By Maria Gotay
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Last Saturday night came and went in a flash! With 15 Bushwick art spaces participating in Beat Nite and additional 10+ in Bushwick Afterhours, Saturday night was a huge success for artists, curators, galleries, and art-enthusiasts alike. I visited around 15 galleries total across the ‘hood’s sprawling streets and avenues from Morgan to Dekalb. Personal favorites were Forest Ave’s huge, splendid, and flashy English Kills Gallery, which featured the show The Permanent Collection: Volume 2: My Own Private Serpico. The exhibit sampled drawing, painting, and sculpture and the most stunning works in the gallery came from Don Pablo Pedro, who mixed sublime and classical imagery in his large-scale paintings, making them both alarming and intruiging.
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On the other end of the spectrum, I thoroughly enjoyed the understated and carefully put-together 950 Hart Gallery‘s “Go Figure” exhibition deeper into Bushwick. The collection gathered works that examined different methods of creating figurative art. In three rooms bursting with drawings and paintings, they showcased adventurous yet meticulous artworks- favorites coming in fantastical neon portraiture by both Antoinette Johnson and Raquel Echanique . This gallery was the most local-feeling of all the spaces I visited and is a sure building block in the non-Chelsea Bushwick art scene.
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All in all, it was an event that was a perfect opportunity for the community of this neighborhood to get together, enjoy the new works, have a beer, and become inspired by the great energy, praise, and momentum Bushwick’s art scene has gathered.
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