W 21st St – Mixing New with Tried & True

Would you rather spend your time with big names like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein & Matthew Barney, or are you more interested in Haim Steinbach, Sandra Elkind & Molly Zuckerman-Hartung? How about a healthy mix? Start at 571 Projects with Sandra Elkind: Flat Pennies & Other Tales. Elkind is hung up on memories. Her photographs explore how memories are simultaneously sharply focused and fuzzy. She achieves this blur by creating meticulously rendered dioramas of her recollections (like those in MAD’s Otherworldly exhibition). The resulting images are dreamlike and vibrant and mystifying.   

From the ephemeral to the massively dense: check out Matthew Barney’s DJED across the street at Gladstone Gallery. For these sculptures, Barney worked with industrial metals and the guts of an old car to explore themes of reincarnation. To that end, these pieces are part of a larger project that will be an opera based on Norman Mailer’s “Ancient Evenings.” Don’t read any more about them. Walk into the gallery and take them in. They are beautifully fluid and clean and complex and dirty. They’re the melted down remnants of an old car, and they’re really good.   

Speaking of really good, Haim Steinbach’s latest “shelf assemblages” at Tanya Bonakdar are worth a gander. Each shelf is an exercise in what happens when seemingly random objects are grouped together. Just stroll through the gallery and enjoy the chanciness of it all, and at the end you’ll find out why the show is called Creature. 

Don't stop strolling because west 21 Street between 9th and 10th Aves is one of the most beautiful blocks! Enjoy the tall trees and old brownstones as you head across to Rafaella’s for some nourishment. Then, maybe, loop back around for the Warhols. I mean, could you really pass those up?

Ingredients:

Venues: 571 Projects; Gladstone; Tanya Bonakdar

Artists: Sandra Elkind; Matthew Barney; Haim Steinbach; Roy Lichtenstein; Andy Warhol

Streets: W 21st St, 9th-11th Aves

Eats:  Rafaella’s

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