I must start with my absolute - MUST SEE - DO NOT MISS!!!
Please do yourself a favor and go to Freedman art to see Lee Bontecou's recent work!! (closes Feb 11) The gallery is a bit off the beaten path - and small - two tiny rooms in a 3rd floor walk-up - and a bit easy to miss. But oh- so worth it.
Full disclosure is that I am and have always been obessessed with this artist's work. I spent a good deal of time writing about her early work of the 1960s and early 1970s for my thesis in graduate school. Now she is in her early 80s and has rarely shown her new work in the last few years and did not show any of her work for almost three decades between the 1970s and the 1990s. Like her early work, she still works on drawings and sculpture using some of the same materials of fabric or pieces of tarp with wire stretched over a metal armature. Although her earlier wall sculptures (just google her - her work is rightly placed in the permanent collections at MOMA and the Whitney) were more abstracted but with anthropomorphic features, here the work is less abstract but still straddles between the world of nature and space.
The drawings could depict marine life and sea creatures in gray, dark charcoal and blacks. You cannot tell if these are primordial animals or some futuristic life, but either way, in their beauty, there is something foreboding and horrific. Her mobiles in this show are also an amalgam of nature, creature and machine. Invoking flight, they are scary and wonderful at the same time and you will be intrigued by both figuring out the variety of materials used, how it is structured and put together and lastly and most importantly, what it is. Her toned down palette of grays, blacks, dark browns and greens and white allow you to focus on mysterious subject matter. Is it a bird, is it a plane, is it a fish, is it a rocket?
There are two installations created in white sandboxes with materials of dried plants, wood, ceramic skulls and heads of imagined animal life. You can hover over these for a while, but what drew me in the most was a grouping of ceramic spherical forms that have a gaping hole surrounded by teeth. They are both delicate and terrifying. Again, the question is never answered if these are prehistoric or from the future? Are they alien from the sky or the earth? As with her mobiles, drawings and sculpture here, there is a void. Here the void could be a mouth or other orifice. In her drawings, the void could be the darkness of space. Either way, the void is as important as the form and the subject. The void in her work emphasize the mystery in these worlds she has created and the void allows our imagination to run, as fantastic and as frightening as that may be.
Its hard to find more original art than this today.
http://freedmanart.com/
**********
There is a fun group show at Skarstedt gallery (closing in February) that includes all the heavy hitters - Cindy Sherman, George Condo (who they now represent - whose recent new work they exhibited this late fall. Although I am not a huge fan, I thought his new work was brilliantly executed and showed a lot more depth in terms of style and concept), Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince, Jenny Holzer et al. The work is varied in terms of medium but its tied together in terms of their prominence as artists in the 1980s (most of the works are from the 1980s, but some is also recent).
http://www.skarstedt.com/
If you are just going to pop in the gallery for a second, the room on the first floor is the best. I love the Thomas Schutte sculpture Grosser Geist no. 9 (see below). It is a static twisted man of steel which is set off by the sole painting in the room, a Keith Haring black and white acrylic with crazed, dynamic bodies and heiroglyphs (see below). The two work well together in this room. The corroded and patina surface of the sculpture is just beautiful reminding one of the steep walls of a Richard Serra vortex, but here looks more interesting over the hills and valleys of the corkscrew forms of legs and arms.
**********
Another stop should be Luxembourg & Dayan to see the group exhibition Grisaille (ends at the end of January - run to see it!!). I have only seen one other show in this space but just the gallery alone is worth a look. Its a narrow, impeccable townhouse (with some great modern and midcentury furniture that I always admire when I am there). The work in this show is based on the concept of Grissaille - where the works all have a monochromatic gray palette.
The show is beautifully curated and set off with amber, bright pink, deep slate blue and burgundy walls. I love seeing art in a way that reminds me how it feels to live with it in a home rather in the "white box" kind of sterile environment that seems to be favored with most galleries. You feel more of an intimacy with the art which really adds to one's experience. (So sorry - I have to go back and take pictures!!) Art included in this exhibition is a gigantic Glenn Brown surrealist landscape based on a Dali painting - full of variations on black, white and grey. There is an iconic Vija Celmins graphite drawing of the ocean. Waves of perfection with her diminishing horizon - the brain has to remind the eyes that its just a drawing and not a photo. There is a priceless Giacommetti facing a small nude by John Currin interestingly hung over a late 18th Century French panel of gray wall paper depicting Psyche. The minimalism of a Carl Andre corner piece, Robert Morris felt piece and Richard Price painted car hood - in metal grey and silver are much more relatable and intriguing shown in this cozier context than a cold museum. Besides the Celmins drawing, there are two old exquisitely delicate Talbot photographs of lace, a magnetic painting by Graham Durward and a Betty Tompkins work that you can't just look away from (google the latter - can't produce it here.)
http://www.luxembourgdayan.com/
************
Also, quickly pop into see L&M Arts exhibition of Andy Warhol's ink and watercolor of a series of hats that he did in the late 50s for a women's magazine on the first floor. The series of hats from characters throughout literature and popular culture is whimsical and light and a rare glimpse into his talent as a draughtsman before all his more famous Pop lithographic paintings came onto the scene.
************
Stop by Gagosian if you must. Feel sorry for the security guards that must grow dizzy looking at this all day long. Buy a t-shirt or a beach towel downstairs to say you've been. Enough said.
No comments:
Post a Comment