A Review of Adel Abdessemed’s “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” at David Zwirner
by Niki Schur-Narula
Walking into Adel Abdessemed’s exhibit, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” show goers were greeted by a strikingly good looking gallery assistant who directed them to the beer (Rolling Rock) that was being stored in garbage cans. This could be considered poor form by Chelsea standards of wine and wine alone, but I thought it was a friendly addition to the often intimidating vibe one can get at these things. Going to any opening at a Chelsea gallery is always an experience, but David Zwirner Gallery seems to attract not only just your run of the mill, swanky, highfalutin New York City art scenesters, but the particularly sexy ones.
The first room was covered in the artist’s sprawling sketches of cute animals like turtles and hedgehogs and weasels with explosives tied to them. It was nice, because, you know, fuck those animals. And if I were a successful enough to be exhibiting at David Zwirner, I too would just put up some silly sketches to fill up a room I didn’t immediately know what to do with. The press release talks about how these explosive animals are “presenting an allusion to modernday kamikazes,” fyi.
After the silly animal room, we get into the real meat of the show. Four razor-wire Christ figurines (think the Matthias Grünewald pose, where he actually looks like he’s in pain and starving, not the Italian, beautified, strong man pose where it looks like he might actually be enjoying himself up there) are lined up on the right wall of the room. The razor sculptures are pretty visceral, but repeating them on the wall is almost decorative. If you think about it, the world has a lot of decorations in which a dude is dying.
In the same room as the sharp, metallic, screaming Jesuses, there are probably about 30 glass microphones, their wires cut. The press release for the exhibit discusses this piece as “an allegory for the ideal of transparent communication and open dialogue,” but I felt it to be more of a representation of frustration. Clear microphones with wires going nowhere makes me think of people talking and no one listening. Or maybe it’s the artist justifying his choice of depicting Christ in a way that is sure to rile up some religious conservatives – hey, “free speech”, right?
Crossing over into the 533 space (and passing throngs of beautiful people on the way there, which I promise to never fail to notice or mention), the first thing you see is a pretty rundown boat, lying on its side, filled with garbage bags. The piece, entitled Hope, is an installation of a boat that was found abandoned on a beach in the Florida Keys, presumably by illegal immigrants. The boat is filled with trash bags (which Abdessemed actually had casted in polyurethane resin – why not just leave them as trash bags? They would be so much lighter. Man I wish I were a famous artist). The piece, which the artist claims was inspired by this piece by Caspar David Friedrich, should incite some controversy about the provocative analogy of the boat’s contents and its former passengers.
The next room is where the genuine meat of the show lies. And this time I’m talking actual meat. You walk in and are faced with a wall covered in burned, taxidermied wolves, deer, and maybe some birds. Some of them are eating each other. It’s crazy. He got all these dead animals, made them do awful things to each other, and then he set them on fire. I guess it’s a shout-out to Picasso’s Guernica, which kind of makes sense. It’s also built to the same dimensions as Picasso’s work. It is amazing. But, be warned, it stinks like holy ass. The whole room smells of formaldehyde, sulfur and, I guess, burned fur and charred animals.
Nearby is a video of a baboon writing “hutu” and “tutsi” on a whiteboard with magnetic letters. You know, in reference to that genocide that happened a while ago in which a million people were killed. If you don’t know about it, go ahead and Google Don Cheadle. Also, how do they teach baboons to spell???
Lastly, Abdessemed, who is an Algerian born French dude who now lives in New York, made a brilliant sculpture of a wonderful person beating his head into the chest of a jackass. He is capturing the moment during the final of the 2006 World Cup in which the French player Zidane, also an Algerian born French dude, took a rude, unsporting comment to heart and lost his head (!!!). Apparently, Matterazzi, the Italian perpetrator of the insult that ended the game for Zidane, told Zidane that he is “the son of a terrorist whore.” I bet he regretted that while he was rolling around in the grass. Watch the video, it’s amazing. One of the best moments in my knowledge of sports history. There are also some great YouTube remixes that will keep you around for a while, if you’re looking to kill time. But I digress. The sculpture is larger-than-life and cast in black resin, and you can really feel the anger and frustration in Zidane’s figure; His balled up fist and expression of rage really comes through.
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf is a show wrought with political commentary, violent imagery, bitter anger and resentment, and it’s (by and large) excellent. The pieces are not shrouded in layers and layers of hidden meanings – like Abdessemed’s works in the past, these pieces speak for themselves and the messages tend to be pretty clear. He’s definitely working on getting people who tend to get upset, upset. And that’s always a good thing. Antagonize, people. Antagonize.
David Zwirner is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10am-6pm and the show is up until Saturday, Mar 17th.
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