this gallery is perhaps thrice the size of my studio, and was full full full of people and paintings. as Peggy Olsen, of Mad Men quotes (season 3 episode 4 i think) "it's so crowded in here i feel like i'm on the subway." and they spilled out onto the street, mingling with the respective crowds of the nearby galleries. now what i'm trying to understand is, what's all the hubub about? i'd rather be kind, and say, "i just don't get it," rather than flat out denying there existed any merit to the work in this show. but, i'll let you decide for yourself. here is the exhibition card image:
my neighbors in the building offered an excellent reprieve from a rather unsatisfying evening out at the galleries (Saturday). short animations and films...one entitled "White Out," was discomfitingly similar to Paul Pfeiffer's earlier videos wherein he'd remove the basketball players (or boxers...etc) from the arena, leaving the viewer with swishes, blinking lights, and the sensation itself, minus the spectacle's main characters. another, beautifully done, though i missed the title, involves a slow rotation through domestic spaces...as though the camera, panning 360 degrees moved so slowly there was time enough to change the scenery entirely before it'd come full circle. we begin our voyage in the attic of an old house, panning eventually past bedrooms, bathrooms, living room spaces and workshops, a doorway with someone desperately ringing to get in, and finally conclude in the garage, just as the door shuts. and it's also so eerily ersatz, the pieced together photomontaged landscape, in its hyper-real color, and just-a-wee-bit off movement. kudos you guys. if you'd like to find them online, my neighbors organized a screening of works by themselves &; friends including: claudia larchner, liddy scheffknecht &; armin b wagner, and markus hanakam & roswitha schuller. later i went out with some friends, residents here, sissa and auréle.
last night le Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac hosted a vernissage for Elger Esser, whose work i'd forgotten was so breathtakingly poetic. the exhibition entitled Saone & Rhone features photos of those two landscapes printed large enough as to allow each of us the opportunity to dive right in. and standing before one of them i realized i'd never seen so clearly the division of air, land, and water. i'd never been offered such an opportunity virtually. the uppermost and bottommost edges of each print fade to almost-white before the frame's edge, and in each a modest strip of land is suspended like a tight-rope pulled taught through the middle. and it's revealed: the division of water, solid, gas. and it's so simple, and we wonder why we'd never seen it this way before. and not to ramble on at great length, but the colors, so muted, seem to have been breathed onto the paper's surface. they're somewhere between entirely desaturated, sepia tinted, and that artificially yet nostalgia-inducing hand coloration effect from the early 20th ce.
also on exhibit are francesco clemente and terence koh, both of which were terribly disappointing.
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