Further demonstrating my fundamental cluelessness, and some area dealers reluctance to tell me about their shows probably due to my unpredictably rude critiques, I just found out about another new gallery opening up in Dallas this week – Light & Sie. Stanley Light is a vaguely familiar name from the collector rolls in town.
Their mission statement ranks up there with many artist blurbs for sheer cringe-worthiness (I’m on a one man crusade to end this dastardly practice; the artist statement must die). Or am I just crazy? I’m simply in the wrong racket. I should just limp back to the Zen monastic swamp I crawled out of. If I didn’t love art so much I’d hate it (I love the sound of Rachel Cook’s recent dance party performance, with others, in Austin. More art with dancing, I say. Yay, Dancing. Go, Art.)
However, I like many of the forty-five jpegs on the website of the work set to open September 27- by Brit art duo Anderson and Low. Sometimes I think pretty, formal, computerized wallpaper is all we can hope for. I will not hold the following statement against them. Ok, maybe just a little. It’s not like you want to argue that there isn’t a "power inherent in art to transformlives" or really bother to question whether art even "plays a role in the Universe." It’s obvious that I am the conflicted and amibivalent one. Why should I take it out on a gallery with such a fantastic name? And it is a very good gallery name – it’s like in Basquiat, when queeny Rene Ricard hears JMB’s name for the first time and fawningly gushes "ooh, that sounds famous already…"
I do really like the bits about taking care of their artists – but isn’t that all just the gallery’s job anyway? I don’t know, maybe its great. In another Basquiat ref (I love that movie, I tear up every time) I often feel like David Bowie’s Warhol, when he whiningly complains,"Gee, Jean Michel, I just don’t know what’s good anymore…" Maybe even though I don’t like their statement so much, sometime they’ll offer to take care of, and historically archive, me and my art. I need to get some of it into some museums and collector’s homes – its piling up my studio/laboratory/prefab Home Depot Tuff Shed. Give me a call, guys.
"Light & Sie is an exhibition space for “cutting edge” [quotes not mine; why can I now not not picture Dr Evil saying that?] international
contemporary art in all media located in the American southwest. We are
dedicated to being aesthetically and conceptually rigorous, and fully
aware of our responsibility to show the art of our time.
contemporary art in all media located in the American southwest. We are
dedicated to being aesthetically and conceptually rigorous, and fully
aware of our responsibility to show the art of our time.
One of the primary goals of the gallery is to retain specific
territories for each artist we show. [huh?] What will define the artists as a
group is that each, independently, will be singly responsible to the
medium(s) of their choice and is mindfully questioning of the role that
art plays in the universe.
[what?]
We see the responsibility of the gallery as five fold; to work
for the long term development of each artist’s career; to act as a
liaison to international museums, exhibition spaces and galleries; to
place the artist’s work in significant public and private collections;
to create a historical archive for each artist; and to act as an
accessible public space and study center in which the exhibitions
become exemplary gesture of the power inherent in art to transform
lives."
for the long term development of each artist’s career; to act as a
liaison to international museums, exhibition spaces and galleries; to
place the artist’s work in significant public and private collections;
to create a historical archive for each artist; and to act as an
accessible public space and study center in which the exhibitions
become exemplary gesture of the power inherent in art to transform
lives."
