4 hrs. in chelsea
We headed to Chelsea today to see Amy Sillman’s show at Brent Sikkema and trolled the neighborhood for a quick art snack. Here’s what appeared, in no particular order. Yum yum.
The Sillman show is four thumbs up from our group. Big paintings in her figurative gestures emerge from abstracts vocabulary. Color too bold for most painters to dare, but without feeling gaudy. Gorgeous compositions. Here are two.
From there we hit Jeff Bailey Gallery on 25th street for Louise Belcourt’s show of paintings. The forms, which are remeniscent of the Alex Katz treatment are more satisfying and some of the surfaces have a brushy texture which is refreshing amidst the flat planes. These paintings are of brooklyn buildings, although apparently she sometimes gets similar inspiration from Canadian hedges. Whatever turns you on, the outcome is great.
We hit what was my favorite of the day at the gallery I love to love, CUE. CUE invites an artist or curator to invite another artist to show and/or have a residency. This month, Kiki Smith curated a show by Valerie Hammond. The delightful, ethereal works include unique paper masks, drawings with hidden drawings hinting from second sheets below (only blowing between the sheets gives any better view of the sub-drawings), and gorgeous assemblages of fern leaves, flowers, and drawings of hands.
Then we headed over to Yossi Milo to see what is up at this great photography venue. Next month Yossi Milo shows one of my favorite portrait artists, Loretta Lux, so try to keep that on the radar. Right now, though, is right up my alley, Sze Tsung Leong shoots cityscapes in China showing the modern China and the occasional tearing down of the old. Beautiful large-format shots.
A yummy treat came from Vietnam-born artist Tomas Vu at Von Lintel Gallery. The beautiful giant imagination-scapes contained lush microenvirons in a bizarre variety of styles that somehow works perfectly. Here is a large image and two details from the same painting.
Back in the realm of photo, but in a more experimental vein, David Moreno’s show at Feature consists of silver gelatin prints of TV noise. The images are made via a one-second exposure through a camera mounted on a device that allows a 360 degree rotation during the one second. The lens is focused on a TV between channels. Here are two of these great shots (pardon the photographer reflection).
Charles Cowles is showing some sculpture and drawings from James Surls. I greatly prefered the latter.
PPOW has a show of Bo Bartlett, beautiful draftsmanship, and a severely restricted palette helps him convey the sense of “memories.”
At Baumgartner, Marci MacGuffie was another good example of a style trend for the day: obsessively drawn pieces within a whole macrocosm. They appeared in Justin Craun’s portraits at Fredericks and Freiser as well as Tomas Vu. A detail is below.
The prize “weird” goes to Pace Wildenstein, whose show Dubuffet|Basquiat serves to show us that the two painted similar works (gee whiz). The catalog describes their works as “ugly paintings”; the show juxtaposes one of each with similar grid, color scheme or subject. The good news is that you get to see a great set of paintings from each, including Basquiat’s Tar and Feathers and Dubuffet’s Voyage en Voiture . Detail from a Basquiat below.
In closing, here’s a detail from a smart public/private collaboration by Christina Ray at DCKT. Her piece “Damage” was created based on web submissions determining where the gallery would be damaged (a hole drilled into the drywall). The hole was then embellished with a disc, connected by lines and accompanied by a statement regarding damage.
May 6th, 2006 at 8:48 am
Wow! What a great line-up. I wish I had known you were going.
The stuff at CUE looks amazing in the photos. Undoubtedly it’s so much better in real life…I can only imagine.
Nice to see the floor line included in the Silman photos. It really gives a sense of scale which is so critical, and usually lacking when viewing art on-line.
May 6th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
glad my floor line decision meets with approval. I felt the same way about showing the scale.
May 8th, 2006 at 10:47 am
Amy Sillman was a yummy. One of the other thumbs that were pointed up snapped this of me.