Last Solo(s) Show of 2011

I attended, briefly, the closing reception on December 16th of the last art show of the year at Solo(s) Project House. There was also supposed to be a holiday party after the artist Marc D'Agusto spoke, but the (odd)choice of a Thursday rather than Friday or Saturday produced poor attendance, so things wrapped up early. Still, there were things well worth seeing in that double exhibition, by D'Agusto and Hannah Craft. I'll show a few now and save a few pix to enliven the announcement of the first Solo(s) show of the new year, whenever that might be.

Several of D'Agusto's paintings have graced the hallway between the lobby and main exhibition space of Solo(s) Project House for months. But the show in the main space was new to me.

D'Agusto's work entails a lot of architectural imagery, of constructed buildings and ruins of buildings, rust, etc.

The Solo(s) institution allows alteration of the exhibition space in ways you don't expect of most galleries, so that concrete dust and fragments on the floor are part of the wraparound experience you walk thru rather than merely look at.

There were things on the floor, on the walls, even hung from the ceiling.

D'Agusto's severe, hard paintings and sculptures were paired with soft, feathery hangings just outside the main exhibition space, by Hannah Craft.

Solo(s) remains one of the most inventive of Newark's exhibition spaces, and I look forward to whatever 2012 — which we can all finally say with "twenty" at the beginning: 20-12 — will bring.

Aside:  Before the Millennium began (on January 1, 2001, not 2000, since there was no year 0, only a year 1 from which each millennium dates), I wondered how long it would be before we would say "twenty" in the name of years. I had heard, but doubted, that the proper rendering at the time of a year like 1905 was not  nineteen-oh-five but nineteen-five. That wouldn't make very good sense, because that would produce "195", not "1905". In any case, a few people started saying "twenty" only this year: "twenty-eleven" — which would more mellifluously have been said "twentyleven". At the beginning of the year, very few people said "twenty". After about August, it became more common. But many of us have held out until 2012. I expect that next year everybody will be saying "twenty-twelve".

Curiously, there has been a revision after the fact, of earlier years to "twenty"-somethings: well, at least "twenty-ten". Nobody said "twenty-ten" at the time, but you may hear it in the future. I doubt we will ever hear "twenty-eight" or "twenty-oh-eight", but we'll find out soon, once the "twenty" habit has been established with twenty-twelve.

Part of Hannah Craft's installation at the ceiling outside the main exhibition space.