Highlights from Art Basel Miami Beach

Full report from the Miami fairs coming soon -some eye candy till then...

A R T B A S E L M I A M I B E A C H

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one more from Chelsea....

BOURGEOIS AND EMIN AT CAROLINA NITSCH 

Somehow I forgot about the small, really fucked up show of collaborative paintings by Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin at Carolina Nitsch. All the works dealt with sexuality, gender and relationships. It was very interesting to see what the works became when one artists starts the piece and another completes it. My favorite was the work above which showed a crucifix over the male genital. Nothing we haven't seen before, but great to see these two women talk about what are still considered taboo subjects. The show closed last weekend, but is traveling to London.  


http://www.carolinanitsch.com/index.php?/past-exhibition/do-not-abandon-me-louise-bourgeoistracey-emin/

Chelsea November 2010

THE BIGGEST LET DOWN OF THE YEAR 


This was not an uplifting or inspiring gallery tour. It was a lot of misses and disappointments on a brisk Saturday afternoon. 




KOFMEHL AT LOMBARD FREID 

  

William Earl Kofmehl III at Lombard Freid Projects. Surprisingly, this show titled “Dear Father Knickerbocker, I Just Googled You” was probably the best of the day. The show is a mix of sculpture and painting with a large squirrel in the middle of room. The wooden sculpture was probably 12’ tall and 10’ long and visitors were able to walk through the squirrel’s arched tail. The small embroidered works collected on the walls were vignettes with little sayings and playful situations. The final piece in the show was a life-size sculpture of the artists on a bench with several squirrels with him. Instead of having a normal bushy tail, thes squirrels appeared to have zucchini and ears of corns for tails.  The show is a nod to the squirrel as a Trojan horse, to squirrel advocates in New York and to the City’s history. It seems the artist and the gallery are trying to make odd and unclear connections with these different elements. Not sure any If it really makes any sense or any significant statement.

To me, I would not make a stop in again, although it was playful. I would suggest doing a pop-in on the way to Brice Marden at Matthew Marks.

http://www.lombard-freid.com/home.htm

http://www.matthewmarks.com/exhibitions/2010-10-29_brice-marden/

MOON BEOM AT KIM FOSTER

Moon Beom at Kim Foster Gallery had several bright and surreal paintings that were both earthy and ethereal at the same time. The Korean-based artists had bold and significant inspiration behind these works and it was clear to see the beautiful tactile quality of the works. However, since the gallery was filled with these works in different shades of both bright and muted colors, no one piece really stood out and the works became watered down and almost one-note. It was a shame, because on their own, these pieces are great. I felt the curating hurt the viewers perceptions and reaction to the artist’s work.

http://www.kimfostergallery.com/artists/Beom.htm

MIRANDA LICHTENSTEIN AT ELIZABETH DEE

I was super excited to get to Elizabeth Dee, where I don’t think I’ve ever been before. This is crazyness as I love so many of the artists she represents, including current obsessions “The Ryans” : Ryan Trecartin and Ryan McNamara. However, I was not feeling any of the works in this show, by Miranda Lichtenstein. When I look now at the installation images, I hardly recognize any of the works. I did like the two ghostly photographs above. They were expressive and intoxicating yet soft and almost deathly. The gallery’s press release doesn’t say much either about the artists inspiration or her ideas or what’s she’s trying to express. It all seems haphazard and a little slapdash.

http://www.elizabethdeegallery.com/exhibitions/view/font-size-2-545-west-20th-street-font

UNO RONDINONE AT GLADSTONE 21ST ST

Ok, so what I haven’t confessed yet, is that I was about three Bloody Mary’s in when I started this tour. I am sure this explains my lack of attention span and also general haziness for some of the work and shows. This is good to know as I am kicking myself for being slightly buzzed when I walked into Uno Rondinone’s show at Gladstone 21^st Street. The large square gallery contained only 6 life-size sculptures that at first just seemed like mannequins sitting on the floor. But upon further investigation, you saw how the painstaking detail in these works created haunting life-like sculptures. All of us were waiting for the works to open their eyes as every detail was so precise and executed wonderfully. The show just opened last week and is up until Christmas, so I am hoping to make it back to revisit these lovely creatures.

http://www.gladstonegallery.com/rondinone.asp


WANGECHI MUTU AT GLADSTONE 24TH ST

We then hit the Gladstone gallery on 24^th Street to see Wangechi Mutu’s “Hunt Bury Flee” exhibition. The show had some interesting pieces, but by this point in the tour, I really needed something amazing to put a smile on my face. I found it in the rear space of the gallery where a large collection of what I am calling “fallen angels” were mounted to the three sides of the gallery walls. In horizontal bands these beings seemed to be waiting for battle, or fallen from heaven or up from hell – I wasn’t sure where they were from or where they were going. However, the scale and tactity of this piece was transportative (what I am usually looking for in West Chelsea).The other works of art in the show included banal burlap sculpture and collage paintings that were haunting yet beautiful in their materiality and expressionism. 

http://www.gladstonegallery.com/mutu.asp?id=2133


ELAD LASSRY AT LUHRING AUGUSTINE 

     

I was very hopeful going into Luhring Augustine as they have held some amazing exhibitions recently that really impressed me. However, I was further disappointed to find more banal, immature and unsophisticated works that didn’t seem worthy of the space. Basic photographs of cats, people kissing, half-naked hunks and green tomatoes didn’t really seem to be fitting in a space that a few months ago housed a mind-blowing carousel that still haunts me to this day (in a really great way).

Per the gallery’s press release: In his staged photographs, collages made from found material, and intimately crafted films, Lassry employs seemingly mundane subject matter such as publicity shots, portraits of animals, nondescript landscapes, and still lifes of vegetables. The artist liberates each image from its existing visual history by negating origin, authorship and intentionality. At once disquieting and mesmerizing, Lassry’s compositions are emptied of their associations and compel the viewer to consider a new conceptual space for the picture.

Well this is where the pragmatic side of this journal is at it’s best. Majority of the pictures on the wall of my favorite Chelsea gallery could have been taken by anybody and seemed so amateur as to be laughable. I am a huge advocate for up and coming and new art and going against the mainstream, but here is where even I have to draw the line. http://www.luhringaugustine.com/exhibitions/elad-lassry#

RAUSCHENBERG AT GAGOSIAN 

And finally, I was really hoping for a powerhouse collection by Robert Rauschenberg at Gagosian and boy did I get it. However, I realized as I walked through the massive collection, that I really don’t like Rauschenberg. It’s just not my style, but for those that do, it was a great sample of the artist’s work and some really interesting pieces. My favorite was Untitled (Runts), 2007 (below). A great collage of what I consider true American imagery. However, when I asked for more info from the gallerist I got dismissive and pretentiousness at its best. Really was a great way to end a horrible tour.

http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-10-29_robert-rauschenberg/

Move at PS1

After falling in love with the preview videos on Friday,  I almost didn't make out to Long Island City yesterday. Luckily, my boyfriend convinced me to make the trip and with the E train not running, we got into a zipcar across the 59th Street Bridge to 21st Street. 


It was a madhouse with the expected right-out-of-an-American-Apparel-ad hipster garbage, but we pushed through and made the rounds. This was a clear collection of high highs and low lows. Although I normally love anything with Ryan Trecartin attached to it, his work with a collection of artists with TELFAR, did not keep my attention. Although I don't know how it could when within earshot was Cheryl and American Apparel's room with booming Daft Punk music. Inside, you found a dance party mixed with a make-shift behind-the-runway makeup room. Guests to the museum were getting elobrate and crazy hair and makeup done and then many hung out to dance. It seemed a little provincial, but since it was Halloween and American Apparel - I got over my pretentiousness and moved on. 

I was most excited to get to the second floor to see Rashaad Newsome and Ryan McNamara. Newsome's performance with Alexander Wang wasn't starting till 5pm, so we had about 20 minutes to hit McNamara and Rob Pruitt with Marc Jacobs - both great collaborations. One of the best parts about this event (as I don't know what else to call it) was the gorilla feel as you'd walk through some rooms with no idea what was going on, but since we had a time limit, I kept going. 

Rob Pruitt with Marc Jacobs created an immediate runway show with guests of the museum walking down a made-up runway and then transitioning to the next room to see "live" shots of a Marc Jacobs show, where you are coming down the runway. It was a great way to use current digital media. 

Ryan McNamara with Robert Geller "You Can Dance" had different timed dance lessons with guests also being able to join in on the lesson. Ryan was there as well as a dance instructor (both who obviously had visited the Cheryl/American Apparel space). I am not sure I loved this piece, but I did really enjoy watching how guests interacted with Ryan and the instructor. Some just enjoyed themselves while others really worked hard for perfect steps and ending up on their butt - twice people fell in the 90 minutes we were there, this was the first. The sunlight pouring into the space definitely changing the way I perceived it.

We rushed over to Newsome's side of the museum to wait the 20 minutes for the doors to open. The piece he was doing was an updated version of 2009's Shade Composition. The piece (video clip below) included about 12 men and women acting as a chorus with Newsome the conductor. The singers were also on stage, giving you as much attitude as they could. It was really wonderful and totally worth the wait. It made you think of language and the way we express ourselves. When I got home I watched the original version of this performance on Newsome's website. I totally loved the version at PS1 as there was mixed race and gender plus a whole lot more sass. 

After Newsome, we only had 30 minutes to make it through everything else. We rushed up to the third floor to watch the meditative piece by Brody Condon with Rodarte. With touching rods, five performers moved throughout the space without letting the ends separate. It was very intoxicating but we had to move on.

We made it just in time to watch Olaf Breuning pour paint all over a model in a Cynthia Rowley dress. We couldn't get a good view of the model, but the noise on paint splashing all over her was by itself amazing. The model walked away covered in grey paint as an assistant helped her to the next room. Before she could make it, the barefoot model slipped and took the assistant with her. Everyone was ok, but it was amazing as Olaf said it had not happened before and it was clearly the last pour of the weekend. The dresses and other pieces seen below came out really beautiful. This collaboration seemed so obvious, but provided something new, surprising and beautiful.

We ran through the performance pieces on the ground floor. Artist Tauba Auerbach's performance piece had a troop of women on the floor which we had to step over as we kept moving (I think at that moment my boyfriend wanted to kill me for my impatient nature). But we moved on to another performance by Jonah Bokaer in an all black masked Narcisco Rodriguez one piece. It was a dark room and he made slow movements on a black box. I wish we could have stayed longer, but it was already 5:55 and we had to go. 

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.

Los Angeles Fall 2010

My Los Angeles trip was limited to a few galleries and museums that had new and exciting shows. I was extremely dissapointed to find out I was missing the Dennis Hopper show by three days, but luckily I was able to see Ryan Trecartin's new collection of seven videos - yes, 7! The videos were great - I wish he would upload them to Vimeo as they are almost always better at home than in the gallery. I only had 45 minutes, but that was more than enough as the craziness of Trecartin can only be taken in small doses - at least by me. 

I also made it to the opening of the Resnick Pavilion at LACMA. The building housed a  mix bag of exhibitions, including "European Dress in Detail: 1700-1915" as well as Masterworks of Ancient Mexico and then selections from the  Resnick Collection - it was an odd mix. The Pavilion was open earlier then the other buildings and I totally missed both Catherine Opie and The Sporting Images of Thomas Eakins - sometimes being impaitent is a total downfall.   

 

Then it was off to a quick pop-in to Michael Kohn to see Simmons and Burke "If not Winter". The best part about this show was three large collages that included vocal accompaniment. Under each piece was a pair of headphones that contained another collage of sorts with different sound bites mixed with well-known audio scores from what I believed were mainstream movies. The pieces reminded me of Trecartin, although they were not moving images, the combined chaos of the images and the audio was total overload for my minor jet-lag. 

                                                    

Other pieces in the show included altered photographs, story paintings using words and the first image below which seemed etheral and dream-like - the total opposite of the other works in the show. 

  

I was lucky enough to have a business lunch at Century Park and finally made it the Annenberg Space for Photography. It was a lovely little jewel perched in an oasis of an office park - an urban planners nightmare, but the space was totally alive with pedestrians. The gallery was intimate and clean. The current exhibition was the Pictures of the Year - a great collection of emotional and sometime disturbing works. My favorites are below and more info, including the entire collection on view can be found here

I surprisingly found a parking meter and was able to pop into the Gagosian in Beverly Hills to see Taryn Simon's Contraband - a show of grouped photographs of items seized by the US government at JFK over the artist's five day stay. It includes everything including counterfeit luxury goods, dead animals, pills and everything in-between. The show required a lot of attention but really seemed simple in the end and again I usually turn to Gagosian for powerhouse shows that blow you away. But after Dan Colen in New York and this show in LA, I am left disappointed. http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-09-22_taryn-simon/

Finally, I kept going back and forth if I should attend a lecture at the Hammer by Yoshua Okon, a Mexico City-based artists who has ties to Los Angeles thanks to a MFA from UCLA. In the end, the lecture was much longer than expected but it was wonderful to hear the artist talk about his work and see the interaction with the audience, which was mostly engaging with intelligent questions. I think I just found a new favorite artist -

http://hammer.ucla.edu/residencies/detail/residency_id/17

http://www.yoshuaokon.com/

Chelsea Early Fall 2010

Lichtenstein at Mitchell Innes

My Saturday line-up was a very healthy balance between discovering new artists and big name shows like this one – a retrospective of Roy Lichtenstein. The show was small which was perfect for such powerful bright, quintessential pop paintings. In this show the mainstream pieces were incredible and the standouts of the show, which is rare for me to say. My favorite was “Reflections: Portrait of a Duck”. The piece was fun, beautiful and moving. The best part was the deep, rich, powerful blue color Lichtenstein used for the hat, which does not come through in the picture below. 

Pipolotti Rist at Luhring Augustine

Although it might be premature, Luhring Augustine has been pulling out the big guns to become the best gallery of the year. First with sculptural works by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, then with the retrospective of Ragnar Kjartansson from the 2009 Venice Biennale and now with Pipolotti Rist. This show, by the artist who transformed the atrium of MoMA into a giant playpen for both children and adults, was transformative. The main space of the gallery was fully taken over by “Layers Mama Layers”. It was an otherworldly space that combined billowing sheets of fabric, lasers, videos of lambs in the meadow and soft, almost meditative music. The show is small, with only three installations, but they are powerful enough to make a huge impact.

Jeff Bark at Halstead Hunt

A classic combination of beauty and despair, Jeff Bark’s aptly named Lucifer Falls is a combination of the most beautiful, picturesque landscaped visited by characters in what appears to be their darkest moments. Almost all the pictures are impactful and moving, although some did feel staged and somewhat theatrical. Photographs that leave you questioning, expecting some dark, sordid tale, always appeal to me. These photographs, as beautiful as they are, felt more staged then I would have liked. Also, the combination of sexy headless nudes with suicidal beauties in homely nightgowns left me confused and somewhat annoyed. I need to investigate further.

Act Up at White Columns

This is where we started and although it was great to see some of the old propaganda from this pivotal organization, the show is mostly education more than anything. The dominant works are interviews that required some time and serious attention. I’ve seen better collections of Act Up’s pivotal, groundbreaking pieces and left wanting more.

Dan Colen at Gagosian

I am glad I waited to write this review until after the New York Times review as I now know I am not crazy. This show was snoozaroo. The best pieces were paintings made from chewing gum, which did still smell sweet if you got close enough. The other sculptural pieces were interesting but not worthy of the Gagosian space.

Dan Flavin at Paula Cooper

Again, I try to steer clear of the mainstream shows as I usually like to experience underexposed artists through galleries. Thus leaving the big guns for museums. However, it is a show like this one that proves an artist you thought you knew can still surprise you. The main piece in the gallery was part of the barred corridor series that Flavin created in the mid 70s. The piece was astounding and made me appreciate and love his work even more.

Tetsumi Kudo at Andrea Rosen

Coming off of Pipolotti, this show was a great collection to keep the high going. There were several pieces throughout that seemed like small botany projects with dirt-covered sculptures that resembled flowering ant farms. However, upon further investigation, it was not ants you found inside but beautifully bright electronic components of a computer. The show was playful, interactive and thought provoking.  

Angelo Filomeno at Galerie Lelong

The marquis and a bearded dominatrix with a cake in the oven – with a title like that, how you could possibly walk pass this gallery? Angelo Filomeno’s sculptural and fabric pieces were very interesting with a palate exclusively of black and yellow. The show was a mix of skulls and crustaceans – a mix I’ve never seen before, but two iconic images that have been overused in recent times. The show did not seem groundbreaking or really interesting. A table full of S&M devices including whips and dildos mixed   with skulls – all in glass – was boring. I am sorry, it just was. I hope to learn more about this artist and find other work that moves me.

Matthew Marks

We only got to one of the Marks galleries to see new pieces by Gursky, Charles Ray and others. We didn’t get to see Nan Goldin’s pieces as she was at the 24^th Street gallery. The Charles Ray piece was a massive white wall sculpture of two boy’s faces. I always fall in love with a Charles Ray after I find out it’s him. This is not because I am a mindless follower of anyone in the major league. It’s because I’m usually not impressed until I realize it was his intention to sublimely fuck with your sense of perception, which he does in a different medium every time. The one Gursky piece (who can usually do no wrong) was a photograph of the audience at a soccer game. It seemed boring after the Dubai pieces he did last year.

Lennon Weinberg

This show by Joseph Zito is the winner of the oddest collection by a single artist. It included paintings, videos, sculpture and installation – at least I think it was an installation. The rear wall of the gallery was covered by a bright purple curtain with a bright purple covered bench in front. I have no idea what this show was about, but there were about 5 people working there and I assume they had no idea either.

Magnan Metz

This very small show, titled The heaviest luggage for the traveler is the empty one, was one of the highlights of the day with three amazing sculptures by Alejandro Almanza Pereda. My favorite and the biggest mind-fuck of the day was the vertical collection of cinderblocks that were balanced and held together by chains. The best part of this piece wasn’t the idea of what would happen if they feel down, but the surprise to the viewer to find the padlock with key on the back side of your approach – allowing any viewer with a death wish to simply turn the key. Both the four-Diana’s as I have self-titled them as well the botanical shelves also question our sense of architectural space both indoors and out. It was a great show and was a great way to end the day.

Friedrich Petzel

The group show was sadly not worth the pop in. The best pieces were the earthy, burnt canvases by Karin Sander. These were very interesting, but they were not enough to overcome the boredom that came from works you’ve seen before. Also, the curating was not without fault here as it was unclear the connection between the pieces.

Danziger Projects

Small, tiny show by Christopher Bucklow of cibachrome prints of skinny ladies that look like little balls of fire. The show is very small and the limited pieces shown are all very similar without any alteration outside of color choices. Worth a pop-in if you have the time, but don’t go out of your way.

Mike Weiss

Very commercial show of shinny things by Liao Yibai that focuses on our culturally obsession with labels. Again, not worth the pop in, it was all things anyone who’s been to an art fair has seen before.

McKenzie Fine Art

Not expecting greatness in the paintings by Tom Leaver – but found it! I loved these very ethereal paintings of dark, somewhat dreary forest landscapes. The pictures were beautiful and the painter’s obsession with a tacit image was clearly represented in the pieces chosen for this show. I loved them and thought they were beautiful. (and somewhat affordable by Chelsea standards)

Lehmann Maupin

We did a 30 second pop-in for this show, but had to make a quick escape. I am not feeling any pressure to go back to see the somewhat banal videos by Jennifer Steinkamp that looked like a cross between snakes and the DNA strain you studied in high school.

Reaves Gallery

This new gallery has two shows currently up. My favorite was Interior Situations by New York-based artist Kenneth Browne. The paintings he created were beautifully tacky on purpose. They paint a scene of modern-day Brooklyn with a yuppie white couple living in their new condo complete with West Elm décor and accessories. However beautiful and manufactured the apartment might be the artists gives us a very different impression of their relationship as it starts to unfold in the selected works curated for this show. I thought it was a really great selection and with the backup story, loved the execution of these works.

Nicole Klagsbrun

Thank god for nice gallery girls! Although everyone is accustomed to the gallerist who does not look up from her Mac Book when you enter the gallery (and if she does its to give you a nasty look), I was happy to chat with one of the team members at Klagsbrun about LA-based Patrick Jackson’s Tchotchke Stacks. I always loved these pieces for their use of absurd and horribly tacky household sculptures creating something so delicate and fragile. Upon discussing with the team there, I fell further in love when she spoke of how everyday Americans see these tchotchkes as art. That statement totally transported the pieces to have a whole new meaning. They are really great and I might have to make a trip back before the show closes. (In full disclosure I did mention to the gallerist that I had seen and remember the pieces from ABMB, 2009 – which might have given me more street cred)

Mary Boone

Superstar gallery Mary Boone’s newest exhibition from artist Liu Ziaodong was unique in the way the artist created portrait paintings of people pulled from other paintings on the wall. It was curated in a way that the group paintings were the focal point with the portrait works adjacent. I liked the show, but was not transported by the paintings; others in my group though loved this show.

Price Street

This group show had some hits and some misses. There were some things I really wanted to like but with further investigation couldn’t appreciate for reasons that included color choice, objects that didn’t belong in the piece or just general hot messes. However, I was dying for Elizabeth Higgins’ beautiful simple landscape that was Hopper-esque and really lovely.

Blue Mountain

Linda Smith’s convoluted pool paintings at first seemed playful and an intriguing way to show the human body in a swimming pool, but as we circled the gallery, it became increasingly creepy and otherworldly. The shift occurred with the group shot that looked to be set in a 1970s commune on the western coast of Florida. The oddity continued with a few angel-like paintings of children in flotation devices in mid-air. Still not sure if this was to convey the joy of childhood, but it made me think of a creepy kid-toucher. Not necessarily a bad thing – but not my taste, maybe it needed to be more literal for me.

Noho Gallery

There were three openings, all on the same floor of 530 West 25^th Street. Noho Gallery was the most adventurous. The work was mostly sculpture and all had a playful spirit as the tile “branded” suggested. The artist here is von Schmidt. My favorite piece was a wooden male fountain sculpture that appeared to be peeing on the gallery wall. I didn’t love the execution of the body sculpture, but I loved the visual play of the man literally peeing on the wall.

Michael Mazzeo

We did a quick pop in to Mazzeo’s space as it was nearing the end of the day. The show is in two parts Dave Jordan’s seasonal landscapes and Eric William Carroll’s dreamy landscape prints that were ethereal – the trend of the day – and also somewhat somber.  The show was small and interesting, but a week later, I hardly remember these pieces – not a good sign that the trip up was worth it.