Fair Enough: Aqua Art

The posts so far:

Fair Enough: And I'm Off 
Fair Enough: Traveling Incognita? 
Fair Enough: All Over But the Posting 
Fair Enough: Art or Trash?  Post updated with captions and a Winner
Fair Enough: Prologue to the Report
Fair Enough: Art Basel Miami Beach, Part 1 
Fair Enough: Art Basel Miami Beach, Part 2
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While other high-rise hotels are cropping up around it, the Aqua Hotel remains small, the perfect venue for a fair

Below: the interior, where every room opens onto a balcony or the coutyard



What I love about Aqua is the scale. Unlike the big fair, with its rows of booths—each essentially a stage set with the fourth wall open—Aqua is more intimate. You enter someone’s room to see the work. The art is typically smaller and more closely spaced. What you might miss on a cursory walk through the big fair, you really get to see here. And unlike other hotel fairs, which can feel cramped, the openness to the courtyard gives you light and fresh air.

The work at Aqua tends to have a strong material sensibility. Or maybe I just notice it more. In any case, viewing the work is more intimately experienced—somewhere between entering a gallery and entering someone's home (a perception enhanced when the beds are still in the room).

We start with the quirky and material, which I happen to l-o-v-e, and then peek into a number of rooms, sometimes entering and walking around.

Jim Dingilian at McKenzie Fine Art, New York

This bottle once contained distilled spirits. The spirit in here now is much more transcendent. Using smoke on the inside of the bottle--I have no idea how he draws onto or into it--the artist has created an eerie and evocative image of a slightly seedy area, perhaps resembling one where a bottle like this might have been tossed 

Valerie Hammond at Walker Contemporary, Boston

Hammond draws on paper which she then dips into wax. Her hands would seem to be metaphors for life, or magic, or both

Diem Chau at G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle

You'll see more farther down the post, so here I'll just tell you that Chau has embroidered sheer fabric that's stretched over a small saucer

Laura Moriarty at Conrad Wilde Gallery, Tucson

Moriarty has created small topographical landscapes out of layers of wax. Though she references maps of her Upstate New York area, these are geologically fabulous impossibilities

Platform Gallery, Seattle

 Why does a floormat seem to welcome, even when it's well, a floormat?

McKenzie Fine Art, New York

From left: Paintings by James Lecce, Gilbert Hsiao, Reed Danziger, Chris Gallagher;  Jean Lowe books

Below: Lowe books and Don Voisine paintings. You'll see more from each artist in about a week in the curated posts

Gallery Thomas Jaeckel, New York

Paintings by Hendrik Smit, Ian Hughes and Peggy Bates; Tatjana Busch sculpture

Conrad Wilde Gallery, Tucson

My paintings on the back wall; Miles Conrad paintings at left

Two views of Conrad Wilde Gallery, above and below

The chromatic theme allowed the small room to accommodate a lot of work

PDX Contemporary, Portland, Oregon

The exhibition was a solo for Nell Warren, whose printmaking approach to painting and work on paper is apparent above and below, and below that

Nell Warren at PDX Contemporary, Portland

Toomey Tourell, San Francisco

On bed: Michael Russell stitched work and William Edwards sculpture

Below: Tom De Groot paintings, Brian Dettmer altered books

Randall Scott Projects, Washington, D.C.

Sometimes I go right for the painting, which is what I did here:

A grid of paintings by Robert Kingston (love those grids), which I perused individually, one of which is shown below:

Philip Slein Gallery, St. Louis

I can't tell you who the individual artists are here, but the installation provided many long minutes of looking

Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco

Love this gallery and its artists

Below I've focused on paintings by Sarah Walker and Barbara Takenaga, left and right of door respectively

Stephanie Breitbard Gallery, Mill Valley, California

Jylian Gustlin's stitched rubber hanging and Jhina Alvarado's photographically inspired images

Below: Alvarado's oil paintings are treated with an atmospheric scrim of wax

Fouladi Gallery, San Francisco

Lisa Solomon's mandala is made of tank-shaped felt elements pinned to the wall. How do I know this?

Paperless journalism, baby

Also at Fouladi: my buddies Gregg Hill and Omar Chacon. Hill crushes and paints oil drums; Chacon--you remember his painting from Traveling Incognita?--works with layered drops of resin

Diem Chau at G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle

Love this installation of stitched fabric stretched over small plates

Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia

Rebecca Rutstein paintings above; Tim McFarlane paintings below; both artists working in acrylic on paper

Robischon Gallery, Denver

Linda Fleming reflective work on back wall, Jae Ko sculpture in profile (shown full view below), and Ted Larsen sculpture

Below: Wendi Harford painting, Jae Ko sculptures (of adding machine paper rolls), Larsen sculpture

Also at Robischon Gallery: Derrick Velasquez sculpture of bookbinding tape over a dowel (that book influence is everywhere); detail below

Beth Urdang Gallery, Boston

In the closet, cake sculptures by Pat Lasch

Closeup below

Birch Libralato Gallery, Toronto

Peeking into the room, with Ed Pien cut paper pieces

Why you need to enter the room: You wouldn't have seen Ginette Legar's faucet-and-brush sculpture from the doorway

Walker Contemporary, Boston

Casey Roberts gouache paintings above; Valerie Hammond's hand drawings below, and below that

Miller Block Gallery, Boston

. This pierced-paper piece by Jane Masters--like embroidery without the thread--reminded me just how hungry I was at the ends of a long day of looking

William Baczek Fine Arts, Northampton, Mass.

Jaq Chartier, one of the fair's founders, is also an accomplished painter. Her three paintings are visible in the foreground, with Sean Greene's painting to their right; in the window, Cynthia Consentino's Girls with Guns