implicit art

Wonderful day yesterday, slowly moseying around Chelsea and surrounds from gallery to gallery, afternoon drinks with good friend and great artist Sean Slemon, dinner with brilliant writer/thinker/academic and all-around fabulous lady Rebecca Schneider (and our respective partners – can’t get enough of that Nicole Ridgway, so it’s a good thing I convinced her to spend her life with me).

Some highlights in Chelsea:

• Monet at Gagosian – absolutely stunning. I wish the catalog was less than $100! Me wants.
• The New Grand Tour at Bryce Wolkowitz – works by “Suitman” – especially the one not on their site – were witty and fun.
• A brief tour of the LES printshop with Dusica Kirjakovic, a real sweetie. Saw some fun work by William Powhida and Steve Lambert (recent and/or current residents; dude, Lambert’s web site is nice – awesome wordpress hack!).

• Hany Armanious at Foxy productions – all diligently casted works to look like an “unfinished” show – clever, surprising, well-made.
• Two shows at Winkleman: Yevgeniy Fiks (his drawings are smart and meticulous) and Reflective Reflexion (curated by Joy Garnett). Also had a light catch up with the man himself, which reminded me both how great his book is and also how lucky I am in my current job and life.
• Jim Kempner Fine Art – some nice work, but I admit the highlight was that they were editing a new episode of The Madness of Art in the basement; I giggled, and told the two folks working in Final Cut that I was a fan.
• Ben Govker at PPOW made me laugh.
• Carsten Nicolai – if you don’t know his work, you really really should, especially the sound sculptures – at Pace.
• The show and a catch-up chat with the ladies at David Krut – I miss Johannesburg!
• MagnanMetz’s new space is AMAZING! Not a huge fan of the current show, but I commend them for doing it – it’s a bit risky and it’s really well curated. The aforementioned Sean Slemon is with them, as well as a few others I am a fan of. Watch these guys, for real.

• Gudjon Ketilsson and Gudrun Kristjansdottir at Luise Ross. I also chatted briefly with the lady herself, and she is a force to be reckoned with, I must say… This is a really solid show, and I highly recommend it. I was tempted to purchase one of the small drawings (and LOVED the installation of sand, above), but a family of three on an art professor’s salary, ah, you know how it is…

There were a few other works that made me happy throughout the day, especially some at The Drawing Center (though that’s not in Chelsea), but above are the ones that stand out to me most a day later. Lemme know if you hit any up and have any other thoughts on them.

PS Upcoming show at Bitforms looks AWESOME. Curated by Emily Bates and Laura Blereau (don’t know the former, think very highly of the latter), with brochure essay by Sarah Cook (of Rethinking Curating: Art after New Media, which I am currently reviewing for Rhizome). It opens on Thursday; I will be there and so will T.Whid of MTAA – come say hi and see great work!