Art in Chelsea

On tuesday I walked around Chelsea looking at a whole lot of art. And the winners are:

1. For worst pictures to see after lunch, the award goes to Manabu Yamanaka! (Applause). His work supposedly deals with his Buddhism, according to the flyer at Stux Gallery. The flyer also emphasized that Yamanaka does not digitally manipulate his photos. This made the work more unnerving to look at. Mr. Stefan Stux was there giving a gallery lecture and answered a question for a tour group, explaining that these works were so disturbing as to not be commercially viable. And he obviously loves this photographer and you could tell by the way he talked about it.

2. Best use of 2x4s and romex and particle board goes to Maya Lin. Give it up for Maya! Her show at Pace Wildenstein had three different landscape sculptures and geez, what can I say. Her work is really simple and really startling at the same time.

3. The award for the most jarring commentary on the horror of misogyny goes to Kara Walker for her piece about a 13 year old Somali girl who was stoned to death for being raped. Turns out that Artforum wrote something about it, which I would rather have you read yourself instead of going through the trauma of detailing this intense and scary piece of art. Glad I saw it. Can't stop thinking about it. Ready to stop now.

4. And best drug addled free love retrospective goes to Dennis Hopper for his black and white photographs from the 1960s and 70s of all manner of counterculture fun. I was struck by how many interesting men he happened to be friends with to photograph and how soulful and stunning they looked through his viewfinder. Not sure how free the love was, but he sure knew how to make a fella gaze into his camera.