Last night, joined by CeCe Chin, I popped around to some openings in Chelsea. First stop was Shame The Devil at The Kitchen featuring LMCC Alum’s Kenya (Robinson) and Michael Paul Britto. The show was a mixed bag of video, painting and an installation of cracker boxes (as I wrote this, just got it….ha!). Next up was Marcia Kure at Susan Inglett and finally the star of the evening David Altmejd, who represented Canada at the 2007 Venice Biennale, at Andrea Rosen.


The Altmejd show is a diamond in the rough so to speak. It shimmers with crystals, PVC and taut thread. To the untrained eye the work is a calamity of sorts, a self implosion of things that sometimes find themselves spilling outside the frame. Life forces that flow together in moment of frozen time.


I particularly enjoyed the wall sculpture in the first image, the one that Jerry Saltz referred to as the Vajayjay. It was both angel, vagina and the cover of Nirvana’s In Utero from 1993. I love Jerry, and had a great discussion with him about the show, the work and the possible symbolism of various present elements.


The gallery was packed to the brim and we even had to shuffle on a slow moving line to get to the back room in which another molded wall sculpture spilled out and a case of crystals sparkled under the fluorescent lights. Many familiar faces had come out for the event including Jerry Saltz from NY Magazine, David Velasco from Artforum, artist Jules de Balincourt, Artforum publisher Knight Landesman (in a bright orange suit), and CeCe’s friends Jon Santos and Huy Bui.

David Altmajed is on-view at Andrea Rosen until April 23rd, 2011.

More soon!
xo
— Posted from my iPhone
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