Looking back at Looking at art, March 2011

It's funny, I had to go down to Chelsea to find out about a gallery in Beacon that I hadn't even heard of. Back in March, hitting some galleries in Chelsea,  I ran into Amy Lipton on 11th Ave.  She told me about the place called Estuary Gallery, located over at the loft project off of Rt 52.  Amy said she tried to go to the opening of the inaugural show in the previous week, but couldn't find the place (it can be confusing to navigate that area if you're not familiar with it, especially at night.)

At the Josh Smith Show at Luhring Augustine Gallery, I met Jerry Saltz, who was marvelling at the great awfomeness (my word, a cross of awesome and awful) of Smith's work - which has provided me with at least a couple of hours of entertaining conversations.  Peter Acheson and I caught his previous exhibit from last March at Luhring Augustine.  His latest painitngs seem to be striving more for awesomeness than awfulness (something I'm not sure could be said of previous groupings) - aside from those stop signs;  I was challenged by Mr. Saltz to put something that awful in my next show.  That will be priority one, next show I have. 

Some Josh Smith at Luhring Augustine.

I also met Phong Bui, editor of the Brooklyn Rail who was at the Augustine with the artist Joel Shapiro.  I spoke with Phong about recording an interview with him for Dead Hare Radio.  I once had dreams of bringing the Rail up to Beacon for distribution.  It entailed a convoluted human chain of that would somehow get a couple of bundles of the paper to Beacon through happenstance convenience.  Of course that never developed.  I was actually capturing ambient sounds during my walk through the galleries and created a sound collage for show #3 of Dead Hare Radio.

Let's see....what did I see?  Some unexpected and weird videos - in 3D by Gary Hill, “of surf, death, tropes & tableaux: The Psychedelic Gedankenexperiment,” at Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY through April 23.

I know how this feels:  Terence Koh at Mary Boone.

I watched Terence Koh edging his way around a mound of salt on his knees at Mary Boone.  Some black and white reliefs of Ellsworth Kelly at Matthew Marks, I believe.  A Tara Donavan at Pace(?) that was a bit too prim for me.  Also, Richard Butler had a show at Freight and Volume.  I'm back and forth with his work, but I'm digging some of his new larger heads.  I could be wrong, but I think I heard Richard has moved into that building where the unfound Estuary Gallery is located.  
A few Richard Butler pieces from his Freight and Volume show: