Let's see, you can put us on a burning barge and push us out to sea or you can read this article. . . oops, I had better rephrase that. I mean to say, we are not middle-aged, we are "pre-old." Our biggest thrill of the season was when the Senate momentarily considered lowering Medicare to age 55 (an idea quickly euthanized by Big Insurance) and pornography for us lies in the words "reverse mortgage," but, artistically, call us naive, call us delusional, but do not call us lazy. There is movement afoot, if not of the coprophagic kind.
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Jason Andrew, curator of the Jack Tworkov estate, who just closed down the UBS Gallery with the Tworkov retro, is especially busy. He is curating a Tworkov show, about to open at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, helping Lesley Heller inaugurate her new space at 54 Orchard Street on Jan. 22 with a new curation called "Wells Street Gallery: Then and Now," but most importantly he has opened a weekend commercial gallery called Storefront in Bushwick, with my middle-aged pal, the great naturalist Deborah Brown.
A Yale pal of Brown's, George Negroponte, who resigned as chairman of the Drawing Center and moved to Stockholm, opens his first New York solo in five years at Kouros Gallery uptown on East 73rd Street on Feb. 4. George's old pal, the dealer Carolyn Alexander, convinced him to leave Jason McCoy for one show and exploit his huge Greek collector base. As befits isles gilded by eternal summer, George's new work is chromatically bright and brighter.
Los Angeles painter Steve Van Nort, pushing 60, who for many years showed at John McEnroe's SoHo space, has asked Whitney Museum curator Joan Simon, a longtime supporter, to find him a venue. The huge new abstracts look like wet rainbow Clyfford Stills with Barnett Newman zips down the middle. Good luck, Steve! Being pre-old, you are going to need it.
Last but most, Deborah Kass has postponed her next solo show at Paul Kasmin Gallery for one season, as she perfects a much-anticipated new round of genius. But she will be in a ton of group shows, including two this month, a big one at Marlborough and a depressing debunking of "The Wizard of Oz" at Anna Kustera. As the critic and painter John Zinsser keeps telling us, the middle-aged stable is rich and deep, so stick your hooves in the muck and trot around.
CHARLIE FINCH is co-author of Most Art Sucks: Five Years of Coagula (Smart Art Press).
