chelsea, june 2007 - group shows

Jon Kessler, in The Line of Time, and The Plane of Now, at Wallspace -

The front room has a flat-screen tv showing Edward Hopper's famous painting, with video stuff happening where the background street-scene should be - movement, light, shininess, kinetic stuff, maybe computer stuff, looks random.

This sculpture (pictured above) is in the back room... the same Hopper painting, but with the street-scene painted out, and things moving around, back and forth. Tiny video cameras are mounted on some of the moving parts. The light and movement filmed by the tiny cameras mounted on the sculpture is blue-screened into the background of the Hopper painting... that is what is shown on the video monitor in the front room, filmed by a camera mounted across from the sculpture, focused directly on the painting (not showing any of the sculpture).

If someone walks between the sculpture and the video camera across from it, that person blocks out the painting for a moment...

it's hard to explain.

It looks like a robot, a relative or descendant of one of those Nam June Paik's.


Two (or three?) of the video cameras; the little black things, one trained on the piece of tinfoil as it is pulled up and down, the other swings back and forth in front of that concave mirror.


Man Ray, in Concrete Works, at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, through July 27th.

Here is another one.


Jessica Stockholder, in Concrete Works, at Mitchell-Innes & Nash.

The Albert Oehlen in this show is for sale at $425,000, but for that much money you could buy TWO cars in that unbelievable Chelsea car showroom.

Green Lotus. Does Albert Oehlen get half, or is that like a re-sale? Do his paintings generally sell for that much? If I were an artist like that I would have a lot of nice cars.


Stefan Saffer, in In Context, at Pavel Zoubok, through August 10th - I had seen his work on Barry's flickr site and really liked it, so I was happy to see this. James and Barry have been following his work for a while...

Also liked seeing Tony Berlant, John Evans, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Simon Neville, and Jack Tworkov. It's a huge show, almost sixty artists included.

There is a small Al Souza which I initially mistook for a possible Arturo Herrera, then circled through the show and came upon a Herrera. The Souza is the better Herrera.


i forget, in Rare Birds, at Luise Ross, through July 27th - the premise is maybe a little corny - everything has birds in it! - but the work is good. Way too many charming pieces to name all their names.... but it was especially nice to see a second John Evans that day (the first was in the Pavel Zoubak collage show).

The snake in the piece above is a twisted piece of tinfoil; the red sun and star I think are sawdust, or sand.

Last time I was here they had the John Dilg show, he is included in this show as well.


Jakub Julian Ziolkowski, in Three for Society, at 303 Gallery, through July 27th - something creepy, like a leather mask or something...both his paintings are cartoony but creepy like that. I like the way he lets these tiny controlled drips happen, and then works them into the composition... for example, in the piece above you can maybe see that little drip of blue in the shoulder, and in this piece you can see the oily ass-crack sweat.

There is so much tension in that drip of blue in the shoulder.

I also liked the Mary Heilmann.


Josh Smith, in Irreversible, at Stellan Holm - good abstract painting show... they wouldn't let me take pictures, this Josh Smith one was snapped as the guy said "No Pictures", so it sucks, sorry.

This Josh Smith so clearly has the name spelled out, so I asked if it was made before or after the work included in his recent solo at Lehmann Maupinn, in which none of the (possible) text is legible. They said this piece was made after those pieces...

Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to focus on this show as much as I'd have liked, because I ran into someone and got distracted. There was a nice stripe/stain glittery piece by John Armleder.

Curated by Niandra LaDes.