Klaus Wanker

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

Prank II: A Dud

A less-damaging (and much-less-original) prank was also carried out on opening night: Someone went around strewing Monopoly money around the floors of galleries. Presumably meant as commentary on the commercialization of art, the stunt was just a tad too hackneyed to raise anyone’s hackles. This prank gets a “D”: dull, dumb, derivative.

--------------------------

AI Predictions: You Heard It Here First

• With the ever-growing popularity of video art, look for a lawsuit resulting from an injury to someone who trips (or gets tripped over) in these pitch-black, crowded viewing rooms. After the first such suit, look for the signing of release forms to be required before being allowed entry…
• With the surging interest in contemporary art, and ever-more-crowded openings, look for more Chelsea galleries to institute private viewings (a concept we cautiously embrace if these invitation-only events are open to the press; a move we wholeheartedly condemn if not!)…
• The merging of Chelsea’s hyperactive nightlife (the city’s biggest clubs are here) and its gallery scene is bound to happen sooner or later. Look for a gallery-cum-disco (with a shared lobby and to-die-for custom-designed velvet rope) to open in the near future. Who’ll step up to the plate first? Gagosian? Gladstone? Boone? Marks? The interior-design collaborations, artist/DJ sets and performance-art possibilities leave us panting in anticipation.

--------------------------

Poli See

Speaking of predictions, maybe it was the forecast that gallerists Edward Winkleman and Daniel Papkin recently gave to ArtInfo, or maybe it was the blaring media volume on the pending 9/11 anniversary, but when we joined the crowds in Chelsea, we were expecting to see a number of artists engaging with our charged political climate. And that did, indeed, prove to be the case at a few galleries. And, we’re happy to report, most of the work that could reasonably be read as carrying political overtones was well-crafted; there was little pat sloganeering going on (although there was some).

But while Chelsea had its fair share of political art, it was indefatigable gallery visitors who hit openings in Brooklyn on Friday who got to see an especially strong work that explicitly evoked the political climate. Susan C. Dessel’s installation, Our Backyard, A Cautionary Tale, in the sculpture garden at Dam, Stuhltrager, featured a series of white plastic body bags lined up on a patch of grass. To get from the back door of the gallery to the outdoor bar, visitors had to either navigate a narrow path or step over the body bags to reach the far side of the outdoor space. As the opening got crowded, it provided perhaps the most apt metaphor for why we may see more “political” art this fall—under contemporary circumstances, it’s simply unavoidable.
--------------------------

Jungles and Junk

At the Howard Scott Gallery, the urban jungle collided with the real thing at the opening of Ron Klein’s “Forces of Nature”—a series of installations created using dried plants Klein retrieved on trips deep into unmapped regions of the Amazon, Burma and Madagascar (“It’s like a treasure hunt,” he said), along with “junk” from his life in New York.

NYU biology professor and plant specialist Michael Purugganan, whose attendance at the opening was a happy accident, reveled in the exhibition. “It just blew me away,” Purugganan told ArtInfo. “It’s an amazing intersection of art and the natural world.” Purugganan took home a price list (one of the smaller works was listed for $3,500) and set up a lunch meeting with Klein. For those who buy his larger pieces, Klein said he makes a personal appearance at the buyer’s home to install the artworks.

--------------------------

Old Enough to Drink?

While museums may be bending over backwards to attract non-gray-haired visitors, Chelsea’s galleries are having no such trouble packing in the youth market. Experienced observers of the Chelsea scene were marveling at just how low the average age was at the evening’s openings. We’re not even talking undergraduate artists and the college classmates (and young collectors) who love them—but high school teenagers. Booze-serving galleries may need to start checking IDs…