Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga

Structural Patterns

Reflections on Art, Technology and Society

Raymond Pettibon at Zwirner

without comments

As an artist and professor, I try to make the rounds to the Chelsea galleries with each new round of exhibitions. However, over the years, I’ve narrowed the number of galleries that I stop through, because there are so many and for the most part I think that most of the work I see in Chelsea is really bad.

One of the galleries that I always try to stop by is David Zwirner, because the work presented there usually reflects my flavor for an ideal combination of content and execution. I generally see compelling work that is well done. And the current exhibition by Raymond Pettibon, “The Big Picture” is a great example of this.
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Pettibon’s drawings are beautiful and exciting. They are the sort of drawings that make one want to draw, because they are full of energy, they tell a story, they pull the viewer in and they are topical. Through his drawings, Pettibon lays it out, this is the world that we live in and it’s fucked up.
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On the other hand, Zwirner also shows bad stuff. Step out of Pettibon’s Big Picture, down the hall way to Chris Ofili and you’ll see Modernist junk. Incredibly boring work with a precious price tag.

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Written by ricardo

September 26th, 2007 at 6:18 pm