Sometimes It’s Not Beauty, Just Youth

I was walking across 23rd St. Claryssa Dalyrimple was sitting outside the Half King with some pretty young thing. They were looking at some sort of images between them on the table. I first crossed paths with Dalyrimple more than ten years ago. She wasn’t young then. She looks younger now. Watching her with the pyt, it struck me more starkly than ever how much the old feed off youth in the art world—suck it down like blood from the ripe jugular of a pale virgin.


"You Always Move In Reverse," curated by Bjarne Melgaard

Leo Koenig Inc., 545 West 23rd St [betwn 10th & 11th Aves],212.334.925, http://www.leokoenig.com

Through July 31, 2007


Ever since I first read about this gallery in a profile of Koenig in the New Yorker, I have hated it. Though young himself, Koenig came across as a Teutonic youth monger. This summer’s show is all about what those crazy kids are up to now. Or circa 92. I dunno. There is a bit of a visceral jolt awaiting you when you peek into the black curtained backroom. A slight edge. And so much wanting there to be an edge.


Banks Violette

Gladstone, 515 West 24th Street [betwn 10th & 11th Aves], 212.206.9300, http://www.gladstonegallery.com/default.asp

Through August 17, 2007

Banks Violette has the kind of name and back story that Jewish boys from the suburbs can only envy in a deeply sour way. If Banks hadn’t been born, Larry Clarke would have found him anyway. He’s the kind of blazing emblem for youth that warms the crinkled eyelids of the old. Fortunately he does this with more than a good backstory, a whiff of crystal meth, and Goth, Goth, Goth [or whatever hairsplitting denomination it’s meant to be called]. He does it by freezing time, salting away light and sound: he casts light fixtures and acoustic tiles in salt dessicating our senses, then he pumps liquid nitrogen to stop time—even our beloved 2-D planes, our getaways, are blocked—no space here just black or sheet metal flats, and imploded mirrors frosting over. Time stops; our image in the glass freezes. We are all Clarissa Dalrymple.

Violette’s touch is less abject than it was in the early Team days; given his huge budget it would be disingenuous for it not to be. Still he often owes more to Stockholder than Barney and manage bits of tenderness [horreur!] amid formal grace: orange and white ipods here, a $20 hardware store fan there, and one deep bowel cleansing note that rumbles across the black floor like that first great fart of the day.

Not just youth.