picks ’em / NYC March/April 2006
Christopher Chambers
It seems like every time I walk around the block in Chelsea another half-dozen galleries open shop. It’s a bit like the real estate bubble, I just don’t see how the market place can sustain such growth. But then, this is New York, and every average billionaire around the world wants a piece. The irony is that just what attracts people here is what gets stomped out by their presence. Artists have a way of ruining neighborhoods by seeking out cheap space; it becomes groovy because of their presence, the rents go up, you know what happens next…
Among the more interesting art stores to launch recently, Christopher Henry is an oddly designed space. He shows narrative work in various media. I particularly liked an installation of fake flowers in transparent globes by Cassandra Lozano. Freight + Volume is a small sleek space along one of the gallery rows (24th Street), they show hip young stuff. A couple of small galleries have opened up along 10th Avenue between 27th and 28th Streets that remind me quite a bit of the East Village shoebox style galleries of the 80s. So far, Magnan Projects–formerly of Leibman Magnan, they got divorced–has shown a couple of solo and two-person painting shows and a mixed media group exhibition of emerging artists. Next-door (now this gets confusing) Morgan Lehman has opened a New York branch for their Connecticut-based art operations. The fanciest of the latest bunch is Bartolami Dayan. The hot new gallery’s first show was Tim Noble and Sue Webster’s "The Glory Hole." The artist team’s freestanding abstract metal sculptures cast ephemeral shadows, and a work with lighting altered the facade of the building.
C.O.F.A. (Claire Oliver Fine Art) and Andrew Kreps both expanded their respective galleries into impressive three-story operations in Chelsea. Since I started writing this paragraph I had to go back to Chelsea to double check some information. Like sixteen new galleries had opened. We’ll have to get to them next time. Of particular note: With the Zen-like steadfastness of Mark Rothko or Joseph Albers, James Nares continues to produce calligraphic swipes of paint on canvas with almost no discernable variation for 20 years now. There were a couple of real beauties in his exhibition at Paul Kasmin this winter, but then an elephant hits one good one out of ten too, as can be seen in the night clubs at the weekly exhibitions organized by that devil Baird Jones. The last press release he sent me read: "Animal House: Artwork by Tillamook Cheddar (a dog), Congo The Chimp, Arum The Elephant, Cholla The Horse" at Crobar nightclub, on Friday night, from 10 to midnight. He was also promoting: "Celebrity Names Which Are Often Mispronounced: Artwork by Rachel Weisz, Red Skelton, Diane Arbus, Kate Millett, Mamie Van Doren, Roy Lichtenstein, Ottis Toole, Dr. Seuss, Claes Oldenberg, Tyra Banks, Bai Ling, Leni Riefenstahl" at Avalon nightclub. Sounds serious.
