chelsea, april 2007, #1... a SPECIAL EDITION anaba supplement to the NYTimes

i saw a lot of stuff... AGAIN. i mean, a LOT of stuff.

My plan was to start off with posting a few FAVORITES, but I saw that today's NYTimes reviews three of the shows I saw and had planned to mention in the next few days... so I think I'll just tag along with the Times and compare impressions.


Wilhelm Sasnal at Anton Kern - this show was a letdown... the painting posted above is probably the only one I liked(?).. it was a pretty WEAK painting show. BUT... it seems I completely missed an instructional video that was hidden somewhere and which supposedly provides all kinds of help(?) in appreciating the paintings. ALSO... Anton Kern exhibitions invariably "stay with me"... meaning that more than once I have left that gallery sort of disappointed, with a little more appreciation/understanding coming later.

Roberta Smith says - the film "helps explain but doesn’t really justify the deprived, unfinished look of the paintings and their general lack of color"... and that Sasnal "doesn’t give the viewer enough to work with."

UPDATE 4/7: artnet has posted a review of the show, including an image of the painting that is reversed... scroll all the way down.


Anya Keilar at Daniel Reich - not interested in any of the stuff in the front space, but enjoyed the three glamour-y mixed-media relief pictures in the back. They're like shadow boxes, with suspended layers of fabric and paper, really nice... lots to engage with.

Roberta Smith says - she likes the front stuff a little more than I do, but seems to agree that the three boxes in the back are the best.


Neil Farber at Clementine - SNOOZE. The piece pictured above is one of the first ones you see, many many many many little heads with faces... I initially thought it was an unusually unimaginative and drab Deki Yayoi. This show was a yuck that I probably wouldn't have mentioned except I'm playing this follow along with the NYTimes game.

Bridget Goodbody says - the show "brings to mind Dante’s Divine Comedy"... she also describes the show's "pièce de résistance".

HOLY SHIT! What crap! What is happening? She writes for the NYTimes??? Is that some kind of Sanjaya thing they are doing? I don't get it.

UPDATE: i was in chelsea months later... Clementine gallery's storage racks are viewable from the window on the tunnel... the "piece de resistance" is sitting on a shelf in the back.

Chelsea visit

Went to Chelsea on Saturday hoping to see Eric Doeringer. He wasn't there but I did end up seeing a lot of good stuff; below is a partial listing. I'll continue tomorrow.

Polly Apfelbaum at D'Amelio Terras - Cartoon Garden (black and white), a 13 x 25 foot bed of individually cut, black and white cartoony flowers, looked GREAT in the slightly larger white rectangular room on the concrete floor. It reminded me of being at Ryoanji. It was PERFECT.

Nick Mauss at Daniel Reich - Some interesting-(ish) small paintings and drawings behind spindly music-stand-like tripods, but the most interesting thing was watching Daniel Reich walk in. What a weird floating walk! I couldn't take my eyes off him.

Tom Meacham at Oliver Kamm - Lots of very different small-ish paintings. No problem with the lack of consistency, but would like to feel that a little more exploration was happening. Felt a little like skimming.

Maybe they were consistent in a non-exploration of technique and content; an overall thinness - but ultimately not very satisfying.

Kerstin Bratsch at Derek Eller - Similar to the Meacham show but not quite as broad a range of techniques; a little more concentration. Each individual piece meant more.

There was a very 2D, washy, black-and-white warped canvas Russian folk-art lady painting below another black-and-white, smaller and more abstract. Good small one of a more thickly painted grey horse split down the middle by the ground, like it was impaled or perhaps a carousel horse. A good sailboat painting.

All interesting.

Ethan Greenbaum at Buia - Very much liked. My favorites were the most abstract, more sculptural ones like Person, Window, and Landscape. I think they are painted on sculpted and cobbled together pieces of foam or something. Person is a tall mustard-colored construction; part stop-sign, part hangman gallows.

The more standard-format, slightly Carrol Dunham-like one pictured below is called Employee.



Donald Moffett at Marianne Boesky - Heavily textured silver paintings in a very bright white room. They made me think of the Rudolf Stingel seen at the Tang last year (or two years ago), but not as interesting. Maybe it was the presentation - the low-key hallway hanging at the Tang was very good.

A few of these paintings had holes in the center, which I think went through the wall. Couldn't see inside, it was all blackness. Maybe I missed something? Was there more?

UPDATE 12/10/2005: Now I have seen this same paintings in Miami at Art Basel, where they looked very good. What a difference an installation makes. At Miami, there were just a few - one on the wall, one on the floor leaning against the wall - surrounded by work by other artists. Much better as individual objects, just as paintings, than that bright bright cold original installation.

Sergej Jensen at Anton Kern - Very interesting, I left this the same way I left the Matthew Monahan show here earlier this summer - not quite understanding but thinking I have seen something good. I need to go back.

This piece is called Palette Head -



The gallery also had a Matthew Monahan in the back with a bunch of David Shrigleys. EXCELLENT.

Mike Kelley, Day is Done, at Gagosian - Whoah!!! Overwhelming! This is another one that I need to go back to, so much to digest.

He has taken some old (maybe 1970's) high-school yearbook photos and re-shot the same poses with new models, and also made videos taking off from the photos. I don't know if all the yearbook photos are from the same yearbook or not but some of the characters in the videos overlap; for example, two characters from two different photos will interact in the same video.

The gallery is like a funhouse, full of music and costumes and flashing lights. I love the way he makes us move through the space. I really hope I have a chance to go back before it closes.

RELATED: Artnet's Ben Davis on Kelley's show.