Chautauqua: A Continuum of Creativity at Denise Bibro

First, a disclaimer: I'm not a fan of the kind of work usually shown at Denise Bibro. It's a gallery that shows C-grade artists who are smart enough to stay away from the vanity galleries, but their work isn't contemporary enough to be noticed by any of the more respected cutting-edge spaces. The work in question is the sort of work that isn't self aware - it's work that seems to be done for its own sake, which was a justification that worked back in the days of modernism and before but doesn't quite fly today. It's work that doesn't connect to art history, or to contemporary discourse, or to anything outside of the canvas. That said, I'm not going to deny that there's a market for this sort of work, and I'm not trying to disrespect the artists who show at the gallery - I'm just trying to make known my expectations going into this show. Also, on my way to the opening the elevator I was in almost crashed and I had to help pull people out of the stuck car, but that's another story.

The only reason I went to this show is because a friend of mine had a piece in it. The show itself was divided into two rooms: one room had work by the faculty of the Chautauqua school, and the other room had work by the school's alumni (including my friend). Most of the work in the student room was, to put it politely, assballs. A few pieces stood out as being decent: my friend's piece (and I'm not just saying that to be nice; it would have been one of my favorite pieces even if I didn't know it was his), a two-panel oil, latex, and ink on paper painting of highly stylized islands, was one of the best pieces in the show. It's the kind of painting that's really hard to describe, so here is a link to a whole page of them (the one in the show is "Island Series 1".)

Another piece that stood out was a large Rococo-style porcelain sculpture, "Paradise" by Chris Antemann. It had a degree of finish and Jeff Koons-like professionalism that seemed out of place next to awkward student paintings and toilet-brush sculptures. It's one of the better pieces in the show - the gallery is using it on all the promotional materials. Surprisingly, it was done by an alumnus, not a professor.

Few of the professors' pieces really stood out to me - one memorable piece was "Premise" by Don Kimes: a large photograph printed on canvas of what might have been a microscope slide or maybe someone licking a camera lens. Whatever it was, it was (to me) the strongest piece among the teachers' work. Another piece that caught my eye looked like intestines or maybe saucy spaghetti ("Plot" by Tom Butter). There was a lot of predictable and average work (an academic nude, some geometric abstraction, a couple portraits) and then there was one piece that looked like it came straight from my grandma's living room. This sort of work is the norm at Denise Bibro, and not surprisingly the artist actually shows at the gallery; I imagine that she had a hand in getting this show set up. If she did, I'm thankful, because my friend has another notch on his resume and I had a chance to conquer my long-running phobia of dying in an elevator crash.