Sometimes life is capable of annoying its subjects with potholes, roadblocks, and random police checkpoints. However, the forced alternative paths we take because of these barricades, often lead to pleasant surprises. Such was the case on Saturday afternoon. I attempted to hit all the big galleries in Chelsea, like Gladstone, Rosen, and Shafrazi; yet, my spontaneity led me to find closed doors because of “summer hours.” The only solution with countless deadlines approaching on Monday, were the small galleries of the East Village, SoHo, LES, and Chinatown. Many of these smaller galleries closed for the summer like artist-run exhibition space Reena Spaulings on East Broadway, or open by appointment only like James Fuentes, but my luck struck with the Jen Beckman gallery at 6 Spring Street.
The Jen Bekman Gallery is an exhibition that collected its artworks by theme. Titled, Ornithology, the exhibit swings seamlessly through multiple mediums and features collaged birds, caged birds, wild birds, painted birds, and drawn birds. The very small gallery curated the exhibit in solon style. This exhibition style lends to perhaps a deeper semiotic interpretation of the way birds would take flight in the sky. Reading from left to right the exhibition begins with Summer Tanager, a mixed media collage by Laura Levine. The Summer Tanager feasts on wasps and bees in the southern United States, to then fly over 500 miles to places like Panama and sometimes Western Europe. Levine pays tribute to this bird and its voyage decorating the background of her collages with stamps that are just as bright and saturated in color as the red male Summer Tanager poised in the foreground.
Other works that are hard to ignore are the pigment prints of Todd Forsgren. Trapped within a diaphanous net, the delicate Painted Bunting and Magnolia Warbler birds appear panicked. To free these birds from their capture would risk breaking or injuring the fragile birds. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, name both of Forsgren’s subjects as endangered species.
Also worth mentioning are the photographs of Bert Teunissen and Alec Soth. Teunissen’s large 30×30 print reveals an older couple eccentrically dressed and staring straight into the camera lens. In the center of the photograph are caged birds in motion, and all around them is a unique environment with piles of newspapers, stained walls that look as if they were once white, and kitchen bench decorated in a loud yellow-checkered tablecloth. Soth’s C-print is of a beaten down back lot landscape. In the distance are wrecked boats and buildings; in the center stands a bruised rooster on weathered chair. Its composition is clean and subject matter bizarre.
In an overpriced and overhyped art market, it is nice to step outside the white starches of Chelsea, and into the cozy and intimate gallery settings of downtown. The Ornithology exhibit continues through August 2, 2008. Please visit the links below to step outside of your box.
http://www.museum52.com/new_york/index2.php
http://www.reenaspaulings.com/
Tags: alec soth, animals, bert teunissen, birds, c-print, chelsea, exhibit, forsgren, gallery, gladstone, iucn, jen beckam, photography, reena spaulings, review, rosen, shafarazi, species, summer tanager
One Comment
Thanks for the informative post