Lower East Side & Chelsea Round-up

By Charles Kessler

Here are some photos of, and very brief comments about, 23 exhibitions I selected from about 70 galleries I visited over the last week in the Lower East Side and Chelsea. Links to the individual galleries and exhibitions are provided in the captions.

Lower East Side:

There are some powerful paintings in this show, in spite of their small size. You can see some good reproductions here and here.

Installation view of  Second Family, 2 Rivington Street, curated by Julie Torres (no ending date reported).

Update: Julie Torres emailed me that the show closed. 

I recently mentioned Nichole Cherubini as one of the ceramic artists I admire working in the tradition of Peter Voulkos. 

Foreground: Nichole Cherubini, Verdent Empress, 2014, earthenware, glaze and birch plywood, 66 x 16 x 12 inches (Fitzroy Gallery, 195 Christie Street, until October 26th).

Do Ho Suh's main installation (you can see it here) is boring and old hat, but I loved the fragile delicacy of his rubbings of three-dimensional objects (a fire sprinkler in the photo below). They're especially captivating in contrast to the coarse sources of the rubbings.

Detail, Do Ho Suh, Rubbing/Loving Project, Corridor, 348 W. 22nd St., colored pencil on vellum, 57 x 104 x 5 ½ inches framed (Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 201 Chrystie Street, until October 25th).

There seems to be some buzz about Jane Corrigan's paintings, and I can see why. The bravura of her simple flowing brushwork is impressive. Unfortunately, they all started to look alike.

Jane Corrigan, Milk, 2014, oil on linen, 28 ½ x 39 inches (Kerry Schuss Gallery, 34 Orchard Street, until October 26th).

Andra Ursuta's Tongue Mops are gross but affecting!

Installation view of Andra Ursuta's Tongue Mops (Ramiken Crucible Gallery, 389 Grand Street, no ending date reported).

Below is an example of the type of thing missing in Chelsea. Walking around the LES or Bushwick, or even Midtown, is interesting in itself. There so much to see, and so much going on besides the art. If the art is of no interest in Chelsea (and that happens sometimes), there's not much else to keep you going, especially since the auto repair garages and taxi depots have been pushed out. 

Bicycle polo, Roosevelt Park.

Chelsea:

Unfortunately, Allan McCollum's show will be over by the time this post is published. I knew him when I lived in Los Angeles and I always liked him and his art. Lately his work has become richer and more existentially deep – and downright beautiful. 

McCollum created a system that allows for the production of a single, unique shape for every person in the world. You can read more about what he's attempting here, but it's possible to enjoy the work on a purely visual level. 

Installation view of Allan McCollum, The Shape Project - Perfect Couples (Petzel Gallery, 456 18th Street, until October 4th). 

It occurs to me that some Chelsea galleries are more like DIA Beacon or Mass MoCA than art galleries; and that's not necessarily a bad thing. This mammoth sculpture has to do with abstracting, bending and collapsing Mies van der Rohe’s Lake Shore Drive Apartments, in Chicago.

Installation view of Monika Sosnowska's Tower, about 110 feet long (Hauser & Wirth, 511 W. 18th Street, until October 25th).

This was pretty lame stuff for Mona Hatoum whose work is usually quite poignant. She has better work in the back room. 

Mona Hatoum, Twelve Windows (Alexander and Bonin Gallery, 132 Tenth Avenue, until October 18th).

Tomma Abts's paintings get lost in this space. 

Installation view, Tomma Abts  (Zwirner Gallery, 519 W. 19th Street, until October 25th).

Tomma Abts, Oke, 2013, acrylic and oil on canvas, 19 x 15 inches (Zwirner Gallery, 519 W. 19th Street, until October 25th).

Why would Zwirner do that? It's not like they don't have more appropriate spaces to show intimate paintings (see below).

Installation view, James Bishop (Zwirner Gallery, 537 W. 20th Street, until October 25th).

In 2006 Jason Rhoades died of a combination of a drug overdose and heart disease. In spite of the chaotic way it looks, Rhoades provided precise instructions about the installation of this work.

Installation view, Jason Rhoades, PeaRoeFoam, first presented in 2002 (Zwirner Gallery, 537 W. 20th Street, until October 18th).

This is supposed to be the factory that makes "PeaRoeFoam," the white pebbles scattered about made out of "whole green peas, fish-bait style salmon eggs, and white virgin-beaded foam." Among other things in this typically whacky installation are replicas of the infamous Ivory Soap box with a picture of the porn star Marilyn Chambers (Beyond the Green Door) holding a baby. 

Installation view, Jason Rhoades, PeaRoeFoam, first presented in 2002 (Zwirner Gallery, 537 W. 20th Street, until October 18th).

Nick Caves's exhibitions at both of Shainman's Chelsea galleries are heavy-handed and repetitive – a loose cage, mainly gold colored, with stuff in it about race. 

Installation view of Nick Cave, Rescue, (Jack Shainman Gallery, 524 W. 24th Street, until October 11th).

But he nailed it with this relief about the oppression of African American servitude.

Nick Cave, Untitled, 2014, bronze and hand towels, 41 x 22 x 15 ½ inches (Jack Shainman Gallery, 513 W. 20th Street, until October 11th).

Jonathan Monk's show (below) is a lot of art about art, but I was disappointed to learn that the one piece that got to me is really two separate works. The little Santa (Paul McCarthy Dressed as in Tokyo Santa with Young Head of Paul McCartney Standing – don't ask) seems enthralled looking at souvenir scarves hung on the wall (From One State to Another, Sewn Together to Make a Whole). It was quite disorienting and, dare I say, poetic.  Too bad.

Installation view, Jonathan Monk (Casey Kaplan Gallery, 525 W. 21st Street, until October 18th).

Jackie Winsor boxed herself in, as it where, making the same basic sculpture for decades. But this particular early work is helped immensely by the room's prefect proportions and colors. 

Jackie Winsor, Pink and Blue Piece, 1985, mirror, wood, paint, cheesecloth, 31 x 31 x 31 inches (Paula Cooper Gallery, 534 W. 21st Street, until October 18th).

Mark di Suvero at Paula Cooper, along with David Hockney at Pace, are my favorite shows now in Chelsea. Di Suvero's sculpture is thrilling without being an overpowering and theatrical spectacle (like Monika Sosnowska's Tower at Hauser & Wirth is, above).

Mark di Suvero, Luney Breakout, 2013, steel, 22'3" x 22'6" x 12'6" (Paula Cooper Gallery, 534 W. 21st Street, until October 22nd).

And who knew he's been painting all these years? And very well too. Most sculptors, even David Smith, tend to center an image when they make a painting, avoiding dealing with the edge. Not di Suvero. He plays off of and at times crashes right through it. 

Mark di Suvero, Untitled, 2014, acrylic paint on linen, 82 x 132 inches (Paula Cooper Gallery, 534 W. 21st Street, until October 22nd).

Mark di Suvero, Untitled, c.1995, acrylic on canvas, 112 x 130 inches (Paula Cooper Gallery, 534 W. 21st Street, until October 22nd).

I found Adam Putnam's 2x4 sculptures strangely moving, perhaps because they're barely held together, about ready to collapse. They will be part of a future performance. Check P.P.O.W's website for when. 

Installation view, Adam Putnam, foreground is Contraption 1, 2014, rope, wood, steel photograph, dimensions variable  (P.P.O.W Gallery, 235 W. 22nd Sreet, until November 1st).

Roxy Paine's current show is a tour de force of trompe l'oeil. (I always wanted to write that!) But what he chooses to make out of wood is what gives the work its haunting, sometimes poetic, quality. It occurred to me that the work is a reverse Thomas Demand.

Installation view, Roxy Paine, Checkpoint, 2014, maple, aluminum, fluorescent light bulbs, about 14 x 27 X 18 ½ feet (Marianne Boesky Gallery, 509 West 24th Street, until October 18th).

Rebecca Warren's sculptures look like ceramic, but they're painted bronze and probably have more to do with Giacometti than Peter Voulkos. 

Installation view, Rebecca Warren, Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear? (Matthew Marks Gallery, 523 W. 24th Street, until October 24th).

I've been interested in Matthew Richie's art since I first saw an installation at Artist's Space in the early 1990s. It's good to see that he keeps pushing it. 

Installation view, Matthew Richie, Ten Possible Links (Andrea Rosen Gallery, 525 W. 24th Street, until October 22nd).

It might be mildly interesting that Roger Hiorns's installation is made of an atomized aircraft engine and graphite and not ordinary sand, but ultimately it's just another Zen rock garden, and not a very good one at that. 

Installation view of Roger Hiorns, Untitled, 2014, atomized aircraft engine and graphite (Luhring Augustine Gallery, 531 W. 24th Street, until October 18th).

His sculptures in the small back gallery are more interesting (why is that so common lately?), partly because they ooze a soapy foam giving them a creepy kind of life. 

 Roger Hiorns's work in the back gallery (Luhring Augustine Gallery, 531 W. 24th Street, until October 18th).

Jacob Hashimoto's installation is breathtaking when you first enter, but ultimately it's empty decoration. 

Installation view from the front, Jacob Hashimoto, Skyfoam Fortress (Mary Boone Gallery, 541 W. 24th Street, until October 25th).

What I found unusual is that there's a clear front and back to the work – odd for an installation presumably meant to be seen from all angles. 

Installation view from the back, Jacob Hashimoto, Skyfoam Fortress (Mary Boone Gallery, 541 W. 24th Street, until October 25th).

This is a small, beautifully proportioned space that Andrea Rosen has across the street from her main space. They've been effectively using it to compare and contrast the work of two or more artists – in this case the painted reliefs of Matt Keegan, and one of Anne Truitt's columns. Both artists deal with painting vs. sculpture, and sensual surfaces and color. 

Installation view, Matt Keegan (on the walls) and Anne Truitt (foreground), (Andrea Rosen Gallery, 544 W. 24th Street, until October 22nd). 

Most of the work in this exhilarating show was drawn on an iPad, enlarged, and printed on paper. And can this guy ever draw! 

Installation view of David Hockney, The Arrival of Spring (Pace Gallery, 508 W. 25th Street,  until November 1st).

If you can't get to Hockney's exhibition, the paintings work quite well online. You can see them on Pace's rather clunky website. 

David Hockney, Woldgate, East Yorkshire, 2011, iPad drawing printed on paper, 55 x 41 ½ inches (edition of 25).

Chelsea does have one great point of interest beside the art galleries – the High Line. The new addition has opened, and it's spectacular. 

New addition to the High Line.

My only fear is that future development will wall off the view of the city; it's already happened to some parts.

The High Line just before it turns the corner to the new addition.

It doesn't look good for the views as the nearby Hudson Yards is developed. I hope this doesn't become another tragic example of what Jane Jacobs called "catastrophic success." 

Proposal for the future Hudson Yards.

Jeff Koons Retrospective, Part 2

By Charles Kessler

This is my second post about the Jeff Koons retrospective (on view at the Whitney Museum of Art until October 19th). The first post is here. 

Installation View: Jeff Koons, A Retrospective, Whitney Museum.
(Click to enlarge)

Koons is one of those artists I hate to love, but when I made a concerted effort to ignore the fact that he's so rich and famous, and kind of a jerk, and I approached the show as if seeing the art for the first time, his work nearly blew my mind! It's bold, inventive, gutsy, impeccably crafted, and sometimes it's even profound. Is his art worth tens of millions? Of course not – but that's a different issue having to do with conspicuous consumption, not art. In a deeply visceral way, Koons captures a crass and vulgar part of our culture. As Peter Scheldahl wrote in the New Yorker, "if you don't like that, take it up with the world."

Of course I don't like everything Koons made – if I did it would mean he wasn't taking enough risks. For one thing, I don't think his paintings are very good. His early paintings are washed out color-wise (strange in light of their Pop imagery); and his later paintings have too much crammed into them, as if he's trying to muscle them into greatness. His Made in Heaven series of erotic paintings may be interesting conceptually, but they're pretty boring as paintings. And even his best paintings, the ones that aren't cluttered (like Loopy, 1999, below), don't go beyond basic 1960s Rosenquist-type Pop Art.

 Jeff Koons, Loopy, 1999, oil on canvas, 108 × 79 1⁄4 inches (Bill Bell Collection).

I have fond memories of seeing and being amazed by Koons's early work in the East Village at the International with Monument Gallery. It was completely different from the Neo-Expressionist and graffiti-oriented work so popular at the time. And looking back, many of the innovations and themes Koons was to deal with in the future were there: kitsch, sex, bright colors, mirror reflections, a variety of textures, inflatable sculpture, weight vs. weightlessness, and density vs. hollowness. 

Left: Jeff Koons, Inflatable Flower and Bunny (Tall White, Pink Bunny), 1979, vinyl and mirrors, 32 × 25 × 19 inches (The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica © Jeff Koons); right: Sponge Shelf, 1978, sponges and mirrors (collection of the artist).

But even though Scott Rothkopf, the curator of the retrospective, has mounted a well-organized and coherent installation, and was sensitive enough to install this intimately scaled work in smaller rooms, it just can't hold up to the vast, crowded space of the Whitney.

To my surprise, after three visits to the show, I ended up liking Koons's later work the most – unlike practically everyone else writing about it. His later sculptures are simpler and more straightforward than his paintings, and there's a perverse intensity about them I find at once compelling and disturbing. His big flashy ones, the ones he's most famous for (like Balloon Venus below) are accessible, playful and monumental, like Claus Oldenberg's public sculptures – and they work great in this context. 

Left: Venus of Willendorf, ca. 28,000 BCE - 25,000 BCE, 4.25 inches high, oolitic limestone tinted with red ochre (Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria); right: Jeff Koons, Balloon Venus (Orange), 2008–2012, mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating, 102 x 48 x 50 inches.

Koons sculptures have several layers of meaning. Balloon Venus, for example, makes a tongue-in-cheek reference to the famous prehistoric sculpture the Venus of Willendorf; and the differences highlight the contemporariness of the Koons sculpture. The Venus of Willendorf is a personal figurine meant to be held. It's a modest 4 ¼ inches high, and it's made of gritty stone. Balloon Venus is showy and public, 8 ½ feet tall and made of smooth stainless steel with a high-tech mirror coating. The Koons is all glitz. It's experienced as light-weight and empty (literally and figuratively) like our pop culture; whereas the Venus of Willendorf  is stone-age solid.

Koons is fanatical about getting the trompe-l'œil realism exactly right. He even worked with a balloon designer (who knew there was such a thing?) to create the models for his balloon sculptures, and he insisted on making each model from a single balloon so the finished sculpture would have a sense of continuous air pressure throughout the piece. Even the rendering of textures, for example what looks like inflated plastic in Hulk (below), is miraculously convincing. (BTW, it's a real functioning organ, not a bronze replica.)

Close-up detail of Jeff Koons, Hulk (Organ), 2004-2014, polychromed bronze and mixed media, edition of three (Broad Art Foundation).

A somewhat earlier sculpture, Aqualung, 1985, is especially impressive even though it's smaller than the work Koons is famous for. It is made up of 30 separate molds, and although they're all bronze, there's a remarkable variety of textures – everything from the rough surface of inflated canvas, to hard and shiny metal, to the texture of string and webbing.

Jeff Koons, installation view, Aqualung, 1985, bronze, 27 x 17½ x 17½ inches (edition of 3 plus AP). 

To his credit, Aqualung goes beyond showy facility; it's interesting from all angles, there's a complex variety of positive and negative spaces, and there is a unique play between weight and weightlessness – being bronze, it's permanently inflated, but, like Life Boat, 1985 (below) you would sink if you tried to use it. 

Jeff Koons, Life Boat, 1985, bronze, 12 x 80 x 60 inches (edition of 3 plus AP).

The flower sculptures and reliefs in this show are pretty opulent, but my memory of them is that they were much shinier in the 1991 Made in Heaven exhibition at the Sonnabend Gallery in Soho. And because they were so gleamingly glossy, the Sonnabend flowers were as lurid and shocking as the sexually explicit paintings in that show. I thought that was brilliant.

Detail view of Jeff Koons, Wall Relief with Bird, 1991, polychromed wood, 72 x 50 x 27 inches, edition of three.

Unfortunately the ones in this retrospective, while lavish (perhaps excessively so – and that's a good thing!), don't have the glitzy vulgarity of the Sonnabend ones. I checked with one of the Whitney curators – sorry, I forgot to get her name – who looked it up and told me the flowers in the retrospective weren't in the Sonnabend show, and the Sonnabend flowers were made of glazed porcelain, while these are painted wood. Too bad. 

The same goes for his 1988 Banality sculptures. The ones carved from wood are warmer and not as edgy or as off-putting as the shiny porcelain ones. The warmth of wood is too friendly, too like the original tchotchkes they're modeled after. 

Installation view, Jeff Koons, Banality Series.  Pink Panther, 1988, on the far right, is glazed porcelain; and String of Puppies, 1988, second in from the right, is painted wood.

They are all, however, very weird – disconcertingly so, even if (or because) they're outwardly playful. Here are some examples:

Koons's blissed-out goofus of a Saint John the Baptist holding a pig that looks brighter and more alert than he, is pretty zany – although Koons's model, the 500-year-old painting by Leonardo with its eerie and epicene Saint John making an ambiguous gesture, is ultimately even more bizarre and unsettling. (Perhaps I'm over-interpreting, but I wonder if Saint John embracing a pig is a comment on Christianity nullifying kosher laws.)

Left: Jeff Koons, Saint John the Baptist, 1988, porcelain, 58 ½ x 30 x 24 ½ inches (the Sonnabend Collection); right: Leonardo da Vinci, Saint John the Baptist, 1513-16, oil on wood (Musée du Louvre in Paris, France).

Ushering in Banality, 1988, is ludicrous enough, but it gets even weirder when you put it together with this quote from Koons: “I’ve always thought of myself as the young boy in the back pushing the pig.”

Jeff Koons, Ushering in Banality, 1988, polychromed wood, 38 x 62 x 30 inches (edition of 3 plus AP); and detail from the back. 

Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988, is the most acclaimed sculpture in his Banality series, and it's loved by most critics, even Peter Plagens who otherwise hated the show.

The work derives from a famous publicity photo of Michael Jackson with Bubbles, his beloved pet monkey.

Left: publicity photo of Michael Jackson with his pet monkey; right: Jeff Koons, Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988, porcelain, 42 x 70 ½ x 32 ½ inches (private collection).

Most critics believe the sculpture is about kitsch, fame and glitz, but I have a somewhat different interpretation. I believe it's about a poignant relationship.

In the photo and sculpture the poses are similar, and Michael Jackson and his pet monkey are wearing matching marching-band uniforms. Of more interest are the differences between the photo and sculpture.

In the Koons sculpture, the sleeves of the monkey's uniform hide its fur, and the foot of the monkey has no fur and looks so human it could easily be mistaken for one of Michael Jackson's hands. All of which make Bubbles seem more human-like. (Koons, remember, also humanized the pig in Saint John the Baptist, however unflattering to the saint, so there is some precedent.) And Bubbles is keenly looking out at the viewer, unlike the introspective and rather sad Michael Jackson.

Two views of Jeff Koons, Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988, porcelain, 42 x 70 ½ x 32 ½ inches (private collection).

Furthermore, they're not sitting on grass, as in the photo, but on a shiny white and gold pedestal festooned with gilded flowers. In contrast to these rather regal surroundings is a lonely and isolated superstar gently holding his beloved Bubbles in his lap. I really do find the sculpture touching and heartbreaking.

And finally, there's Play-Doh, 1994-2014, a sculpture I love, and which Roberta Smith referred to as "a new, almost certain masterpiece.”

Installation view, Jeff Koons, Play-Doh, 1994-2014, polychromed aluminum, edition of five. (Photo: Fred R. Conrad, The New York Times.)

It might be the newest work in the show, but because of Koons's perfectionism, it took 20 years to fabricate the 27 interlocking individual pieces of painted aluminum.

Play-Doh was inspired by a mound of Play-Doh that Koons's son proudly showed him. The colors are thrilling – bright but semi-gloss and tactile, unlike his gleaming earlier work. And, like Ken Price’s Specimen Rocks, the crevices and broken edges are the same color as the surface, so it feels as if the color goes all the way through. And the work has a sense of weight and density, unlike most other colored sculptures which feel light and hollow (Koons's Balloon sculptures being an extreme example).

Detail close-up, Jeff Koons, Play-Doh, 1994-2014, polychromed aluminum.

BTW, I could swear there’s a dog image here – the yellow shape on top is his head and ear; the blue circle, an eye; and the blue curve, his nose. Koons made dogs in the past, as can be seen below, so this wouldn't be unusual.

Left: Jeff Koons, Split-Rocker, 2014, armature with about 50,000 live flowering plants, 37' tall (it was on view in Rockefeller Center until September 12th); right, detail of the top of Play-Doh.