Our IDC class filed out of Baruch’s Vertical Campus building, making its way in scattered friend groups towards the bus stop. Daniel, Olha, and I were sitting at the back of the bus watching some comedic clips from “Everything is Illuminated”, a 2005 movie starring Elijah Wood. We got off near Chinatown and were soon approaching 30 Orchard Street, a tall Tom Smith was holding the clear door open. One of the things that I most appreciate about modern art galleries, is the clean presentation. Nothing in the room is meant to distract from the art, allowing the artist’s work to speak for itself. “Swimming In My Head” is a fitting way to name the exhibition. The paintings created by layering and then compressing various layers took the eye on a journey. Something told me that the feelings evoked by such art can only be recreated by the consumption of mind expanding substances, or a profound spiritual awakening.
My friends and I would stop in front of each canvas and observe silently for several minutes. Only recently, I would have been confused by a large segment of modern art, abstract forms would confuse me, a false pretentious stench would permeate through many of these galleries. Maybe a certain degree of maturity, or possibly a slightly more eccentric friend group opened up my mind to these unusual creations. Their realism isn’t in what we see through our restricted windows on the world, the realism lies in the human subconscious. The most interested part was breaking that contemplative silence and sharing what it is that we saw. One of my friends saw two birds facing each other, another saw endless planes of existence coming apart, I saw something entirely different.
The layers aren’t just the physical reality, they represent the infinitely complicated task our sensory receptors have to complete every waking moment. Coming to terms with what we can understand or even conceive of in our current state is ground and humbling. Yet when Tom Smith spoke about a few of the highlights in the gallery, we discovered that he had a premise taken from reality to create his abstract works. One of those was a body of water with willow trees hanging over it, another reminds viewers of an underwater scene. Colors have strong influence on how the viewer feels at a given moment. One of the red works conjured up apocalyptic imagery, anger, wrath. The yellow painting let off a musical vibe.
I left the gallery with my friend group in a different mood. We explored some of the other galleries in the neighborhood, catalogue in hand. The cat cafe was intriguing as well, and restraining myself from tapping on the glass was no easy task. Our class made its Wikipedia page for an artist worthy of exposure and future success. It was really something to take things in for ourselves and then hear about the artist’s process first hand. We will be coming back to this neighborhood for future gallery openings, NYC’s vibrant art scene never disappoints.
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