co-owner of E11even 2 in 78th Street Studios. He grew up watching the iconic comedy, and now he’s curating an exhibition of paintings, 3-D work and photos dedicated to its catchphrases, characters and concepts. In Christina Sadowski’s contribution to the exhibition, the E11even 2 co-owner took a still image from the show’s finale and experimented with digital drawing. Several edited layers later, the final result looks like a mixture of charcoal, colored pencils and watercolor that depicts Elaine, Jerry, George and Kramer in jail. While Sadowski wasn’t a big fan of the show, it reminds her of the E11even2 crew and their friend, Eileen Dorsey. “You know the question on Facebook that people will post: If I was in the backseat of a police car with my best friend, who would be the best friend and what did we do?” Sadowski says. “If I was gonna end up there, it would probably be with them.” Sept. 16 and Oct. 21, other viewings available by appointment, E11even 2, e11even2.com
Herbert Ascherman Jr.: 40 years
After six months of poring over 120,000 black-and-white negatives with a magnifying glass and another month spent developing 200 of those in a dark room, Cleveland’s pre-eminent portrait photographer Herb Ascherman selected 65 to represent his life’s work. Spanning from 1975 to earlier this year, the silver gelatin and platinum prints showcase Ascherman’s work done mostly outside his commercial photography, such as landscapes, street shots, portraits and nudes. A lifetime of work means that there were some surprises among the images that Ascherman examined for the exhibition. He rediscovered a photo of a young girl in a white dress, an epicenter of calm as she moves along a merry-go-round. “It’s taken from the back, so all you have is this beautiful white shape of her holding on and then all the chaos of the horses around her,” he says. Sept. 2-Oct. 15, Heights Arts, heightsarts.org
Thump... Dump, Clump, Lump... Bump!
Dana Oldfather was reading a bedtime story to her 2-year-old son when inspiration struck. Like the brave little boy who faced his fear of the dark in Maurice Sendak’s Into the Night Kitchen, the 37-year-old artist wanted to create an exhibition that reminds us to fight back against the scary unknowns in our lives. “[The story] is all about this boy who hears a racket in the night,” she says. “Instead of being afraid of it, he shouts back at it.” The exhibit, which opens Oct. 7, features new paintings from Andy Curlowe, Amber Kempthorn, Amy Kligman and Erik Neff. In Unwinding, for example, Kempthorn highlights the nostalgia of childhood items like running shoes and Dairy Queen signs with bright color choices, but contrasts that lightness with the impending threat of a circling flock of crows. “While [the artists] all are very intelligent, socially and politically conscious people, they still maintain this levity in their work that I think is really important in times like these,” Oldfather says. Oct. 7-Nov. 19, Bonfoey Gallery, bonfoey.com
Here There Be Monsters
When you feel bad for the creature from the black lagoon, you know shit’s goin’ down. With a yellow duck inflatable float around its waist, the B-movie creature is surrounded by an oil slick and discarded plastic bottles in Laura and Gary Dumm’s pop-art portrayal of what lurks ahead if we don’t become more environmentally conscious. “Gary’s very political,” Laura says. “I’m always one who likes to think we can make the world better.” The couple fuses a brightly colored, surrealist style with classic movie monsters such as Frankenstein and Audrey II, the Venus’ flytrap from Little Shop of Horrors, as the misbegotten byproducts of scientific experimentation. Gary, an illustrator and cartoonist, drew the initial sketches. With input from Laura, a painter, he tweaked the designs to make them easier to blow up to 3-feet square and paint in Laura’s vibrant style. “We’re both children of the ‘60s,” she says, “So we’re kind of like that anyway.” Oct. 7-25, BayArts, bayarts.net
Anger Is a Gift
Although anger may seem to bring destruction, Will Sanchez sees it as the opposite. “People see anger as something they need to get rid of or something that they need to control, whereas it helps us, actually, to create,” says the artist and owner of Gallery 1299. Sanchez grapples with abuse and loss in his own life with a series of 6-by-9-foot paintings in oil, acrylic, crayon and chalk that highlight different aspects of anger, from fury to wrath. “I go back and think of different things that made me angry or affected my emotions to the point that they were out of control,” he says. The exhibit features other artists channeling their frustrations such as Gary and Laura Dumm who take on Donald Trump with a 30-by-30-inch bright acrylic caricature. “Art is not just there to look at,” says Sanchez. “It’s therapeutic to the artist, and it’s therapeutic to the [viewer].” Oct. 28-Nov. 18, Gallery 1299, gallery1299.wixsite.com
