Here's what was up in Chelsea on a slow, sunny Tuesday. Lots of places were changing over to the next show but I still saw:
A group show at Nicole Klagsbrun of works by Brendan Fowler, Jacob Kassay, and James Hyde, plus a solo show by Barney Kulok: Black-on-black text paintings filled with rows and rows of stenciled, shorthand phrases, which turn out to be the names of wireless networks he located on his cell phone while roaming between two predetermined points in New York. Most are a mite more interesting than the colorless, Time Warner-mandated name we use here: "3546." Kulok is a photographer first, and that plus the fact that the two points often related to the history of photography in New York (such as: site of famous Weegee photograph, location of Alfred Stiegletz’s famous Gallery 291) superimposed past and personal on the intangible digital present, muddying the whole concept behind "In Visible Cities" but also spicing it up some.
Installation view of Barney Kulok's "In Visible Cities" at Nicole Klagsbrun:
Galerie Lelong – Gentle giant heads by Jaume Plensa, some made of carved alabaster and others made in resin and lit from within. One peek was enough.
Justine Kurland's "This Train is Bound for Glory" at Mitchell Innes Nash: Kurland clears away folky residue from the Depression-era myth of the carefree hobo in her somber photos of trainhoppers, wanderers, the odd hiker, and others she met while traveling across the US of A. Weird thing though: the best works show lone trains snaking across grim, unpeopled Midwestern landscapes and cozying up to a barren hillside on the Donner Pass. Her more familiar depictions of small souls in the big wilderness, especially those showing Kurland’s own little boy hanging out in her camper van, tug a titch too hard at the heartstrings.
Then around to 22nd Street, east to west again:
Rebecca Warren at Matthew Marks: Warren did something fantastic installing this show, where everything registers just a bit off-balance. One unfired clay sculpture of a booby, bumpy goddess type is sequestered in a big vitrine,
á la museum display, while an equivalent one right next door is just out there in the open. An L-shaped steel sculpture dangles off the side of a pedestal as if it were slouching toward the ground at precision right angles. Other sturdy, steel constructions resemble Anthony Caros or small Richard Serras, but all that machismo is wiped away with the addition of a girly pom-pom: the crazed decorator’s touch. The show’s tallest work, standing doubly so on a slender pedestal, is installed with just inches of clearance beneath the gallery ceiling--never mind that moving it just a few inches forward under a nearby skylight would have given it lots of extra headroom. Love it.
Installation view of Rebecca Warren's "Feelings" at Matthew Marks:
Peter Hujar at Matthew Marks, just next door: 1950s photos of developmentally disabled children in institutions in the US and Italy, mostly sad with a dab of happy.
Maya Lin at that big Pace Wildenstein space. Blockbuster treatment in the neighborhood, big banners everywhere for “Three Ways of Looking at the Earth.” The biggest way is 2 x 4 Landscape, a single, rolling hill made of 2x4 boards cut to various sequential lengths. It has an impressive, looming sort of presence (taking up most of the gallery), calling to mind a city of skyscrapers or ticky-tacky hillside dwellings. It made me think of Hong Kong, even though I’ve never been there.
Then around to 21st Street, west to east:
Barbara Gladstone’s second space had its first show by
Damián Ortega. Ortega started off as a political cartoonist and I totally heart him for his wry wit and ultra-efficient visual puns. (Other sculptures, favorites of mine: 1)
Cosmic Thing, a VW bug disassembled and hung spread out in the air like the parts depicted in a how-to manual and 2) an obelisk on a dolly, fixture of civilization thus made moveable.) But in this show, called “CAPITAL Less” he fires off an obvious round in with several big, crumbling pillars of bricks, looking wind-worn and twisty. Kinda boh-ring. But I still love him. There’s also a sculpture of a length of ventilation hose, coiled like a snake, which is slightly more clever take on all those halted construction sites and foreclosed apartment buildings.
Installation view of Damian Ortega's "CAPITAL Less" at Gladstone Gallery:
Last stop: It was double painting at Tanya Bonakdar with Carla Klein’s panoramic, murky images of driving in the dark on floor one and Rita Lundqvist’s folk-inspired little oil-on-panel pieces on floor two. Bad things just might be afoot in Lundqvist’s Shaker-simple scenes, which are populated with stoic little individuals who smile through a host of ambiguous scenarios.
Rita Lundqvist, Full Moon, 2009:
