I Hurt Myself Today. (OK. Thursday actually.)

Yeah. Opening night in Chelsea. What silliness. Don't know why I did that to myself. Although, as impossible as the art-looking can be amidst the clusterfuck there's always a couple things that stand out in a very real way. Thursday night two very different shows did just that in exactly the same way. I loathed them for the first 30-seconds, and then I totally fell in love.


The first show was Thomas Lendvai's Between Pain and Boredom at Winkleman Gallery. Minimalist lumber, baby. But the truth is, as much as I love minimalism, I never quite trust it at first. Then, I look. If it's bad, it's lumber in a wall. If it's good it does what Lendvai's work does. It opens up the space in your head and the room in your heart to be filled with the unexpected. Surprises abound in this work. I even found a few when I was leaving Susan Graham's fine show at Schroeder Romero next door. I know I'm onto something when a work pulls me back into the gallery one more time before I leave the building. Although it refers to a emotional space usually confined by solitude, Between Pain and Boredom reaches out. You should too.



This professionally taken photo was totally lifted from the gallery site.

The next show that hit me couldn't have been more different. The cheese factor in Yuh-Shioh Wong's 13 Ways Forever Expanding Compartments at Foxy Production was immediately overwhelming, and like I said: I hated it at first. Then I started looking more closely and kept finding things I loved. The works wouldn't end after I walked away from them. There were two reasons I kept returning to a piece: sometimes my head couldn't quite wrap itself around the mechanics and it was a pleasant itch in the back of my skull, and other times it was just so delicious that I wanted another bite. Sometimes it was both. "Forever expanding" to say the least. Filled my heart with the good stuff. Applause multiplied by a thousand mirrors, or at least 13 of them.




This professionally taken photo was also totally lifted from the gallery site.

Oh, and I also stopped at Pace-Wildenstein to see the new work from Robert Whitman. I knew that the scene would SUCK, but I couldn't help myself. I'm well chuffed about this show and I was feeling brave. As I said earlier, I don't know why I do this to myself. I knew that any real investigation of the art would be impossible. I'm sure that some of the A-listers partying at opening were disappointed because the lights were off. What's the point of looking at art if you can't be seen looking at it, right? At any rate, it looked fucking awesome and I'll return . . . probably a couple hundred more times. LoveLoveLOVE Whitman's work. Big ups to Rachael Jackson for the introduction to it oh so many years ago.


This photo was so totally lifted from the gallery site it isn't even funny.