Chelsea Thursdays 4/14

After a productive first day in my new full time job as an artist, I headed over to Chelsea with my abstract artist friend Jess.  It was so refreshing to have finally met someone who also loves to go to Chelsea Galleries and critique artwork.

The first show was appropriately named Awakening at Tria.  It featured works by Jenny Nelson & Keun Young Park.  A show of an oil painter and a collage artist who tears tiny pieces of paper to create pointilist drawings.

Slag Gallery Ubiquitous -
Lucy Kim
Yui - Unfolded, 2010
68 x 86 in
oil on aluminum foil

We decided these pieces were made by wrapping a model, painting them, then flattening out the resulting painting.

Klotz Gallery - Takeshi Shikama
kanegasaki komagatake 5, 2005
Medium: Platinum Palladium Print on Gampi paper
Size: 11 x 14 inches

The photo prints of the woods inspired me.  I loved the way light is captured, with the deep blacks and grey tones.  The piece Tateyama Bijyodaira even resembles a drawing I've done!  Klotz Gallery also featured a video loop called Alba by Alyson Denny & Joshua White, featuring footage of white-on-white subjects.  Beautiful and strange detail shots, that when I viewed it seemed amoebic and gellatinous, but bright.

Able Fine Art - Kyoung-Ja Suh"The Blue I"Acrylic on Canvas
130x 162 cm
2009

The blues resonated in these paintings.  And the layering in the red pieces, such as Meditation II really created depth.  These works seemed so simple and general at first glance, full of large color fields and shapes, but when I stood in front of them for like ten minutes, they became deeper and heartfelt.  Never underestimate the power of simplicity.

Joshua Liner Gallery - Sprung - Oliver Vernon, Minyon
Acrylic on linen, 2011, 46 x 40 in.

Joshua Liner - All And Nothing - James Roper
Autosarcophagy (The Host Within the Host)
Acrylic on canvas, 2009, 40 x 48 in.

Joshua Liner features incredibly talented technical artists that sometimes border on illustrative.  I loved the focus on perspective in Oliver Vernon's work.  The spaces were dizziying, and he had a wonderful sense of light.  I liked the organic quality of the subject in James Roper's work.  It was interesting how the style of his paintings sometimes seemed graphic, but he really took it to the limit.  Instead of dismissing it as something I'd find in a graphic novel, I was continuously struck by the feeling that I was looking at something I'd never seen before.

Our last stop was Bold Hype Gallery, but the photos and photo manipulations in the Canis Mortuus Familiaris show by Jeremy Dower were too gross and pop-art-like for me.  Check it out on their gallery website if you're curious; they were definitely successful images.