A Rose is a Rose

The first thing I did in New York was get a cab to Leah's place. The second thing was to hit Chelsea to find the Jonathan Levine Gallery. Contained within until Oct 4th is "Ambien Somnambulants", the new exhibition of recent work from Camille Rose Garcia, one of my favorite artists working today. And oh boy, was it glorious! Garcia's work in print is lovely, but in person its stunning. The details are incredible, touches of black glitter and slight texture only add to the surrealist dreamscapes she creates. I wish that I had about 17,000 extra dollars lying around so that I could have one of my very own to love every day. Instead I picked up a lovely free poster.

In my life I have been very deeply affected by art exhibits, but only rarely. My life changed on a day in November 1998 in London when I stumbled upon the Victoria and Albert's showing of Aubrey Beardsley's work. Now I have 3 tattoos by or inspired by Beardsley! Then my husband and I saw Yayoi Kusama's exhibit of Eternity/Modernity at the Kyoto Museum of Modern Art in January 2005 and it was truly breathtaking. Now I've seen Camille Rose Garcia, and I had some of the same stirrings of emotion and a similar jaw-dropping reaction. Garcia's fusion of the bizarre and disturbing with remarkably lush and beautiful imagery is a wondrous thing to behold. I could write about how her work is influenced by politics and modern society's slow, brutal destruction of our planet and how people medicate themselves to live in a sort of denial-infused fugue state. However, the reality is that I just really think the work is very pretty. Very pretty indeed.