Dr. Marten’s recently showcased their social media prowess by hosting the launch of their second #FIRSTANDFOREVER film, First Love at Frontrunner Gallery.  The film, directed by Gavin Watson, stars Agyness Deyn and Ash Stymest (see below).

In addition to showcasing First Love, the event featured a new media installation of instagrams printed to canvas, DJ, custom bourbon drinks and the new line of Dr. Martens shoes in the gallery storefront.  A fine assortment of downtown regulars and bloggers were in attendance and spirits were high.

The unique #FIRSTANDFOREVER storyline paid tribute to the unforgettable feeling of one’s first heart break.  Among all the great accouterments and creative uses of the Frontrunner space, the Instagrams printed to canvas felt particularly innovative.  The prints showcased the spirit of Doc Martens and the evolving beauty of new media and mobile photography.

Inspired by the mobile photo installation, Frontrunner’s editors captured Instagram portraits of the event attendees.

Emerging West Coast Artist Julie Orr opened her first solo exhibition in New York on October 6th at Frontrunner. The autobiographical exhibition of the young artist is comprised of oil paintings on wood panel, exploring otherwise intangible experience through the use of environmental self-portrait.  The iconic self portraits attracted attention from art bloggers and passerby’s on the ChiBeca streets on Thursday night.

“I found Julie’s work to be an important reflection on our preoccupation with ourselves in the new media social web,” said Edward Symes adding,  “It speaks to our image and reinvention of our image.  Julie does a great job of showing herself in relationship to her environment.”

Orr sets herself in an imaginary and sensory environment of musical knobs and geometrically delicate future spaces.  Julie Orr’s world as a little music, a little nostalgia, and good dream to mix them up.

Orr’s series captures her transitions during the first years of her painting career, weaving a narrative of youth, transition, invention, and self-realization.  Orr sets herself in musical environments as diverse as cabaret, concert, and rave driven equally by raw sexual energy as surrealistic self-reflection. Auditory elements are translated into a visual sensation for the viewer. The power and energy of music is recreated through the weaving of bold color, textures resembling sonic reverberation and fluid movement.

Paintings incorporate contrasting images (such as soft eyelashes and hard piano keys or human flesh and soundboard buttons) to represent larger tensions between ideas and people.  The contrasting images flourish when they are given the energy of Orr’s deep sense of color and iconic imagery.

“If Julie was a musician? Well, she is Electronica but also a whole lot of Soul.”

The contrast of the cold electronics and warm flesh reflect modern music’s duality of non-living (technology) and living (raw sexual energy).  Orr’s work is both potent and current in only the way a musician could experiment and dabble.  But the music analogies only go so far.

The painting ODALISQUE by McConnell

In the weeks prior to New York Fashion Week, painter Bryn McConnell opened an exhibition of “Looked,” a series of paintings in her signature Matisse style that comment heavily on fashion and the idea of self reflection.  Bryn work was first seen by Frontrunner Collective portrait photographer and event photographer Leah Overstreet on the T.O.A.S.T. (Tribeca Open Artist Tour).  We were really impressed.  Writer Rena Silverman, a freelance writer at BOMB magazine wrote a great profile of McConnell and the creative collective presented at Frontrunner.

The work comments on the role of fashion that lies at the heart of self-image and society at large.  She finished the two week run on 59 Franklin Street with a performance along side the feminist / da-da group, The Push Pops.

The performance featured an interplay of power and desire between a trio of women who who were sequentially taking turns imposing their will on one another.  Stripping their partners of their fashionable drag, step by step, snip by snip, and stroke by stroke – with a collection of tools ranging from scissors to lip stick.  The end result help a palpable sense of mounting tension that held the crowd in amazement.  See the photos below.

Andrew Piccone showcased a series of portraits of the protestors encompassing the early stages of the Occupy Wall Street Movement.  The morning of the show, the NY Metro Newspaper wrote a frontpage article criticizing Piccone for profiting from the protest.

In fact, it was the Metro that was profiting from unfairly criticizing the artist.  Later that day, the Gothamist joined the discussion and over 100 people attended the show.

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Painter Brian Halloran delivers a show of paintings with a very bold social criticism of the art world.   A site specific interactive show about his distant relationship with his art patrons, “”Patrons and Artists” depicts, in caricature, art world cast members: the dealer, the collectors, and the artist himself.  To take the experience a step further, Brian changed his name to “Bran” for the show to play the role of the isolated artist.

Alejandra Picard (center) is an emerging international artist.

Frontrunner Gallery presented mixed media artist Alejandra Picard in her first solo exhibition in the United States.  The show attracted a variety of collectors, friends, and fellow artists.  The opening for Alejandra’s show included a performance by singer Carrie Bauer. 

Picard is planning a show in Mexico City with the Frontrunner Collective in 2012.  Plans have included Oaxaca, Mexico.  Mixed Media work is popular in that area of Mexico and includes many textile arts.

Stay tuned for more.

During the afternoon of August 11^th, Frontrunner Gallery hosted the summer media program for the LOVE (Leave Out Violence) organization in the New York City area.  The class was taught by Frontrunner photographer Erica Reade and arranged by fellow photographer Leah Overstreet.  Creative work was seen by over 200 people from the organization, the student’s families and community, as well as local Tribeca neighbors.  Erica Reade commented, “Thank you to Frontrunner for graciously allowing us to host our Youth Art. It was an incredible success.”

Each student posted a creative writing and visual reaction to family, community, and art using photography, prints, poetry, and short film.

Sculptor Corinne Beardsley, who is directing the project built a small sized model and presented it in a recent planning meeting at Frontrunner.

Tom Sachs alongside "Cock" mixed media, 24" x 9" x 18"

Speroone Westwater on Bowery held a grand opening of Tom Sachs’ new show, “Work”.  The crowd included many downtown artists, writers, actors, and filmmakers taking in three expansive floors.  Tom recently collaborated with filmmaker Van Neistat, one part of the downtown duo The Neistat Brothers (a recent HBO Series).  The film, “Ten Bullets” is clever and fun, showing us the efficiency of a working studio with exacting standards.

Tristan Wheelock showed a series of panoramic images taken over the past four years at an opening on July 22nd at Frontrunner Gallery.

Artist Statement:

I affectionately call my little Ansco Pix Panorama the “one dollar wonder.” I picked it up at a thrift store nearly half a decade ago and immediately fell in love with the wide perspective and the unpredictable
results of shooting through a plastic lens.

The images in this series are part journal and part travelogue. I’ve been drifting throughout the world for the past four years working as a photojournalist and these panoramic pictures provide with an escape from the digital rectangles I get paid to make.

The photographs I take with this camera are more like diary entries than anything else. Limited by the number of exposures on a roll of film, each frame becomes a little more important and thus the process slows down and sometimes becomes almost meditative.

I’ve grouped these pictures to represent a nostalgia for the recent past. They span the country from coast to coast with a focus on my hometown and shorelines. Nostalgia is a general theme in my imagery as a whole and I think it shows through strongly in these panoramas.

A large crowd attended the show to celebrate 104 degree summer New York City summer weather as well as performances by musicians Open to the Hound, Sam Yield, Carly Howard, Desiree Portalatin-Gutierrez, Weird Chess, and reading by writer Mathew Van Deventer.

Event Photography by Leah Overstreet.

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