Andrés Basurto, "Montejo Tres." 2011, broken bottles and epoxy putty. At the The Lyons Weir Gallery in Chelsea.

The West Chelsea district of Manhattan is famous for its countless scattered galleries of contemporary art and performance works, and I’ve recently had the pleasure of exploring many of these exhibits. The galleries are spread over a large area and most are unassuming buildings with large glass displays, but they are filled with extraordinary art, which is expressed through numerous different mediums, such as acrylic paintings, broken beer bottles, giant salt mounds, straight pins on wood, and many more materials.

At the Anton Kern Gallery at 532 West 20th street, there was an exhibition of the work of Jonas Wood, who paints in a sort of surrealist style, using acrylic paint, to portray living spaces and people that had most likely pervaded his childhood and life as he was growing up. There are cubist-inspired renditions of old basketball cards and players, paintings of photos of rooms, and portraits of various individuals, shaded in geometric shapes and composed of straight angles. The one consistent factor of all the works was the switching of perspective, as every painting’s viewpoint was either impossible or differed in several parts of the same work. Jonas Wood presented a new kind of take on modern life, through an older medium and one that brings out the edginess and even a new kind of reality from present-day experiences, and he does so with beautiful works of art, which are all masterfully done.

Tara Donovan, "Drawing (Pins)." 2010, gatorboard, paint, and nickel-plated steel pins (72" x 72" x 2-1/2"). At the Pace Gallery in Chelsea.

The Pace Gallery at 510 West 25th street, presented an exhibit called “Tara Donovan: Drawings (Pins)”, which consisted of a collection of large white panels with straight pins tacked into them to form amazing shaded shapes. Most of the pin-works formed large circles, which were shadowed on the outside by wider-spaced pin placement, and several of the works had their negatives hanging on the wall right next to them. For example, on one side there’d be a circle filled in on the outside, and right next to it would a panel which showed a canvas filled in everywhere but a perfect circular area in the middle. This contrast of shapes created an awe-inspiring effect. The pins were all so meticulously placed that every space in between them seemed almost identical, the precision of each work was absolutely impeccable. Many of the filled in shapes also developed a three-dimensional aspect since the pins would be tacked on top of one another in the dense parts, and this made each pin-work even more impressive. Tara Donovan created a very unique and astounding collection of artwork, working through a new medium and accomplishing almost inhuman perfection.

The Lyons Weir Gallery located at 542 West 24th street, showcased the work of Mexican graphic design artist Andrés Basurto, with his exhibition “Inspired By A True Story”. Basurto used fragments of old wine and beer bottles to construct colorful, see-through skulls, with the original drink labels still on them. These skulls looked incredible and the colors were perfectly placed, in specific areas of the skulls; on one skull, the only blue parts of a label were left in the face, mainly the nose, eyes and mouth regions, while the rest of the skull was yellow. These colorful craniums were eye-catching and remarkable sculptures and definitely deserve a place in the top ten exhibits of the Chelsea galleries, at least for the time being.