Trey Abdella: Under the Skin at VITO SCHNABEL and DAVID LEWIS

James Kalm, after 18 years as a content producer here at YouTube, had his beloved channel “terminated” on the 20th of December 2023. YouTube alleged that he’d violated the sites Community Guidelines regarding “sexual and nudity content”. His initial appeal was denied on the 22nd despite this content clearly falling under YouTube’s own EDSA (Educational, Documentary, Scientific, Artistic) exception of the standards. It looked like this historic and unique archive of over 800 programs would permanently disappear. Fortunately, with strong support from James Kalm’s worldwide community of paint-heads, Jerry Saltz, and a lot of anxious effort, YouTube reconsidered its “termination,” and on the 5th of January, 2024, the channel was reinstated. Trey Abdella “Under the Skin” a double venue show is a great program to start off this new year with. Combining a painterly base, Abdella constructs diorama like objects that investigate nostalgic and contemporary images of fly-over America. The high realism of the paintings is contained and contrasted with glossy sculptural forms that mimic natural history displays, roadside oddity shops, Billboard ads, and miniature hobbyist’s HO scale train collections. All this is projected with a comic/poetic perspective of a distorted American Dream and what lies beneath it. This program was recorded on December 12, 2023 and January 6, 2024. #jameskalmreport #jameskalmroughcut #lorenmunk