Top 10 New York Gallery Shows of 2012
I’ve been thinking about making some Top 10 lists of television shows and movies for the end of the year, but honestly, I can’t even remember what I was watching before I started the Good Wife two weeks ago. That’s not true; those were the halcyon days before Caleb canceled cable. I was was watching the Real Housewives of Miami. Even still, I could not possibly put together a list of all that I consumed in the past 12 months, not unless a publication was paying me a decent sum of money. Which they won’t probably ever, unfortunately.
What I do have is a hard drive full of things I’ve written professionally, many of them for art magazines. A quick Finder search on my Mac revealed every exhibition I’ve reviewed this past year, along with a number of transcripts from interviews used for profiles. A top 10 list quickly revealed itself to me.
I’ve decided only to put shows in galleries on my top 10 list, although there were a few exhibitions at institutions I really enjoyed—the Whitney Biennial, which was the best the museum has seen in decades, and Neil Goldberg’s “Stories the City Tells Itself” at the City Museum of New York.
It’s worthwhile to note that I saw only a small percentage of what the city offered this year, and have a very myopic perspective. The list is subjective, based on what I had the pleasure to write about, thanks in large part to my editors.
Without further ado, here are my top 10 favorite gallery shows of 2012, with links to my reviews on them (with a few exceptions where the reviews are not yet online):
1. Ned Vena @ Clifton Benevento
If you collect paintings, and you don’t own one by Ned Vena yet, then you’re a fool. I mean that affectionately. But seriously, his paintings are beautiful, the work of a graffiti artist on canvas. And Clifton Benevento, a small gallery in Soho, is one of my favorite in the city.
2. Esther Kläs @ PS1 MoMA
Ok, I lied about the gallery thing. But the show at PS1 was actually a continuation of an earlier show of Kläs’ at Peter Blum, which is another of my favorite galleries. Esther’s sculptures are a revelation, and I believe set the tone for 21st century sculpture—female artists exploring their bodies through materials and totemic structures. That makes no sense, so just trust me.
3. D’Ette Nogle @ Clifton Benevento
It told you I liked Clifton Benevento. And D’Ette Nogle, who is a school teacher in Los Angeles, is doing some really interesting stuff with conceptual art using contemporary mediums and pop culture.
4. Andrea Zittel @ Andrea Rosen
Andrea Zittel is awesome—she lives on a commune in California, and makes art every day wearing the same uniform. The show, once it revealed itself, was theoretically quite interesting—all about fluid panels, and the definition of sculpture.
5. Chris Johanson @ Mitchell Innes & Nash (upcoming in the January issue of Art in America)
For some reason, I found this show to be incredibly moving, in its own quiet way. Johanson is San Francisco based, so check him out if you’re out there ever.
6. Jessica Rath @ Jack Hanley
The exhibition was about breeding apple trees. The photographs that accompanied were haunting and melancholy. I loved writing about it because I got to learn about science.
7. Mark Flood @ Luxembourg & Dayan
The show was like throbbing with the hunger, anger, and passion of the young artist Mark Flood in the 1980s and 1990s, before he made it big with his lesser lace paintings. Luxembourg & Dayan is staging some great shows lately.
8. Michael Mahalchick @ Canada Gallery
This show as fucking weird, and it reminded me of death, but I liked it.
9. Andro Wekua @ Gladstone
Wekua is doing a lot of interesting stuff with memory and dreams. He’s a darling of editors, so you’re sure to hear more about him.
10. Valerie Snobeck @ Essex
This was the harder reviews I’ve ever written, because the work was so theory laden. But in the end, I liked it a lot, half because of how it all wove together, and half because it inexplicably harnessed the energy from Chinatown, right outside on the street.
