27 July 2007

before the rain

I’ve been mostly in the house and studio for two weeks now, printing, planning, and collecting sad stories. But, afraid I’d miss all the good summer group shows (and become a depressed recluse!), I escaped for a few hours in Chelsea the other day, if only to get a little inspiration for my own show this fall…

The more I think about it, the more I want my show to feel curated, in a sense. It’ll be a mix of old and new work (though more new) centered around the idea of the Muses in my life, past and present (and absent...) In a way, this is how I started out – wanting to make bodies of work that felt found and collected more than simply created in series. I get so bored by shows of photography where every print is the same size, same idea done 100 times and edited to the 20 “best”...

With this in mind, I tried to pay close attention to the curating of the few shows I saw, but I can’t say I learned much in the end. I saw a few thematic shows, and a few group shows where the artists simply had affinity, but came away thinking about the same sort of thing – I liked this piece, hated that. Much of the blame is my own blindspot. I just know that sequencing and curating are not my strong points as an artist and aesthetician, and I’m always amazed at the skills of those who are good at it. (Case in point: Cathy Edelman’s sequencing of my current book project. She did a great job making sense of a jumble of ideas…)

I quite enjoyed Good Morning, Midnight at Casey Kaplan, curated by Bruce Hainley, though I couldn’t tell you a thing about what it meant, or what its connection was to the Jean Rhys novel, Good Morning, Midnight. The press release doesn’t help much either. I know my limitations here, but I wouldn’t mind being led into some deeper connection between the work and its supposed inspiration, whether or not I’ve read the book…

Anyway, I was happy to see a piece by the long-lost Vincent Fecteau, whom I’ve always admired for his crazy handmade miniature world (whether I understood it or not.) And I was fascinated by this piece by Roger Hiorns, due to its obvious alchemy – that blue stuff on the little cathedrals is copper sulphate crystals, growing and changing:

The show I was most excited to see was over at Matthew Marks: Project for a Revolution in New York curated by Mitchell Algus. Now, in case you don’t already know, Mitchell Algus has a small gallery in Chelsea devoted to lost artists from the ’60’s and ’70’s, for the most part. There are always crazy things on the wall there, some great, some “bad” (often in a great way…) It’s just one of those places to check out, when you need to get away from the homogeneity of the Usual Suspects in Chelsea.

The show at Marks is no disappointment. There’s just all kinds of odd stuff on the wall, from super-cheezy paintings of alien women to long-lost Photo-Realists to Polaroids by Carlo Mollino (which I really love, in a groovy-porny-60’s way…) The thrill comes from peering into the Non-Sanctioned past, maybe. These aren’t the artists you know from the time, but you see all the struggles of history played out, the painters working hard to forge a way out of the rigors of Modernism into something new, perhaps more personal…

I am still surprised at the amount of Juvenile Bad Painting and Drawing around Chelsea, still the House Style for new young artists. It’s boring, kids and I can’t wait for it to be over. (Really, stop it now, and go home. Dana Schutz already won.) Still, slogging through it all, I managed to come across some beautiful etchings of Bruce Conner’s collages at Susan Inglett. I only wish I had $1,250 to spend. I’d buy one in a second.