The Out of Towners: LA Eyes on NY Art
When we got off the subway in Chelsea, I looked around. There was a pizza place in each direction, a couple of offices, buildings climbing the sky. Where are the galleries? I wondered aloud. Dane, ever the keeper of the map, figured out which way we needed to go. We passed a store with modernist furniture - that, at least, felt like a start. I couldn’t help but be slightly disappointed, but on we went. When we found the Altman building where sixteen Los Angeles galleries were hosting the LA Art in New York fair, we still hadn’t passed a single gallery. By then, I had to head to a meeting so I left Dane to install his work. The thing about New York is between subways and taxis, uptown and downtown and the rest - you don’t really have time to worry about what you missed; there’s always something new. And I’d find those galleries yet.
The next afternoon, and countless footsteps later, we arrived at the Whitney to find a long line snaking around the side of the building. A steel pyramidal structure festooned with roughly painted, sprayed and collaged placards by more than one hundred people (a re-staging of Di suvero’s earlier work by Tiravanija) was the first piece we saw and, in many ways, was indicative of the rest of the show - a broken neon-orange peace sign, a face with no eyes, Bush’s visage in yellow and black horizontals like a bee. The line began to move and there was a surge of excitement (apparently everyone else heard that this was NY’s Disneyland). As we past the gate into the thick crowd, I overheard some college students in tight jeans and carefully torn jackets making fun of the museum guard’s accent. It startled me; the whole time (had it only been one day?!) we had been in New York, I’d been noticing the way people got along - the integrated streets, the small kindnesses people felt compelled to offer (I’d been given change, handed lost gloves, offered a seat) so their barbs came as an uncomfortable surprise.
Day for Night I can’t help but think it should have been the opposite. The galleries echoed with themes of violence, politics, death. These were matched by a nostalgic preference for assemblage and expressionism, though this was, in some ways, balanced by a many videos. At first, the attention to the political was a relief. It seemed that finally someone was looking at the state of our world, mirroring frustration and powerlessness in the face of our politics. But scratch the surface and the anger and rebellion seem to scream for the sake of themselves. There was sex and blood, death and bones, and enough scrawled notes and patched together collages to feel as if the exhibition were tossed together in a frenzy of heat with a bottle of glue and a jar of wax. Happily, there are some cases where an overt opinion, intelligently considered idea, or poetically rendered expression, prevail.
Robert Pruitt’s “Glass Slippers”, broken bottles stuck to a pair of basketball shoes, and a large drawing and alter to the memory of himself are all outstanding. Mark Bradford’s monumental canvases are a dense patchwork of rectangles emerging from chaos in the lost angles of a sprawling and mysteriously metropolitan space. Deva Graf’s wrapped head, an embroidered design where the face would be, dripping wax from the head while bunny ears cast crooked shadows on the floor under the grey pedestal, is like a sculptural poem. Pierre Huyghe’s video chronicles a surreal attempt to build an island and is full of hazy, amber light and incredible shots of the swelling sea under a layer of snow and ice. Despite evocative exceptions, my overall impression of the show retained an overly clever and patched together sensibility.
That night I finally found the Chelsea galleries and there blocks upon blocks of them after all. It was pretty amazing. By the time we made our way across town from the Whitney, several had closed. But with openings and events there was plenty to see; in particular a beautiful exhibition of large-scale photographs by Frank Thiel at Sean Kelly Gallery. The crowds at the openings were similar to groupings of artists and arts fans in Los Angeles (and likely most major cities) making a claim for the much talked about borderless international art scene though scenester boundaries still apply, you have to know someone or be known to get a hello. Walking (more walking - who knew a yoga-doing, hike-taking Angelino would be beat by NY sidewalks!?) through rows and rows of galleries, the oversized section devoted to New York art in most magazines started to feel somewhat justified. Later that night, a drink meeting with a New York editor made short work of the claim that Los Angeles is a rising star in the art world. At least according to this New Yorker, this was a dream akin to the ever imminent boom of our downtown (although its newest renaissance does seem more promising then ever, lending a surprising optimism in response.)
Next stop, the LA Art in New York exhibition. The feel was breezy and cool, especially compared to the press of the subway, the crowds at the Whitney, and bustling sidewalks. It felt like LA as much as it looked like LA complete with familiar art, familiar faces, a complimentary bar, hardwood floors, and airy exhibition spaces. But sentiments were mixed amongst dealers I spoke with, most having speculated enthusiastically they would give it a try for this year. Some were selling well, while others reported that the quiet crowds were nothing next to the Armory. A cool confidence and warm generosity marked event.
I was worried about the Armory. I waited and put it off. I went to meetings, walked around Chelsea, waited to see my friend, Lee (a painter, who was busy on a fashion design job for the same three days we were in town). Happily, she got off early the last afternoon and we had lunch, walked through Central Park, and talked. Hours before the Armory closed and less than a day before we left town, I finally said, ok, let’s go to. The three of us stood in the park discussing it while kids rode their bikes down a long set of stairs in a risky mix of street gymnastics and extreme sports.
A cab ride later, we paid our twenty dollars each and were given green armbands and waved inside. The best part was seeing so many galleries from all around the world Zurich and Antwerp, Madrid and Paris, Sydney and London, and tons from New York. With so much art and only three hours until closing, we moved rather quickly. It is a different way to look at art floating along the aisles and stopping at whatever catches your eye, you get a sense of things without really taking in many individual works. The first pier started out ok with a fantastic painting and several spectacular photographs, like Mike Kelley’s memory series from Patrick Painter. But by the end, we were all a bit depressed and complaining that nothing stood out, nothing was great. It was all so disconnected.
We grudgingly went to the second pier cause Dane felt like hell, we’re here, let’s get our 20 bucks worth. This time, I suggested everyone “buy” three pieces. Lee quickly chose a Bill Viola video from James Cohan Gallery and Dane found a photo and plex piece by Rodney Graham. I liked Kiki Smith’s white sculpture at Pace Wildenstein, but not enough to buy it. I thought I’d include Kelley’s photographs, why not the whole series? It was only an imaginary buy. Then I picked two pieces from Tina Kim Gallery, where I could have chosen at least five. I had started taking cards and writing the names of the galleries and artists I liked. It was more fun this way and I found myself thinking about art differently. Would I rather support a known artist who I have always admired or an artist from Spain whose work I liked, but had never seen before; should I rethink my choices? Lee said the only thing she cared about was whether she could look at it everyday. She and Dane only ended up with two pieces while I had to whittle my choices down from five. We noticed that no one had chosen a painting or a drawing. Lee and Dane each had a photo and a video and I had a photo, a collage, and a sculpture. What was happening with painting? And what was with all these nudes and skin pix?
At the diner, where we rested our feet and chatted, I looked at the walls where a gold painted bird, a photo of the city, and something else I don’t remember, were hanging. For a second I thought, couldn’t these have been in the Armory? What was the difference? And I realized that what the Armory lacked was context. It was art on art with art to spare. There was no sense of the history or the politics or even, in a way, the place that connected the works to their makers. How much does context matter? As we open art up to such a variety of media and concerns, do we become more and more dependent of this notion of context? This was more than enough to think about on the plane ride home. Who knows, maybe next time I head to the Big Apple, the art will all have moved uptown (or is it downtown?) and all the artists will be moving to LA.
Annie Buckley is an artist and writer living in Los Angeles, CA
(Copyright Annie Buckley, May 2006)
