Art in Chelsea

Matthew Marks Gallery shows new works of German photographer Andreas Gursky. The new works comprise a big scale series of fomula one racing cars on their pit stop. The cars and their teams are bright and beautifully lit and set against a darker background. There is also a gargantuan print of an event at a North Korean stadium (poor people making up a pattern of flowers) as well as a landscape series of the Halong bay in northern Vietnam. The digital manipulation of those series is not so well done. It is just too obvious.

Rirkrit Tiravanija has a great installation at David Zwirner Gallery. He has built a big box which is set in what appears to be the garage of the gallery. You can enter the installation either through open rolling doors from the street or go through the gallery. That has the effect of entering a side spot like a garage. In the installation hot thai food awaits you which you can just take out of the pot. There is a nice social effect to it especially as that gallery is super up-market. You wander through the streets of Chelsea hungry and thirsty and suddenly there is this place you are allowed to (if you are not a bum, that is).