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I like receiving art invitations in the mail. Postcards are best because you don’t have to open them—and on the other end, they’re less expensive to mail than envelopes. Sometimes I play games with the invites, games that you can’t play with e-mail invites. I mean, once in a while I print out a press release for an article I’m working on, or I print an image off the computer if it really grabs me, but not usually. I play at stacking the cards that arrive at my door and arrange them around the room—propped up against chair legs, side by side across the sofa, along the wall and on the floor in card castles—so I can see them en mass. And patterns emerge. |
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March/April Picks – Christopher Chambers
I like receiving art invitations in the mail. Postcards are best because you don’t have to open them—and on the other end, they’re less expensive to mail than envelopes. Sometimes I play games with the invites, games that you can’t play with e-mail invites. I mean, once in a while I print out a press release for an article I’m working on, or I print an image off the computer if it really grabs me, but not usually. I play at stacking the cards that arrive at my door and arrange them around the room—propped up against chair legs, side by side across the sofa, along the wall and on the floor in card castles—so I can see them en mass. And patterns emerge. We can group the figurative paintings into a little ensemble and watch them converse. We can match up all the abstract works by color or style; sometimes the similarities bridge mediums: a blue photo of a naked lady might go nicely alongside, well, you get the idea.
The winner of this month’s game is a pairing of an invitation to an exhibition of drawings by Aric Obrosey at McKenzie Fine Art Inc. and a postcard of a sculpture by Tracy Krumm for her show at Lemmons Contemporary’s new space in Tribeca. Obrosey makes black and white graphite drawings on paper; the postcard depicts one of the mostly linear examples of his work (some have more blended tones). The drawings mine the artist’s personal vocabulary of knots and twists associated with lacework. Like crocheted doilies, they are obsessive renderings, meditative and dizzying. Ms. Krumm’s sculptural musings are mostly made of knitted wire and found bits of industrial metal thing-a-ma-bobs. Seen side-by-side, completely unbeknownst to one another, the two artists hit upon a similar vision. The drawings could just as well be close-up studies or details of the sculptures. What makes the pairing interesting is that it does not represent a movement, whereas many other artists are working in a trendy or fashionable format of the day with their lack of originality comprising a movement. But living in the same world, at the same time, these two have looked out at the world at large and into the depths of their beings, and have arrived at something similar. Good art, and even bad, acts like a subconscious cultural barometer. And every month, the exhibitions change, more mail comes and we can play this game again—but no combining postcards from different months allowed! There can be as many cards as necessary to form a narrative, or whatever strikes you. Please drop off or snail mail entries to Christopher Chambers Card Game at the NY Arts magazine offices.
The best art shows of the winter were: Benjamin Edwards’ sci-fi/futuristic etherscapes (at Greenberg Van Doren) in boldly going where only Photoshop has gone before. Well, a few of these paintings on canvas look like illustrations from early Isaac Asimov or H.G. Wells paperback book covers, but most have digital-looking figments flying over and through architectural elements wthin perspective. It kind of looks like a television ad for Verizon or Sprint’s wireless services. They are very well executed and crisp; sure to please the Matrix Generation. At Betty Cunningham, photographs of unpeopled land and seascapes by Edgar Martins evoked a surreal, almost mythic presence in their majestic quietude. I-20 hosted Debora Warner’s solo. She displayed half-a-dozen interstellar tondos; videos of herself participating in (artistically embellished) athletic triathlons, several faux rose bouquets of felt in tubular vases, three monochromes and one, more colorful, in a newspaper cone. The different elements add up to an emotionally charged narrative, rife with innuendo.
