A Day in New York: Jenny Zoe Casey

Running into local friends at openings isn’t that unusual, but every now and then I see Jenny Zoe Casey, the artist who organized and invited me to speak at TEDxOrlando a few years ago, visiting New York all the way from Florida. She was in town for the day (!) and so I invited her to write a post about her hardcore hit-and-run visit. Here’s her report.

I live in a stand of moss-laden hickories soaring high into a clear blue, crazy humid sky that more often than not is swarming with biting insects. And even though I live in rural Central Florida, every now and then I like to take a day trip to NYC to see as many shows as I can. On a recent Saturday, I visited the Met, a few Upper East Side galleries, Chelsea, and the Lower East Side, but the exhibitions at Winkleman, Thorp and Pocket Utopia were the highlights.

I love the Winkleman Gallery because the gallery program is invariably intelligent and adventurous. This month, the gallery presents New York artist Leslie Thornton’s second solo show. I spent most of my time with the centerpiece of the exhibition, Luna, a video triptych displayed on large, vertical flat-screen monitors. The work was lovely, evoking a sense of pleasurable loss through kaleidoscopic images of the parachute-jump tower at Coney Island. The tower seemed a monument to the spinning of time, framed by seasonal change; the endless activity of gulls; and a soundtrack of birdcall, passerby, and city sirens.

Edward Thorp Gallery is currently showing paintings by Judith Simonian. She uses a technique, adhering cut painted canvas to stretched painted canvas, that does interesting things to space; I also loved her use of color and the gestural energy of her brushwork.

Just before heading back to La Guardia, I went to an opening at Pocket Utopia for “The Thrill of the Ideal,” a selection of etchings by Johan Christian Reinhart, curated by Richard Tuttle. For me, it was fascinating to experience 18th-century Romanticism through a contemporary lens. And there was a wonderful crowd that evening — a friendly, interesting group of people in a welcoming space. It was the perfect finale to another productive and fulfilling twelve-hour visit that, according to my husband, will put a spring in my step for days.