Chelsea Galleries Review

To begin, my gallery tour through Chelsea was a little bit hampered by the Jewish holidays. Several of the galleries, like the Andrea Rosen Gallery, ended up being closed for Rosh Hashanah on Saturday when I went to the city. The Aperture Gallery, which was supposed to close at 6:00, turned me away at 5:15 because they were hosting a private party. I had intended to visit all the galleries on the list but in the end I only had the chance to appreciate three.

Mitchell Innes & Nash was exhibiting work by Enoc Perez. His weathered, stylized paintings were purported to "represent an optimism tinged with the sadness of an impossible utopia" (which I thought seemed like a stretch). The large paintings themselves used bright colors (apparently applied by applying individually-painted sheets of paper to a canvas) to depict futuristic buildings, and then the surface of the canvas was distressed with many long vertical cuts. Then, randomly, there were two figure paintings done in the same style, interspersed with the 16 or so architecture paintings, which in my opinion these didn't fit the series very well, and didn't add to my understanding of his "cynical optimism" message.

Juergen Teller at the Lehmann Maupin Gallery was intriguing in concept even if the pictures did not appeal to my taste. Teller photographed 2 female subjects nude in the Louvre, standing next to famous statues and works of art like the Mona Lisa. His straight-forward photography and the subjects' lack of posing made a critique of traditional concepts of female beauty. Even the room gallery was spartan-- a big white square room. Unfortunately, aside from the impressive level of access he had to such a prestigious museum, I think his stark approach to the photography made for some technically boring pictures.

At the Robert Miller Gallery, I found the work of Barthelemy Toguo particularly nice. I was both fascinated and puzzled by the medium in which he worked, which somehow involved the bleeding of different watercolors into highly-controlled images, evocative of African tribal art and mythology. The results of his painting were disturbing and beautiful, and I can't honestly figure out how he accomplished them-- often the bleeding paint would just stop dead, wherever the artist seemed to decide they should. He also had a photo series in which he shared his multiples attempts to reveal corruption, paranoia, and racism in the African airline industry. His anecdotes, coupled with images of artifacts from these social experiments, were eye-opening for me. He often subjected himself to mistreatment, jail time, and enormous inconvenience, and I had to admire his dedication to making his point. In terms of the layout, the gallery space was large and his work was numerous, but the space was partitioned enough that I was able to appreciate differences between his several distinct areas of inquiry.