Hole in the ...???

So. She cut a hole in the ceiling, and I'd thought it was supposed to be in the floor. I'd had this terrific idea (preconception?) that she'd smashed through the floor, there'd be a guard rail, and you could see people circulate in the galleries below. FAT CHANCE. There's a timid, well-behaved slice in the ceiling. You gaze up, that's it. Tidy polygons of white material (plaster, hmmm?) are carefully arranged on the floor. In a measly 10 ft. ceilinged gallery. Damn. Should she need help smashing through a floor, I'd be glad to offer my services. Her work "furnishes", according to the wall notes, "a physical opportunity, and a metaphor, for the play of the imagination." This is New York. We want more.

Monika Sosnowska: The Hole
MoMA, "Out of Time", on the second floor
through Nov. 27

ps. The equivalent if being served foam. Cool, but still foam.



These drawings snap, crackle and pop. Exploded gunpowder on paper. Vivacious and alive and oddly sepia-colored. He sandwiched the fireworks between the two vast sheets and let fly. Two arcs. Mirrored but different. Call it the best application of detonation, or of its after-effects.

Cai Guo Qiang, Drawing for Transient Rainbow
MoMA, "Out of Time", on the second floor
through Nov. 27

You can't put your arms around a memory...

The beauty of decay,on a grand scale. Palaces gone to seed: marble chipped, statues de-headed, paint peeling. It's Havana, of course. The remnants of grandeur, grandeur reduced to penury; laundry hanging up to dry in an empty salon, a room populated by two exhausted club chairs and a gigantic, mute chandelier. What's it like to live in a dying house? These huge color prints (up to 60"x80") bring the viewer into the abodes of the former aristocracy. May their memories be as lush as the light is, here. Miss Havisham haunts this show. Havana, the pearl of the Carribean, is slowly being dipped in vinegar.

Michael Eastman "La Habana: Evanescent Grandeur"
www.clairoliver.com


A bunch of apes emoting. That's right, simians in front of the lens, many of them acting pros (are they union?). Individual portraits of facial expressions you're not likely to otherwise see. And they're hysterically funny. (Is that hilarity edged with nervousness?) Sometimes poignant. The monkey (okay, he's utterly adorable) in "Undecided" emits a tentative air, casting his large eyes to the side, tilting his head. "Mala Centerfold" is monkey cheesecake. Every hair is in place, every model flawlessly groomed. Most of the images have ben digitally "finished" to a plastic quality, which ends up looking horridly kitch. The pleistocene is plasticene. Most, but not all (see above). The prints are large, and the extremely matte surface adds to the eerie factor.

Jill Greenberg, "Monkey Portraits"
www.clampart.com

on elusive allusions...

Moody, enigmatic, and elliptical. Dreamy and conceptual. A little, um, unusual. There's definately the "huh?" factor as you look at the first print, of a man standing in a field, a breeze-blown white shirt obscuring his face. Things clear up a bit as you read the extensive gallery notes: "To catch life in flight." From another series, "To see the light bent and confined by geometry." A sculptural ribbon, hanging in the air, casts a shadow on a stone wall: it vaguely resembles Arabic. From a known medium to one unknown. The moment is decisive, tangible; the context (and depiction -- the images are fuzzy rephotographed prints), time, is intangible. Light compounded by time.
This show is highly interpretive. As they say, results may vary. (Me, I love this twisty stuff.)

Corinne Mercadier, at Alan Klotz
511 W. 25 st. suite 701
212-741-4764
through Nov. 18
www.klotzgallery.com

X-ray vision...

O joy. The light fantastic that penetrates the flesh, getting down to the bone (and the corset stays). Riffing on the old masters, these X-ray images, digitally printed on canvas, are unlike anything you've ever seen. Leonardo's "Last Supper" is upended here to a wedding banquet. Center stage, the bride wears a tiara, it balances on air: a halo. Necklaces float, bracelets are suspended. Wine bottles, too. Elsewhere, a full-length portrait of a woman reveals her heels' steel spikes and the aformentioned foundation garment. A het couple kiss but they're joined at the navel (fusion/infusion?), and a 21 st. century Venus, half woman/half octopus, is draped in pearls. Don't miss the stunning "La Sirena", an odalisque mermaid dangling a small fish above her upturned mouth. Crave more? Stay for the X-ray video of a woman pleasuring herself.
Big, bold, and assured, the work is capitulatively beautiful.
A word on the artist: Bonichi never really set out to become one. "After my classical studies came the philosophy, the ancient history, the anthropology, the philology, the paleoethnology...in 1999, after years of trial, the first X-rays are born." (Benedetta Bonichi, "To See In The Dark", (2002) p. 100.

Benedetta Bonichi at Keith de Lellis
47 E. 68 st.
212-327-1482
through Nov. 25
www.keithdelellisgallery.com
www.toseeinthedark.it

p.s. actually, I'd love to be in one of her images. Ms. Bonichi may be in for a surprise...


New work from the master of the camera obscura, this time in muscular color. The inverted facade of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, all colonnaded and honey-orange, is superimposed over a de Chirico painting, its blues complimenting the edifice. There's a ladder in the corner, perfect for scale (ha). Wouldn't it be lovely if that esteemed institution purchased this print and displayed it next to the painting? This is the best image in the show. Close second would be a b&w camera obscura, "Sunrise Over the Atlantic Ocean," where a band of white light (aka the sun) slashes diagonally across the wall onto the floor. The ocean is projected onto a blank white wall and a door. Sunrise atop a closed door. A new day on a fucking closed door...
Money, $7 million of it. A b&w cityscape of moolah, used bills banded into bricks, stacked like a child's play towers. Ka-ching.
A grab bag of a show, but in every trick-or-treat sack there's a Torres chocolate or two.

Abelardo Morell "Furthermore", at Bonni Benrubi
41 E. 57 st.
212-888-6007
through Dec. 2
www.bonnibenrubi.com


A fitting conclusion to the afternoon--the accepting landscapes of Gregory Conniff. Large-scale and b&w, shot at the edge of "managed" areas. A link, a segue:an interregnum. A very 19c. feel, very Constable. A quality of stillness, even when the wind blurs the leaves. Sensory, in a delectable way. Romantic, with the occasional bout of a gorgeous, warm tone. The affectionate vegetation of the South (Miss.) stirs up more empathy than the solid and stony regions of Wisconsin, but that may be just my own predilection.

Gregory Conniff
(sorry, show's closed. Visit: http://webpages.charter.net/gconniff/