Tris McCall has written about art, architecture, performance, politics, and public culture for many publications, including the Newark Star-Ledger, the Bergen Record, Jersey Beat, the Jersey City Reporter, the Jersey Journal, the Jersey City Independent, and New Jersey dot com. He also writes about things that have no relevance to New Jersey. Not today, though.
Jersey City residents stuck at home looked, desperately, to local authorities for answers. That tap, too, ran pretty dry. Neither the municipal government nor Suez, the utility company that provides our water, were forthcoming with answers.
Today, those rooms are silent. The global health crisis has emptied out the galleries and closed the doors of our creative spaces. Most of the arts institutions in Jersey City work on thin margins. Even in good times, it’s difficult to keep galleries solvent. Frozen in place and with few ways to act, local curators face an unprecedented challenge.
“One Year After,” a retrospective exhibition that will be on view at the Art House Gallery through the end of March, places those simpler works in the company of others that aren’t quite so guileless and establishes Manzueta as a painter of considerable breadth and talent — more than just our homegrown answer to Daniel Johnston.
Since the last time we rounded up performance spaces, the town has lost a cornerstone: FM, the comfortable, decent-sounding downtown venue that was, for more than a year, the most reliable local spot to catch an independent act. FM had a real stage and lights and a dedicated PA system run by soundmen who took pride in their skills. It was a true rock club in the time-tested style, booked by people with roots deep in the community and a clear vision of the kind of venue they’d like to run and scene they want to cultivate.
JC Fridays stands as our quarterly reminder that Jersey City is a visual arts town. It’s what we do well, and it’s a comparative advantage the city has over other municipalities in the Garden State (and beyond). We love to look at pictures and sculptures and photographs and off-the-wall installations. The annual Jersey City Art and Studio Tour turns the entire town into a giant open gallery. While there are plenty of other cultural events on the calendar, JCAST feels like the anchor of local culture.
But in practice, JC Fridays is a visual arts celebration and a quarterly echo of the annual Artist Studio Tour that has defined the cultural life in this town for decades. There are more art openings and gallery events listed on the JC Fridays site than all other options put together. This means it’s a fine excuse to run all over Jersey City, taking in as much visual art as you can stand.
From these elements, Lay has conjured something subtly familiar and maybe even deeply human. Lay calls many of these images “digital mandalas,” and many of them do display the symmetry and the near-tessellated quality associated with traditional Indian art. Modern mandalas are often used as relaxation tools, but for centuries they were associated with devotional practice. Here, the Buddha is gone missing, replaced by a microchip.
What we found was a grand, generous exhibition that, despite its size, was surprisingly coherent. Themes emerged: the beauty of the post-industrial environment and the repurposing of found objects, whimsy and good humor, depictions of streetscapes, roadways, bridges and girders, and, naturally, a copious amount of Jersey love.
Technically, all of these painters are experimenting. They’re pushing at the boundaries of their styles, exploring the power of shape and color, taking chances, doing the sorts of things that an artist does when he or she is subject to the interstellar currents of deep space. Yet there’s so little sweat visible in “Circle the Square” that you may not even notice. All they ask of you is the same thing that all deep space cadets do: Have a little faith, detach from the mothership, and float.
Glass painting in West Africa has roots in a lower-tech era. Yet its modern resonances are undeniable. When done properly, a glass painting is seen through a thin, shiny transparent layer. It’s not unlike the way we modern viewers apprehend most of the images we encounter: through the backlit flat-panel screens of laptops and phones.
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