THE FLOWERS OF ROMANCE
by Charlie Finch
Most of the time, I’d rather have my good times happen by accident. Such was the case when I walked down Second Avenue on a cold evening a few weeks ago to visit the Half Gallery on Forsyth Street, which, since it combines the powers, formally and informally, of Bill Powers, James Frey, Andy Spade, Carter Burden, Cynthia Rowley, Olivier Zahm and others, probably has more celebrities per square foot than all the ersatz parties in Miami Beach during the first week of December.
Opening at Half was a painter named Donald Shambroom, who lives outside of Boston. It’s his first New York exhibition in 20 years and comprises a series of mournful paintings of orange gardenias, and one of an outstretched pink hand, bowing towards a gravestone, mockingly thanking George W. Bush on behalf of the war dead of the last decade.
I asked myself where I had met this Shambroom fellow before and, when a number of familiar faces arrived, realized that I had not seen him since he was painting at Yale in 1973. Memories, none mournful, flooded back of other marginally promising painters of our era (Dirk Nelson, Frank Cole), and the faces in the room identified themselves: here was the avant-garde guitarist Gary Lucas, sidekick of Captain Beefheart; there was Robert Rubin, who curates at the Bibliotheque National; and there was painter Dennis Kardon, he of the brash nudes and frequent mentions inArtnet Magazine.