Naturalia

Still a few days left to catch Naturalia at Paul Yasmin Gallery here in NYC. Exhibit ends on March 4th. It’s a thought-provoking mixture of old and new representations of nature in collaboration with Sotheby’s Old Masters division. The juxtaposition may leave you with a confirmation of what you already knew you liked to begin with.Be sure to check out both spaces, across the street from each other.

The virtual reality piece seemed to be broken, which is not something you could say for the five century old works. This is a first time I’ve put one of these gimcrack devices on. It was blurry, hot, and uncomfortable. Give me real reality any day. (“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” said Philip K. Dick.) I wrote about Albrecht Dürer’s famous rhinoceros for JSTOR Daily. I wrote some more about it here. The poor animal, which Dürer never actually saw, drowned while being shipped to the Pope. At a much larger scale than the Dürer, Walton Ford portrays that fateful moment here:Most intriguing having these two works in the same room. Here’s some more I wrote about Ford.