We headed up to NYC despite the predicted 37 degree fahrenheit temperatures, but it ended up being a good day and wasn't that cold afterall.
The standout event of the day was meeting artist Hans Breder whose work is pictured here. I never saw a photograph of the man and just happened to ask him a question. When I heard his accent I guessed he was the artist. He was very generous with his time and walked us through his show at The White Box on 329 Broome.
When Jon Manteau mentioned some aspects of his work that reminded him a little of Duchamp, Mr. Breder replied that Marcel had once shook his hand and told him he liked his work. So Jon says that we "touched the hand that touched the hand." He also said he lived with Tina Modotti for ten years so we touched the hand that touched the...? Of course Mr. Breder is an important artist in his own right and it is clear that many artists use the techniques and concepts he developed many years ago.
Another famous artist, Richard Tuttle, was at the packed opening of a show at Nicelle Beauchene where he had a couple of pieces in along with Jim Lee, Rosy Kaiser, Stephanie Backesalan Saret and Josh Tonsfeldt. The show is made up mostly of 3D works, even the paintings.
We agreed that in some ways the most memorable and surprising exhibit of the day was from Mike Kelley at Gagosian. If you are in NY go see it for yourself. Although the photos are representative of the work it still needs to be seen in person to really get the full effect.
I was glad to run into the work of Elisa D'Arrigo, at Elizabeth Harris, who I have featured here on this blog before. Kristen Baker's work is strong for such a young painter, see her work at Jeffrey Deitch up until December 19th. We also liked some of the work of Norbert Schwontkowski at Mitchell-Innes. Manteau, an avid surfer, also loved the hurricane photos of Clifford Ross at Sonnabend.
We probably hit at least 35 galleries and although it may sound like everything we saw was great, that wasn't the case. We left Chelsea feeling there was a lot of painting which is nice, but most of it was pretty weak.
