Art-A-Whirl starts tonight.
You probably didn’t need us to tell you that. And if you’ve ever whirled through Northeast during this annual, art-bloated weekend, you probably also didn’t need us to tell you, as we did Wednesday, that the Rogue Buddha gallery will be one of the best stops along the crawl. It always is.
But where else should you go? Believe it or not, there are a few places just a stone’s throw from 13th Avenue that, despite their location, generally only draw those in the know. Now you can consider yourselves one of them.
R.P. Kittsteiner Art Gallery
With blowout concerts in every bar and block parties happening everywhere, it’s easy to forget that the true quintessence of Art-A-Whirl lies in peeking into the sleepy, rarely-viewed artist’s studio. And sometimes that means entering an artist’s actual home. Such is the case with the R.P. Kittsteiner Art Gallery, the upstairs perch of the duplex owned by artists Rosi Kittsteiner and Bradley Royce. The couple has been welcoming Whirlers for years, entrancing them as much with their mini-art opening hospitality as with their art—Kittsteiner’s bleary, oil-stick landscapes evoke a warm-bath dreaminess, while Royce nods to the afterlife with immaculately built wooden urns that resemble small pagodas.
809 University Ave. NE, Mpls.
rosiartgallery.com
Future Presence 5
Fledgling gallery FP had its first AAW opening last year, and the space looked rough. But that’s been a large part of the appeal of the scrappy/gritty art space, located in an abandoned and very un-loved storefront; the original FP concept was to be a rotating and alternative gallery, one that paired established talent with up-and-comers. But this year’s AAW show is stacked with mostly established talent. Very established. Meaning, national and international. Highlights will include Nick Howard, whose nightmarishly obsessive ink-on-paper scenes of giant worms and bald men in black surgical masks are the best drawings in the city, and Michael Gaughan, the oddball artist/rapper who, under the name Icerod, has been converting St. Paul’s Turf Club into a faux college dorm room, where he freestyles over the Internet with would-be emcees on Chatroulette.
1126 Second St. NE, Mpls.
futurepresencewords.blogspot.
Ritual
How ’bout some performance art? Jaimie Carrera, the local guy who hits this dicey medium the hardest, has orchestrated some of the most memorable (for better or worse) happenings in recent recollection. (Who could forget his stint as a Satanic go-go dancer for schlock art-metal band Faggot?) This time, Carrera partners with the young figurative oil painter Caitlin Karolczak for a two-part, five-hour stage show that takes place on a set dominated by two identical, antique twin beds. Check the trailer here, and tell us you’re not intrigued.
Grain Belt Bottling House, 79 13th Ave. NE, Mpls.
Friday, 8-10 p.m.; Saturday 1-4 p.m.
