Walking through the Past

Chelsea Galleries

I went to see the Morandi show at Zwirner’s this past weekend. I was immediately impressed by how upscale these very wealthy private galleries have become. This show is platformed like a museum exhibition, complete with guards in uniforms and gangs of retirees crowding into the picture frames. I know it’s not cool, but I’m not a fan. Not a lot of fireworks going on here. I get the commitment to small visions, and I appreciate the rigor of humble colors, but for me, endless shades of putty do not capture my imagination. “Oh! How dare you, Mark!” At least, that’s what my art angel told me. My art devil just said, “Fuck off, angel.” Still, if you’re a fan of Morandi, you’ll enjoy the poetry in these quiet, tightly formed, academic works. 

Paula Cooper had Carl Andre. And even though this classic work is familiar, accepted, and discussed in depth, the show still had an edge. It shouldn’t, really, at this point, but because the art world is so freaking conservative and unthinking these days, this show still pushes you to think about what you’re looking at and what it might mean. Duchampian challenge is still viable. Mundane objects are still tools for assassination. To illustrate this point all we have to do is look back a few years to see a banana taped to a wall. People lost their minds. Why? Andre had already restated this Duchampian point forty years before the duct-taped-chiquita. Plus he opened the doors to language, reproduction and seriality. But unlike a line of bricks, the S&M Phallus bound to the wall was waaaaaay sexier! Go see Andre’s show and have a good think about how smart and inevitable this thing looks. 

DeKeyser is also at Zwirner on 19th Street. I like De Keyser’s reticence. These paintings strive for emptiness and transition, and how he gets there can be surprising. I also like how he manages to tip the compositions into strange resolutions. It’s an interesting show and it may get you thinking about, for lack of a better word, insolvency. When is a painting bankrupt of imagery, materiality, composition, or ideas? De Keyser’s work can take us right to the edge, right up to the point when things disappear. I like the later work better, but it’s interesting to see some of the earlier works. 

I wandered from gallery to gallery hoping to find some painting that might capture my imagination, but I didn’t see anything particularly interesting. Maybe it’s a slow month. But Chelsea feels moribund as far as painting is concerned. There’s a lot of illustration being shown. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly isn’t very exciting. There are a lot of rehashed ideas, and frankly, a lot of decorative painting, being shown. Not bad. Well done stuff. Professional. Lovely. Sellable. But I need something more. I want ideas!

Mark Stone 2/5/2025