The cool thing about a lot of the galleries here is that they are on such a grand scale–gorgeously designed art warehouses for big ideas. There are a lot of wonderful intimate spaces, sure, but the cavernous spaces of Mary Boone, Gagosian and Luhring Augustine are like art carnivals, just spectacular. Gagosian has a super show up of sculptures by David Smith from the 50’s and 60’s, really a mini-museum show of work based on the human form. Mary Boone has a few like super gigantic catoony paintings by Brian Alfred (pictured below left, a time-lapsed painting?), and Luhring Augustine has some sculptures by Rachel Whiteread. I don’t know about the rest of you, but if you’ve seen one Rachel Whiteread, you’ve seen ’em all, honey. Actually, I did find myself drawn to their nuance and delicacy. For this body of work she created casts of the insides of cardboard boxes in plaster, illustrating the aesthetic and conceptual complexities of the utilitarian cardboard box. One of the highlights of yesterday’s outing was a short film called Zoo by a Finnish artist, Salla Tykkä at Yvon Lambert. The camera follows a Hitchcock blonde type woman (below right) around a zoo as she observes and photographs, the point of view shifting back and forth from the animals’ to hers. The soundtrack is ominous and filled with menace. An underwater rugby game is intercut into her trip through the zoo. The film ends with her walking into the water of the bear pen, then cuts to her floating face down. Hey, this is my story! The film uses Hollywood narrative strategies to encourage us to watch ourselves watching, as gendered spectators and participants. We also saw Louise Fishman’s giant gestural abstractions at Cheim & Reid, Tony Oursler’s entertaining video sculptures at Metro Pictures, yet more silly Fischli+Weiss work at Matthew Marks’ up-Chelsea space, enough already, and an interesting show at Jack Shainman of work by Hank Willis Thomas. He’s taken out the text and logos of advertising imagery, revealing the visual strategies and cultural stereotypes used by the advertisers. Michael Raedecker has an interesting show at Andrea Rosen, of pretty and minimally embroidered paintings matted with clumps of hair.
Today we took a stroll through Soho. I haven’t been there since the late 80’s and early 90’s, before all the galleries moved to Chelsea, so it was a bit of a shocker to see how significantly the vibe there has shifted. It’s like an art ghost town, only the former galleries aren’t empty, they’re Prada stores.
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