| Several years ago I was hired to curate an exhibition of black female artists. I rolled my eyes and coined it, “The Soul Sisters Show,” which infuriated the sponsor, who was also my best friend, my roommate and a black man. So, I made an appointment at the Kenkeleba House to peruse their slide banks of said subject. The young black woman who was the director there was incensed at the idea of a white guy organizing the show and was particularly nasty and difficult to work with, while still assuring me that they needed any opportunities they could get. Muttering to myself on my way home, I suddenly realized, “Hey, isn’t Val a black woman artist? And, how about Lynn Seeney?” |  |
Picks for January/February, 2007 – Christopher Chambers
Several years ago I was hired to curate an exhibition of black female artists. I rolled my eyes and coined it, “The Soul Sisters Show,” which infuriated the sponsor, who was also my best friend, my roommate and a black man. So, I made an appointment at the Kenkeleba House to peruse their slide banks of said subject. The young black woman who was the director there was incensed at the idea of a white guy organizing the show and was particularly nasty and difficult to work with, while still assuring me that they needed any opportunities they could get. Muttering to myself on my way home, I suddenly realized, “Hey, isn’t Val a black woman artist? And, how about Lynn Seeney?” I just never really thought of them in a box like that before. I rounded up a few other women of African descent that I knew and the exhibition was set. But I never liked the idea of putting together an exhibition based on ethnicity alone. Or art that patently exploits it, like Kara Walker’s. In organizing a show, if their works shared some aspect of a common style, well, that’s different and it’s useful. Similarly, several galleries have opened in New York in the last few years that showcase Asian art, Latino art and, recently, I received a press release announcing the opening of a New York branch of a German gallery that will introduce young European artists to New York audiences. Are they going to show New York artists in Germany? I don’t like one-way streets. Sure, I bought an imported drill gun at Home Depot; I’m not a xenophobe, but should I, as a critic, or curator, or American, or world citizen, support a private enterprise that doesn’t support me or anyone who looks like me?
We’ll try not to think about politics as I recommend the season’s most interesting exhibitions, regardless of race, color or creed:
First, top pick for the frosty season is Sam Lewitt (never met him, have no idea what he/she looks like) at the Miguel Abreu Gallery on the Lower East Side. I’m not crazy about promoting galleries in this, perhaps my favorite neighborhood, because, like a favorable restaurant review, too much attention ruins a place. However, gentrification will inevitably spoil the area anyway, so, F it, if you can’t beat ‘em, join them. Miguel Abreu, one of the founders of the avant-garde, now defunct Thread Waxing Space, has opened the most tasteful gallery in hipsville. Architecturally, it doesn’t look like a New York gallery—tiled floor, bookshelves up front, recessed lighting, desk in the middle of the room—I’ve seen this sort of style in other countries. Mr. Abreu’s taste tends towards conceptual art. His program includes monthly exhibitions, lectures and screenings in one-off events. Sam Lewitt’s exhibition focuses on the idea of databases, or more precisely, the evolution of knowledge storage systems; libraries, for example. There will be several mock book sculptures, a vitrine holding a few examples of a thought “saved” in different modes and a large photo-montage about the emergence of photo copy machines.
The most interesting shows from 2006 (since September) are listed below in no particular order.
Jade Townsend, “And the days fly by on their own” at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art. A site-specific, narrative installation employing such elements as sod, chain link fence, plastic trees—“Populated by an open-ended collection of social and cultural symbols, while maintaining a cohesive and personal nature.”
Fabienne Lasserre: “OTHERS” at Virgil de Voldère Gallery. “Spiny head-like forms absent of the usual orifices; formless blobs with tentacles extending from their core as well as tool-like objects resembling harnesses or sadomasochistic paraphernalia populate a large felt-coated pedestal mid-gallery. Similar to the ethnographic exhibits common to natural history museums.” Surreal sculptures and drawings made with leading materials.
Annette Messager, “To Bring Into the Worlds (Mettre aux Mondes)” at Marian Goodman Gallery. “Installations based on the aesthetics of collage and accumulation of theatrical display and fictional-autobiographical wry meditation upon birth and creation…using reminiscence and memory as a vehicle…grotesque, the absurd, the phantasmagoric.”
Mathew Ritchie, “The Universal Adversary” at Andrea Rosen Gallery. “A major architectural intervention, a folded black latticework sky almost 30 feet across floats at the literal and conceptual center of the exhibition. The folded sky fills the main gallery, bifurcating the space into a floating viewing platform and a dense netherworld filled with new paintings.” Ritchie’s work takes the creation of the universe as its central theme: cosmic explosions, notes and jottings.
Barnaby Furnas at Marianne Boesky Gallery. Heroic, large paintings: monumental floods, the parting of the red sea—mythic and religious themes.
Albert Oehlen, “Painter of Light” at Luhring Augustine. Large scale, heroic, abstract, action painting. Oehlen epitomizes a current trend towards what I will term, “Pop Expressionism.”
Olav Christopher Jenssen, “Appendix: Third Section of the Empty Drawing Room” at Tracy Williams Ltd. Cryptic, intimate, abstract expressionist, encoded, expansive, curious, dense, layered, simple shapes…paintings and works on paper by a Norwegian artist who resides in Germany and Sweden.
