A Brief Tour of the Chelsea Forest

A brief tour of Chelsea resulted in the following judgements:

1. Sue Williams. I was with you all the way along, from raunchy klutzy cartoons to suave calligraphic body part scenarios, all the way up through non-objective minimal gestures. But this time I do not get it. It seems you are repeating yourself - back to toylike sex shapes, all-over composition, artfully designed...but there is something missing. It's too careful, overdetermined, predictable. Sadness.

2. Marcel Dzama. No.

3. Lisa Sanditz. You are deft with your paint-handling, you are lively and clever. Nice presto-change-ups of style and scale. But it feels cautious somehow and already-known. Too familiar, derivative. Last time around the spirit of fun was there. But now it just seems forced, self-conscious.

4. Monique Prieto. Some have said no. Sucky suck. But strangely I was drawn in to this entirely new project. I am not normally excited about word-paintings, something didactic and distanced about them. But these were slow, hard to read, revealing themselves little by little, unlike signs, where meaning comes to you all at once. The words she chose are fragments from Samual Pepys' diaries, a chronicler of life in 17th century London. The words are in places spelled anachronistically, in the ye olden style, referencing the past, but the way they are painted is graphic, Fred Flinstone-like. They are surprisingly fun to look at.