Ambling about the Lower East Side galleries last week, I came to realize the neighborhood has an insidious enemy: polite little “funky” abstractions. It may be that the last vestiges of criticality representing Orchard have finally washed away, or that I got stuck in Gianna Commito’s quaint exhibition of abstractions at Rachel Uffner, but for some time the Lower East Side has started to feel different. Galleries regularly pop up–some with logos made out of the goofy-if-despicable Comic Sans–and fade away, though both the newcomers and old have recently failed in carrying on the neighborhood’s reputation as a less overtly market oriented locus rife with emerging talent and risk taking programming. Could this burgeoning conservativism be residual from the recent recession; a genteel mask to wear when bringing a gallery back from the brink of financial ruin? Read More