I once heard at a dinner party that Mike Wiess of Mike Weiss
Gallery was involved in gun running and possibly had ties to the Israeli
Defense Forces, which I thought was strange because I really liked the Alex
Gingrow show he put on. But promoting a strong exhibition that took snide shots
at other galleries does seem like the kind of thing a gun-dealing Zionist gallery
owner might have the self-confidence to do.
After walking into Ozeri’s show of photo-realist paintings
of a female Israeli solider, I was totally psyched to write a review detailing
his involvement in funneling guns to Israeli settlers. Well, after a couple of
hours or so on google, I found nothing about fueling Middle East discord, only
that he has been accused of firing a gallery worker because of her looks,
admitted to calling the cops on Eric Doeringer for selling his fake paintings
on the street and was once backed by a tobacco-industry lawyer. Still, this
would all be in keeping with the resume of a gallerist who might take shots at
other galleries and run illegal guns into Israel. But then after an even more exhaustive
internet search, I found a Michael Weiss who is an active advocate for the
Israeli Defense Forces, runs a neocon thin- tank and is respected enough to
write for Foreign Affairs. Sadly he doesn’t seem to run guns and is not
currently operating a Chelsea gallery.
Even sadder, all this research just leaves me with
absolutely no reason why a contemporary gallery would be showing
photo-realistic paintings, not made by Chuck Close in the 70’s. Unless of
course Mike Weiss is Michael Weiss’s alias to cover for the fact that when not
being a respected columnist, Zionist gun-running, think-tank founder, he also
moonlights as a gallerist as a way to launder profits from his gun running? Not
saying it’s true, just think that would explain a lot, or at least this show.
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