| (no subject) |
[Jan. 21st, 2006|01:47 pm] |
| [ | tunes: |
| | Swirlies "Cats Of the Wild Volume 2" | ] |
ELIZABETH AND ANDREW NEEL @ Freight & Volume
OK kids, this show is AWESOME and you have to go see it. NOW. I’m normally really skeptical of video art, so when I walked in to this gallery my first through was “Oh lord, I have to sit through more boring-ass video shit AGAIN.” My main complaint with video art, aside from so much of it being fucking BORING, is that a gallery is a totally inappropriate environment to see it in. Nobody wants to stand on their tired gallery-traipsing legs in a empty room with nowhere to sit for half an hour or whatever to watch some yawn-inducing video. And you're also likely to walk in right in the middle of the video and then you'll have to watch only the second half and wait around for it to re-start if you want to see the beginning. However, there are a number of video artists I have come to love: Jane & Louise Wilson, Doug Aitken - and Laurie Anderson’s video show a couple months ago was really great, AND she was thoughtful enough to provide cushions in the gallery so people could sit comfortably!
This show consists of five medium-sized Apple plasma screens with big G5 Macs underneath them (it could also double as MacWorld Jr) The videos are all made by having the camera fixed on one viewpoint without ever changing and each video is around one to two minutes then they loop and start over, so it’s perfect for impatient people with short attention spans like me. The first video is a close-up of a guy going into a bathroom and has a little sample cup, pulls out his pee-pee and fills up the cup with urine, obviously doing a drug test. The next is a guy lying on the yard for a few minutes, then he gets up and walks away. Then there’s close-up of a fish being gutted, and a foreign guy watching football and yelling at the TV. The tour-de-force is the one that starts with an idyllic view of a stream with a bridge going over it. You hear the sound of a car, and the car appears and begins to go over the bridge, then flies off the bridge and flips over and lands in the stream! Aside form having this “HOW the hell did they do that!” quality, it’s sublimely beootiful. All the videos are shot in luscious and delicious Hi-Def and they have such a quiet but commanding presence and everything just feels perfectly resolved and even though they’re videos they kind of feel like objects, like a animated still life.
TEAM gallery
Every time I go into Team the lady director who works there always does a double take at me and looks at me just a fraction of a second too long so that I know she’s looking at me. So she either thinks I’m totally cute and stylish... or conversely, thinks I must look like some freak. I’ll choose to believe she thinks I’m totally cute. And I’m really flattered, because she is really pretty and sexy and if I wasn’t gay I’d be a gentleman and ask her out on a date. The drawings here are pretty good too.
COHAN AND LESLIE gallery
I don’t have anything to say about the art, but this gallery always smells really weird. Always! And not in a Comme des Garcons - avant-garde air freshener kind of way. It’s kind of unpleasant. That shit STANK, people, whatever it is!
Then I went to 27th street to see all the new galleries everyone is talking about. I’ve even seen them referred to as ‘pioneers’ for daring to establish a gallery PAST 11th avenue! Oh my god, they’re just like fucking Lewis and Clark! The bravery! I hope no Indians or homeless people attacked them!
So I was all prepared to be a hater but these are really nice spaces. They even have wood floors! I LOVE wood floors! It’s so nice when a gallery actually doesn’t feel like a car showroom or a white-cube clinical art morgue and has some personality as these do. I like.
Then at MATTHEW MARKS 24th street outlet warehouse they have a nifty group show of drawings up. There was especially good stuff by Terry Winters, Jasper Johns, Charles Ray and Ken Price.
Ken Price
Charles Ray
Terry Winters
There's an Ellsworth Kelly here too. I used to hate his stuff and thought it was super-boring and empty but at some point I ended up loving him. "What? A solid square red canvas? And then a solid blue diamond-shaped canvas? LOVE IT!!!"
Ellsworth Kelly
And normally I only like to review shows I enjoyed because nobody likes whiny negative art critics, but I thought I’d include a negative one for all you hater-lovers out there. Plus this show has gotten SO much good press it needs a bad one to balance it out.
ELLEN ALTFEST @ Bellwether
In the last installment of Chelsea Art Reviews I brought to your attention loads of amateurish bad painting all over the place. Well, Ellen Altfest can paint, and she can paint well. It’s just that she chooses to paint crap like still-lives of cactuses and plants in a totally sincere, non-ironic way. Why is everyone creaming themselves over this show? I read some other review of this which I’m totally going to rip off here and it said if this exact work was in some stodgy un-hip gallery uptown nobody would give it a second thought, but since it’s in a ‘hip’ gallery like Bellwether everyone’s all “OMG! Awesome!!! Cacti!!! I LOVE cacti!!! And plants! That’s so retrograde and cutting-edge! Wow!!!!” It’s like how there are a number of bloggers out there who can write really well but sadly have nothing to say. (Me, I can’t write and have nothing to say, but those two cancel each other out and ultimately it adds up to AWESOME!) She can paint really well but.... well, you get the picture.
So it’s not that these are really bad paintings or anything, but they’re not great and I don’t think they warrant all the kiss-ass press. There! OK, the painting of the tumbleweed or whatever is pretty kick-ass and I’d hang it in my room. But that’s IT! She really excels at doing elaborate textures. And the first time I saw this I thought the palette was really drab and icky with all barfy grays and browns, but this time I saw that there were a lot of subtle colors that bring them to life. Wait, I’m supposed to be hating this! Also, Bellwether staff, it’s a good idea for you to point the spotlights ON the piece, not a foot above it, as a few of the lights were oddly positioned. Maybe it’s an avant-garde installation or something. Whatever.
 |
|
|
| Gallery Receptionist Reviews |
[Jan. 21st, 2006|04:23 pm] |
| [ | tunes: |
| | 3Ds "Swarthy Songs For Swabs" | ] |
The job of most gallery receptionists is apparently to simply glare at visitors to the gallery with subtle contempt as they enter. I imagine a job interview for a gallery receptionist position going something like this:
GALLERY OWNER: Nice to meet you. First, let me see you glare at me with subtle contempt with a thin-lipped smile.
GALLERY OWNER: OK, that’s good. Now let me see you ignore me.
GALLERY OWNER: Nice. Now, give me a fake smile like you’re pretending to be nice but are clearly being insincere.
GALLERY OWNER: Good. Now let me see downright contempt like I’m a non art-loving tourist from New Jersey.
GALLERY OWNER: Perfect! When can you start?
However, there are a few nice ones out there. (And just so I don't piss off anyone, probably some of these people are NOT actually receptionists, but just happen to be at the front desk. )
PERRY RUBENSTEIN: Always gives me a big smile and says “Hi!” I like her.
BELLWETHER: Made eye contact with me and smiled.
ATM GALLERY: Was working on her computer but as I came closeby she looked up at me. I smiled and said “hello” first but she then smiled and said “hi.” That’s acceptable.
MARY BOONE: Guy in the front ignores everybody. Then there’s that serious-looking guy in the back room who is always on the phone or doing paperwork. Never says hi. I suspect he doesn’t really do anything but is just a permanent performance-art piece to scare onlookers into not licking or stealing the art. (In a related story, this is a great gallery space, with high ceilings and wooden beams just like a barn. If I ever have a show there, I’m just going to fill it with hay and put a few horses in it.)
JAMES COHAN: They look at me and make eye contact but don’t say hi even though I smile at them.
LEHMANN MAUPIN: The person at the front always ignores everyone who comes in. Why do they even bother having someone at the door?
most galleries whose receptionist would ignore everybody anyway are smart and don't have a receptionist or front desk at all. |
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
driverufo's journal