A Twentieth Street Odyssey.
November Picks
by Christopher Chambers
A Twentieth Street Odyssey
Thomas Erben Gallery had a futuristic wall painting by Vargas-Suarez Universal titled "Stardust." It looked like schematics for an interstellar spaceport � la Star Wars. Of course, with this sort of thing one always wonders, "what’s for sale here?" Conveniently, a few small, framed works are visible on display behind the desk. Next door at Sara Meltzer are architectural models of tall buildings in light green, sand blasted plexi-glass, by Jude Tallichet. I still like Adam Ross’ work in the rear gallery, although me thinks he might need to go meditate in Malaysia for a spell to get his success out of his head and get his mojo rolling again. Continuing down 20th St. Andrew Kreps has Robert Melee’s third solo with the gallery on view. He works in a variety of media, from a yellowed m�lange of a repeated photograph of his drunken mother to a few "paintings" which consist of either macaroni or bottle caps coated under thick layers of plaster and paint. Three video monitors of Mom acting weird line one wall. A darkened room contains some more videos of Mom, these with transgender sexual overtones. And in the very back is a last room, brightly lit with fluorescent tube bulbs. The floor, ceiling and walls are covered with colorful, quasi-psychedelic, hand painted paneling—as well as a console that houses several old T.V sets playing videos reminiscent of a John Waters flick. Down the block, also at street level, Anton Kern hosts a show of so-lifelike-it’s- creepy sculptures of an unspecified canine species that might actually bite if you get too close. Across the street at Feigen, I really didn’t care for the contrived grooviness in the back, although the sculptures and photos of nakedness, up front, by a different artist were moderately amusing. No names mentioned. I did go upstairs at 529 but there wasn’t anything there I liked enough to mention. Back downstairs, the stitched fabric landscapes at Elizabeth Dee Gallery looked a lot better in person than I expected from the reproduction included in the publicity materials. In fact this show is the (DING! DING! DING!) pick of the month! As paintings they would be yer’ ordinary paint by the numbers, hard edge figuration that has been the digs for the last few Lisa Ruyter style years, but as painstakingly crafted sewn items with bright contrasting colors outlined by black machine stitching, they are most striking and legitimize the progression of art minded signposts that have lead up to these works. And at the end corner, across the street from the women’s detention facility, I was really looking forward to seeing "1969" at Spike, but they wuz closed by the time that I finally got there.
