Nothing illustrates the vast plurality of contemporary art more than the fact that these two medicine cabinets exist at the same time.
Damien Hirst: 
Whiting Tennis (Link to artist talking):
Detail:
Hirst is cool, Tennis feverish. Hirst’s form is armored, Tennis’ vulnerable. Tennis’ assemblage of his models for sculptures isn’t intended a medicine chest, which is where the comparison breaks down. His elegant gray box is more like a church. Like Robyn O’Neil’s (here), his overal effect is silent, engaging a private implosion.
I value both Hirst and Tennis, but if I could pick one of these objects to live with, it would be Tennis’ a thousand times over, price points be damned.
Tennis is in Supramundane at Ambach & Rice through the weekend. He’s also in Dimension Invention at the Kirkland Arts Center through June 3, which I’m going to see later today. He is represented in Seattle by Greg Kucera .In flusher days, now demised, Kucera would never have let him appear at another local gallery, especially with his best work to date.
Regina, you’re mistaken about “In flusher days, now demised, Kucera would never have let him [Tennis] appear at another local gallery, especially with his best work to date.” I don’t know where you would get that idea.
I can’t imagine not co-operating with another gallery’s request to borrow work by one of our artists for a group show such as this. Ambach & Rice put together a professional show with the help of an independent curator and is publishing a catalog of the show. This is good for the art scene in Seattle and for the larger art world as well.
This is how galleries are supposed to behave by creating varying contexts for work they admire by artists they respect.
We have borrowed work from several galleries in (and out of) Seattle for group shows over the years. Our current show includes work from James Harris and from Scott Lawrimore’s galleries.
We’ve never been turned by our colleagues with such requests, and we would very likely lend work to group shows at those same galleries.
I am, however, thrilled to see that you’ve found something to admire in Whiting Tennis’s work. Always glad to see you go from dismissal to admiration in the process of looking and viewing over many years. We started at admiration and have never been disappointed.
Hi Greg. I knew you’d respond to this. Ambach & Rice didn’t borrow one piece. There are at least half a dozen. Whiting Tennis is having a show within this show, and a gallery show in the same town as yours with your own artist at its heart is not something (my opinion) you would have oked in flusher times. However, you’re right, special circumstances here – independent curator and catalog – make it a possibility.