Chelsea Thursday Openings

Although there were only a few openings yesterday, so I was able to tackle four in about 45-minute in West Chelsea. I am disappointed I didn't make it uptown for Gregory Crewdson before the show closes tomorrow. 

Brice Marden at Matthew Marks
This show was surprisingly amazing. It took me till I got home to realize how much I loved these paintings. The pieces were simple but beautiful and really popped. I can't imagine how much they cost, but their simple beauty is clear in the image below.  I normally steer clear of big name gallery shows, assuming I can see their work in larger museums. However, I have started to appreciate the smaller scale and singular focus of gallery exhibits. This show just opened and it may not hit you at once, but it definitely stayed with me.
http://www.matthewmarks.com/

 

Next up was Bruce Silverstein with works by Michael Wolf and Andre Kertesz. 

(www.brucesilverstein.com)

Both exhibits we're the highlight of the evening. Wolf's photographs were diverse and beautiful. Although some of the urban  imagery was familiar and seemed common, other photographs of people, distorted buildings and snapshots that seemed mischievous left me asking questions and wanting more. I loved the photograph below of the man's face pressed against the glass. To me it is a business man in a stopped taxi playing with a random photgrpaher on the street. I immediately fell in love with this photograph.

 

Another highlight, was a disotrted picture of a familar building in Tribeca. The way the photograph was printed distorted the viewer's perception of the building and the clarity of the image. When you viewed the piece from different angles and distances, it changed in surprising and distorting ways. 

In the back space of the gallery were phenomenal historical black and white photographs. The pictures that struck me were those of everyday people enjoying the sun on what I assume is a summer day in the City. Similar images could be captured in present day New York, but I love the romanticism and the mystery of the two photographs below.  

 

James Casebere at Sean Kelly (www.skny.com)

I was very excited to see this show based on the images I saw online. However, I think I love these works more in theory than in reality. The prints, computer-generated images of suburban landscapes, are pretty amazing, but it was the end of the tour and they were filming and I walked a million miles to get to Sean Kelly's 29th Street gallery, so I didn't spend as much time here as I wanted. These pictures seemed dreamlike and reminded me of stills from a Ryan Trecartin video. I saw them as some imaginary dream-scape created in an Avatar-driven reality. But upon closer inspection, you realize, even though they are computer-generated, they could be Anywhere, USA. It's at that moment, even through an exhausted haze, you realize these fairytale landscapes could be a reality. It was alarming, creepy, disturbing and amazeballs.

Bruce Wolkowitz
(www.brycewolkowitz.com)
Through a packed gallery  the works and images of Abelardo Morell didn't pop or catch my attention. the works were not inspiring or even all that interesting.  I am sorry, but I wasn't really feeling this show. The crowd, however, was very interesting including a Frida Kahlo-look-a-like. The back gallery was covered in continuous dark profile pictures, it was really crowded, so it was hard to see what exactly was going on or the point. It reminded me of the Andy Warhol piece at Dia Beacon (below), but less exciting and more one-note. I am not planning on going back to re-investigate.