Chelsea and beyond....

The nicest day we've had yet, and it was well spent browsing about in Chelsea, checking out the galleries. I started from 22ND and was planning on moving my way back towards Penn, until I realised I was there before the galleries really opened. There were a couple open, none that were on the list, but I went ahead anyway to kill some time. The Bruce Silverstein Gallery, showing Nicolai Howalt's, Car Crash Studies was pretty cool. The photographs were of cars that had been involved in severe, and potentially fatal accidents, which made his work even more stimulating. In some of the photos there was definite blood splatter over the driver's steering wheel, and on the shattered windshields. There was a series of photos that were 4 rows across and 3 down, of airbags deployed. It seemed like the same one, at different stages of deployment, but it's hard to tell, all airbags look alike. But the sequence of them was pleasing and and the abstract qualities in each photo were interesting. By looking at the bigger photos, you assumed they were of a smashed up car from some fatal accident, but they were unrecognizable, and seemed blurred. They were actual photos, just really up close, and the reflections and dents in the car became shapes and patterns, just like some abstract painting. It made me think...maybe this is what he thought those people might have seen, during the accident, a separation between what's real and what's not. Some other experience, that maybe only those people could explain, and that Howalt's photographs were trying to capture? Who knows, but it was cool.
So it was finally 10am now and I think all of the galleries were open by then, so I went back to the gallery I wanted to go to first, the Pace Wildenstein. In this gallery was 3 installations done by Maya Lin. This was probably one of the coolest things I've seen in awhile. When you first walk in, you definitely weren't expecting what you saw, a huge 10' by 53'4" by 35' configured, topographical like mountain/hill made out of 2 by 4 little blocks of wood, neatly stacked. Amazing. This thing took up the entire space it was in pretty much, there was a small walkway area all around it, just enough for two people to shimmy. It was made with over 50,000 pieces; impressive. There were 3 basic rooms, all connected by open walls, but clearly 3 separate rooms. The room right off of it, was a wirey grid like sculpture/instillation that touched all four walls and each point met the wall, at the middle area of each wall. As if you stood in the center and picked a point and spun around, and that's where it based itself. It's made out of aluminum tubing and paint, a 19' by 34'8" by 29'2" creation. You were invited to walk underneath of it, next to it, around it, anyway you wanted. It made the viewer involved. This topographical like grid is based on an actual spot near Bovet Island, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and the closest land is Antarctica. The third piece she had, titled, Blue Lake Pass, was made out of duraflake particle board and was several pieces next to each other to create an overall shape. There were 20 of these pieces, 4 by 5, in rows; it reminded you something of computers and a virtual reality, which makes sense, because it's based on a topographical map of terrain from the Rocky Mt.'s back range. This artist used the gallery space in quite an impressive way, and from here on, I was sure there wouldn't be anything cooler, based upon the last gallery visits we were required to do.
Moving on now....
The next gallery space I entered was the Andrew Rosen Gallery, which was showing Bruno Taut and Tetsumi Kudo's work. Bruno's work consisted of a few colors, the basic primary colors and maybe a couple shades of green too. In the first little room were 3 photos on the wall of primary colored sky scrapper and you looked past into the second, bigger room and noticed an actual glass building thing, just like the ones in the photos. There was a yellow, red and blue set of glass wear that was all hand blown glass, including the sculpture building thing in the center of the room. Along the wall in the second room was several framed white paper cut outs, over top of white, which made no sense to me, and i was bored. So the 2ND gallery space was work by Tetsumi Kudo and an instillation by Richard Tuttle. Kudo's work was just colorful prints, spray painted and imprinted patterns, that looked somewhat 3d. Bright oranges and greenish yellows, flower patterns and hearts. In the same room was the instillation by Tuttle, which was a shitty flower pot deal with shitty flower substitutes coming out of it, that was a dildo and a mannequin hand, etc. Anyway, the last space in this gallery had sculptures made from cigarette butts and just straight cigarettes, and a drawing so accurately done, it seemed like a photograph. The drawing read, "I'm smoking" and was spelled out using hand drawn cigarettes and dollar bills. Then I bounced out of there as soon as I could, to move on to more galleries.
The next stop was to see James Turrell's work at the PaceWildenstein Gallery. His work was boring to me, I spent a total of 3 or 4 minutes in there before I left. His work was big framed, holograms, that had different light fixtures shining on them, so when you walked away, to the side, closer, further, the light changed and so did the image that appeared in the actual frame. Interesting idea, but it was boring. There's only so much time you can spend starring at light shapes on a wall.
The next gallery was the Lehmann Maupin Gallery, which also was lame. The photos were done by Juergen Teller, called Paradis. Photos of ancient Greek sculpture with two naked women posed next to, sitting, or standing with the sculptures. One woman was much older and the other, much younger. I could see the artist was trying to have a comparison and a contrast between the figures, flesh and stone, young and old, body parts next to each other, real and unreal. I wasn't drawn in, and my attention faded soon as I saw the first photograph.
Next we have the Andrea Meislin Gallery, which was found on the second floor of the building, and you had to weve through the hallways to find it. The exhibit, Look at me: Photographs from Mexico City, by Jed Fielding, was creepy. Seemed like every person in each photo, either had a disfiguration, was blind, or...... had some type of disfiguring. It was weird to look at and I didn't spend too much time in there, because it made me feel uncomfortable.
Also stopped in at the Sundaram Tagore Gallery and checked out the work by Joan Vennum. The paintings were like landscapes, formatted out of a dream sequence, with blending, warm and soft colors. Made you feel like a perfect beach day or some open windy field with tall grass, or bunnies.. It was pretty but, it was just pretty.
A gallery we weren't required to see was the Winston Wachter Fine Art Gallery, showing Ed Cohen's work, The Nothing That Is Not Here. Which was brilliant and random, very colorful and happy, but also had a dark feel in some of the works. Solidly painted canvases with a multicolored drips and splatters in a specific pattern in the center of each painting. Kind of like that cardboard box and marble thing, when you put a piece of paper in and roll the marble around in paint....anyone? Goes back to pre-school. This was interesting to me, because I love the drip technique and I usually paint with my canvas laying flat and this is how he painted too.