Welcome to the Stellar Club
January recap
Welcome to The Stellar Club! I have been playing with this idea for several months now, and if it weren’t for the new year and my yearly goals and resolutions, I would probably still be just thinking about it instead of actually executing it. I’ve really come to love Substack; I follow several newsletters from art to fashion and book tips.(I am happy to share my favs later on!) It’s such a great concept where you can share things you like and thoughts in more depth in a less judgemental environment than Instagram, for instance.
So, The Stellar Club will be dedicated to all things art and culture. It will be sort of a diary of things I want to share or recommend.
Those who know me from IG know that occasionally, I like to share a little more than just art. Therefore, Stellar Club will be my outlet for sharing anything from artists and shows I am currently obsessing about, as well as books, travels, cool spots, fashion designers, and other cultural moments.
So what to expect?
I will regularly write about emerging, underrepresented, or undiscovered artists.
I will write what I enjoyed seeing/visiting/ reading every month
I will write about travel. Let's call it ' A love letter to XYZ': This is not your traditional tourist guide. It’s a series of mini personal guides to my favorite places / from my travels. What museums, bookshops, corners, restaurants, etc. I visited and loved.
I will write about fashion bits. Who knows me knows my love for style & fashion.
Anything else that will come to my mind!
What I visited, enjoyed, watched, and read in January.
January is the most depressing month for me. It’s a weird period before something fun or exciting happens after Christmas festivities. However, this January actually didn’t feel all that bad. It was nice to detox, reflect, and work on resolutions ( one of them being to write this Substack). On top of that, I got to read two interesting books, visit a couple of interesting exhibitions, watch a couple of good movies, and go to the theatre.
Londoners involved in the art world know that an amazing Antony Gormley exhibition at White Cube just ended. I wouldn’t say I have the same relationship with sculptures as I do with paintings, but Gormley’s work is quite immersive and extraordinary - the play with scale, material, light, and architecture. I will not get into more details as the show is over anyway. But what is still on and worth visiting is Complex Condo - a collaborative exhibition consisting of international galleries. Founded by Vanessa Carlos of (Carlos/Ishikawa), Complex Condo has 50 participating galleries in their London edition the year, and each gallery gets to invite a non-London-based gallery to exhibit at their London premises. The invited gallery then gets to bring and show whatever artist/s they like. With a couple of art friends, we started the tour at Carlos/Ishikawa (of course), who were, by the way, also exhibiting their own show - a solo of Libasse Ka ( worth visiting; the fact that the artist is only 25 is crazy). The other part of the gallery was dedicated to hosting Chapter NY gallery with two other amazing artists: Cheyenne Julien and Stella Zhong. Then, we continued to check out five more galleries. I also loved Emalin, who was hosting Galerie Neu ( Berlin). They were showing Manfred Pernice & Megan Plunkett.
On one particularly cold Friday evening, I went to the movies to see Poor Things. I was quite excited but also prepared to be left in shock. Yorgos Lanthimos has shocked me before. Poor Things didn’t disappoint. It was weird, but it was also incredibly artistic, stylistically and cinematographically. I loved the social commentary and the strangeness of the time period in which the movie was set. I also enjoyed the fashion of the movie, which corresponded with the time period hybrid. Moving onto books: as someone working in the art world, it might come as a shock that I only now read ‘Just Kids’ by Patti Smith. I loved probably three-quarters of the book and was flipping pages with ease. The last bit was too music and/or poetry-heavy for me. The second book I read this week was ‘Nothing holds back the night’ by Delphine De Vigan , a very dark autobiographical novel. However, I have to say that despite the heaviness of the story, I still enjoyed the book, especially the first half, which was a page-turner.
And lastly, I went to the theatre to see Plaza Suit with Sarah Jessica Parker ( fans will understand) and her husband Matthew Broderick. It is a comedy about marriage written by Neil Simon. Some jokes were too obvious or staged for my taste, but all in all, I very much enjoyed the play. And SJP’s performance was actually really good.