First Gallery Crawl of the 2013.
It's really snowy outside and I am ready to leave it to others, braver than me, and with a car to move around. But once in Downtown Pittsburgh, biking in the snow, seeing the lights and people gallery crawling... It's always like this: you promise yourself to visit just two galleries, maybe the 707 and 709 Penn Gallery, close to each other on Liberty Avenue. Then you seriously consider that the Woodstreet Galleries are always worth visiting... and once there, how can't you run around at the Space Gallery, just on the opposite side of the street?! Darn walkable Pittsburgh!
This is what happened, despite the snow, the cold and the bike.
My first stop was suggested by a friend that I met by chance on Liberty Avenue. He was looking for the Pop-Up project, that promised some food booths open air, weather permitting. Weather didn't, so we headed to a quite "new" space, 131 Seventh Street, to visit the Night Market 3. It was an indoor market that displayed desserts vendors, creative artists (Don Jones was there - see previous post) and a band of musicians, elegantly playing classical music.
Here I loved the setting: a true example of Pittsburgher creative restoration of an empty space, valorized in its simple (but never banal) materials and architecture.
Then we went to the 707 and 709 Galleries, where we found Craig Freeman (707) with his light and hilarious view of the first Mikey Mouse version (late '30s), and Fabrizio Gerbino, that sincerely didn't impressed me.
© Craig Freeman
At the Woodstreet Galleries you'll likely find very powerful installations by video artists. This time it was Miguel Chevalier who amazed the visitors with the gigantic projections of his ideas. The all space is filled with darkness and colored lights, at the same time. You find yourself completely absorbed by his psychedelic vision of the world.
The Space Gallery let me a bit unsatisfied. What I saw seemed to be pretty banal and overseen. Actually, mainly being garbage left here and there, it was even more than overseen. But I'll try to tell a story (my personal vision) of it. Some pieces inspired me to think about things. Not a granted service, for contemporary art.
The big windows along Liberty always let you see what's going on inside. And it's always a good sampler of twenty-something's life (see the New Yorker, for more info about the twenty-something generation). The main exhibit there was titled Romper Room and guested various artists. The result was a mix of anger against the world, anxiety about society, hate for Christmas and an ancestral fear/respect of our parents generation, that has to maintain us or at least financially helping.
Indeed, there is still a desperate need of domesticity, in our generation of twenty-something (I'm 25). There is only a lot of uncertainty about what's and where is "home". We are still living in Romper Rooms, full of "bastard toys" that give us a sense of security: recognizable shapes but uncanny finishes.
The children at the presentation were looking (at "us") like Dante Alighieri and Virgilio:
« Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa;
misericordia e giustizia li sdegna:
non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa. »
(Inferno III, verso 51)
You can always spot a piece more interesting than others:
But then anger comes back, and you'll find things like this: a mistic library containing nasty drawings on books for "man's good".
My only recommendation for the author is: just respect the books: if you hate them, just don't read them. There is no need to destroy a book. That only reminds me of Hitler "tolerance".
So, in the end, a piece is suggesting that the primitive man is vanishing. I have the impression that even the modern one has gone since a while, and the contemporary one is really in troubles.
These exhibit seems to move us toward a premature phase of our lives, the infancy. The short circuit is caused by trying to live in a romper room when you are no more a toddler. The result? Apparently: disaster, or...
...or the Human Touch Project, that is much more hopeful. The artist is Phoenix Savage, always at the Space Gallery. She invites everybody to pick a piece of wax in boxes with different colored stickers. She tells you the mood you have picked according to the color. She asks you to work on the wax to shape the emotion/mood you have to select. Here my piece. I picked the yellow: happiness.
And it's with happiness that I want to leave you today, despite we are surrounded by anger and frustration. I think destroying is never a solution, in general. Creating and modifying is always better.
I would really leave all the rotten art in the basements: I can't see anything useful in it, nor a lesson to learn. Just frustration, with no explanation about it.
Keep fast! Improvement is always possible.
