Chintown 10/21

Better late than never. Two weekends ago I head over to Chinatown for a Saturday night of art openings. There were openings at Happy Lion, Kontainer Gallery, Rental Gallery, Telic, Peres Projects and Mary Goldman . Two weeks has calmed by view of what I saw. As I left the scene after hitting the openings, I was full of venom for the state of the art world. In retrospect, things are not as bad as my initial reaction.

Chinatown is known for the youth of the artists having shows, which can be both good and bad; new fresh art blood mixed with works about ideas that haven’t reached maturity.Dan Attoe, at Peres Projects, had freshness, a sensation I imagine hard to infuse into his neon sculptures. His efforts to turn the gallery into a lodge atmosphere are admirable, but in the end a little to testosterone driven for my personal taste. The art at many of the other galleries was the art you would expect, paintings, drawings and prints challenging the frame and traditional methods of making, but overall a little to predictable to be excited about. I had hoped for some excitement down at Telic with Mario’s Furniture, but there were very few people in the space and some of those were be pressured into being participants. It was too much pressure for me on a Saturday night, so I left without playing.

The one show that I did see that I thought was of note was Freedom: and Other Seldom Travelled Roads by Sanford Biggers at the Mary Goldman Gallery. The works were playful yet thoughtful renditions of the African American consciousness, using iconography typically associated with that culture or the image of that culture to push a little further. Each work, simple yet strong, would be quite understated as an entity unto itself. However, displayed together in the gallery setting they made smart pairings and brought out the meanings a little further. The series of metallic east coast doorknockers originally meant to look like comical servant, recast here metallic and partially melted in combination with drawings that used the same silhouetted shapes in mirrored metallic stickers recalled the pop sensibility of Jeff Koons with ideas greater than celebrity. Another work, a typical fertility idol, simple split down the middle and then separated spoke volumes about concepts of identity. It was overall a strong show and by far the highlight of the most current crop of Chinatown offerings.