Tangible Poetry

Other posts about the New York art fairs:

. Big Black Objects

. Quirky

. Painting: Linearity, Angularity, Materiality, Color

. Peripheral Visionary

. Painting: Not Always About Size .

Free of a personal mandate to write about the recent New York fairs in a big reportorial way , I found myself looking at the work differently. I'm not sure I would have written about Big Black Objects if I'd felt the need to report venue by venue. I certainly wouldn't have stopped to ponder those Oddball objects. And I might not have stopped sufficiently long to be moved by the poetry of the three objects shown in this post. The names of their makers are big, mind you, but the work was comprised of small elements that required slowing down for closer inspection. Or is that introspection?

Armory Show: Mona Hatoum, Static, 2006, steel chair, glass beads, wire; at White Cube, London

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With it's scuffed-up surface, the chair above looks like a leftover from the booth setup. But, no, the non-arachnid cobweb tells you otherwise. Closeup, that web is constructed of red glass beads. Are they attached to the wall and the chair, or is the internal armature sufficient to support the web as an object? And look how the structural intersections of the web are repeated in the lines of the adjacent drawings. (Sorry, I don't have the name of the artist who made the drawings.) This piece, a combination of the offhand and the handcrafted, of the thoughtfully installed and the seemingly forgotten, compels you to remember. And to wonder if, perhaps, there might be a Bourgeoisian spider around the corner.

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Armory Show: Michal Rovner, video projected onto object about 18 inches in diameter; at Pace Wildenstein, New York City

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At first glance this looked like a well-illuminated object from the Neolothic age. But wait, is that surface pattern moving? It is indeed. Each dot is a tiny silhouette of a human figure in motion. The figures are engaged in actions that look like work: lifting, moving, making things. This may not be a Stone Age object, but it conveys the eons of object making and, by extension, the history of human culture.

Armory Show: Wolfgang Laib, small marble object placed on the floor, surrounded by grains of rice; at Sean Kelly Gallery, New York City

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Of course you know Laib's domestic mysteries--house-like shapes made of natural materials like marble or beeswax placed among piles of hand-gathered pollen or surrounded by handfuls of grain. Here in a bustling commercial enterprise, this tiny sculpture sat as a reminder of the slow, the quiet, the hand carved, the patiently gathered. (And now for the cynicism: I'm sure the price tag reflected the fast, the noisy and the big.)

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Painting: Not Always about Size

Other posts about the New York art fairs:
.
. Big Black Objects

.

. Quirky

.

. Painting: Linearity, Angularity, Materiality, Color

.

. Peripheral Visionary

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Armory Show: Thomas Nozkowski, untitled paintings from 2001 and 2002, at Pace Wildenstein, New York City

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Thomas Nozkowski is one of my favorite painters. His vision, strongly geometric and vaguely narrative, is unique. And I admire immensely the way he remains true to his vision--not only esthetically but dimensionally. His small easel-size paintings contain a universe of images and ideas. (Tomma Abts is another, and I expect to write about both in greater detail later in the month, as both have shows up now: Nozkowski at Pace; Abts at the New Museum).

At the moment, however, I'm still mining my hoard of art fair images. (And who knew that my timing of this post would coincide with Roberta Smith's paean to petite in today's New York Times?) In addition to Nozkowski's paintings in the Pace Wildenstein booth, there was a wall of quiet, mostly achromatic paintings by Avis Newman at Lisson Gallery; both big-name galleries at the Armory Show. There were some small paintings that stood out at Red Dot, too: those by Sarah Lutz and Anne Neely at Lohin Geduld, and Charles Burwell and Tim McFarlane at Bridgette Mayer. Most of these latter artists work larger as well, but it was the small work that held the big draw.

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Armory Show: Small paintings by Avis Newman in acrylic and graphite at Lisson Gallery, London. This was, for me, the most contemplative installation in the bustling venue.

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Below, a closer look at one work, about 12 x 12 inches

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Red Dot: Sarah Lutz (top) and Anne Neely at Lohin Geduld, New York City. What a pairing, each image anchored by a dark horizontal element at the bottom of the canvas.

I am particularly enamored of Neely's small canvases, whose horizontals create an unmistakable sense of landscape while retaining an unshakable grasp on geometry

Red Dot: Charles Burwell (foreground) and Tim McFarlane (grid of four) at Bridgette Meyer, Philadelphia. Tim's a buddy, and his larger paintings are familiar to me; the small ones were the perfect size for the modest proportions of the room. Burwell's work is new to me. I want to follow it for a while.

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Painting: Linearity, Angularity, Materiality, Color

Other posts about the New York art fairs:

. Big Black Objects

. Quirky

Armory: Sarah Morris, Rings, 2007, household gloss on canvas; Gabriel Orozco sculpture, plaster and acrylic, at White Cube, London

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I went into the New York fairs knowing that I couldn’t do the same kind of reporting I’d done in Miami. In fact, I really wanted to view rather than report. But as I started to see work that interested me, the camera came out. Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the same artists whose work I've liked in the past were the ones whose work I was liking at these fairs, and at the same galleries. I may never get to Dublin, for instance, but I've come to expect that the Rubicon Gallery will have something geometric by Ronnie Hughes, whom I've never met and whose work I know only through the art fairs, and that I will find it appealing. I also looked for Sarah Morris at White Cube, London; Imi Knoebel at Galerie Nacht St. Stephan, Vienna; and my new favorite, Mindy Shapero at Breeder, Athens, and was not disappointed.

If you follow this blog, you know my predilections are for geometry, materiality and color. Here’s some of what I saw and liked, organized for the flow of images.

Armory: Imi Knoebel, kreuz und quer 1 and kreuz und quer 8, both 2007, acrylic on aluminum at Galerie Nacht St. Stephan/Rosemarie Schwartzwalder, Vienna

Armory: Linda Besemer, acrylic over dowel, at Angles Gallery, Santa Monica

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Armory: Bridget Riley painting, Sol Lewitt sculpture foreground at Pace Wildenstein, New York City

Armory: Heimo Zobernig (I think) at Friedrich Petzel, New York City

Pulse: Beat Zoderer, Negativraster No. 2/07, 2007, PVC in lacquer on wood, at Fiedler Contemporary, Cologne




Pulse: Ronnie Hughes, Plexus, 2007, acrylic on linen, at Rubicon Gallery, Dublin

Pulse: Jennifer Coates, Folding Sky, 2004, acrylic on canvas, at Kinz, Tillou & Feigen, New York City

Pulse: Jason Young, cast resin painting at Margaret Thatcher Projects, New York City

Pulse: Ryan Wallace, The Singularity is Near, 2007, oil, acrylic on canvas, at Envoy, New York City

Pulse: Tobias Lehner at Union Gallery, London

Armory: Rebecca Morris, Untitled (#06-06), 2006, oil on canvas, at Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin

Armory: Joanne Greenbaum, left, and Pae White at Greengrassi, London




Mindy Shapero, Breeder Gallery, Athens.

Detail, above, of this oddly appealing, easel-size work:

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Big Black Objects

Armory Show: Avery Preesman at Zeno Gallery, Antwerp. Ridder, Dood en Duviel, 2004-2005, triptych; oil, wax pigment, cement

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In fashion, two of anything is a coincidence; three is a trend. This axiom was on my mind as I began to see first two, then three, then more—many more—black objects at one fair after the other. Did anyone else notice this?

The objects themselves are varied, as you can see above and below. The cage-like object protruding from the wall at the Armory Show produced in me a primal frisson of fear, while the large cube at Pulse, which commanded the open space in the center of the venue, pushed the button on a mental soundtrack that began duuuuuh duuuuuh duuuuh DAA DAA.

The bituminous staircase at Scope was clever (though having seen the similarly constructed table and chair at Scope Miami, the surprise factor was missing here); the big fabric sphere, at the Armory Show, was oddly appealing; while the vaguely anthropomorphic sculptures made from polystyrene pellets and trashbags at Pulse evoked Rodin. There were even a few paintings that had sufficient objectness to be included here (one would be Chris Martin’s) or a shape that so reflected ones I was seeing in three dimensions that I included it.

Materials ranged from cloth to Mylar to packing peanuts and trashbags, charcoal to wax, coffee-cup lids to roofing sheets. As for the licorice pipe and shoes, the only recognizable objects in this lineup, they were just dementedly fabulous.

Cue the sound track of "Thus Spake Zarathustra" and scroll down:

Closer view of Ridder, Dood en Duviel

Armory Show: Mindy Shapero at Breeder Gallery, Athens. No information given for the looping sculpture, foreground

Armory Show: Vincent Tavenne at Galerie Giti Nourbakshch, Berlin. No title given for the spherical sculpture, foreground, which is cloth over a modular wooden armature

Pulse: Nathaniel Rackowe at Bischoff/Weiss Gallery. Black Cube, 2007, corrugated bitumen roofing

Scope: Bahk Seon Ghi at Krampf Gallery, New York City. Charcoal installation, 2007, charcoal, nylon thread

Pulse: Johannes Girardoni at Lukas Feichtner Gallery, Vienna. Diptychon and Drip Box, both 2008, beeswax, pigments, wood

Bridge: Arthur Mednick at Ch'i Contemporary, Brooklyn. Three small metal sculptures, left, with a closeup of one below (the painting is by Norman Mooney):

Armory Show: Tara Donovan at Pace Wildenstein. This sculpture is actually silver Mylar, but the curving folds give it an inky blackness

Armory Show: Chris Martin at Mitchell-Innes and Nash, New York City. I don't have the title for this painting, which has funny little raised discs placed all over the surface. The composition is very sculptural, don't you think? The sculptures to the left are by Jessica Stockholder

Armory Show: Jacob Dahlgren at Andrehn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm. Sydney, 2006, coffee-cup lids and aluminum.

Detail below

Pulse: Seung Wook Sim at Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago

Armory Show: Padraig Timoney at Galleria Raucci/Santamaria, Napoli. Exhausted Quarry, 2008, pigment, rabbitskin glue, ink and wood on canvas; diptych

Pulse: Dan Steinhilber at G Fine Art, Washington, D.C. Untitled, 2008, polystyrene packing peanuts, polyurethane glue, polyethelyne hose, trashbags

Volta: Jesse Bercowetz at Galerie Michael Janssen, Cologne/Berlin

Pulse: Andy Yoder at Edward Winkleman Gallery, New York City. Above, Pipe; below, Licorice Shoes. The pipe is woven, like a basket. The shoes are 10 feet long.