Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Billy Sullivan @ Texas Gallery



I'll admit that I'm a bit too biased to be looking at art like this. Karen Kilimnik, Elizabeth Peyton, Alex Katz, Billy Sullivan. I mean, who really cares about artists who portray their friends while they lounge around the living room or on the patio furniture? I guess I do. This collection of acrylic and oil pastels on paper is pretty cool. From the near-psychedelic pig to the rather creepy-lewd portrayal of a couple of fellows with too much swarthy body hair and gay man mustaches squiggled in. It's nice stuff. And the Joel Shapiro work in the main gallery isn't bad, either. But who can get excited about that when you've got a portrait of somebody (man? woman?) with a weird helmet of black hair?