Jorge Pardo at Friedrich Petzel Gallery

Computer routed, vaguely art-nouveau stylized butterfly shapes are mechanically fastened into long, high, wall-like constructions. These walls are in turn arranged to divide the large gallery into a disorienting maze. Random voids are plugged with diverse images - people, landscapes, historical events - all culled from the internet. To navigate these narrow passages one gets the sensation of walking through corridors of memory, a déjà vu mixed up mash-up view through multiple windows on multiple worlds; a digitally fabricated analog manifestation of computer memory bank ones and zeros. The surprising effectiveness of these very porous "memory walls" to almost totally obscure others in the room was oddly enhanced by the continuous unintelligible soundtrack provided by a relatively large crowd of talkative gallery-goers.

Meanwhile, across the street, the empty old Dia waits patiently silent, where Mr. Pardo's cheerfully colorful tile floor remains hopeful, and occasionally manages to catch the eye of West Chelsea wanderers, even through darkened windows and the dust of indecisive neglect.

Jorge Pardo continues at Friedrich Petzel Gallery, 537 West 22nd Street, until June 19th.

My Very First Time...

By Baad Lamb “Bob’s sinks are now selling for hundreds of thousand of dollars!”

This was Saturday afternoon lunchtime conversation, a mother boasting about her son to old friends and now one new acquaintance (me). But an audible question mark in her voice hinted that she might not fully understand just what Bob actually did, or why anyone would pay so much money for his ”sinks”. Naturally, I was intrigued, but perhaps because I was both the newest and the youngest member in this group I remained silent as the conversation moved on.

A few years later at a similar gathering, I was lucky to have Leah speak of her son with pride once again.

“Bob has a new installation, and it is going to be at the Dia in New York.”

This time I was comfortable enough to ask the right questions, to get the where and when details. I now knew I had to schedule a New York weekend, seek out this “Dia” and see for myself what $100,000 sinks looked like; especially in an installation.

Back in high school, I had somehow managed to arrange my lunch, two study periods and my actual art class all in a row, so that three times a week, I was in the art room for more than half the day. A lot of my time was spent making drawings and paintings and occasionally clay sculpture. Sometimes, our teacher would tell us about the famous contemporary artists of the day. But if installations were part of the art-vocabulary in my rural town, I was absent that day.

Seems absurd that it took till 1993 before my first time.