Saturday, November 27, 2004

The Greatest Showplace on Earth!

"Chelsea...the greatest showplace for contemporary art on Earth" Roberta Smith - NY Times 11/28/04
Wow, there it is. I am amazed and astonished that it has happened so quickly but then "Chelsea is SoHo on crack" as the saying goes. It's the go-go eighties all over again with a group show of the tragically unhip - David Salle and his gate crashers from way back when: Clemente, Haring and Basquiat. Planned for the Tony Shrafazzi gallery, this show should be telling: will it be well-recieved? I hope not. It was bad enough the first time around to have all these over-inflated egos commanding all the high prices and prestige. What is happening in Chelsea right now owes nothing to the eighties.

Like it or not, much of what is on view in Chelsea galleries is of the twenty-first century: high tech materials, digital video and projection, post-post-modern thinking and wildly idiosyncratic excess characterize an emergent new art that moves at a rapid clip and morphs in a dizzying array of styles, attitudes and persona owing in equal parts to science fiction, the internet, and late-stage capitalism. Not to say that we are in a "Golden Age" but definitely one that is fresh, vibrant and in some way, promising.

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