September/October Picks
By Christopher Chambers
The best solo show in New York City this summer (besides my own, of course) was Will Ryman (son of Robert) at Gasser Grunert. His comical Gumby-on-a-bad-day figures were posed in several situations in walk-in sized cubicles. The best individual work of art was a medium/small oil painting on canvas by Andrea Champlin titled Generative Cascade, in Jeff Bailey Gallery’s group show, Fake Plastic Trees. The painters’ dialogue sometimes seems painted into a corner. Recent trends have included a flat slick, hard edge style, and the ever-popular bad boy, bad girl, bad painting school of sometimes lyrical, generally puerile, suburban charm. But there is also a resurgence of expressionism and there’s the much-touted Neo-Baroque. Painting is somewhat of a headless beast at the moment. Andrea Champlin’s painting addresses the various issues; choices open to an intelligent, adventurous picture maker. Her work would pretty much fall under the first category – hard edge/slick surface, but the layering of abstract imagery with botanical references is very cleverly composed and it comes off more painterly than graphic. The next best work of art was in the same show, a painted plastic sculpture of apocalyptic antlers.
In contrast, by popular vote, the worst show of the summer was Dexter Dalwood at Gagosian. His lazily rendered paintings of interiors, exteriors and useless stuff bored all who entered, making one wonder, "How did this get in here, anyway?"
Other exhibitions high up on the hit list included Charles Yuen’s lovely, layered, childish paintings at Metaphor’s new location on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn; Michael Rovner, In Stone, at Pace Wildenstein/MacGill — transient runes projected on slabs of rock housed in vitrines/light boxes; A three month display by Ashley Bickerton at Sonnabend, of constructed collages-painted-wood-things with assorted attachments referencing something about disgusting honkies amusing themselves in the South Seas; And Linda Burnham’s sweet paintings of swarms of artificial looking butterflies at Fredericks Freiser Gallery.
The much anticipated outstallation of half a dozen monumental Franz West sculptures at Lincoln Center was a little disappointing. It could have been really great — now follow my advice — if he’d have ground off the seams and chosen more lively colors . . . but then I guess they wouldn’t be Franz West. Over at Madison Park, DeSuvero’s massively heroic welded I-Beams and steel slabs are humongously impressive extant objects.
