Fair and Fair Alike: Miami 2009. Pulling a Thread

Fair and Fair Alike coverage so far:
. Blanc et Noir
. Working the Angles
. A Peek at the Geometry of the Next Post
. Five Woven Grids
. House and Home
. Bourgeois, Benglis and Wilke
. Mano a Mano
. The Pretenders
. Art Miami
. Red Dot
. NADA
. Scope
. Aqua Art
. Pulse
. The Big One, Art Basel Miami Beach
. An Overview Before the Individual Fairs
. Art Bloggers at Art Miami
. Are We Out of the Woods?
. A Little Gossip
. Art? Or Not Art?
. Nosing Around

One of the many pleasures of visiting the fairs each year, is documenting the various threads that make themselves visible. Some I can count on from year to year, like geometry; others are unexpected, like the appearance of domestic structures; still others are reflections of the moment, like the strong use of castoff materials, more of which in the following post. The textile sensibility, always present, was much more manifest this year. .

Picking up the thread of the previous post: Amanda Ross-Ho's canvas silhouettes of weavings, at Mitchell-Innes and Nash, New York; at ABMB

What's a textile sensibility? Sometimes it's simply work executed in a textile medium, like Arturo Herrera's felt sculptures or Ghada Amer's thread paintings. Sometimes it's the representation of textiles as expressed in other mediums, like F.J. Valdez's large-format photographs of kilims rugs, stacked to look like a display at a souk. And sometimes it's just a sense of the woven, knotted or stitched; this latter idea is completely subjective, so I may be making a connection that was not intended by the artists.

Do I love all of this work? No. But I love the connections, and for this post that's enough.

Textile sensibility: Amparo Sard at Galeria Ferran Cano, Mallorca and Barcelona; at Art Miami, with work traveling to Bravin Lee, New York

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The barely there image is what you might call conceptual embroidery; the image is created with a pin or needle, but there are no stitches; the pricks create the image. Can you see it? The seated figure holds a cloth and scissors on her lap

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Textile sensibililty: Andrea Higgins, Swatch, oil on canvas, about 16 x 14 inches, at Hosfelt Gallery, New York and San Francisco; at Pulse
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I love the visual connection between Andrea Higgin's Swatch and the actual weaving, below, which becomes scupture by dint of its mass

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ABMB: Michael Beutler two-ton rag rug; at Galleria Franco Soffiantino, Torino

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Detail, above, and full view
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ABMB: Ian Davis, Harbinger, acrylic on linen; at Leslie Tonkonow Artworks, New York ..

Scope: F.J. Valdez photographs; at Jacob Karpio Galeria, San Jose, Costa Rica
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ABMB: Delson Ochoa painted canvas reminsicent of Colonial floor cloths; at Galeria Luciana Brito, Sao Paolo.


. Art Miami: Madeline Keesing, A Million Sunsets, oil on canvas; at Goya Contemporary, Baltimore

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Detail below
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ABMB: Teresa Margolle, Sangre Recuperada (Recovered Blood), cloth with various fluids used to clean a crime scene in Mexico's northern border; at Galeria Salvador Diaz, Madrid

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ABMB: El Anatsui, Untitled, found aluminum and copper wire (and Claudette Schreuders sculpture); at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Detail below
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Aqua: Paul Oberst knotted grid; at Bridgett Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia

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Art Miami: Greely Myatt "quilt" of cut and pieced aluminum road signs; at David Lusk Gallery, Memphis.

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NADA: Sarah Crowner's pieced paintings; at Nicelle Beauchene, New York..

ABMB: Ulla von Brandenberg quilts, Tumbling Blocks and Drunkard's Path, Pilar Corrias Gallery, London .

. ABMB: Jacob Hashimoto sculptures with layers of painted acrylic discs held in tension by threads attached to dowels at top and bottom; at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago

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Detail below

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ABMB: Nick Cave, Sound Suits, designed for performance; at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

(If there were an award for most-photographed at Art Basel Miami Beach, this might be it. I couldn't get a clear shot until Sunday morning when I was able to slip in early. The toursists who insisted on posting in front of the sculptures were the worst)
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Detail below

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ABMB: Richard Tuttle, tie-dye hangings/paintings/constructions at gallery unknown (I don't think it was Pace, though I did see a show in the New York gallery of works like these )
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Detail below
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Pulse: Marie Watt's tiny folded stacks on tree-bark ledge that's about 12 inches from end to end; at PDX Gallery, Portland
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ABMB: Arturo Herrera installation of painted wall and arranged felt sculpture; at Galleria Franco Noero, Torino
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NADA: Ricardo Rendon, perforated felt with the centers on the floor; at Mitterand + Sanz, Zurich

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ABMB: Robert Morris felt sculpture; gallery unknown
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ABMB: Angela de la Cruz, Deflated, oil on canvas; at Lisson Gallery, London

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NADA: Dianna Molzan, deconstructed painting, about 24 x 18 inches; at Overduin and Kite, Los Angeles
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ABMB: Simon Denny, Bucholz Gallery, Cologne

(Don't ask).
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ABMB: Ghada Amer, embroidered canvas; at Kujke Gallery, Seoul
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ABMB: Ruth Lasky woven geometry; at Ratio Gallery, San Francisco

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Below: view of the booth with Lasky's framed weavings and Mitzi Pederson sculpture
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NADA: Larissa Nowicki stitched grid; at Man & Eve, London

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Detail below
For a sense of scale: each stitch is about 1/4 inch

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ABMB: Berend Strik, (Un)Constructed, embellished C-print on canvas, 36 x 57 inches; at Jack Tilton

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Detail below
(I find this work and the one below too crafty for my taste, but I like the way they expand the theme of this post)

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Art Miami: Yun Lee, Marine Musical Series, acrylic on canvas; at Leonhard Reuthmueller Contemporary, Basel
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ABMB: Yayoi Kusama, Prisoner's Door, mixed media (but it looks like stitched and stuffed canvas that was then painted); at Victoria Miro Gallery, London
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I showed this in the first big post, Are We Out of the Woods?, in which the theme was branching out and taking root. Here's a detail:


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Next up: The penultimate post, Reused, Recycled, Repurposed. And Just Plain Crafty

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Fair and Fair Alike: Miami 2009. Blanc et Noir

Fair and Fair Alike coverage so far:
. Working the Angles
. A Little Peek at the Geometry of the Next Post
. Five Woven Grids
. House and Home
. Bourgeois, Benglis, Wilke
. Mano a Mano
. The Pretenders
. Art Miami
. Red Dot
. NADA
. Scope
. Aqua Art
. Pulse
. The Big One, Art Basel Miami Beach
. An Overview Before the Individual Fairs
. Art Bloggers at Art Miami
. Are We Out of the Woods?
. A Little Gossip
. Art? Or Not Art?
. Nosing Around
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ABMB: Esther Stocker had the entire booth at Krobath Gallery, Vienna. The booth was small, one of the Art Nova spaces that lay at the south end of the big fair, but it was one of the best

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I ended the previous post on Geometry with a view of the gallery you see here. Clearly, this work is a bridge between the two. The Krobath Gallery created a dramatic mise en scene for what could have been a Bauhaus drama. Here it sets the stage for this post: studies in black and white.
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Two more views of the painting and sculpture, above and below
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Art Miami: Will Insley, Westwood Gallery, New York
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ABMB: Enrico Castellani, Superficie Bianca (White Surface), at Galleria Lia Rumma, Napoli

The surface is given dimension by dowels pushing into it from beneath
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ABMB: Imi Knoebel's big, multipart constructions, at Kewenig Galerie, Cologne

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ABMB: Fergus Feehily's little geometry of what appear to be found materials, at Green on Red Gallery, Dublin.

I try to provide images in situ so that you get a sense of scale without my getting into the numbers. Here the screws provide the scale; the longer dimension is about 12 inches
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Art Miami: John Griefen and Tad Wiley at Gary Snyder Project Space, New York

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ABMB: Rashid Johnson at Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles

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ABMB: Wayne Gonzalez's eye-rubber, marvelously blurry from a distance, at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

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Art Miami: Jesus Rafael Soto, Circulo en Negro, with kinetic elements that visually activate the black field

Soto's work was shown at four galleries in this venue, but I think this one was at Durban Segnini Gallery, Miami

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ABMB: Jacob Hashimoto construction with paper, dowels and string, at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago.

the longer dimension is about 48 inches

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ABMB: The Helsinki gallery, Anhave, also had a black and white booth

Above, Matti Kujasalo, Untitled, acrylic on canvas

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Detail below:

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Also at Anhave: It looks as if Benday dots, above, create the image below--except that the dots are cut out of a black canvas to create the halftone image

Anne-Karin Furunes, acrylic on perforated canvas

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ABMB: An achromatic moment at Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin. Work by Allan McCollum, left, and Mark Francis
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Art Miami: Mike and Doug Starn injket-print tree under glass
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ABMB: Jacin Giordano mixed media sculpture, at Frederic Snitzer, Miami

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Detail below
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ABMB: Amanda Ross-Ho's textile silhouettes, cut from black-painted canvas, at Mitchell-Innes and Nash, New York

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This work will carry us to the next post, which looks at the textile esthetic that has woven itself neatly into contemporary art

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Next up: Pulling a Thread