A THURSDAY AFTERNOON STROLL THRU CHELSEA

Finding ourselves over on the West Side today we paid a visit to several noteworthy exhibits:



1) SOL LEWITT @ PAULA COOPER

This memorial exhibit to the artist (who died in April 2007) is an elegy to a master of optical pleasure. The main gallery is filled with a HUGE cube, each side having black to white banding created by compressing and expanding circular pencil marks. The effect is a simulation of corrugated fiberglass in gray, with the bands alternating vertical, diagonal, horizontal, diagonal on the four exposed sides. As with so many of the artist's later works, it was executed by a team of artists following his written instruction. With the artist's death so recent, the cube seems like a mausoleum for the artist, a marriage of his later wall drawings with his first formal influence, the Cube. A series of early etchings remind us all of what a master of the Line he was. Adio Caro!!



2) KEITH TYSON @ PACE WILDERSTEIN

LARGE FIELD ARRAY is a monumental modular work that combines over 230 separate sculptural forms into a single Field Array work designed to operate as a gigantic experiential lens for viewing some of the fundamental forces that make up reality. Or so the press release says. I found it more of a grand circus sideshow, full of the commonplace and the creepy. Each module of the installation is two-feet squared and arranged at four-foot intervals in a roughly cubic array on the floor and walls of the gallery. High and low culture nestle up against each other creating odd visual "compare and contrast" views. Notable modules include a small model of a grand pipe organ, a white cube displaying stock and news reports from Reuters, a sculpture of a man spanking a boy's bare rear with a belt, a stuffed tabby cat curled up on a rug in front of a gas home hearth, and an eternally spinning roulette wheel. This item also adds a nice aural quality to the installation, as do several other modules, like the low percolating mud bath near the entrance. It's a lot to take in but worth a visit.
Be advised: Due to the nature of the installation only 30 people are allowed in the gallery at a time, so a weekday visit is advisable.

3) UGO RONDINONE @ MATTHEW MARKS
BIG MIND SKY is the name of this installation of works, which consists of twelve enormous cartoonish heads, each nearly nine feet tall displayed on pedestals of cobbled old wood, numerous small precise paintings done with graphite on gessoed linen canvas of "mundane" views which include doors, windows, and items in the artist's studio, and faint "poem drawings" dispersed on the walls of the gallery. There is also a large keyhole mounted to the rear wall of the gallery that dispenses warm air. The "drawings" consist of short poetic aphorisms like "I'm tired of having hands I want wings", with each faint word cascading vertically down the wall. Rondinone "date paintings" have a wonderfully exact delicacy that reminded me of Lyonel Feininger. And his gigantic "Moonrise" sculptures are incredibly silly and sweet. The whole effect is playfully melancholic: are we haunted by memories of our past or by the fear of an unknown future? Rondinone creates an interesting space to explore these questions.

4) PAUL NOBLE @ GAGOSIAN
Another weird alien landscaper, this time the drawings are bigger and the sculptures are smaller. Entitled “dot to dot” it's comprised of drawings, ceramic sculptures, rugs, sound, and various other installation elements. Time and space are addressed best in the artist's large graphite drawings. Piles of primordial blobs create timeless landscapes of decay: are we looking at Incan ruins or the remains of a long lost moon colony? A display of small glazed ceramic works, each sitting on an elaborate wood pedestal, have a comic globular quality to them, a cross between a Smurf and a bong! They do work as three dimensional objects, although I found a lot of the glaze choices muddy. Least successful is the sound installation which requires you to take off your shoes and to stand on an artist's rug and listen to a Reichian tape loop of someone saying "dot to dot". The message is overly simplistic and the effect doesn't vary much as you move around the space. Dig those great beaded curtains though!!

5) DEBORAH KASS @ PAUL KASMIN
I love Deb Kass!! There I said it!
This exhibit entitled "feel good paintings for feel bad times" continues this artist's exploration of the intersection of art, culture and self. She combines references to post-war art history with hooks from pop culture to create smart works that always make us smile. This is her first major exhibition in New York in twelve years. Check it out!!

ALSO SEEN:

ROBERT ADAMS: QUESTIONS FOR AN OVERCAST DAY @ MATTHEW MARKS - If you see Rondinone, then check out this small suite of exquisite photographs next door. A meditation on a weather-beaten tree, many of the later images in the series are otherworldly and ethereal. Worth a look.

CANDIDA HOFER "IN PORTUGAL" @ SONNABEND - More large documentary photos of gorgeous private and public interiors. Done with the artist's usual eye for formality and lighting, many prove to be interesting studies of the meeting of Muslim and Christian cultures. Others are just simply sumptuous. Check out Teatro de Sao Carlo, Lisboa I in the first gallery!

DAVID STEPHENSON & TANYA MARCUSE @ JULIE SAUL - Him: Pictures of vaulted ceilings lit well and shot straight up creating very geometric-patterned prints. When successful they remind you of a set for Blade Runner or 12 Monkeys. Pretty and mindless. Her: Entitled "Fruitless", platinum print portraits of orchard trees destined to fall to development. Ho-hum.

KUNIE SUGIURA @ LESLIE TONKONOW - More photographs: early large prints and photograms from her Artists Paper series. So what are you doing these days Kunie?

T. J. WILCOX @ METRO PICTURES - Fun film narratives with accompanying prints. The prints are product but the films are the art here. Definitely stay for "The Jerry Hall Story"!! A+

LASZLO MOHOLY-NAGY @ ANDREA ROSEN - check out the Friedrich Kunath installation in Gallery One if you must; I'd head straight to the back gallery for this small exhibit of color photographs and sculptures! Parfait!!