By Katarina Hybenova
You can tell you’re in Ridgewood by the chill atmosphere that lingers in the local galleries and bars. Sort of on the periphery of Bushwick, Ridgewood is enjoying its off-radarness. On Friday night, our favorite Ridgewood gallery Small Black Door opened their new show, Post Acid, in a post-trippy festive fashion.
Matthew Mahler, who curated the show, built it around the hypothesis that everything – from fashion trends to socio-political statements made public on Twitter – echoes sentiments of the countercultural revolution of the ’60s and ’70s and is littered with reminders of the psychedelic. Ten artists in the show (Andrea Bergart, Thomas Burke, Lisa Candage, Myla Dal Besio, Rob de Oude, Adrian Jevicki, Matthew Mahler, Jenna Ransom, Adam Parker Smith and Aaron Williams) have been subconsciously incorporating the trippy reminders that have now became a part of pop culture. Seriously. How would art look nowadays if nobody had tried LSD and told us what the world looked like?
The art show proved the excellent taste of Small Black Door. The desire for more color, more variety and more innovation in arts has been apparent throughout the programming of Small Black Door.
The opening was friendly, half BYOB/half Coors supplied. We merrily discussed the Ridgewoodian happenings. Matt Mahler, a co-owner of the gallery told us that Jonathan Terranova, his buddy and the other co-owner has just become father and, thus, very understandably missed the opening. Rob de Oude, an artist in the show and a co-owner of new Parallel Art Space, was mentioning the upcoming art walk in Ridgewood organized by the Queens Museum. It’s called “This is Ridgewood actually” and likely refers to the fact that parts of Ridgewood were called Bushwick in previous years. We all concluded that the neighborhood borders discussion is a waste of energy, and the beautiful creative spirit is common to both Bushwick and Ridgewood. Moreover, it doesn’t come from the specific geographic location but from the people who live in both Bushwick and Ridgewood…
