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3.15.2010

Armory Week: Stacked

(Marketing Mondays will return next week with "The Rogue Consultant")
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More Armory Week here, here and here .


Armory: Joachim Schonfelt at Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
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Seeing so much stacked work at the fairs, it occurred to me that the format represented a large slice of what was being shown throughout the fairs: taxidermy, abject or commonplace materials, textiles, structure, materiality. If the medium is obvious, or shown in detail, I'm not mentioning it. Those of you who were there, I'd love to hear how your impressions jibe with mine.

Armory: Artist unknown at Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin
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I love these little sculptures, the way the different lengths of pencil fit together, the way the points meet the surface of the shelf, and the way the artist selected particular rubber bands to bind the stacks. But it's also true that you can put almost anything on a shelf or pedestal and call it art.
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Armory: Tony Tasset at Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago
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Armory Modern: Peter Hallery at Galerie Forsblom
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Armory: Rosa Brun at Galeria Oliva Arauna, Madrid
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Armory: Ebru Eygun at Dirimart, Istanbul
Full view below

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Armory: Lisa Lapinski at Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles
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Detail below
(I think they're squares of wallpaper that have been overprinted or painted)
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Armory: Jim Lambie, painted or polished aluminum, at The Modern Institute, Glasgow
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Installation view below
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Armory: Jose Pedro Croft at Galeria Senda, Barcelona
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Armory: Omar Careno at Faria Fabregas Galeria, Caracas
(Painting inset with painted and stacked wooden blocks)
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Volta: Nikolai Bendiz Skyum Larsen at Galerie Vanessa Quang, Paris
(Stacked and glued business cards)
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Armory: Jacob Dahlgren at Andrehn-Schipjenko, Stockholm
(Stacked plastic hangers)
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Armory: Niko Luoma, photographs, at Bryce Wolkowitz, New York
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Armory: David Brooks at Museum 52, London
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Armory: Rachel Whiteread at Galleria Lorcan O'Neil, Roma
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Armory: Michaela Meise at Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles
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Armory: Takaaki Isumi at unknown gallery
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Armory: Jessica Jackson Hutchins at Laurel Gitlin, New York
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Pulse: Megan Whitmarsh at Michael Rosenthal, San Francisco
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Armory: Richard Nonas at Sfeir-Semler, Hamburg and Beirut
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Detail below
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Armory: Leslie Wayne at Jack Shainman
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Installation, above, and closeup below
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Armory: Nari Ward at gallerie unknown (possibly Lehman Maupin)
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Armory Modern: Elizabeth Turk
Detail of a work, above, through which we see the works below:
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Armory: Antony Gormley at White Cube, London
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Detail below


So we started with stacked animals and ended with the stacked figure of a person. Next (and last) post: some geometry. Did you think I wouldn't cover that? Oh, no, you dittn't.

12 comments:

Bea Modisett said...

Great post Joanne, thanks! I especially love Nari Mard and Elizabeth Turk's work. The image of Jim Lamble's piece has a great connection to the photo posted on your sidebar under "Viewlist at Minus Space" Looking forward to the Geometric post!

Nancy Natale said...

Excellent post, Joanne. Your curator's eye sums it up for us again. My particular favorites: Ebru Eygun, Niko Luoma and Nari Ward. Thanks!

snaphappy said...

Hi Joanne,
Always great to see what catches your eye. Thanks for including me, and all the other small intimate works that get overlooked at these Fairs. ( Just a note, my piece was at the Armory, not Volta).
Cheers, Leslie

Joanne Mattera said...

Leslie,

My mind said "Armory" but in a momentary disconnect, my fingers wrote Volta. It's fixed. I always look at the small work. Big may make the dramatic immediate statement, but small makes the intimate and lingering connection.

Sarah Gee said...

Another eye-opening, inspiring post! Thank you, Joanne, for all your work. Oddly, I'm doing a stacked piece myself. Working way out here in Vancouver, in a sort of cultural outpost, I'm always surprised by the connections and coincidences. On good days I call it synchronicity.

LXV said...

Joanne, I really enjoy seeing the connections you make amidst all that visual cacophony (not to mention sore feet). Those Richard Nonas were really nice. The Betty Parsons surprised me. You are no slouch as a photographer, by the way. The lighting is quite challenging in there. But what gets me is the huge disconnect between seeing them "live" and seeing them online.

And this is not just about the Fairs, but about the whole experience of looking at art on a computer screen. Things are so much more immediately seductive in this miniaturized, brilliantly saturated medium, recontextualized into adorable catalogs. Not a value judgement—just sayin'

Mead McLean said...

It's amazing going to these fairs and missing so many things that you've picked up on. Sometimes I wonder if we've even been to the same fairs.

Joanne Mattera said...

Mead,

I always use the blind-men-and-the-elephant analogy with regard to the fairs. One feels a trunk, the other a leg, the other the tusks, the other a tail, and each describes a different beast. I'm not sure anyone really sees the whole fair.

What did you see that you liked? What was your sense of the elephant?

Karen Schifano said...

So nice to run into you last weekend, J. This a great post to have on my screen, since my brain has lost all the images of what I saw that day. Is it your photos, your choices of work? Almost everything you have here looks good, and I didn't remember feeling that way after the fairs. Thanks for this! Look forward to your opening this week.

Admin said...

Nice to see Richard Nonas.

Mead McLean said...

Joanne, there were several pieces that were absolutely fantastic. At the Armory Contemporary side, there were two or three small rectangular blue resin pieces that were built off of canvases. Those were maybe my biggest highlight. Also I was impressed with one of Keith Tyson's Nature Paintings. I'd never seen one in person before, so it was a treat, though the lighting wasn't great. Another great piece was the landscape by David Schnell. It had a Matisse-like quality--very pleasant. Mark Flood's pieces also stood out. "Another Painting" sums up how I tend to feel at the main fairs. At Scope there were some fantastic geometric paintings by Sara Carter. Lots of layers in acrylic. Excellent surfaces. Also at Scope, there were a few small pieces by Fulvio di Piazza. The subjects were dumb--just surreal lanscapes, but the surfaces were luscious and juicy. ADAA had some interesting things--the Egon Schiele drawings and the solo booths of Sugimoto and Roxy Paine.

In general, I tend to notice dimension and geometry. Sculptures stand out at the fairs after you've seen a thousand paintings and drawings.

My overall impressions? Hmm...The Armory was too crowded to be enjoyable and the booths seemed small, especially compared to ABMB. Pulse seemed to be a repeat of Miami without all the electronics. Scope was tiny and mediocre, but there were a few gems there. The ADAA was stuffy and snooty, but the lighting was great and the work was top notch. I also love it when the fairs have cushy floors--after walking twenty miles a day, my knees appreciate a lack of concrete.

It's not related to the fairs, but I really enjoyed the Banks Violette pieces that are up at the Gladstone Annex in Chelsea. Another good show was that one with the really spare, small landscapes. Just enough to get the message across and no more. Really excellent. Wish I could remember which gallery and artist it was.

LXV said...

Joanne, My sense of the elephant really can't be articulated in words, so I am adopting your method, although, I humbly concede, nowhere near as well as you do it. You make it look so easy!