Expand! Expand!

On Tuesday a friend and I had the day off and after watching an incredibly bad movie, we decided to to walk up to Chelsea and check out an exhibit in a gallery on 22nd Street that he read about. I've recently been trying to encourage myself to take more of the arts in and this sounded cool enough to me. I guess since I haven't been acting for a long time, haven't really been writing anything and Tangent is on hiatus, my inactivity really gets to me at times. I've been reading like mad, but I haven't had an expressive outlet. So I thought if I tried to expand and appreciate a variety of arts in an effort to re-invigorate my rusty impulses, it all might inspire something new.

We went into the first gallery and seeing the new artwork, abstract canvases by an artist in his 80's, I felt my mind close a bit. My first impulse was "this ain't art to me," or, trying to be charitable, it wasn't to my taste. My friend, while not entirely enthusiastic, was much more open to it. "The installation has a really great flow," he said as I stared at the old cement floor, much more interested in the swirls the cement made as it settled who knows how many decades ago.

We then went next door, where the same artist had some ink on paper drawings from a "seminal sketchbook" inspired by a ride on a bus in 1954. Okay, that sounded interesting. I was much more taken with these. Still abstract, still just shapes on paper, but there was something. Something in the black ink. What were these little swirls here, these lines and dashes there? Are they something more, supposed to represent something? No. It didn't matter. It's like a Lynch film - don't question it, just go with it. I was drawn in. I love getting right up close to paintings I like. I love to study the brush strokes, to see the lines of the bristles in the swirls, to ... I don't know, maybe capture something of the artist's inspiration from that day? Then I'll step back to take it all in at once.

Okay, so I saw something I liked, I felt warmed up. We crossed the street to another gallery, a blind jump to see what they were exhibiting. I could feel my mind closing a bit, but we went in anyway, wondering what might be in store. It was quite the very cool brain-bender. The artist had created 214,000,000 shapes for "creative experimentation," taken over 7,000 of them ...

You know ... it's probably not important what I saw. Go see the stuff. It will make for a great afternoon, I'll post links at the end of this. But what I took from it ... it was like returning to the gym after a long time away. I was using muscles I haven't used in a long time, flexing other muscles never used before. I wanted to embrace more, to take more in, to try to not be so readily dismissive. We saw an impressive variety of artistic expression, in a perfect progression for me on that day: abstract canvases, drawings, designs, installations, comics, portraits and photography. Walking out, I could feel the possibilities that I didn't feel two hours before and wanted to at least try something. Sketch, put some paint on a canvas, just do something. It may be art, it may not be. But what would it be if it remains an untouched idea in some remote corner of my mind? Nothing.

I wanted to stop and buy a little sketchbook on my walk home. But I didn't make the effort. Arriving home, I was down because I didn't act on the creative impulse. Another tiny failure after weeks of many failures of many sizes. But when my wife got home and I told her of my day and those galleries and what I saw and showing her the one picture I was inspired to take on the way home, I felt that flicker again. I made a resolution to stop by the art supply store in our neighborhood (where the prices are better) and pick myself up that sketchbook. I begin to think about what I might want to put in it, and I draw a blank ... but it's kind of inspiring to me. It's a blank canvas waiting to be filled.

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Here are links to the galleries I visited, in order of my progression (and they're all free, amigos. All it costs is a little effort):

Matthew Marks Gallery - Ellsworth Kelly: New Paintings

Matthew Marks Gallery - Ellsworth Kelly: Drawings On A Bus-Sketchbook 23, 1954

Friedrich Petzel Gallery - Allan McCollum: The Shapes Project

Friedrich Petzel Gallery - Stephen Prina: The Second Sentence of Everything I Read Is You: The Queen Mary", 1979-2006 (ummm, yeah, you know ...)

Julie Saul Gallery - Roz Chast: Theories of Everything (Hysterical!)

Julie Saul Gallery - Birgitta Lund: In Transit

(There is another gallery, the name of which I can't remember, on the third floor of 535 W 22 St. (next to an exhibit called "The Bong Show") featuring a series of portrait paintings. While I liked the artist's style, the subjects were ... you know, fine. Check 'em out anyway.)

Yancey Richardson Gallery - Andrew Moore: Photographs (Amazing!)