nice

Update: I've just acquired my first piece of Aaron Krach's work. I'm now the happy owner of the t-shirt in the pic below. (Available at the New Museum gift shop).

Aaron Krach  Indestructible Artifact #11: Confidence, 2009

 T-shirt, edition of 500.

Every once in a while I come across something that pulls me in and makes me smile. In this case, it is the work of Aaron Krach. Linking off of One Art World, I clicked on what I thought was a link to a Lower East Side gallery site, but instead turned out to be Aaron's website. What initially grabbed my attention was the t-shirt above. As a practicing psychotherapist and a working artist, its sensibility appealed to me on both counts.

I looked further and found this essay:

Having long been an admirer of Yoko Ono's art, I was moved by this simple declaration of an artist's recognition of meaning and purpose. The essay's closing sentence (called a "kicker" in journalistic terms) was, well, a kicker for me. 

Here are photos of the show (October 2009) that Aaron dedicated his apartment for.

"i curated that show in my apartment because it was something I always wanted to do. i moved my furniture out and put everything up---only work i loved, and only work i wish i had made---and then invited people over during one (long) saturday and sunday. then done."

 My favorite is the handkerchief with the words "there there" embroidered in its center. I found it very moving, and told Aaron in an email that I had once used those words to title a painting because I found them so comforting.

Visit Aaron's website to see his work, and Artists Who Use Text To Say Nice Things to see more about this project, including the names of the artists. Thanks, Aaron. Nice.