New York , Tuesday Nov 6, 2007 (post one of two)

Joel Shapiro, untitled, 2002-2007, bronze, 13′ 4″ x 27′ 9-1/2″ x 12′ 11″

I hate the fact that MoMA is closed on tuesday’s (and that the Gugenheim is closed thursday’s) this really does start to tweak my plans in ways I was not expecting. That said, I did not see the Martin Puryear show, I’ll have to settle with seeing it when it comes here. I was really pleased by the amount of minimal and post-minimal work on display this month.

Carl Andre at Paula Cooper
I’m a fan of Carl Andre’s work. However this installation just didn’t have the immediacy that I have grown accustom to in his installations. There was some very smart interplay with the floor’s construction and the placement of four floor pieces that worked inside the grid they set up and then re-inforced that in the grid of the floor. That was an unexpected approach to energizing the entire space.

Joel Shapiro at Pace
So I walk across the street and stumble into Jeol Shapiro’s show. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a show of his and I really forgot just how fully occupied the room becomes with just a few objects. On top of this there is this amazing craft in all the work – even the rough edged ones. The show is centered by this great piece with a long cantilevered extension that just does not allow you to look away. Highly recommended. On a different note, it’s really great to see a gallery showing sculpture in a way that you can actually walk around the entire object – sculpture is just so much stronger when it is not pushed into a corner or against a wall (unless it is supposed to be pushed against a wall). I’m seeing far to many shows everywhere where this is becoming the norm. It’s really short sighted for the work and does the view a disservice.

Barry Le Va at Sonabend
Continuing with the amazing thread of minimal and post-minimal work, I was thrilled to see Le Va’s show – it really spoke of a different time; work on construction paper with binder clips, xerox’s, dimestore photographs, and transparencies. If a younger artist was making this work today it would be done in photoshop and then output in a color inkjet, and then shown ten times the size these are – losing exactly the delicate nature of the objects – however keeping the approach intact. For the viewer this delicate approach is the visual thing that kept me looking.

Four Friends (Jean-Michael Basquiat, Keith Haring, Donald Baechler & Kenny Scharf) at Tony Shafrazi
This show for me was a real guilty pleasure, It brought back memories of the mid eighties when I was in school and these artists were just getting some recognition. But really as much as I like these artists, it was the Donald Baechler works that really took the limelight from the others. A year or so I spoke of how it seems that the JMB artworks that are available seem to be secondary – this trend is continuing – sadly.

Tomorrow I talk about work made in the current century – Johnnie Winnoa Ross, Jaq Chartier, and Richard Prince’s show at the Guggenheim.