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At the same time as New York's cultural commentators were slugging it out over the Sensation art exhibition in Brooklyn in late 1999 one of the artists at the center of the storm was quietly showing his best work in a downtown Manhattan gallery.
Celerity Media went to investigate and provided Netsetgoods.com readers with all they needed to know.
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 Brit-pack artist Chris Ofili was almost unknown in New York until late September when Mayor Rudolph Giuliani began his assault on the Brooklyn Art Museum. Now there are few New Yorkers who haven’t heard of the young artist’s mixed-media portrait of the Virgin Mary.
Mixed is the operative word. Rudy had trouble deciding whether it was the elephant dung "breast" or the collaged pictures cut from porn magazines that angered him most, but either way he cast a spotlight of publicity on Ofili’s work that a public relations specialist would have given a limb for.
For Ofili, the timing of the debacle couldn’t be better. Even as the storm over his work hanging in Brooklyn rages and lines continue to snake away from the art museum’s doors, an exhibition of Ofili’s work opens in Manhattan. Incredibly, this exhibition was planned more than a year ago but the furore over his Virgin Mary is guaranteed to pull in the crowds. And happy crowds they should be. If this is to be their first taste of contemporary British art it will be a sweet one. You may visit this exhibition at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise on grubby West 15th Street expecting a sordid freak show but even if the elephant dung does not amuse you, expect to get a buzz from this show.
The gallery gets the commercial stuff out of the way fairly smartly. The only opportunity to spend any money comes in the entrance corridor: slap down $10 and a dodgy photo of the infamous virgin’s yours. But you’ll be wasting your money–it’s not cool, it’s not pretty and it’s certainly not funny–the photo, that is. The painting, on the other hand, is all three but since it is in Brooklyn and you’re in Manhattan you may as well look at what is presently hanging in the gallery.
Forge through into the inner sanctum and you’ll find what you came for. It’s not a big exhibition by any stretch: two rooms with barely more than a dozen pieces make up the whole show. You’d be forgiven for feeling a little disappointed at first but take your time and it all starts to make sense.
Stand close and try to keep your fingers from wandering over the tiny, stiff mounds of stippled paint that Ofili uses to give his paintings their trademark color and texture. Draw in a deep breath filled with the emotive scent of oil paint, so strong it could be almost fresh-painted. Muse over how harmless a few elephant turds are close-up–nothing but mashed grass, really. Then step back and see how the tiny and potentially offensive parts merge and blend. The humor works close-up and from a distance.
On one seven-foot-high canvas Captain Shit, Ofili’s scatological superhero, strikes a proud but camp pose amid a scattered constellation of black stars. Facing him across the room, a six-foot monkey catches sex, drugs and money in a drinking goblet. It radiates mischief. Two other huge canvases also compete for the viewer’s attention with their dark, intense images. Ofili’s mixing of glitter, oil paint, more elephant dung, love beads, gloss varnish and oils works just as effectively on these paintings.
Bowl into the second and final room and you’ll find more humor and more variety. There is one more giant canvas in the second room for good measure flanked by two collections of simple, tiny ink paintings. The smaller works are easily as fascinating as their controversial cousins.
And then it’s over. All that remains is to return to the street. Pause for another look at that terrible reproduction of the good Virgin and you’ll see more in it now you’ve checked out the big mothers in the other room. |
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