Our final art-filled day in the city was a bit of a marathon. We headed to splurge on galleries in Chelsea. I absolutely fell in love with this part of the city.
There are hundred of galleries in this area, so with a guide in hand, we chose a semi-random sampling and took 24th street by storm visiting about fifteen in all.
The first I think was the Franz Gertsch Gallery. I love the large, bold photos and interesting images by Chuck Close. I feel like I saw some of his work somewhere else in the trip. Next we hit the Max Lang Galerie. Here there were some cool Andy Warhol (Dracula) and Keith Haring prints. There was some other pop-looking art from an artist named Tom Ken. There was some other cool works by a graffiti artist who goes by QUIK. Next door was the Gladstone Gallery with works by Anish Kapoor and Caroll Dunham. These were actually a little disappointing. I didn’t really like the abstract color works on paper of Kapoor’s. I thought Dunham was more interesting. Not to say I like looking at what I thought were some semi-abstract assholes (literal) and guns, but I did like the bright, bold geometric shaped and interesting uses of the frame (breaking the frame and combining frames).
At the Mike Weiss Gallery we saw “New Paintings” by Andrea Belag. Cool name, didn’t care at all for the paintings. There were works by lots of different artists at the Baumgartner. I particularly liked a piece of completely balanced stones called “Axial Stones” by an artist named Quasha and a bold piece by an artist named William Anastasi. I actually liked what I saw at the Stellan Holm Gallery. There was an exhibit by Dwayne Moser called “The Real Tinsel,” that featured kind of large-scale cool paintings of city scenes around Hollywood that were painting from photographs that were also there.
The Matthew Marks Gallery was my absolute favorite of the day. We spent a while in there viewing Nan Goldin’s “The Other Side.” The photographs show a spectrum of transsexuals and drag queens. I loved the different and emotions and tones of the images. Some conveyed struggle and isolation while others seemed to be liberating and glamorous. It was beautiful.
The other galleries worth mentioning was Vera Lutter’s huge pinhole-camera photographs at the Gagosian Gallery. I was also intrigued by Andy Hofer’s “Only Gods Could Survive” exhibit. It was a strange mix than seemed straight out of an offbeat kid’s animation onto a sketchbook. Some took the form of odd superhero sketchbook drawings, to a bat-shaped armour, to hanging picture installations. It might be best described in some recurring themes or images: dinosaurs, bats, blackletter, superheroes, medieval, armour, trees, skulls and mythology.
We wrapped up the evening with a lovely Italian dinner paid for by Kartz and nicely completely with some vino rosso.
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