Sunday 9 December 2007

Escaping the pre-Christmas chaos

This weekend I decided to stay far far far away from the Christmas shopping madness after last week's Abercrombie and Fitch nightmare and joined a Saturday afternoon tour of the 'Best Exhibits' showing at the Chelsea galleries.

I love these tours. I try to do them every few months or so, but I don't manage to do them nearly as often as I would like. There are a few groups that do them, but mostly I like to do the ones run by
NY Gallery Tours led by Rafael Risemberg. Rafael runs a Best Exhibits tour every month and for $20 - or $15 with an online coupon - he culls down the overwhelming number of exhibits showing at the 200+ galleries in Chelsea to his eight favourite picks. Usually I love 3 or 4 of his picks, hate 2 of them and feel ambivalent about another 2, but it's always 2hours well spent and since he's been running these tours for a few years he has good relationships with the galleries, so you get to find out the fun stuff like how much a piece costs. One time we even met one of the artists, C.K. Wilde, who creates amazing collages using currency, and got to ask him a few questions about his work. I like that a lot because the interpretation of the work is so subjective that you can only really know by speaking to the artist, but sometimes the galleries will tell you. You can see pieces here from the exhibition C.K. Wilde had at the Pavel Zoubok gallery, back in 2006, with another artist, Mark Wagner, who also creates collages using currency, although his preferred media is dollar bills. Unfortunately the photos don't give a true sense of how detailed and clever the work is, so if you have a chance to see his work, don't pass it up.

Anyway, this month my favourite exhibit by a long shot was Do Ho Suh's show Cause & Effect which is showing at the Lehmann Maupin gallery, 540 West 26th St.

In the back room of the gallery is the piece shown in the photo below, which I nabbed from the gallery's website. It's a tornado made of 100s, well more like 1000s, of interlocking plastic figures. The effect of the piece is amazing!! If you get a chance to see it, I highly recommend it.

Rafael reckoned it would sell for upwards of $400,000.

Fancy it for your living room? :-)

Here are other photos I nabbed from Flickr, taken by Sokref1 of the same exhibit with a bit more close up on the detail. The exhibit closes on the 22nd December, so dash on over soon if you are interested in seeing it up close.


9 comments:

Flowers said...

hey fish!
tag! i think you'll like this one...details over at my patch.

Blur Ting said...

Wow, that's an amazing work of art! Thanks for showing us.

Anonymous said...

those are great photos....well, great exhibits, really!

Amel said...

WOAAAHHHHH!!! That's REALLY something!!! If I EVER go to New York, I'll make sure I visit one of these art exhibitions he he he he...

Btw, did you go ice-skating last weekend?????

fishwithoutbicycle said...

Hey Flowers, thanks so much, you made my day.

Hi Blur Ting, glad you like it. It took my breath away.

Hi O, thanks for stopping by, I can't take credit for the photos as I nabbed them from Flickr, but can definitely recommend the exhibit :-)

Hi Amel, glad you like it. The galleries are definitely worth checking out. Unfortunately I didn't get to go ice skating last weekend, so I'll have to try when I am in London :-)

Amel said...

Skating in London? YAAAAAAYYY!!!! Sounds like SO MUCH FUN!!!

A friend of mine says that England is such a HOT SPOT during Christmas-time, especially for shopping. Is that true? Or is New York also as good a place to shop? HE HE HE HE...

fishwithoutbicycle said...

Hi Amel, yep there is ice skating at Somerset House in London (http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/) which is gorgeous and feels very festive.

England will be crazy with Christmas shoppers - as crazy as New York - although half the shoppers in New York seem to be from England because the dollar is so weak compared to the pound right now. It is going to be EXPENSIVE for me :-(

Maldives said...

really nice pic you have on this article. it impress me.

fishwithoutbicycle said...

Hey Maldives, thanks for stopping by. Thanks for the compliment on the photos, I didn't take them I'll admit, other people are much better photographers than me :-)