I ended up having Friday afternoon free (thank you Easter!) so I decided to walk home and stop off at a couple of art galleries in Chelsea. As I walked down 19th and passed the David Zwirner gallery, I was stopped in my tracks by this:
It literally looked like somebody had turned a small flock of planes into worms and parked them inside a gallery. Here’s what it looks like from another perspective:
This is not the sort of thing that one sees every day and I was impressed that anyone would come up with this concept, let alone sucessfully execute it (I mean, really, who is going to buy this art? This is a gallery-only piece. There really aren’t too many folks who have space for a 100′ by 30′ by 20′ sculpture in their living room).
I had to learn more about this artist, Adel Abdessemed, so I went into the adjoining gallery. And that’s where my admiration quickly turned to revulsion.
Why?
Well, he’d taken a huge white room and projected a massive video on the wall. The video consisted of a small concrete pit where he had thrown in dozens of iguanas, giant frogs, pythons, dogs, scorpions, tarantulas and roosters. What happens? They all start killing one another. Last I checked, dog fighting was considered savage and illegal (see: Michael Vick), so I don’t know what inspired him to try to play god with his little cast of creatures.
Also, it turns out that Adel derives true pleasure from killing animals and photographing them. His 2008 exhibit in San Francisco consisted of him quickly killing six animals and was cancelled due to complaints.
Here’s hoping that this exhibit gets cancelled too. Never before have I gone from admiring to despising someone so quickly.