Chelsea Galleries - The Lion, the Witch, and the Headaches

We started with Barthelemy Toguo at the Robert Miller Gallery. It was easily the least impressed I have ever been in my life. One room was sealed off from the others by a thin, hanging veil. Inside the space, the floor was completely covered in cardboard boxes which have been duct taped together. I wasn’t quite sure what the point of this invention was, but seeing as how it failed to correlate to his work I assumed the gallery owners did not want the pristine floors beneath Bart’s paintings to get soiled when viewers (such as myself) eventually become so under whelmed they begin to defecate in their pants. Stacked in one corner were filled laundry bags. Portraits of poorly rendered nuns and priests thinking of hard core sex were hung as if anyone could be proud of completing such a time wasting endeavor.


Next up was Enoc Perez at the Mitchell, Innes & Nash gallery. I actually wasn’t too depressed to arrive at this space. Thick, robust paintings of buildings and landscapes hung triumphantly as if to give a big, writhing middle finger to the sloppy and alienating works that have filled the room before and will probably fill the room after. The application of paint Enoc uses seems almost contradictory of the final result. When you look close, you cannot imagine a person can get such a clear image out of the multitude of colors scraped and cut into the dry surface of the canvas (which will often show through). His use of color was enchanting, and although they are showing landmarks through the colorful lens of a kaleidoscope, I feel like I can fall into their world if I stand too close.


Lastly was Juergen Teller of the Lehmann Maupin Gallery. At first I was confused at the first painting I saw, but optimistic. Could Juergen be an actual, talented painter? Then I realized the hanging frame in front of me contained a reproduction of an old renaissance painting. Damn it, I thought. My annoyance grew when I saw that the majority of his work was two naked women photographed at the Met. I saw no value of any of it, and I still don’t give it any credit as works of art.