I am thrilled to announce that my ALL-NEW Chelsea “Best Exhibits” tour Sat. Feb. 16 – as always the most extraordinary tour I lead each month – will also be the most multi-sensory tour I’ve EVER led in the 11 years I’ve offered gallery tours!  It will push the proverbial envelope in so many ways, not least of which the fact that the “visual art” component will constitute a bare majority of  the exhibits we’ll visit.  Highlights will include: (1) an Aroma art exhibit where you’ll enter stations with different smells, (2) a cutting-edge 3D video installation, for which you’ll wear 3D glasses, and (3) an amalgam of sculpture and sound art that is so original, it’s impossible to describe.  These are just 3 of 7 shows we’ll visit that day.

Chelsea is exactly the kind of cutting-edge environment where experimental art thrives, as the 300 galleries in this neighborhood have to compete with all the others for attention, and ultimately for sales.  But the galleries we’ll sample on this tour are also risking sales at the same time.  Is Aroma art even art?  I say yes, categorically.  But will buyers agree?  And will the art world intelligentsia?  What happens when the aroma in the artworks runs out – do the buyers need to keep replenishing the chemicals?  At extra cost?

I used to say that sound art was the rarest type of art shown in galleries.  And it so happens we’ll see an EXTRAORDINARY example of sound art on this tour, in which microphones are placed inside a body of water to capture the sounds of objects thrown inside.  The resulting sounds are absolutely other-worldly.  But sound art is no longer the “rarest” – it’s now aroma art, also on this tour.  At least for now it’s the rarest.

I remember not so long ago when computer art was the newest art form, and before that video art.  Even photography, which was invented in the mid-1800s, didn’t achieve “fine art” status until the 1970s and ’80s, when museums finally began to show photography exhibits, and to create photography departments.

What’s next on the contemporary art frontier?  Get a taste on my tour this Saturday.

Rafael Risemberg, Ph.D., Director
New York Gallery Tours