mindmarrow

November 6, 2012 Repository 28: Chelsea (damage) and Robert Lazzarini Posted In: contemporary art, exhibition of note, perspective

As I was reading the most recent Artforum magazine, I could not help but focus less on the artwork and more on the advertisements and gallery addresses. Most of the shows being advertised for November 8 starts listed with Chelsea galleries are definitely postponed a few weeks out or indefinitely. I imagined the artists whose works were being safe housed at the galleries, all of the damage control going on, the disappointments and all of the unknowns.

Then I came across a show going on at Marlborough in Chelsea. The image was of a warped, broken and dirty window. The sculpture is by artist Robert Lazzarini. The show is titled (damage), and per the press release he is focusing on America’s “fragmented, disturbed, broken and distorted” landscape. It continues to explain that he is known for altering the spaces his work is shown in order to further disorient the space. The show was to begin at this Chelsea gallery on November 8.

How fitting then that the gallery is likely left with a film of Sandy, a sludge less of the type from America’s fragmentation, but from nature’s disruption. I am curious if the artist is working to keep the gallery in this state of controlled disarray for his show, or if he will wait for the space to become pristine to its pre-Sandy state. I hope he does the former, a gentle reminder that tricks of the eye only move you superficially, but the dirt and grime on the floor in a fancy gallery would reach you to the core in terms of a perspective shift – assuming this is his aim.

I feel terrible about all of the damage the area has received – I’ve been in and around those galleries often, and know that the depth of the damage (artists’ losses as well as galleries’) will never be fully grasped. Here’s hoping the (damage) gives perspective to embrace the present, and roll with what we’ve been given.

Image courtesy of artist Robert Lazzarini and Marlborough Chelsea.

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