Category Archives: Chelsea

Coke Wisdom O’Neal’s Boxed in Nudes

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Installation view, Blue Nude

Coke Wisdom O’Neal has a really nice photography show up at Mixed Greens in Chelsea at the moment. Continuing his work with boxes, he photograped his subjects inside tight, clear plexiglass boxes and them mounted the prints with a plexiglass frame that mimics the models enclosure in the image. The result is beautifully fleshly and vulnerable. Rarely does one see faces, and the focus turns more onto the hands or hips of the person. There is a great luminous quality to the skin tones that really adds to the little details: the little rolls of a sotmach or the wrinkles of an arched foot.

I love see the flesh pressed against the glass, reminding one that these contorted figures are indeed contained. Its makes for a nice study of the human form, although within the models limp poses it suggests more along the lines of captivity and restraint, freedom and identity than pure aesthetic study.

Installation View, Blue Nude

The single figures also speak of lonliness.

Tara Donovan’s Pin Drawings at Pace

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Drawing (Pins)
Drawing (Pins), 2010


While out for some openings in Chelsea last night, I noticed Pace had kept its doors open, so I got to take a close look at Tara Donovan’s latest work. As always when I see her work in person, I love it. Her use of materials manages to be subtle and simple but transformative. I originally thought when I saw the press release that these were graphite drawings, but as you can see below, they are made by sticking pins into gatorboard.

Not only do the pins create line and shading, but there’s a nice depth to the varying degrees of how deeply stuck the pins are. The pins themselves have a sheen to them, which picks up nicely in the light as you walk around them, and at 96″ x 96″ these large works leave some room to walk.

These pieces really don’t reproduce well in photographs, so if you have the chance to get over to Pace before March 19, I recommend it. The circles drawings, like the first image, are my favorite, but most of the works are  clean and perfect gradients like these:

Go See: Pipilotti Rist at Luhring Augustine

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It was in my plans even before I read this review of the show to go see the Pipilotti Rist, just because her video installation Pour Your Body Out in the atrium of MoMA was so lush and engrossing. I didn’t even know she has made a chandelier of underwear. (pictured above)

Now it’s been moved to top priority. : )