wynwood gallery roundup
Post #114 • September 25, 2003, 8:07 AM
Paintings by my friend Jordan Massengale are worth a trip to Dorsch Gallery to see, especially the series of pig’s heads on a table, which are Soutinesque and strange in the best possible way. There are also two largeworthy abstractions. His pastels don’t hold up as well in comparison. Also at Dorsch: Javier Sasieta’s monoprints seem like something I’ve seen a lot of already, especially on the web. Christopher Lynn’s application of ab-ex motifs to magazine images for the most part refused to come off, although the large, shaped collages on the wall were striking.
While in the neighborhood, see the show of Kate Moran and Joe Walters at Bernice Steinbaum Gallery. Walters makes arrangments of flora and fauna that have been made to appear heavily rusted, and landscapes that work from the same palette. Moran makes little poigniant sculptures and drawings of baby dolls, sheep, and other things that seem to harken to an earlier time – the history of a psychological world if not an actual one.
Five storefronts down is Rocket Projects, although the work didn’t bowl me over. Dimitry Saïd Chamy did an installation with rivited sheets of shaped plastic and an interactive computer piece; he’s working his way out of his envelope, but the intentions of the installation (to “attempt to escape the weight of the everyday and to measure the inertia of a deep loss,” according the gallery) don’t materialize and I find myself preferring other works by him. Doug Meyer’s installation, a paean to an imaginary 1980s nightclub, just isn’t my thing. Despite the labor that went into it, it has an art-school-project look to it that hobbles much of the art I see these days.