To be perfectly honest, after doing some research for the posting yesterday I was a little uncertain about the prospects for last night. The usual “go to” galleries were not having big openings or had shows I was less than excited about. However, as I mentioned in yesterdays First Thursday preview, there were a few places that I was excited about and these places did not disappoint. In fact, I saw some of the better shows that I have seen a quite some time. The student art sale at Brooks was hit and miss, but there was a lot of great stuff there. In general I found the best photos there were the least manipulated during either pre or post-production. Or maybe just less obviously manipulated. Regardless, it is nice to go to a show and see art that you can actually afford to buy. This was also the case at Perch which took a very small space and put up one of the best shows per square foot that I have seen in a really long time. In particular, the work by Michelle Elizondo was so good that I was convinced to take home a group of three of her small paintings on board. These beautiful postcard-sized paintings were mostly landscapes with a few more abstract works sprinkled here and there. The presentation was wonderful and as a large group of images they were irresistible. So much so, in fact, that it was very hard to choose only three to walk away with. While I was immediately smitten with these paintings, the other work up at Perch was easily worthy of mention here. Monika Molnar-Metzenthin had produced a series of blind-contour self-portraits that hung from lines like close hanging out to dry. Each of these portraits, produced without lifting the pen or looking at the paper, demonstrates an incredible ability of mental visualization that I find confounding. And viewed as a series the variations between each drawing become intriguing connections to some particular variation in the artist at the time of its creation. On December 14th from noon to 4pm she will be in the gallery and available for portraits.
There are other great things to see at Perch, but there is another show that I want to mention that really should not
Carlos Grano UNTITLED, 2007
be missed. I managed to get to the Contemporary Arts Forum to see their “Anthology” show before the performance there started and was especially impressed by the work of Carlos Grano, and Paul deBruynKops. The work by these two artists could hardly be more different. Grano has created large geometric abstractions made from magazine paper. I generally prefer figurative art, but Grano’s work is genuinely beautiful. The arrangement of squares often suggests greatly enlarged pixels from an image that is just beyond your ability to decipher. This is a large part of what makes them so fun to look at, but his use of color also greatly contributes to their appeal.
Paul deBruynkops BOTTOM'S UP CLUB, 2008
On the other side of the artistic spectrum Paul deBruynKops’s mixed media dioramas depict the seedy world of pulp fiction detective novels. There are many wonderful little scenes here, but the most ambitious work is a large construction of a street scene complete with cranes, cars and smoke stacks that can be manipulated by the viewer using remote controls. A stop motion movie breathes even greater life into the dark, depraved world that deBruynKops has created, and it is immensely fun to visit though I have to admit I wouldn’t want to live there.