Lower East Side Galleries are *urp* better than Williamsburg Galleries. (Did I just say that?!)

A foray last Sunday to Manhattan’s LES yielded, among some truly impressive art (like the show at CANADA, below)…

detail of a great, self-referential work by Michael Williams

glimpses of optimistic market ’signs’ that, though hardly Upturn-Prophesy-worthy, deserve mention.

Here, my buddy, Francesco glances over as Rachel Uffner puts away a work we’d just watch her put on hold for the Principal of a blue-chip Chelsea gallery. (Since it’s a sale-in-progress, I don’t wanna name names.)

Barb Choit brings Duran Duran-esque memories to Orchard St.

Meantime, works that re-appropriate and otherwise alter Nagle posters from the ’80s (by Barb Choit) were on display.

Choit and Williams aren’t the only self-referentially minded practitioners South of Delancy. The ever-impressive Pieter Schoolwerth showed “Portraits of Paintings” (here, his riff on Golden Age Dutch artist Ter Brugghen, at Miguel Abreu gallery, down the block).

"Portrait of 'Esau Selling his Birthright' with Candle" in situ

Abreu always wins my award for most-edifying-stop on the LES gallery hike. The books you can peruse in his shelves are like a mini grad-school seminar (check out all those texts by Alain Badiou) and are worth the trip, alone.

Installation shot of Erin Shirreff's show

Francesco continued to stroll through Orchard Street dealer Lisa Cooley’s show of works in such diverse media as silver gelatin prints, video, and (my fave) sculpture made of “compressed ash” by Erin Shirreff. Looks like Jay Gorney (my favorite Downtown-turned-Uptown gallerist) had just signed the book. Is this work Chelsea bound? Or was it just a nice little, conceptually cohesive show?

On to Sloan Fine Art, the gallery I think of as the end of the rainbow. Tons of deserving artists (the sort whom I always wish would get shows) get shows there, one after another.

detail of Thomas C. Card's "Horizons # 1" @ Sloane

I wasn’t familiar with Thomas C. Card’s work, above. But that’s what’s great about Sloan, and the LES in general. You find things. You learn things. Like at 11 Rivington, where I got a totally unexpected treat:

Caetano de Almeida's "Rara estamba - excentrico" 2009

Abstractionist/conceptualist Caetano de Almeida, who’s had quite a career in his native Brazil, and, believe it or not, has never shown in NYC. The above piece (image nabbed from the gallery’s website) was made by exposing areas of the canvas to “pollution”—a strategy that put me in mind of Jiri Georg Doukopil, while the show itself reminded me of getting my introduction to another well-known Brazilian, Nelson Lierner, at another unlikely gallery, Roebling Hall, a while back. Sometimes galleries are better than textbooks.

Roberta Smith was just exiting de Almeida as I entered; then I sited good ol’ Jerry Saltz right across the street at Salon 94 on Freeman Alley. We checked out the show of inscrutable-yet-gorgeous sculptures by Barry X Ball (sorry, no time for photo, but here’s the link), and chatted briefly about the Internet. He didn’t seem to know any more about Ball than I did; nor to understand what I was trying to convey about how awesome art dialog is on the Internet—two circumstances that I found both reassuring and unsettling. I figured it meant I ought to end the day. It was already getting dark, and I’d been away from the computer too long.

Today: Bushwick.