Oct 23, 2009

Finally, I get to Chelsea

Saw some good work in Chelsea this past week.
The big, beautiful pictures-lover in me loved these shows:




Amy Stein at Clamp Art - Amy's Domesticated series, employing both stuffed and real animals, plays with our skewed relationship with the natural world in a lyrical and effective way.



© Amy Stein










Justine Kurland at Mitchell-Innes & Nash:
Justine's photos taken alongside a drive across the country to the west are romantic, ethereal, and a throwback to the current early 20th century - zeitgeist currently taking over our city.




© Justine Kurland










Ed Burtynsky at Hasted Hunt Kreutner
Burtynsky uses large format to perfect effect, capturing crystalline reflections in big, oily puddles.




© Edward Burtynsky











Simen Johan at Yossi Milo:
A lot of people around me are 'over' big pictures, like little, cute, badly done pictures as a refreshing alternative. I'm not on that over-big-stuff bandwagon; I like art to surround me, to allow me to lose myself in this other thing or place. Such was my feeling with Johan's show at Yossi Milo, gigantic, fantastical animal pictures covering entire gallery walls. I fell in love with his Bison; the creature mythical, mysterious, and huge, it alluded to our primordial and unknown past on this planet.




© Simen Johan











at Claire Oliver, Beth Cavener Stichter's ceramic huge, eroticized animals were disturbing, beautiful, and provocative:



© Beth Cavener Stichter











And finally, Jaume Plensa's In the Midst of Dreams at Gallery Lelong was spectacular. In the main gallery, giant, luminous fiberglass white heads rose out of a sea of rocks. The other sculptures consisted of slightly warped heads that had been then carved out of white alabaster. The faces appeared somewhat distorted, ghostly, and dreamlike, as if trying to remember a passing glimmer in a vision.




© Jaume Plensa

No comments: