- I started with a full schedule of Chelsea visits... Some standouts: Henry Darger at Andrew Edlin, which included one of the most violent panels by him that I have seen; Dan Flavin at Paul Cooper, which included a really nice two sided tunnel; Louise Bougeois and Tracy Emin at Carolina Nitsh Project Room, which was a collaboration of rather epic man-hating proportions; a retrospective at The Pace Gallery (multiple locations) with major modern art holdings... tons of minimalist work (a theme all day) along with some cool Dubuffet archives and a crazy robe made for Milly Glimcher; Minimalists (Andre, Flavin, Merz, Lewitt, Long) at Gladstone; the Beyond Color show at Bruce Silverstien had some great photographs; Janaina Tschape at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. included a two channel video shot in Venice, Italy that was beautiful, mysterious, and a bit depressing to watch, due to circumstances surrounding my summer living there, years ago. The aquatic aspects of the multiple medium show were interesting, too; Keith Edmier and Allan McCullom at Friedrich Petzel was fun to look at. I enjoy Edmier's sculptures a good bit; Pipilotti Rist at Luhring Augustine was a cool and trippy installation to spend time in, even if nothing specific within the images, etc., stood out; Adam Fuss at Cheim & Read was a bit creepy and nicely installed/presented; and one last standout, which raises lots of internal "questions," was the Gottfried Helnwein show at Friedman Benda... I have always taken issue with his technical showboating and his earlier commercial leanings -- Scorpions "Blackout" for christ's sake -- and I remember him trying to get his work into the Art Institute's permanent collection when I worked there, and being rejected -- but fuck, this show is messed up on a few levels... look it up, it is pretty much all online...
- Slogun interlude for sightseeing, visiting an old friend, and happy hour cheese plate...
- Swans at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple... Pieter, Erin, and I made it inside in perfect time to find a nice central spot on the floor, towards the front... what would later be the faint-zone... minutes before the drone would start that signals the start of the Swans set. Michael Gira was a bit more animated than in Chicago, which added to the spectacle of the show, kicking of their set by giving himself multiple slaps to his face... and then they were off. While I was not one of the whiners who complained that the Chicago show was not loud enough... please, it was loud... last night's show was a few steps closer to being deafening... probably because it had deeper bass that might have been lacking in Chicago. So, yeah, it was pretty crushing and I have that sort of compression feeling in my inner ear... like having flown overseas... and ringing... We checked out the afterparty for a while and ran into more friends, but we left to go get a snack when a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song came on...
- Off to MOMA today, finally, and then Bowery Ballroom tonight...
