Ludlow – East Broadway – Sun and Moon, PDF, Die Like You Really Mean It

From the moment you open that beautiful wrought iron gate and begin to descend the long hallway at Klaus von Nichtssagend, the many vibrant blues of Pamela Jorden’s paintings will strike you. Somehow this feels as exciting as waking up on the first day of vacation and glimpsing the cerulean water in the distance. (Maybe because the closest you’ll get to these shades on the NYC landscape is a subway car covered in posters declaring “It’s better in the Bahamas.”) The longer you look, the more things you will find to love in Jorden’s beautifully complex compositions. Like, have you noticed that giant, streaky brushstroke along the bottom left corner of this gorgeous oil-on-linen piece? It is so subtle yet so bold.

Stop in Brown Café for an autumnal soup and a side of their killer mac & cheese, and then make your way down East Broadway to Allegra LaViola for two interesting group shows. The first is PDF, which, playing off the notion of the “Portable Document Format,” presents a variety of work based on de-constructing, delivering and rebuilding. Even the gallerists admit that “at the outset, the work in PDF is strangely matched,” but it seems to gel into a feeling of overall repurposing and resourcefulness. Case in point: this refurbished cardboard box by Ivin Ballen.

The second show at Allegra LaViola, Die Like You Really Mean It, is a passionate outpouring of emotion through painting. From colorful street scenes to bi-chromatic reliefs, the show emits a fear of what is lurking below the surface. Especially haunting is Christopher Saunders’ The Long Now. It is the thrill of taking off from an airport runway mixed with the uncertainty of ominous clouds in the distance. It is anxious. It is many-layered. It is claiming.

Ingredients:

Venues: Klaus von Nichtssagend, Allegra LaViola

Artists: Pamela Jorden, Christopher Saunders, Ivin Ballen, Various Artists

Streets: Ludlow St; East Broadway

Eats: Brown Café

Map: