rather than comforting, fomenting the shock of the
new much as Abstract Expressionist action paintings
did three generations ago. I learned much from looking
at their walls and asking questions. For instance,
photographer
Marc
Valesella's Gun Series,
startling in the manner
of Andy Warhol's Electric
Chair, is actually the chef
d'oeuvre of an artist known
as a master printer, one
who, in the digital age,
practices and celebrates
the process of the perfect
silver print.
Another artist I was
unfamiliar with was Jean
Marc Louis, born in the
Ivory Coast, where he lived
for twenty-five years. His
golden Self Portrait has the
nous of a Modigliani, the
brio of a Basquiat. Perennial
bad boy Damien Hirst is
represented, in miniature,
by a bell jar, Sanctum 3, enclosing three butterflies.
Above the bed hangs Takashi Murakami's small anime
inflected painting, Kiki with Moss.
Virtually every piece of furniture emanates from an
avant-garde mid-century source. The foyer has a
HYLAND
