An uber traffic cone by Dennis Oppenheim in Roberto Clemente Park. The walkway leads to the Solar Pavilion, a recycled environment by Situ Studio, Brooklyn, which serves as the entry to the Scope fair
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Those 20-foot-high orange traffic cones by Dennis Oppenheim on the field at Roberto Clemente Park were something of a metaphor. The Scope fair has undergone a similar kind of growth. Two years ago it was a hotel fair in a very cramped venue on Collins. Last year it moved to Wynwood under a tent-roofed venue on this lot, and this year it expanded its footprint to 60,000 square with 98 exhibitors from 22 countries.
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I can’t say Scope was my favorite fair—to my mind it just didn’t have the excitement
of Pulse, Red Dot or Flow—but there much to like. My favorite piece was an installation of a table and chair built from individual pieces of charcoal, each chunk suspended on a nylon monofilament so that the constructed objects were hovering about nine inches off the floor. It was part Star Trek, part Zen, a beam-me-up-scotty construction with all those particles literally suspended in space, not quite congealed yet so perfectly aligned and so still.
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There was quite a lot of work on paper, including cut paper, something Philadelphia-based writer Andrea Kirsh noted in one of her posts for the
Fallon Rosof Art Blog. And plenty of material abstraction, some of which straddled the space between painting and sculpture.
And then there was the well-dressed shell of a gentleman whose startling presence was echoed by a much more down to earth version of the fellow just behind him.
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Here's what interested me:
At Krampf Gallery, New York: Seon Ghi Bahk, Relationship, 2007, charcoal and nylon thread.
A detail of the construction is below . . .
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And a detail of the surface is below . . .
Work on paper made a strong showing at this fair, including cut paper.
Above, at Galerie aus Schneider, Karlsruhe: Gabriele Basch, Riesenr, 2007, ink on paper
At Arroniz Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City: graphite on cut paper by
Daniel Alcala
At Galerie Rupert Pfab, Dusseldorf: Sandra Vasquez de la Horra, installation of drawings in pencil on paper dipped in wax
An individual work is below:
At Galerie Eric Dupont, Paris: Didier Mencoboni, two gouache-on-paper works
At Galerie Baer: Stefan Lenke, untitled acrylic on canvas painting
At Bryce Wolkowitz, New York: Noh Sang-Kyoon's material abstractions in sequins on canvas
A detail is below:
At Magnan Emrich Contemporary, New York: Robert Coromina, Proyecto ABCD, 2007, acrylic on canvas, variable dimensions
At Mike Weiss Gallery, New York: Hermann Nitsch, Untitled, oil and mixed media on canvas
At Creative Thriftshop, Brooklyn: Guerra de la Paz (collaborative of Alain Guerra and Neraldo de la Paz) reconstruct the suit--or is it the man? The actual fellow behind the wall holding the same position was total serendipity--or was it?
Detail below:
Departing view from under the Solar Pavilion
