Stan Douglas, Luanda-Kinshasa @ David Zwirner

I generally feel pretty positive towards Stan Douglas’s work. I thought his black-and-white noir photographs at Zwirner were awesome. But I am not sure I am all that into Luanda-Kinshasa. I like funk, especially deep-cut 70’s funk and R&B, are the only musical genres that can get me dancing in public. But Douglas’s spot-on reproduction of a recording session just seemed to lag. It’s such a nice re-creation that outside of occasionally being aware of the pristineness of the HD projection, I felt like I was watching something from a PBS pledge drive, like the Let It Be documentary. Musically great, but at a certain point, it’s just such a successful remake that it becomes the real thing, and I honestly find the real thing a little dull. But God bless him, he did get an extended funk jam on the wall at Zwirner.

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David Zwirner (533 W 19th St. Btw. 10th& 11th Aves.)