For the last couple of days, I have spent some time gallery-hopping like the super awesome hipster that I’m not. On Friday night, we headed over to an opening at the Charles Cowles Gallery, where my friend Oliver Arms had a show, which was inexplicably not on the gallery’s website until today. Since we only got there with about 20 minutes to spare, I only looked at Oliver’s paintings, which were fucking awesome. This was the first time I’d been over to the West Chelsea gallery area since, well, before it was an area full of galleries. In case you haven’t been, there are lots of galleries and one or two pretentious people. And also some auto body shops.

This afternoon, we headed to the Pulse Contemporary Art Fair at the Armory on Lexington and 26th. While it was completely surreal seeing military personnel snaking their way through the crowds of art school hipsters and wealthy collectors standing outside, the show was pretty interesting. My friends and Metblog rockstars from L.A., sixspace, have a booth at the show, and I accidentally bought another piece from them. Whoopsie. After that, we walked around and looked at many of the other galleries’ exhibitions, which ranged from completely amazing to godawful, but overall, the show had good, fresh, interesting work. It’s open from 12-5 tomorrow, so you can still go check it out. Admission is $15, and they have a bar. Nothing says “lazy Sunday” like wandering around looking at art while drinking away your hangover!

After all that art, you’d think we’d be arted out, but we headed back over to Chelsea to go to David LaChapelle’s show. It was completely fucking packed, and the photos were great, but the people-watching was the real story. I’m sure some photos from the opening will show up online soon, since everyone but David seemed to have a camera out and pointed at someone who I’m sure I should have recognized. You can still see the show at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery until April 28, but I’m not sure if it’ll be quite as fascinating without Amanda Lepore there standing in front of her own portrait.

Related posts:

1. The Lower East Side With James Kalm
2. Woo-hoo, Big Foot in Queens!
3. The Art You Won’t See
4. Wanna buy (or be) the next big art star?
5. A must-see photography exhibit