| The New York Optimist October 2008 |
| October 2, 2008 Chelsea Gallery Art Crawl by Stephan Fowlkes Is it just me, or is there an odd energy in the air in Chelsea the past couple weeks? Last thursday had remarkably few openings, and this week was no different. Only about 8 openings were advertised for this thursday, and it was about the same last week. With literally hundreds of galleries in the neighborhood and thursday being the prime opening evening, even when spaced throughout the month, I still felt there should be more. This makes my job more difficult, as I try to focus on those shows I enjoy and would recommend to others, and when the selection is so slim, it leaves me little to work with. Maybe the shifting economic climate is affecting the art world. Or that everyone was too excited about the Biden-Palin debate...who knows? As usual I got to Chelsea a little early, which gives me opportunities to see some shows whose openings I’d missed, and this week I wanted to return to Eyebeam to further investigate the interactive art on view, as I didn’t feel fully comfortable making vacuum cleaner or blender noises last week at the opening, though many in the audience were less reserved. I called myself for free from one of the sculptures, gauged the Hudson River’s current water level with another, and hummed some toast with yet another, seriously. Too much fun! “Untethered:” A sculpture garden of readymades Eyebeam Art & Technology Center 540 W. 21st Street September 25-October 25, 2008 |
| Then I popped into the Gladstone Gallery where I had the place to myself to fully enjoy three works by Mario Mertz: two of his igloo pieces, similar to the one I’ve seen at the MoMA, and one of his Fibonacci sequences in neon. His igloos comprised large slabs of granite and slate, sheets of glass, bundles of branches, neon, and a deer cast in aluminum. Of his disparate materials, Mertz wrote, “I work with contradiction--neon and canvas, glass and wax, electrical technology and mud. Everything is a contradiction because without it there is no life.” The man had a point. The shamanistic properties of his work gave this show a decidedly different feel from Eyebeam--less festive and humorous, more solemn, almost sacred. Mario Mertz at Gladstone Gallery 530 W. 21st Street September 18-?, 2008 |
| Le case girano intorno a noi o noi giriamo intorno alle case?, 1994 Metal structure, glass, stone, clamps, neon; 236 1/4 inches diameter (600cm diameter) |
| The crawl officially began with Cui Guotai’s show of large paintings at the China Square Gallery, curated by Robert C. Morgan. Initially, one is confronted by several predominantly black and white expressionist works, where subject matter is not immediately apparent. But quickly enough, dragons, city scapes, old run-down vehicles, private jets and bridges emerge. The centerpiece “National Celebration” was a roughly 10’ x 20’ painting of a giant locomotive in reds which contrasts strongly with the muted works surrounding it--pretty awesome and impactive. Reading further into the work, one finds the “paintings express a remarkable irony, questioning and deconstructing China’s planned economy. Cui Guotai depicts evidence of a lost era, a disappearance of an industrial age in China, built on disillusionment.” The locomotive isn’t running, the trucks in “Liberation” and “Into Tibet” are dilapidated and immobile, the “Private Jet” lies broken on the runway. As is often the case with contemporary Chinese painting and sculpture, social, political, and economic issues run deep in these dynamic, intensely rendered works. This is Guotai’s first U.S. solo show. Evidence of a Lost Era Curated bu Robert C. Morgan Cui Guotai at China Square Gallery New York 245 W. 25th Street, 8 Fl October 1-November 1, 2008 |
| I just love the juxtapositions Chelsea can offer; going from one gallery space to the next can be likened to traveling the world at random. Each space presents its own microcosm, defined by the work therein and the energy, mood, atmosphere the work elicits and emits. Each space creates and presents an emotional, psychological, intellectual and spiritual environment, and they are all unique. Every show is a unique experience, and every art crawl presents us with a series of such new experiences, and you never know what you’ll find, or the relationships within those sequences. Going from Guotai’s paintings to Jane Voorhees’ paintings and monotypes is one of those beautiful transitions. “Voorhees’ work confronts the inevitability of loss in life.” Her most recent show at SOHO20 Gallery presents us with two bodies of work: her more signature style landscapes and a series of works based on her experiences working with orphaned children in Uganda. The landscapes are presented in several formats: monoprint series framed, paintings on paper, and paintings on gold-leafed wall-hanging boxes. The show is beautifully presented and Voorhees has an uncanny ability to draw out the psychological and emotional qualities of her desolate landscapes, with the horizon lines fluctuating from work to work, as if the works or even the room itself were breathing. There is an organic rhythm in both her work and in the presentation of her different series. “30 Perspectives” is an installation of thirty small views of the horizon in a grid with the horizon line gravitating upward in each row. There is an eerie beauty to these sparse landscapes, enough to make you want to speak in whispers whilst in the gallery. The Earth Takes Us In Its Embrace Jane Voorhees at SOHO20 Gallery 511 W. 25th Street September 30-October 25, 2008 |
| The third great treat of the night was our last stop at Ricco/Maresca Gallery. With the prevailing trends of showing nothing but the newest of the new, the show of Martin Ramirez “The Last Works” was a breath of fresh air--a 45 year old breath of fresh air! All made between 1960-1963, these works on paper are part of a collection of 130 works Ramirez made in the last three years of his life, all found in 2007. Originally from Mexico and emigrating to the U.S. when he was 30, Ramirez spent the second half of his life in mental institutions, diagnosed with schizophrenia. These drawings and collages present the viewer with charged, psychological landscapes and architecturally inspired works, laden with repetition and rhythm, with a highly developed aesthetic vocabulary. There is a very meditative quality to the almost Zen-like repetition. And there is a certain naivete to his figurative work, alluding to some vast, inner-world of which we only catch a glimpse. These works stand out from much of the other current visual fodder in Chelsea, perhaps due to the time when they were made. Newer is definitely not always better! The Last Works Martin Ramirez at Ricco/Maresca Gallery 529 W. 20th Street October 2-November 29, 2008 |
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