Courtney S_NYC Trip

Courtney Sanchez
March 9, 2009
New York City Art Trip: Behind the Scenes of the Contemporary Art World
The first stop on our trip was at John McDevitt King’s apartment/studio. It was very nice of him and his wife to let us have a tour of their home and use their bathroom! I thought it was also interesting and lucky of John to have enough space to have a studio in his home. His encaustic paintings are dreamlike and very beautiful. I enjoyed his demonstration and viewing his collaboration on the book of poems. I am gracious of their hospitality.
Next would be the O.K. Harris Gallery. The first thing shown in this gallery were the oil paintings by John MacAdam. They were paintings of highways with interesting sky backgrounds and moving cars. I also enjoyed Mimmo Roselli’s Measuring the Space with the ropes from wall to wall. Steven Valde Larsen’s photographs of doors were beautiful and first appeared as paintings until looked at closer. The sculptures of tangled wire that produced the chair and U.S. shadows were mind boggling and awesome.
The next gallery would be Walter De Maria. This is where we saw, The Broken Kilometer, 1979. It is composed of 500 highly polished, round, solid brass rods, each measuring two meters in length and two inches in diameter. The 500 rods are placed in five parallel rows of 100 rods each. The sculpture weighs 18 3/4 tons and would measure 3,280 feet if all the elements were laid end-to-end. Each rod is placed such that the spaces between the rods increase by 5mm with each consecutive space, from front to back; the first two rods of each row are placed 80mm apart, the last two rods are placed 580 mm apart. Metal halide stadium lights illuminate the work which is 45 feet wide and 125 feet long (broken). My first glance at this piece made me think that there was something underneath these rows as if they were bridges and you could look under them. I don’t understand this sculpture but appreciate its mass and its ability to make me feel small. The New York Earth Room’s moisture was intense! The air was warm and heavy. It gave an ironic sense of all this dirt in a New York room. Untouchable of living people and plants. I found it interesting that a woman was sitting there when we arrived just looking at the 280,000 lbs of soil. I wondered if she sat there often.
The next art couple we were to meet was curators, Paul and Renee Laster were very inspiring. I like their ability to find artists that people don’t know much about and the way they laid out their gallery space. I loved the mythological tire woman and basically every other piece of art that was in their gallery.
I was really excited to see Louise Neverlson’s work in person, it was awesome! I loved her found objects turned into non representable. Tony Oursler’s Cell Phones, Diagrams, Cigarettes, Searches, and Scratch Cards were amazing and hilarious! I also loved the houses that looked like belonged to elves or children play houses were so cool and wish I owned one (I’m really bummed because I forget the artists name).strange art
The Pulse Contemporary Art Fair was an overload of great! The countless things that inspired me are too numerous to name each and every but an opportunity that I’m so glad I was able to witness and would someday hope to have things on display there or a place like it! Thanks for making the trip happen!