I went gallery-hopping with Imogene today. It was great; I have finally been to the galleries that I have always wanted to visit.
LUMAS was an explosion of color as usual. Ergo, loved it. It was a smooth, Cadbury candy for the eye. It was a good place to warm up one's visual faculties although imbuing one with that much color can make the rest of the gallery-hop feel more sterile and minimalistic.
Artspeak, was fascinating. If I had not spoken to the associate director, Erik, I would not have gotten nearly as much out of it as I have. The group show featured three artists, each exploring a dimension of sound and vision. I am definitely pumped to write for them. I will email the director to see if she needs someone to write a postscript.
Catriona Jefferies was intriguing. Although I think I hyped it up in my head too much. One of the most memorable pieces by Geoffrey Farmer is Wooden High Crusty and Dusty (2017). It is a large painting of kitchenware on cloth hung in the corner of the room; its height forced me to view it at a distance, helping me combat my problem of getting too close to a work too quickly.
Farmer’s artist statement for the show The Big Kitchen was very powerful. It was at once about him and not about him; I think his childhood memory will resonated strongly with readers. A good artist statement should not really be an "all-about-me" page of the artist; nobody except his mother would want to read that. Instead, there needs to be some mindfulness of the audience. Do not just present yourself, engage yourself; universality needs to be derived from specificity.
Equinox Gallery was incredible. I really enjoyed the Phillipe Raphanel show—Island. The paintings were abstract but legible. Without depicting the particularity of the forest, he extrapolates its sheer visual abundance with lines and color. The multitude of layers and paint renders the canvas as a portal to a fantastical world of color.
Raphanel’s works, like those of Farmer’s, must be viewed at a distance to see their immersive effect. Up close, the hallucinatory illusions resolve into distinct colors, subverting the spiritual with bodily. Yet it is funny how the immediate reaction, at least for me, is to view a painting within inches of its surface. As if somehow art needs to conform to the same "closer, faster, bigger" mantra that seems to characterize the contemporary consumer culture of "more, more, more."
