Andreas Gursky at Matthew Marks

German ingenuity.
Scale + focus outside the body + mass + frigid cold =
Andreas Gursky

I'm less inclined to talk about the work at right than to highlight the person in front of it.

Let's just say with my camera I can prove to be a dangerous reviewer.

If not for my Canon Powershot's songbird chirping introduction, I'd most likely never be discovered by galleries with my stealth habit of snapping away.

Perhaps this is unethical of me-- especially since I'm posting the image of this person at right without his knowledge-- but what the hell, I'm going for it anyway.

Even though the current Gursky exhibit seems to not be causing much of a stir in the art review world (tepid, at best)-- again, as I always say, the measure of success for an artist is not always necessarily in a thumbs-up or thumbs-down from Holland Cotter, but more along the lines of, "How long does the viewer linger?"

In this case, the man at right (in perfect "David" pose here, might I add) lingered a good three minutes-plus in front of the work.

To me, that's a success.

Here's some more imagery-- I know for many it is a "been there, done that" issue being the biggest connection problem for Gursky and his audience.

Seriously-- he's done so much-- what else is left?

I have purposely left out the Formula One racing photo that's been highlighted so much in the press with the blonde in the short-shorts, the brunette model at the back, and the press corps with bulbs-a-popping crowding above pit row.

I felt it added absolutely nothing to this show whatsoever, and was more or less a Gursky-by-the-way-of-LaChapelle image-conscious piece of B.S. (wait... soooo how do I really feel about that piece?)

Marks' back room housed Gursky's aerial photos of the South Pacific.

They are quite nice, giving an immediacy with the viewer-- convincing me to believe I was in a hospital setting--perhaps a "Footprints in the Sand" poster was lurking nearby.

Gursky's German ingenuity is once again at hand here--- cold, ice cold, even with Tropicalia in close grasp.

Now I know that I denegrate art descriptions to many base terms quite often here at Lamgelina.

Perhaps it's my lack of a propert art educational background, or my not giving a shit when it comes to big words a la "The Brooklyn Rail"-- seriously, you guys put me to sleep with the academia talk-- but the work at left looks exactly like the chocolate marble cake my grandma used to make.

And if art can make me hungry for cake and let me eat it, too, well, then-- I ain't complaining.

(big word alert here for some "big" art)

"Schadenfreude" be damned.

http://www.matthewmarks.com/

Exhibit is up through June 30th.