Art Fag City at the L Magazine: Greener Pastures, Permanent Midnight

by Art Fag City on August 29, 2007 Reviews + The L Magazine

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Installation shot, Greener Pastures, Permanent Midnight, Moti Hasson

There are probably all of five exhibitions open in Chelsea right now, but Moti Hasson’s Greener Pastures, Permanent Midnight is one worth going to see. I wrote a review of the show up in this issue of the L Magazine. As always, I’ve provided a portion of the text below.

How hard can curating be if all you have to do is choose a bunch of work you like and hang it on a wall? I spent a large part of my twenties dismissing the profession for this reason, along with the fact that I never trusted anyone but artists to deal with relational aesthetics. It's impossible to maintain an attitude like this, though, particularly if you spend a lot of time visiting galleries. At this point I've seen enough artist-curated summer shows to know that artists are no better than anyone else at putting together exhibitions. Good curation is usually much more than simply inviting the greatest talent possible, and entails consideration of how a vast number of variables will work together, including material, composition, approach, size and thematics.

However rare the exhibition that achieves success while working within these parameters, the results should not only highlight the most engaging aspects of the artwork on display, but build connections among them. Probably the best example of this in Chelsea right now comes from curator Ingrid Chu's group show at Moti Hasson, Greener Pastures, Permanent Midnight, an exhibition that brings together the philosophically ambiguous work of five emerging contemporary artists. Essentially a landscape show, Greener Pastures capitalizes on the more visible formal themes within each work, underscoring their aesthetic and thematic relationships.

To read the full review click here.

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