
Till Gerhard's Light From Above (2008)Courtesy of Stellan Holm Gallery
German artist Till Gerhard has a taste for mining the spookier regions of America's sixties counterculture, and in the 1969 Rolling Stones concert at Altamont Speedway — where the Hells Angels went on a rampage, fatally stabbing one audience member — he has hit upon a particularly juicy subject. Painting scenes from the Maysles brothers' seminal documentary
Gimme Shelter, he recasts the show as a Teutonic rite with Mick Jagger as the strutting shaman and the long-haired crowd as his pagan followers. In this context the death seems less like rock and roll and more like human sacrifice. At Stellan Holm Gallery through June 28. —
Andrew M. Goldstein