WOW What a Gallery Day

So as I have several days off in a row from my internship I decided to take the opportunity to go down to Chelsea today and see what their galleries had to offer and may I say I was not at all disappointed. The one show that I simply had to see, being a fan of pop surrealism, graffiti, and street art, was Storm Clouds, a solo show with new works by Jeff Soto at the Johnathan LeVine Gallery. I have been keeping an eye on this artists since I saw his debut in Juxtapoz magazine a few years ago. This is his second major show at the Johnathan Levine Gallery. The work is mostly acrylic on panel or canvas and deals with politically charged themes such as the war in Iraq and our degenerating environment. He presents this material through playful creatures half organic and half machine in a surreal environment where clouds become ominous villains and rainbows become a symbol of hope. The highlight of this exhibition, for me at least, was a giant wall installation mixing wooden cutouts and paintings done directly on the wall. The image appears to be the United States being consumed by a noxious animated cloud formation engulfing almost 75% of the country with pollution and destruction. As the viewer I almost felt claustrophobic as I was devoured by the sheer size of this piece. Storm Clouds was everything I hoped it would be and more.

As I walked past the Pavel Zoubok Gallery I almost embarrassed myself with pure ecstasy as I peered in the windows and noticed they were showing Aaron Noble in a solo show titled Rainbow 6 Warsong. Holly Crap I said to myself and hurried in. I first saw Aaron Noble in the magazine Beautiful Decay and they were doing an article on his enormous wall paintings. He has an intriguing style where he clips out pieces of superheroes from old comic books, an arm here a pony tail there, and then recontextualizes them into amorphous abstract forms keeping with the comic book coloring and inking. To my surprise he also does smaller watercolor versions of these behemoth paintings. I was like a kid in a candy store only with no budget that would allow me to purchase a piece, the cheapest one they had was $5000.00. His line quality and attention to detail is astounding along with his convex canvases. What a pleasure it was to actually behold these images first hand.

One of the first galleries I visited after the Johnathine Levine Gallery was the Bitforms Gallery and man oh man this must have been my lucky day because right there in the gallery were three of Daniel Rozin's electronic video capture pieces in a show called Fabrication. If you have never seen this guy look him up and try and find a video because you can't really get the full ambiance of his pieces if you don't. Basically his pieces are video capture based, what I mean by this is there is a camera strategically placed in his piece and when you step in front of the piece whatever he is using, anything from dowlrods with the ends cut at a 45 degree angle to laminated c prints mounted on wood, will realign to form your image and where ever you move it follows you and changes to fit your new position. I must have spent 30 min or more in this gallery just playing with his pieces.

I must say I visited almost 40 galleries today and that's not even half of them. I will elaborate on other galleries such as the Paula Cooper Gallery which had an amazing Sol Lewitt installation and the Johnathan Levine Gallery who also featured Jim Houser, at later dates it's just to much for one blog. If I could give a day out of all the days I have left up here to my fellow class mates believe me I would because it has been a real eye opener. Hope this finds everyone well and until next time................

Charles