Manhattan is ground zero for networking and the grist for legions of what are sometimes termed New York “stories,” accounts of astounding
serendipity. Although the term “six degrees of separation” was brought into common parlance by the playwright John Guare, and the popular movie of the same name, the theory of one person being linked to another on the planet by no more than five intermediaries was first presented by Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in 1929.
Challenged repeatedly over the years, the theory was supported by the internet experiment conducted by Duncan Watts, of Columbia University, in 2001. When one begins with a particular subset within Manhattan, like the artworld, these New York stories flourish like dragons teeth.
Along my trajectory from artist/medical student in Honolulu to curator/physician in TriBeCa, I’ve been able to appreciate the art world from varying perspectives; and recognize that as impressive as the artworld appears, it is a surprisingly small community of critical mass and Brownian motion nested within the arguable axis of the contemporary art world in Manhattan. As a professional in the arenas of both medicine and art, I feel blessed to have been able to link these two passions, but certainly facilitated by significant web of support from friends and family; I will attempt to present only a fraction of these pieces in an abbreviated version of my own New York story that touches down here, but extends globally. I’m confident that somewhere in this matrix of a tale, you and I, dear reader, are connected!
Sergio Goes, my photographer friend who moved back to Hawaii from New York, produced the brilliant film, “Black Picket Fence,” is originally from Sao Paulo, Brazil, and was just part of the biennial at The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, where in May 2006, I’m curating “Alimachuan: The Emerging Artist as American Filipino” with 24 individuals, each of whom carry their own branching exponential connections. Honolulu is also where I befriended the major nexus/irrepressible artist Kennedy Moore, who lived at party central dubbed “The Compound” right on the beach at Diamond Head. The director at The Contemporary Museum (the curator there with whom I am working is Michael Rooks, also at the ICA in Chicago) is Georgianna Lagoria, whose husband David de la Torre was previously at the Mexican Museum while I was living in San Francisco in the 80s while completing my UCSF Fellowship in Allergy and Immunology after a residency in pediatrics in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where my sons Kanoa and Dylan were born at home. At the Mexican Museum was Lilia Villanueva, who with her husband Craig Scharlin, had a wholesale furniture business in Berkeley. They are now in New York having established TAMA in TriBeCa.
At the time, Lilia was the liaison for the Mexican Museum showing the work of Manuel Ocampo, a painter whose work I first saw at La Luz de
Jesus when it was still on a corner of Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles.
Manuel was the center of controversy in Dokumenta IX and is now living in Manila, where I traveled in 1999 to look for artists with Dana
Friis-Hansen, the current curator at the Austin Museum of Contemporary
Art for the landmark show, “At Home and Abroad” that opened at the
Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, traveled to Houston and Honolulu, then closed at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, with Corazon Alvina, who is now the director of the National Museum of the Philippines.
Back to Sergio…he and Chris Kahunahana, local Hawaiian bruddah, formerly of the Mr. Brown of “Mr. Brown Presents,” in San Francisco, recently established Cinema Paradise, a film festival that’s rising quickly on the international film circuit. Sergio’s friend Carla Duarte was a brilliant host in Sao Paulo when I was there for the biennial and I invited her to a wonderful gathering at gallerist Luisa Strina’s home; she introduced me to feijoado and her friend Guga’s nightclub, where I was taught dancing bounced on a samba leaders hips. (Carla was my link to Olympus camera for whom I curated digital photography exhibitions for several years.) Luisa and I flew down to Rio where I was the house guest of Tunga, a friend of David Medalla, where he hosted an international guest list party at his home in Largo da Barra; I was also the house guest of Andriana Varejao who lived in the garden district of Rio and at her party there I met Ernesto Neto and his wife Lili, as well as Mexican artist Sebastian Romo who knew my friends Monica and Pepe (I attended their storybook wedding in Tepoztlan) from Mexico City, who recently had a baby girl, Laila. Their art organization, kurimanzutto, has rocketed to international prominence on the art fair and biennial circuits. I originally met the student Pepe in Mexico DF, where I was intrigued with the work of his brother Gabriel at Galerie Kin near San Angel Inn on one of my frequent trips to Mexico’s numerous archeological sites. I later linked up with Gabriel in London when he was attending Goldsmiths College; at Lahore, one of my favorite restaurants near Whitechappel Gallery, he announced to me and my son Kanoa, who I had taken on a trip centered around his interested in tattoo and piercing, that we were among the first to hear of his engagement to Frances Horn, the stunning Australian Malaysian woman who ended up working for Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide. Through Gabriel I met Abraham Cruz-Villegas, Laureana Toledo, Dr. La Kra, Daniel Guzman, Luis Felipe Ortega aka “Mezcal,” and Sofia Taboas, artists presently rising in prominence, some in the JUMEX Collection in Mexico and the collection of Craig Robins in Miami Beach. In London I introduced Gabriel to the charter founders of the Mondrian Fan Club, the inimitable major UK talent David Medalla, born in the Philippines, and Australian Adam Nankervis, the current director of the acclaimed Museum of Man in Liverpool, England. They introduced me to Guy Brett, the London critic who wrote “Exploding Galaxies” a book on David and who was the curator of the brilliant exhibition “Force Fields” and contributor to the catalog for the landmark “Out of Actions.” Guy was recently a visiting scholar at Harvard University. Remember Sergio?…he was also responsible for introducing me to south Williamsburg and its wonderful art community fostered by artists Lee Boroson, Eve Sussman, and Simon Lee. Lee and Bellwether artist Kirsten Hassenfeld spend a lot of time upstate in their new digs. Eve has enjoyed tremendous success with her piece in the last Whitney Biennial, “89 Seconds at Alcazar” and is in postproduction for her variation on “The Rape of the Sabine Women.” They have just returned from Uganda, where Simon mounted his amazing “Bus Obscura” that was widely praised at the last Art Basel Miami Beach art fair. Simon introduced me to his assistant Emma Dewing, who is related to the American Impressionist Thomas Dewing, whose works hang in the Metropolitan Museum where my friend Kenneth Soehner is the chief librarian and coincidentally did his dissertation on Thomas Dewing. (Kenneth’s spouse Nathalie Angles is the director of Location One’s international residency program and their salon dinners are legendary.) Emma’s dad is the director of the decorative arts and furniture Geffrye Museum near Hoxton Square in London. I introduced Emma (she said she had already spied him on the subway platform) to my second oldest son Kanoa (in descending age the other family members are Leah, Colter, [Kanoa], Dylan, Elan, Nohea, Aiyana).. Kanoa travels the globe working with Matthew Barney; Emma works with noted Japanese photographer Kunié Sugiura who introduced me to Shingo Francis, whose work I’ve supported and who helps run his father’s art foundation and was just married in Japan. Emma’s best friend is Lisa Mordhorst, who just opened a fabulous show at 473 Broadway, worked for Japanese gallerist Akira Ikeda, and has introduced me to a wealth of talent including the likes of Mark diSuvero, Christopher Yockey, and Nicole Awai. Emma and Kanoa fell in love, were wed in Hawaii, and are expecting a son, Ikaika (meaning”strong” in Hawaiian), this mid-December. I’m so grateful to Kanoa and Emma for being part of my life in New York. Are we connected yet?
If asked . . . next time I might start with my ex-lover Karen, my colleagues at the Whitney Independent Study Program, the encyclopedic
Donald Kunze, ultraconnectress Nina Colosi, supermensch Michael Danoff,
or uberwriter Dominique Nahas, each an epicenter of contacts . . .
Contact Koan Jeff Baysa at usartdoc@gmail.com
www.artpulseny.com
M Degrees of Separation: The Manhattan Factor
(c) 2005 by Kóan Jeff Baysa
All rights reserved
