Chelsea Naftelberg last night; KVA at CATALOGUE Saturday

I went to Trinity College's gallery on Broad Street last night to go to Chelsea Naftelberg's thesis show opening. She is such a sweetheart and clearly having more fun than most people do with Josef Albers. She calls the show "Homage to the Days." There were 31 panels arranged in a grid as if it were a calendar page. Acts like a comic strip, or like a diary, or like a storyboard. Anyway, they're all about narrative, clearing a path, delineating movement, making a memory and then marking it.

Chelsea Naftelberg

Tomorrow night, Kevin Van Aelst is presenting a handful of brand new photographs and holding a tag sale featuring several props from editorial photoshoots he's done for the New York Times Magazine. Bring some petty cash and own a piece of history. Joel VanderKamp and Joe Saphire are hosting him at CATALOGUE, in their studio on Arbor Street.

Kevin is clever, hilarious, thoughtful and insightful. The great joy of knowing Kevin and his art is that very often the work transcends clever humor and cuts deeply into confounding life and death mysteries through the most awful (brilliant), tongue-in-cheek material arrangements. Science plays a big part, similar to the way that Mr. Wizard's magic show used to politely blow your mind. I don't think Kevin uses kitsch, however, a lot of people might see him this way. I think he's far too invested in living it, both the banality and the fractal ecstacy, for kitsch to matter seriously. I think Kevin means everything he does, and I mean that sincerely as a compliment.

In case you are completely out of the loop, CATALOGUE is held every month in the VanderKamp/Saphire studio: 56 Arbor Street, Suite 216 (second floor, front building), Hartford CT. They have had exceptional success. Expect a large interesting crowd, a really nice installation and spiked hot cider.