Last Night's Opening: Laura Levine and Rude & Reckless

Last night was an interesting one for anyone into the nostalgia trip for the mid-70's to mid-80's period of punk/new wave/post punk music and art. At the New Museum, there was the late-reported Gray two-set show. And at the Kasher Gallery was the long awaited opening for two exhibits: The Laura Levine: Musicians photography show, and the Rude and Reckless: Punk/Post Punk Graphics 1976-1982 collection. As planned I attended the shindig at the Kasher Gallery, and was glad I made it.

The gallery, a beautiful space thats just the right size, would make any exhibit look good...not that these two needed any help. More after the break.

The Laura Levine show is tucked in the back of the gallery, and takes up about a quarter of the space. Although I'm familiar with many of these images, it was great to see them on a wall without any distractions. Laura's work is so consistent and tasteful, its difficult to argue with any of the selections that were included. My only complaint - and this seems to be fairly consistent for Kasher photo shows - was there was a lack of info on each photo, i.e. the artists therein, year shot, etc.

To follow here are a few of the images by Laura. My biggest pleasant surprise was the wonderful shot of the oft-forgotten and underrated Dieter Meier and Boris Blank, better known as Yello. Be sure to visit Laura's website for more information from the source. Have a look:

Top, REM. Bottom, Alan Vega.

Top, Jim Carroll. Bottom, John Doe & Exene Cervenka.

Various

Yello

The Misfits

Bad Brains

The Bloods

Taking up about 3/4's of the entire gallery was the wonderful musical ephemera collection (actually only part of the entire thing) of Andrew Krivine. A native of the New York metropolitan area, Krivine started collecting these in the mid 70's as a kid with a bad music habit. With some help from his cousin, John Krivine, founder of two legendary Kings Road, London, based trendy boutiques, Acme Attractions and BOY, Andrew had access to some pretty difficult to get posters, zines, and other items. Read an informative interview with Krivine over at Rebel Rebel Anti-Style.

Again, some dating and perspective on each piece would have been nice, but not absolutely necessary. The amount of material to see was actually quite overwhelming, but beautiful. And as many of the posters were familiar to me, many were new and there were some incredible rarities.

The Steven Kasher Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11:00AM to 6:00PM, and is located at 521 West 23rd Street just west of 10th Avenue, New York, NY 10011.

Very rare US promo poster for A Certain Ratio single "Do The Du". Factory Records was distributed by Rough Trade at the time here in the States.