Gallery-hopping in Chelsea
Liz and Laura are many things. You may not be aware of this, but one of these things is cultured. Oh, you bet, baby. We got culture coming out the wazoo. So in the spirit of growing as human beings, sharing this wonderful experience called life, and getting a whole bunch of red wine for free, we decided to have a Gallery night, Chelsea style (cue Queer Eye theme song to a montage of us getting dressed fabulously).
We started at the Amos Eno Gallery, whose current exhibition is “An Articulate Chicken Recipe” by artist Steven Travis, running September 5th to September 30th. Polymer clay provides the basis of his sculptures, which appear to be more like small, biblically-themed wall hangings at first. We were saddened to find that there was no liquor, but they did provide a variety of crispy snacks and some lukewarm soda. There’s a whole crazy mythology behind the sculptures, apparently, but all we were thinking was, “where’s the wine?”
Next we saw Gabriel Vormstein’s oddly-titled work “(oII (OO) oI) -:” at the Casey Kaplan gallery, running from September 8th to October 7th. It consisted of newspapers covered in paint and tape, and often affixed to the wall, as well as a few scattered stick sculptures. We won’t even get into how we feel about stick sculptures, but as for the wall art, some of it was pretty cool, and he chose interesting foreign newspapers, but we couldn’t help but wonder what the lifespan of this sort of thing could be. Maybe that’s, like, the point, man. Whoa.
As Casey Kaplan was out of beer at this point, we were thirsty when we arrived at D’Amelio Terras and, gladly, found the wine to be flowing. Two artists were featured at this opening: Sara Vanderbeek displayed her photography in “Mirror in the Sky” (September 8th to October 14th), and Dario Robleto’s morbid sculpture took center-stage in “Fear and Tenderness in Men” (September 8th to October 21st). The photographs, of various creepy juxtapositions of objects, mostly, were so-so, but the Robleto exhibit was wonderful. It consisted of vaguely memorial-type objects, incorporating pieces of human corpses (in the form of old-fashioned human hair-decorated memorial plaques, as well as human bones and other sundry parts) in interesting new ways. All in all it was thought-provoking and bizarre, but kind of gothic.
The Friedrich Petzel Gallery showed the work of Seth Price and Georg Herold. Seth Price’s film, consisting of a close-up of ocean waves, and surrounding film stills, were greatly enhanced by the ice-cold Stella Artois served. The film strip itself was entrancing and beautiful, but kind of boring. Georg Herold’s buckshot-strewn paintings and odd sculpture tickled our fancies far more. They were original and oddly fascinating, for panels covered in bullets.
Two artists were showing at the David Zwirner gallery as well. Jockum Nordström’s exhibition, running from September 8th through October 14th, consisted of the odd combination of dioramas and childlike pencil sketches, while the hilariously named John McCracken chose to display a number of large, shiny, black monoliths. The monoliths were pretty pointless, we thought, but the Jockum Nordström (actually, his name is pretty hilarious too, and reminds one of a Devo song) art was not so great either. It bore some of the same awkward quirks as better artists, say, Marcel Dzama, but with far less charming results. And his dioramas were sort of boring as well.
One of our favorite exhibitions of the night was “You Are Not Alone,” by artist Nir Hod (on display September 8th through October 7th at Jack Shaiman). The artist used airbrush, a medium not seen so often in the Chelsea scene as others, but reflected a bit of the cartoonish, 80’s-style pizzazz that so often accompanies the airbrush medium. In the intentionally shocking “I Love…,” we see from the point of view of someone cutting the titular words into their arm, about to begin spelling out the name of their lover; meanwhile, a shadowy figure lurks in the background (the lover?).
We ended the evening with a semi-cold beer at the André Schlechtriem Temporary, where Marc Brandenburg’s “Tilt” is on display from September 8th through October 4th. The artist made ’sticker collages’ out of homemade stickers with negative photographic images. Some of these reflect alternative New York culture, and some, old-fashioned Americana, in the form of fast food mascots, along with a whole lot of other stuff that you could spend hours inspecting, as long as they keep the free beer flowing.
All in all, it was an enjoyable night, and as we lurched back to the subway, half-cheesed and fully snooty, we knew we could now impress people with how cultured we were.
Featured Galleries:
Amos Eno - 530 W. 25th St
Andre Schlechtriem Temporary - 524 W. 19th St.
Casey Kaplan - 525 W. 21st St.
D’Amelio Terras - 525 W. 22nd St.
David Zwirner - 525 W. 19th St.
Friedrich Petzel - 535 W. 22nd St.
Jack Shainman - 513 W. 20th St.
