By Darren Panicali
Being a Macaulay-at-Hunter student is such a luxury; we live for free on our very own quaint, little residence hall, smack in the middle of the east side of the city. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to not explore the city when you become so comfortable in your own area in Manhattan. There was a whole microcosm of spectacular paintings just across town this whole time, and I really just had absolutely no clue it even existed! Just imagine: a whole world of culture and experience right on the same street I live on, completely untapped and screaming to be explored! But Professor Jablonka decided to step in and change all that; and so began our mystical adventure to the infamous Chelsea art galleries.
Picture art that messes with your notion of reality as juxtaposed with pretend worlds; the stuff you might conjure up in your head is what we discovered at Jorge Queiroz’s gallery. His art always seemed to tell some kind of tragic or mysterious story, the details of which you couldn’t put your finger on because just when you think you have a grasp of the painting, you notice another element that dispels your entire view of it and forces you to reconsider it from another perspective. Employing media like oil paint and charcoal and colors both staid and outstanding in strange patterns and figures, everything was so whimsical, but (most of the time) it all worked in accord and didn’t seem as intensely random as one might have otherwise perceived it. Not my favorite gallery, but its enigmatic quality is definitely worth mentioning.
Brice Marden’s gallery tried to incite you to imagination. The squiggly lines with their restricted color palette and bland backgrounds, set in a limiting boundary on the left and right, didn’t particularly inspire me, but I did find them fascinating to look at and imagined each winding line was a path on a map and how you could meander for days on end along them, never finding your destination. And that sums up the experience for me: lost. It didn’t matter whether Marden used thick lines or thin lines or different colors – although these differentials gave a disparate character to each work, the overall feeling evoked by all was one of sheer confusion. Needless to say, the works were still done brilliantly, and you could see the calligraphic influences in the flow of the lines along the canvases. They still possessed a pleasing character, albeit perplexing.
Oh my God, Kim Dorland is my hero. Walking into that gallery was such a breath of fresh air. This man employed the most innovative painting techniques I’ve seen in a long time. The nature of his work was always so supernatural, spooky, and as dreary and disturbing as the dead themselves. He used watercolor techniques to make faces distorted, created 3D paintings with the build-up of paint on the canvas, and tacked on nails, strings, feathers, and other outrageous items, weaving them into harmonious yet chilling images with a sort of “religious” experience that went with them all. Everything was just dripping, waning, and dying. It was truly horrific and spectacular at the very same time; there was just so much emotion. I loved it.
Unfortunately, Kent Dorn’s woodland works were utterly dwarfed by Dorland’s intense pieces. The nature theme was nice, but I really wasn’t interested. I will say that he did well with his own 3D effects, which he used primarily on people and vegetation. Nature scenes were well detailed, but for me, everything carried a sort of unpleasant and anti-ideal feel to it. And my back started to hurt under my bag’s weight at that point; that gallery experience was just a mess.
Oy, William Copley. Oy. If I wanted to see porn, I’d go buy a porno. Or I’d Google it. I understand that perhaps it’s important to idealize sex/nakedness as something beautiful and nothing to be ashamed of and yada, yada, yada, but come on. He could have just as easily made his subjects into more ideal figures instead of cartoonish hoochies, and that could have done the job of conveying something cogent to the masses just fine. Still, it was a powerful message, disseminated through the depiction of sensual acts and blatant sex positions with certain anatomy emphasized over other body parts, and I congratulate him on that, but personally, that was just nasty. No thank you, Copley; no thank you.
I can’t say I understood the political underpinnings of Nicky Nadjoumi’s fiery work, but the ardor was felt so deeply. Through the use of abstract techniques ranging from dotting, peculiar patterns and lines, watercolor, distortion, exposed anatomy, and sharply ironic images, he depicted the censorship and political corruption of his subjects fervently and drove home some message of social strife and discontent. He often left empty space around his subjects, giving them an aura that made them appear more life-like and prominent. It made me feel like participating in some kind of social rebellion, or at least coaxed me into relearning that you really can use art to articulate that you believe something is wrong with the world that needs to be fixed. It was excellent.
My favorite works came from Dorland’s gallery:
Courtesy of http://www.mikeweissgallery.com
He just captured such unsettling ideas and emotions in his paintings. What hit me most were the watercolor faces that appeared to be suffering excruciating pain and melting into oblivion. Sometimes that’s how I view life: it can be utterly depressing, but it’s almost as if we’re all just melting away, too, and eventually our images – our lives – will decay away completely, leaving nothing but unrecognizable, distorted lines of color – our remnants and legacies. But what colors will we leave behind? And what patterns will they lay in? And will we continue to inspire others after the colorful patterns have deteriorated beyond others’ comprehension and sympathy – after death and being forgotten? I guess we’ll never know, but hope is our lifelong companion, and I don’t intend to give up the search just yet.
