Talking shop with McKenzie Fine Art

By Shane McAdams

My first meeting with Valerie McKenzie of McKenzie Fine Art was on the occasion of a group show I was curating. I was eyeing one of her artists, Maureen McQuillan, and wanted to see what McKenzie had available. When the time for our appointment came, I politely entered the gallery, exchanged greetings, and followed her back to the inventory room. About an hour later, Valerie had found two perfect pieces for the show that I was more than satisfied with, but she wasn’t finished. She introduced me to several more artists — those she represented, and those she was aware of — who were perfect for the show.

Often, galleries diversify their stable with the clinical prudence of a financial advisor. So it was refreshing to see a gallery owner pouring through her inventory and glowing about her artists, indicating that McKenzie’s interest was as personal as it is financial. Her repertoire reads as that of a gallery guided by an individual aesthetic, and her enthusiasm is evident in the art she exhibits.

Jim Dingilian, “Nearly Even,” 2006, permanent marker on school desktop, 17 ¾ x 24 inches

McKenzie’s aesthetic leans toward colorful, intricate abstraction, favoring mark-making that is somewhat unusual or inventive. David Mann’s aquatic-feeling environments featuring floating, enamel-based dispersions and jellyfish-like gestures and James Lecce’s luscious marbled swirls of acrylic emulsion are indicative of her eye for art. She does mix it up a bit; Jim Dingilian’s drawings and bleached photographs are rooted in the representational universe, but even so, they have a similarly inventive disposition. The list goes on, but the best way to appreciate the gallery is to stop by McKenzie Fine Art and to let Valerie show you.

I caught up with Valerie McKenzie last week to find out what was she’s been looking at:

The Frick Collection

Last month I had the great good fortune to attend a wedding at the Frick Collection (wow! Thanks again, Jan and Joan!). As guests, we were allowed to roam the museum for an hour or so before dinner, and it was an amazing experience, strolling the rooms and galleries with so few people, everyone dressed in evening wear. In that intimate environment, it was thrilling to see the beautiful masterpieces like so many old friends. Pictures that particularly moved me were the Ingres portrait of the Comtesse d’Haussonville, her blue satin gown and intense gaze offset by the creamy flesh of her very plump arms; the spectacular portrait of Sir Thomas More by Hans Holbein the Younger, with its sumptuous rendering of velvet and fur and extraordinarily life-like skin; and the large Rembrandt self-portrait, all lights and shadows, with much looser brushwork than the aforementioned paintings but still hauntingly life-like. It is a profound and emotional record of a life lived.

Dorsky Curatorial Center

Donna Harkavy and Gracie Mansion have curated a very smart and interesting exhibition at the Dorsky Curatorial Center in Long Island City, “The Constant Possibility of Erasure,” which examines the use of erasure as a conceptual and aesthetic tool in contemporary art. Wide-ranging in media and thorough in its examination of the subject, it is an exhibition that gets you thinking about memory, loss, and fragility, as well as the persistence of text-based art from the 60s to the present. Particular stand-outs for me were Oscar Munoz’s compelling video loop of a brush-wielding hand drawing a face on a hot stone with water, the image evaporating before it can be completed; Jonathan Callan’s erased photographs, where the photo emulsion is picked away so that only an image of a shadow remains; and Jim Dingilian’s drawings using smoke erased from silver trays and blue marker erased from school desktops. His imagery is haunting, dream-like and slightly menacing, recalling the pervasiveness of memory without teetering into the sentimental.

Aric Obrosey

Of course, I have to plug my current exhibition of new drawings by Aric Obrosey. The artist has been using lace-like imagery and structures in his work for over a decade. For this show, the graphite and charcoal drawings are like hand-made lace — labor-intensive, amazingly detailed, tremendously precise, but also incredibly generous and rich. The images of 45 records, LPs, disco balls, and work gloves are reminders of ubiquity versus obsolescence in our society, meanwhile examining the relationship between mass-production and the handmade. One work of extraordinary complexity is Turbulent Fond, an abstract rendering of coiling, curling, flowing, overlapping line, inspired by Leonardo’s drawings of water. Here the lace strands, unlike other works in the show, are devoid of pattern and imagery — only the background is populated with a looser abstract patterning that recalls both reptilian skin and computer boards. I know this is one of the strongest pieces in a show of strong work, since it is the drawing that artists who visit the gallery seem to love best.

Mid-Term Election 2006

Two days after the election, after the endless rain and dark skies had disappeared and we had all caught up with our sleep, I was riding the subway to work and was delighted to watch virtually everyone in my car become entranced with a particularly gregarious and flirtatious baby. Young and old, all races, all shapes, gay and straight — everyone was joyfully interacting with this young tourist. I thought to myself, my god, we’re all so much happier — it’s got to be the election! The people of our beautiful country have finally come to their senses.

McKenzie Fine Art is located at 511 W. 25th St., 212-989-5467, www.mckenziefineart.com.