This month’s inaugural gallery hop started with an expertly rendered wall mural at the Bellwether. Adam Cvijanovic’s work is beautiful, but I could not distance myself from the thought that though his idea was probably conceived in whimsy, it now carries such a charged quasi political message.

The painting titled A Love Poem (Ten Minutes After the End of Gravity), depicts the artist’s idea of what a coastal community might look like after those zero gravity ten minutes have passed.

For me, the images bore too much of a resemblance to those splashed all over the media after Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast. In the painting the only evidence of terra firma is the bits of earth still clinging to the roots of plants that have been pulled up. Houses float in mid air, you get the opportunity to view the neighbors’ dirty laundry, and with no humans present, you wonder, if unlike Katrina, all the residents were safely evacuated prior to this paranormal occurrence.

Two and a half blocks Northwest, I am drawn into the Matthew Marks Gallery by numerous large glossy fashion images plastered over the area of a 100 foot wall. I enter The Now People Part Two: Life On Earth show and to my glee, on the opposite wall are even larger collaborative pieces that fuse photography and sculpture. I usually am as good at ignoring the gallery staff as there are at ignoring me, but I couldn’t escape the familiar face that sat behind the unwelcome desk.

Feigning interest in the art merchandise spread across the desk, I got close enough to realize that the face was actually that of Inez Van Lamsweerde herself, who was later joined by Vinoodh Matadin [the two featured artists in the show].

I can’t say I care for them much as people after hearing Inez state at the 2003 Tokion Creativity Now conference that “I have the best job in the world, all I do is shoot beautiful people all day.” The thought of which, though it was two years ago, made me cringe as much now as it did when I first heard it. I secretly wished she had meant shoot as in .50 caliber rifle; rather than shoot as it medium format Hasselblad camera. Despite this it was great being in the presence of these esteemed artists.

Recovering from star-struckedness [that’s not yet a word], I moved on to the best show I viewed on the ‘hop’.

Usually I skip right past the Sonnabend because of the hifalutin work they chose to represent on most occasions. But sticking my head into the pitch blackness of the gallery I was happily surprised to discover the work of Candice Breitz.

The four pieces in the show King (a tribute to Michael Jackson), Queen (a tribute to Madonna) and Mother and Father (which feature silver screen ‘mothers and fathers’ edited into 11 minute messages), are simple concept-driven video installations, with a smattering of humor across the board.

King is 42 minutes and 20 seconds of a random collection of people singing Michael Jackson songs in front of a black backdrop. Queen is the same idea, but instead of Michael, it’s Madonna. And instead of 42 minutes, it’s 73 minutes and 30 seconds of ‘material girl’ covers.

Like a kid in a candy store I kept running back and forth between these two pieces, wide eyed, trying to absorb the hilarity of it all. After much observation I deduce that the subjects chosen by Breitz for Queen seem pale when compared with the three Michael Jackson impersonators, the jock, the belly dancer, the new black immigrant [the subjects were cast in Germany] and the others featured in King. Also, the full-body portraits of King far outweigh the three-quarter styled shots in Queen.

After ingesting as much as I can, I leave the darkness of the gallery and read the Sonnabend press release which states:

Sonnabend is pleased to debut two new works title King (A Portrait of Michael Jackson) and Queen (A Portrait of Madonna). [yawn] In juxtaposition with Mother + Father, these multichannel video-portraits signal the central dichotomy in Britez’s work, [yawn] a dichotomy between the ’somebodies’ (the global icons whose images Breitz pushes to breaking point) and the ‘nobodies’ (fans an consumers of global culture, whose identifications and obsessions are a recurring subject in Breitz’s work. [ho-hum] To make her portrait of Michael Jackson… [blah-blah] Thriller album… [blah-blah] recording studio in Milan… [blah-blah] inherent to the screen test…

And on and on. Obviously giving potential buyers a reason to plunk down the only god knows how much it would require to own one of the pieces.

On the same block, I looked up at the old unused railway tracks and saw a billboard with a message I wished the Sonnabend staff had heeded: “If an artists speaks about his work for longer more than fifteen minutes, he is lying. Good art speaks for itself.” Breitz’s work cannot be restricted to flat black and white words on two dimensional paper, hence her choice of medium, the work has to be viewed in person in order to be fully understood.

I doubt that anyone reading this can spring the cash to buy one of these joints, so here is the Sonnabend pres release re-edited by El Blogatisto:

Come and see this show, it’s damn funny!