Chelsea experiences
So…I have never been to Chelsea. What a culture shock. I’ve been to everywhere around that area, but I seemed to have avoided Chelsea for some reason. Am I glad I finally got there though.
I didn’t quite expect the neighborhood to be quite what it was. Just thinking about it, I kind of expected some sort of ruddy neighborhood, something of the diamond in the rough sort of area, with all the beauty of art hidden somewhere inside warehouse-like buildings. To my surprise, it was actually a fairly rich neighborhood, at least by appearance. Outside of the galleries, artwork on the street got me excited about what I would see inside, but they were a bit misleading. The art on the street seemed quirky and free, but the atmosphere inside the galleries seemed a bit overly sophisticated. It didn’t seem to fit, but I suppose the difference between the two is that the art outside is the art still trying to make it to the galleries, and the art in the galleries is already on its way to everlasting fame. In any case, the art outside seemed to have the purpose of making a comment on society and it definitely had a message (for instance, somewhere on 22nd and 10th ave someone had painted “We all are homeless” on the street). On the inside, the purpose of the art didn’t seem very clear, but it was still very intriguing.
Of all the galleries I saw (all being everything on 22nd between 10th and 11th ave), three stick out in my mind as absolutely amazing. The first was Ugo Rondinone in the Matthew Marks Gallery, with his Beetlejuice reminiscent sculptures. I walked in and I was shocked. The outside of the gallery was all covered up, there was no hint of anything on the inside, but then the door opens and the sculptures stare at you. The huge clay faces inside the gallery are somewhat disturbing, but all in all, completely fascinating. You can still see the artist’s finger marks on the clay and it’s incredibly tempting to touch the sculptures just to be sure the clay was completely dry, but this was not the best part of this artist’s work. My favorite part were the random quotes on the walls of the gallery, most notably, “I am tired of my hands, I want wings.” There was another quote that I don’t remember exactly, but it sounded something like this: “Things I love: hair food you.” Those quotes changed my perception of that gallery from just cool to meaningful.
Then there was Jamie Isenstein in the Andrew Kreps Gallery. That was probably the most disturbing artwork I’ve ever seen. There were only a few pieces in it, but it was more than enough. The first thing you see when you enter is this piece with two boxes, one with feet hanging out of it, and another that looks empty but is supposed to contain a head. First, you pass by the two boxes, not thinking much of it, but then the feet move. This, combined with the disturbing music in the gallery, made by a fan blowing against glass water bottles and someone (assuming the artist) imitating playing a violin (or something like a violin) on what looked like a sheet of metal. Honestly, as I think about this artwork (though I’m not really sure if this really qualifies as artwork, at least by my standards) I recall the sounds inside the gallery, and I feel kind of freaked out. I recommend seeing the gallery, but I wouldn’t tell anyone to expect to come out of it feeling normal.
Finally, I come to the Pace Wildenstein with Keith Tyson’s art, which was my favorite gallery. There were a lot of pieces in there, all very different, so I will only be talking about one piece in particular, “Buckets of Lack.” If you’ve seen this artist’s work, you will know this piece by a huge sculpture of a silvery gray man struggling to hold up a mass of empty buckets. Why did I like it? The message was great; simple, yes, but meaningful. I liked the thought that the artist was commenting on how people struggle and end up lacking. It’s like an endless torture to work hard and toil terribly, only to end up lacking. I loved that piece because it was hopeless, in that it was saying that we as people struggle uselessly. What added to that was the fact that the piece looked like it was made of steel. It made the hardness of the piece more apparent, even though it was a bit of an oxymoron for a man who is made of steel to be unable to pick up those empty buckets.
As for the atmosphere of the gallery and the way the art was set up, I don’t think that it really showed off the artwork. It was all arranged like in a huge field, all the objects randomly place, but if each piece had its own room, I think the pieces would have come off more powerfully. Each piece seemed to lose some of its meaning in the huge room it was placed. Yet, if they were all separated from each other and each piece could stand on its own, it would have been mind blowing.
So, in all, I enjoyed going to Chelsea and seeing all the new artwork that is appearing in the world. I can’t say that I saw any trends in the artwork (well, maybe the trend of doing weird stuff for some of them), nor can did the information in the written statements answer my questions about the artwork. Mostly though, I wasn’t concerned about why the artists created what they created, but I was wondering what inspired them. What inspired the thought behind “Buckets of Lack,” or the quotes in Ugo Rondinone’s art? Now that I think of it though, I am curious about the reason behind Jamie Isenstein’s work…because that one was just…weird….
In all though, I loved it!!!