Chelsea goes to Chelsea!!!

Donald Sultan Work

The latest adventure i embarked on brought me to the streets of my namesake, Chelsea, and the galleries found there. Although my initial motivation is somewhat obscure and off centered, my experience there was phenomenal. First, I must admit, that seeing places with my name everywhere, was a little bit entertaining. Of course I snapped a couple shots of cute places with Chelsea on the sign, and then I began my adventure at the gallery of Keith Haring. Keith Haring's gallery consists of a stark white room, with three ginormous canvas works hung on separate wall, and there are then two rows of display cases in the center of the room featuring his smaller pieces. His work was not only awe inspiring but I feel like it was a great place to start for me because there was so much to explore. I found it interesting to look at the huge canvas paintings in a variety of ways because with each turn of the head or squint of the eye, a different image popped out. The over all affect of the large works was astounding. They seemed to be interlaced with a story and a message but then seemed so simple, characters jut interwoven and connected by concrete lines. His smaller works were a bit more sophisticated I'd say, a lot of them containing images of phalluses, which reflects a lot about his homosexuality that was part of his defining identity especially in the 1980's when homosexuality was greatly scrutinized. The pictures all matched a number, which, on a separate page, revealed where the images where drawn, which included locations such as, in front of Tiffany's, in Central Park, or at the MOMA. I think this was an interesting way of viewing the art because imaging what he was thinking at each place and why the pieces turned out as they did, is a strange correlation.  He also had a quote that I found particularly intriguing written on one of his smaller works which stated "the relationship between boundaries is realized by composition, composition is realized by isolation, isolation is defined by association, association is realized by observation, observation defines composition, composition is defined by boundaries, boundaries are defined by limitations." For some reason I seemed to find this compelling because I think it can apply to art, as well as life. Finally, my favorite piece of work by Haring that I found in this gallery was titled "eggplant tomato casserole for eight." I'm not quite sure why I liked this piece so much but it just had a lot going on and it seemed to jump out as something fitting to my life. I then proceeded to walk through Chelsea, finding myself in various galleries of artists I'd never heard of,but was equally impressed and intrigued by. One artist I particularly liked was named Donald Sultan, and I thought his work with flowers, was beautiful. I viewed a gallery that included "monumental photos from the 20th century", which included some interesting images that I probably wouldn't have chosen as monumental but viewing them in context made me appreciate them more I think. I visited around 5 or 6 galleries that afternoon,  and it was close to 100 degrees, and I walked around 20 blocks that day total which was killer. I wandered down to Chelsea Piers to see what that was all about, was slightly under whelmed, and then found my way 8 blocks uptown to work for 5 hours. All together it was an incredibly successful day. Seeing those galleries and all of the different artists and trying to grasp their perspective really opened my eyes a great deal. I think this was a great way to start off my summer of art, and I'm so excited to get to the Met and such. Slowly but surely, I'm getting out there and exploring this crazy city, pretty much on my own most of the time, and although being alone is hard at times, I don't think there's any other way to do it because I feel like I wouldn't be able to formulate my own opinions and be as sure of them if I was surrounded by others. So hooray! And I shall move on to the next adventure!