Fair Enough: Art or Trash?

The posts so far:

Fair Enough: And I'm Off

Fair Enough: Traveling Incognita?

Fair Enough: All Over But the Posting

And we have a winner. One person got them all right. But before I tell you who it is, take a look at the captions and compare them against your entry, which you'll see in the Comments section. While there was just one clearcut winner, some of you werethisclose.

1. Rubern Verdu at Raul Zamudio, Art Miami

Art professionals, start your engines. In this second annual installment of Art or Trash? I challenge you to guess which of the 25 images above and below depict work on exhibition at the Miami fairs and which just happen to look like it. One hint: Not everything indoors is art, and not everything outdoors isn’t.

I'll post the captions on Friday morning, December 10, at 9:00. Until then if you're game enough, post a comment identifying each number with "art" or "trash."  I’m upping the ante for anyone who's brave enough to post under your own name. If you guess all 25 correctly I’ll put your name in a hat and pull out a winning name.  Winner gets a 30-minute interview with me and a subsequent blog post that I'll write about you and your work--plus bragging rights that you can distinguish the art-world equivalent of shit from Shinola.

2. Artist unidentified at 3PQ Gallery, ABMB

3. Trash, shot at NADA

4. Artist unidentified at Noero Gallery, ABMB

5. Trash, shot outside the portable restrooms at Red Dot. Everyone got this right

6. Jason Dodger at Casey Kaplan Gallery, ABMB

I found this piece merely interesting until I read the label. It was knitted—by Barbera Stochmolske in Szczecin, Poland—from twelve kilometers of yarn, the height of the earth to above the weather. Clearly conceptual, it nevertheless has a lovely presence and heft, with a red stripe that was engineered, or perhaps folded in just the right way

7. Trash. Maybe not actual trash, but these stacked pallets are not meant to be art

8. Trash. I shot this and #16 on Lincoln Road

The folks who had been selling produce all day were stacking up their goods, and the withering look I received from one of the workers heaped the scorn of class and culture upon me one evening after dinner

9. Helen Mirra sculpture at Meyer Riegger Gallery, ABMB

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10. Trash. Caution tape on a corridor rug at ABMB

11. Trash. Tape-covering wires at ABMB

12. Monika Sosnowska at The Modern Institute/Toby Webster, ABMB. How happy was I when I found this piece?

13. Ditto this piece from Elizabeth Neel at Sikkema Jenkins Gallery, ABMB

14.  Richard Rigg at Workplace Gallery, NADA

15. Artist unidentified at Parisa Kind Gallery, NADA

16.  Trash, shot on Lincoln Road.

17. Chris Astley at Bravin Lee Programs, Seven

I really like this low wall of objects and the almost anthropomorphic way the forms flop and and press against one another. My apologies for lumping this work in with the trash for the conceit of this post

18. Trash, shot behind a building in Wynwood

19. Orly Genger’s knitted units, placed around the grounds at Pulse, are both sculpture and seating. Designed to be used by the viewer, they provided a comfortable place to plop down after a day of art viewing. Orly, if you’re reading this, my apologies for suggesting that this work is anything less than wonderful. I mean that.

20. Carlos Bunga at Galerie Elba Benitez, ABMB

21. Trash, shot on the carpet in the ABMB lobby (if you've been to the venue, you'd remember that rug)

22. Not quite trash, but not art: boxes ready for repacking at Aqua Art

23. Joel Grossman at Galerie Christophe Paschall, Art Miami

24. I am not a fan of Cady Noland’s work, and her beer-can-and-trash room at the Rubell Collection did nothing to change my mind. I guess she had to go as far away as possible from the chromatic elegance of her father. But, hey, she’s in the Rubell Family Collection—and  we’re not

25. Whichever answer you gave, give yourself credit

The dumpster was in the compound of the Rubell Collection, set squarely in the back yard of the casita in which Jennifer Rubell had her installation of cups, spoons, oatmeal and raisins—the makings for a hearty Northeast breakfast on a lovely warm Miami day. Clearly the stuff had come from the interior, which was empty of pretty much everything but the tables holding the food and the refrigerators holding the milk (I hope to post some pics eventually). I called the Rubell Collection to ask about it.

RC: “It’s not part of the installation but Jennifer wanted you to see what came out of the house.”

Me: “Then it is part of the installation?”

RCl: “Well is it and it isn’t.”

An Anonymous commenter offered this criticism of the whole post: “I think I am ‘normal,’ but I see NO art in any of these. It wouldn't surprise me if some people claimed to see art in a pile of dung. This is just crazy.”

Well, Anon, I don't agree entirely with your assessment, but you have you have come to the right place to test your thesis.

Below:  Not Vital's cast bronze of Mongolian Cow Dung, which was shown in the  Gallerie Urs Miele, Beijing and Lucerne, at ABMB

And the winner? Gwyneth Leech, come on down! You know your shit. For your prize, you and your work you will be the subject of a blog post here on the Joanne Mattera Art Blog in January. Congratulations.