Chelsea Gallery Thursday Openings (10.17.24)
Forgive me for the photo quality, we're figuring this out.
This week, I went to Chelsea again. I wanted to switch it up and visit Tribeca, but Tribeca only had 2 openings while Chelsea had 19. So the choice this week was obvious. If you guys knew of more Tribeca openings let me know! I use ThirstyGallerina for my art crawls.
Here's the list of galleries I checked out this week:
This week three exhibitions caught my eye. Gretchen Scherer’s “Seeking an Exit” at Monya Rowe Gallery, Cary Leibowitz’s “You Really Let Yourself Go” at New Discretions, and Peter Hoffmeister & Elsa Werth’s “Omission” at MAMA Gallery.
Gretchen Scherer’s “Seeking an Exit”
Scherer’s work is a kaleidoscopic interior; she captures the collections of museums and philanthropic historical figures. Through her usage of color and perspective, Scherer takes us inward, into the belly of a collection, and breathes life into the canvas. The vibrancy of the palette and the added small off-kilter details, from moved furniture to unhung work, make the work feel not only lived-in but welcoming. The sizing of the canvas is relatively small, but the content is so dense it feels similar to a hidden object puzzle adventure (I did google it, and that is the name!). The work calls you to look closely to see what you can recognize. I saw several works that appeared in my art history classes. Though drawn from life, Scherer takes creative liberty in the settings and arrangement and depicts the work through a highly personal and stylized lens.
The show will be on view from Oct 17 to Nov 23, 2024
Cary Leibowitz’s “You Really Let Yourself Go”
Leibowitz’s work is all too relatable and quirky, not ‘quirky’ in the sarcastic way used to describe millennial humor, but instead in a witty, honest, and refreshing manner. He depicts the truth in a visually aesthetic style, or at least my truth, as I resonated with many of the one-liners featured. The bright pop colors offset the somewhat melancholic sentences. The creative flare Leibowitz’s visual style encases in his blunt commentary creates an interesting juxtaposition in the artwork. From the ones pictured above to an additional work, a large pink and yellow dog bone that stated, “I don’t know what I want to be.”
The show will be on view from Oct 17 to Nov 23, 2024
Also, they gave out free mugs, so I got a nice little souvenir!
Peter Hoffmeister & Elsa Werth’s “Omission”
Hoffmeister and Werth’s exhibition caught me by surprise; I stumbled around the galleries, as usual, and entered MAMA, expecting the usual visual artwork hanging on gallery walls. Instead, I found pillars, and on top of each were declassified government files inscribed into plywood. Hoffmeister’s work will be the main focus as his installation grabbed my attention. The particular one that caught my interest, pictured above, is written to Dr. Martin Luther King, suspected to be from an FBI agent. The letter’s intention was to encourage King to commit suicide, “King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is.”
In the second paragraph, the author wrote, “You know you are a complete fraud and a great liability to all of us Negroes” and immediately identity politics came to mind. Namely, the blackface white Twitter (or X) users put on when attempting to dismantle conversation centered on the black experience internally. Neha Rashid wrote a wonderful article for NPR in 2017 that covers the topic.
If my picture of the work is unclear, here’s a link to the letter. Also, here’s a link to the article published by the New York Times in 2014 that initially covers the letter, just in case you want more information. Art is at its best when it’s promoting difficult conversations that reveal societal trends or the individuals’ psyche. The masquerade performed by the original author of the letter led me down a hole of research as I was able to link it to a contemporary issue. It sparked me to be better informed; access to information and transparency with our government is of the upmost importance and Hoffmeister’s installation highlights that while encouraging the viewer to do more research.
There were other pillars with documents just as illuminating and compelling as King’s. I encourage whoever’s reading this who resides in New York to stop by MAMA and poke around the National Archives.
The show will be on view from Oct 17 to Nov 14, 2024
*Any missing captions will be added once they’re publicly available
Hell yeah!!!