Barthelemy Toguo
I enjoyed a lot of Toguo's works, I was particularly attracted to the watercolors. Some of them were pretty vulgar and somewhat dirty in content--even one that seemed to be a woman spurting blood from her groin onto the heads of other figures. However, such things did not deter me from enjoying the art. I especially loved the work called Purfixation XXII.
Many of the watercolor paintings featured humanoid figures, though many were distorted or disembodied. This painting has a silhouetted profile of a human head, and some kind of lizard like creature. My favorite thing about this painting is that within the body of the main figure, it almost looks like a landscape painting to me, like a window into another plane. I also love the few simple lines extending from the man's mouth across the page.
The back room of the Robert Miller gallery featured some sexual images posted on the walls, and many beds all piled high with clothes and a veil of some see-through curtain covering each. The floor was also covered with banana boxes. While I am not certain of any meaning behind this room, it all seems to be very phallic and sexually themed. My one shot at a meaning has me guessing that there is some idea of protection--the floor being covered in banana boxes--and all but one pule of clothing on each bed was covered in this thing transparent curtain. This made me wonder why one pile was uncovered, left as a pile on the floor, while the rest of the clothes were on beds safely covered. Was this some kind of condom reference? Maybe clothes representing peoples lifestyles that need to be protected? I don't know..its just a theory.
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Enoc Perez featured a gallery full of architectural paintings. Many are rich in color and seem almost solid from afar. It is upon coming closer that I notice that the paint is not smoothly and solidly placed. Mostly all of the paintings are painted in this scratchy fashion. He seems to have worked in thick layers on these paintings and allowed for the texture of the surface to be visable through the paint. The painting where this effect was most noticeable for me were these huge paintings of twoering, somewhat unstable looking buildings. There were two that looked very identical aside from differenced in the building and background color.
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Aperture Gallery - 4th floor - Nature as Artifice: New Dutch Landscape in Photography and Video Art
I have to say, from reading this gallery on the list, I was very disinterested in what it had to show. I'm not sure why, I just didnt think photography of Dutch landscape would 'do it' for me. Boy was I worng. Of all the galleries I visited, this one was by far my favorite. Every photograph was so rich in color and so clean, I didnt believe they were real photographs of landscape at first. That is it all almost looked fake, like they were pictures of perfect little models. In fact with a few pictures I struggles looking far and close to determine if it was real or not. The landscapes were rich in color and almost surreal looking. Some of the simplest photos were the most dazzeling and sometimes even somewhat erie. The landscape photos taken from above looking down where the hardest for me to believe, the color in this photograph particularly was intense and I did not believe it to be real upon forst looking at it.
Many of the buildings were just as spectacular as the landscapes. I had trouble believing that such colorful and perfect buildings actually existed on teh face of this earth. I most particularly loved this photo of what looks like a parking garage? Taken at night, this building is just glowing..I would love to have this outside my window to gawk at.
Possible one of the largest and of my favorites was the large cityscape. Different from both any landscape or building, this one is a convergence of natural lanscape litteres with perfect buildings and lights. I love how the photo was mounted too, on top of a light box, so the photo seems all the more real, like i was actually looking outside a window.
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