I think they're doing neat stuff over at the new Exit Art space. As part of their Exit Biennial: The Reconstruction show, 35 artists are doing different installations over the next month, leading up to a second opening on April 5. Ten bucks (suggested) buys you a pass that you can use whenever you like to check out the progess of the artists' work. It's a great idea - you get invested early on in what they're doing, and return to see the final outcome.

As it was, there weren't that many artists there, so I mostly checked out the materials, and in some cases, their sketches for what they were planning on building. I did talk to Orly Genger for a bit who was obsessively knitting with grey, black, cream, and brown yarn in the center of the room.

Me: So how much are you knitting a day?
Orly (thinking): Noon to eight every day. But that's just here. I do more at home.
Me: Wow. You must really like knitting.
Orly: It's not that so much. I just have a vision for what I want to complete, and I need to keep going if I want to do it.
Me: So what's the vision?
Orly (pointing to an alreadly large pile of sections of knitted yarn spread out on the floor, probably about five feet in circumference): I'm going to make a grey head of hair. And then I'm going to wear it at the opening night party.
Me (realizing I have no artistic vision whatsoever, and even if I did, I don't have nearly the discipline that it would take to pull something like this off): Wow. That sounds like fun.
Orly (with a slightly manic smile): I hope so.

You should really go see Orly knit. It's something worth watching.

I walked over to the Gagosian next, mostly to see the Douglas Gordon show (Play Dead: Real Time, which Juli and Will had recommended. Will works at the Gagosian so that was extra incentive to go, because I knew I'd get an insider look at the place.

I liked the Douglas Gordon show a lot, wasn't as impressed with the Franz West show (Sisyphos: Litter and Waste), which had a lot of crater-like sculptures painted with fluorescent colors. Not for me. The Douglas Gordon show, however, was right up my alley.

There were four huge video screens, maybe ten feet high, maybe more, each featuring a fifty-minute or so repeating loop of different cuts of a big, beautiful elephant playing dead, and then standing up, from many different angles. It was totally quiet in the room, and because it was in the middle of the day, virtually empty. So peaceful. So striking. I was happy.

Later on Will told me that they had actually filmed the elephant in the Gagosian itself. They brought her at 11:30 at night and filmed till 3:30. Sit, stand, sit, stand. The elephant's name was Minnie, and she smelled everyone by sticking her snout in their faces. Will said he was covered with elephant mucus but it was pretty sweet anyway.

He took me through the back offices and I got to see all the hidden art (A Basquiat/Warhol! A Jeff Koons with cute blue doggies!). Great stuff, though I'm sure if I saw it every day I wouldn't care anymore. But for a wide-eyed art fan like myself, it was a lot of fun.

Will also told me that the next show will feature two female photographers, one of whom takes pictures of herself naked, pressed up against Plexiglas. I thought it was the best comparison of a visual artist to my own work that I had heard yet. Or at least it gave me something to aspire to.

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