Oakazine

Right on the cusp of where Little Italy meets Soho, at 225 Centre St, is a polished black and glass storefront whose cursive signage breathlessly avers “J’Adore Clic.” So… c’est quoi Clic? Clic is a bookstore-cum-gallery space founded in 2008 by entrepreneur Christiane Celle with the mission of creating “a curated space where people can find fascinating books on fashion, film, music and art.” Celle, a breezily elegant woman with a lilting French accent, grew up by the sea in Cannes and developed an early affinity for cinema, British rock ‘n roll, and fashion. Initially working as a fashion stylist, Celle’s keen eye for new talent, and knack for curation, brought her rapidfire success as the founder of St. Barth-inspired womenswear store Calypso. Not content remaining confined to fashion, Celle sold Calypso in 2008 and opened up Clic soon after as a way to extend her curatorial craft to the concomitant spheres of photography, art, fashion photography, music, film and subculture.

Clic itself is a warm, white-walled, blonde-wooded space whose tables and shelves are carefully stocked with a kaleidoscopic array of art and photography books: Maripol sits next to Guy Bourdin, Kenzo lies atop 30 Years of i-D, Cecil Beaton hangs out between Matthew Rolston and Isabella Blow. Strange, yet strangely perfect, bedfellows are united by their unique spirits and boundless influence. If you have a penchant for first editions (um, can you say first edition Peter Beard?), and signed copies, Clic also boasts a fantastic array of rarities for the most discerning of collectors. But what truly sets the space apart are the monthly Celle-curated art and photography exhibitions that fill the white walls. Past exhibitions have ranged from photo meditations on the iconography of the boombox by Lyle Owerko, to neo-burlesque black and white photos by Henry Horenstein, to winsome, urban tribal pieces — ranging from furniture to paintings — by Daily Show makeup artist/visual artist Jody Morlock. Like the books featured in-store, the works on the walls at any given time are sure to be variegated, unexpected, and exquisitely curated. Clic currently has two other locations in St. Barth and East Hampton. OAKAZINE spoke to Clic’s mastermind, Christiane Celle, about her beginnings in Cannes, her future in e-commerce, finally having a male customer base, and everything in between. Interview after the jump. — Text by Marlo Kronberg.

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Sometimes music genres are apropos descriptors for other art forms. Paintings and films can be punk, writing can be jazzy or bluesy, and everything can be said to be rock ‘n roll-inflected. If New York-based artist Ben Bertocci’s multi-media collages fell under any sort of overarching musical umbrella they would be post-punk, and not just because his favorite band is The Birthday Party. Fraught with atonal tension and black humor, Bertocci’s pieces are amped-up and loud. Shoddily applied red paint scratches out images. Washing machines hang poised to crush cartoon characters. Images that seem to be torn, not cut, out of magazines are collaged onto aluminum surfaces along with old garbage bags. Look beyond the surface level chaos though, and you’ll find that Bertocci’s work deftly tackles emotionally-loaded themes like violence, ego, love, aesthetic transformation and loss. The delicately fine-tuned craft of the work becomes apparent once you realize that, wait a second, those disembodied eyes, noses, lips and faces aren’t photographs at all! They’re eerily hyper-hyper-realistic oil paintings. The works’ slipshoddiness is beget of a highly patient and trained artistic craft, which explains why Bertocci is the assistant manager of the painting area at Jeff Koons studio.

Originally from the Berkshires of Massachusetts, Bertocci latched onto painting and art as a mode of therapeutic self-expression. “I feel like one of the reasons I express this stuff visually is because I like to tackle emotions that are difficult to express verbally” the artist explained, “At least for me. I’ve never been really good at writing.  I hope some of this stuff works.” After graduating with a MA in Printmaking from Southern Illinois University, Bertocci relocated to New York. Although his earlier personal work was politically bent, oftentimes centered on the human capacity for violence and subjugation, his newer work is far less literal and more visceral. First unveiled at Fuse Gallery under the name Stutter, this new body of work also explores how this 2011 aesthetic moment — from our rooms to our typography to our TV shows to our clothing — will date itself in time. Using the set from ESPN’s SportsCenter as a background for certain pieces, Bertocci posits that as the works age they will take on new, perhaps even humorous, qualities. Oakazine spoke with Ben Bertocci about who he is and what he does. Interview after the jump. — Text by Marlo Kronberg

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SCOPE art fair is a traveling multinational consortium of over fifty contemporary galleries whose artists best embody the variegated shades of present-day artistic thought. This year SCOPE New York was held in a sprawling 60,000 sq foot space on the Westside Highway, and featured a slew of eye-widening multi-sensory discoveries at every turn. Represented by Miami graffiti artist Typoe’s sculpture “Confetti Death”, which features two human skulls spewing broken spray paint caps shredded into technicolor confetti, SCOPE New York 2011 presented a youthful, colorful admixture of high and low art with unorthodox themes. Some of my new discoveries included: a French husband and wife photographic team, a Czech “gellator”, a Chinese artist who constructs motorcycles out of stainless steel wire, a photographer who captures the smoky alienation of modern Chinese life, a resin painter who wears a ventilation suit to work, a cybernetic sculptor and a bacchanalian performance art troupe. But my favorite discovery of the day? Michal Macku. In 1989, Czech multimedia artist Michal Macku coined and spearheaded the “gellage” technique which results in his ductile and sometimes shattered nude photographs’ suspension in glass block sculptures. Starting off with stark self-portraits, Macku removes the gelatin emulsion from the film and transfers the images onto the glass. The resultant collages give the effect of three-dimensional shadows hovering for the evermore like flies caught in amber. More pictures after the jump.

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