"Décor" (Photo courtesy of David Zwirner)
Tonight David Zwirner gallery opens an exhibition titled “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” by Adel Abdessemed, its second solo show with the Algerian-born artist. Here’s a list of things we saw at the packed press preview this morning:
- A 12-foot by 26-foot semi-flattened collection of taxidermy pigs, wolves, foxes, rabbits and probably a few other mammals that takes up an entire wall, is the exact dimensions of Guernica and smells faintly of what we were told is cedar oil.
- Four crucified Jesus Christ statues made of razor wire and mounted on the wall.
- A boat packed with black plastic garbage bags.
- A larger-than-life sculpture of Zinedine Zidane head-butting Marco Materazzi.
- A room filled with charcoal drawings of animals with dynamite strapped to them.
- A forest of giant glass microphones.
- A video of a baboon (a “magnificent animal, who is super,” according to the artist) clacking magnetic letters on the wall that spell out HUTU and then TUTSI.
- The line for the Doug Wheeler show next door (not part of the show, but this was at 10 a.m.!)
A must-see if you have even a passing interest in post-colonialism, or cedar oil.
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