Dustin's fire escape

A few Days a week when I’m not at Creative Time I help my friend Dustin out. He works on Chrystie street and when I take a few minute break to my self this is my view. I love just stepping out on the fire escape with the New Museum directly to my one side and the old lower east side for all my eyes to see.

A view from Fedi's

I’ve known Fedi since she was the Gallery director at CVZ she had just moved to the states from Italy.  Years have passed and today she runs a studio on the top floor of one of the landmark buildings in the Meatpacking.

Record shopping with John

Jayson's new video

 

Chelsea Breakdown

Every week or so I will head out to Chelsea and other arts neighborhoods in New York and talk a bit about what I saw.  This week I ran into legendary filmmaker and artist John Waters and saw a women buy a Robert Motherwell.  The Motherwell incident was my friends favorite moment of the day. The below posts talk a bit on my weekend journey and some thoughts on shows I saw this week.

Damien Hirst at Gagosian the complete spot paintings 1986-2011

         Massive studio practices that employ artists are good regardless of external intuitional ethics or subject matter.   For many even those that are well educated art is merely decorative and a place to escape for a Saturday moment.  It seems though people understand when they enter a contemporary art environment like Chelsea there will be a prevalence to a post modern sensibility, where technical precision is not always the defining characteristic of a master work. However people need to be able to relate on some level to what they experience even if it’s a superficial connection.  There needs be something to justify relevance in the contemporary moment in order to validate arts historical significance and this is where individual subjectivity comes to play.  Hirst and Gagosian offer a point of entrance into the a world that often alienates those that wonder a bit without the proper pedigree or background while giving those in the know something to snicker at and critique.

Formally the shows at the two Chelsea spaces are hung impeccably. Trying to comprehend the massive undertaking of such a show with its 11 coinciding global exhibitions warrants a slow clap at least, personally knowing the difficulty of producing small art events.  The work is what it is and arguments can be made for it in any directing you wish to take, I have my particular stance, which is neither right or wrong or conclusive. I will say though the shows are worth seeing.

Large Studios make works and so do individual artist and originations with the intended function of the art sometimes being very differently. Having a massive studio and gallery team both that employees many that genuinely care about art in some ways justifies the works value as they are all working to sell a product in a system they did not create.  I believe some of Hirsts work to be very theoretically sound and also simply functioning in a way many people need art too. Not all works should be socially engaged.  My only real critique is The Gagosian gallery is the only gallery in Chelsea that asked me to leave my ice coffee at the door.

www.gagosian.com

Joyce Pensato, Batman Returns at Friedrich Petzel

The fumes of oil paint fill the air and a large group of people in the gallery make the cluttered space feel that much more claustrophobic when I viewed this show.  The paintings on the wall are simply lost as the presence of the objects in varied states of decay scattered in mounds overwhelm the senses. I am guilty too of using clutter and stuffed animals in my sculptures but with the death of Mike Kelley still in my head I couldn’t help but being overly critical of the show.  Go for you self take a look and contemplate is this where art should still be? 

www.petzel.com

Terry Winters at Matthew Marks Gallery

Cricket Music, Tessellation Figures, & notebooks is a show worth seeing if you are curious of the state of contemporary painting.    Matthew Marks also gives a bit of insight to the process of Winters by sharing with us a full gallery of notebook pages; this idea of lesser works or sketches is a common trend in Chelsea now.  Regardless if this is an act of market savvyness or not in the case of Winters it is nice to see how works are generated and the over all creative process.

www.matthewmarks.com

On Kawara at Zwirner

I had a professor at grad school kind of a hotshot curator talk to me in a studio visit about experiencing On Kawara’s paintings. The gist of what she was telling me was to learn from the process and sincere dedication to a project.   When I entered David Zwirner I finally understood what she was talking about, as the rooms of dates painted represent a very long career as a working artist.  Granted there is a bit of OCD present in the process but there is something overwhelming and poetic of recording ones own life and life’s work in this way.

www.davidzwirner.com

Nolita,Records and Reggae

Tequila with Justin on Mercer Street