The Fairs: Inside the VIP Rooms

Armory: Show Me the Money
Armory Week: Salvage Operation
The Fairs: Glop Art
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So, OK, this isn't breaking news, but since I have the pics, I'm posting them. I spent the most time at Pulse and the Armory Shows--hours and hours at each one--so it was great to be able to use my press pass to enter their Inner Sancta, the VIP Rooms.
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Contrary to common belief, there was no river of champagne flowing, no nubile waiters dispensing caviar, no billionaires dancing in the buff. Maybe that was at the opening. What I saw were a lot of tired fairgoers drinking coffee, yakking on their cellphones or reading the paper. Wait, I was one of them.
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The windows in Pulse's Collectors' Lounge looked west onto the Hudson, so if you arrived late in the afternoon you got a spectacular view as the sun dropped behind New Jersey. (I returned several times, and when I took the shot below, night had already fallen; it was just before we switched to Daylight Saving Time.) The white leather sofas and armchairs were heaven-- I say this without guilt as a vegetarian--cossetting a fair-tired body until the coffee kicked in. The Armory VIP room had wide chairs and ottomans that you could go to sleep in. And some folks were doing just that.
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The VIP rooms at Pulse, above, and the Armory Show, below. There was art--an intestinal light sculpture at Pulse that was curiously appealing, and a platform full of naked rubber dolls at the Armory Show

The Fairs: Glop Art

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Armory: Show Me the Money

Armory Week: Salvage Operation

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Armory Show: Phillip Allen at Kerlin Gallery, Dublin

Using my my trusty maxim, Two's a coincidence; three's a trend, I'd say we've got a trendlet. Call it "Glop Art"--paint that's slathered, plopped, squeezed and smeared. The paint companies must be so pleased.

My favorite artist in this genre is the British painter Phillip Allen, work shown above and here. I'm wild about his unlikely combination of linear geometry and schmear, which I find visually and viscerally satisfying. (The love child of Thomas Nozkowski and Scott Richter?) At first you try to connect the two disparate elements, as if the surface has been scraped to reveal the painting at the center. But no, that's not the process at all. There's no logic to why a geometric painting would require this buildup of paint at its borders, and that's part of what attracts me: the mystery--no, the oddity--of it. The other part is, damn, I just dig them.
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But the two artists artist shown below, Allison Schulnick and Kim Dorland, not so much. Sure Schulnick's solo at Mike Weiss Gallery a few months ago reportedly sold out, and I hear the sales were huge at Mark Moore's booth at Pulse. I'm not swayed. What's the opposite of 'love it'? A few booths away from Mark Moore (and let me say, the paintings themselves were beautifully installed), the Angell Gallery was showing big, sludgy paintings by Kim Dorland.
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Here, see for yourself.

Pulse: Allison Schulnick at Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica

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Collectors snapped up Shulnick's work. Chris Bors reports in Artinfo that within hours of the opening, 12 of the 16 paintings had sold. I guess I'm just not cut out to be a collector. Other subjects, besides monkeys, are clowns and flowers.

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Then there's Kim Dorland, at the Angell Gallery, Toronto. Actually, I kind of liked the surfaces up close; it was the images themselves that repulsed me.

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I don't usually write negative comments--I just ignore what I don't like--but these paintings pushed a button. I like being challenged, and I have changed my mind about some difficult work, but I just can't quiet my inner voice here, which keeps going "Eeeew."

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Pulse: Kim Dorland at Angell Gallery, Toronto

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Detail, above, and full view on far wall of Sad Girl, 2008, oil on panel, 72 x 72 inches

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Marketing Mondays: How NOT to Approach a Gallery

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Blogpix at Platform Project Space
Blogpix, The Show
Blogpix, The Panel
Armory: Show Me the Money
Armory Week: Salvage Operation .

With all the advice floating around about how to approach a gallery, let’s talk today about what not to do.
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Sending an Email or Letter?
“I am not ‘To Whom to May Concern,’” says a Westchester dealer. “If you don’t know whom to address, you haven’t done your homework.”
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Relatedly, that "Sir or Madam" salutation needs to be retired, too. There's nothing more off-putting than being addressed as "Dear Sir" if you're not a Sir and, frankly, the only "Madams" in business are not selling art.

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Do you address the recipient by first name or title? I'm no social arbiter, but I think either would be fine. Mr. or Ms. is never inappropriate in the salutation, but I’m not offended when someone addresses me as Joanne, and I assume a dealer won’t be either, assuming the letter is respectful and to the point. Maybe it's a matter of age. When I was in my 20s, I used a courtesy title. Now I use the first name, even if I don’t know the person. (Any dealers what to weigh in on this?)

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“Please look at these jpegs and get back to me,” wrote an artist in an e-mail to a dealer in a large city somewhere south of New York. If a dealer is interested s/he will get back to you. So give the gallery something useful: a phrase about your work and some indication of your familiarity with the gallery and its program and a link to your website.

Sending a Package?
First, make sure the gallery is looking at physical packages. Many don’t want to deal with the administrative responsibility and will tell you they prefer electronic submissions.

If physical packages are acceptable, keep yours short and to the point—and neat. A curator from an academic gallery north of New York City held up a tattered manila envelope. “This is what I received a package in,” she said scornfully. “I’m all for recycling, but sending a package in a used envelope tells me that I’m an artist’s second or third choice. And if the package in general is messy, it suggests that the artists may be similarly sloppy in his or her practice.”

So it’s like job hunting? Yes, says this curator: “It may seem petty, but appearance matters.”

Visiting the Gallery? Don’t Interrupt
I was chatting with a dealer in a small gallery outside of Manhattan. We were seated in the gallery proper. An artist came in with a portfolio, stood there waiting for a break in the conversation. When it didn’t come quickly enough for her, she said to the dealer, “Excuse me. I’m here to show you my work.”

“Did we have an appointment for today?” asked the dealer.
“No,” the artist replied. “But you said you’d be willing to look at my work.
“I am willing to look at your work, but you need to make an appointment.”
“But I’m here now.”
“But I’m busy,” he said
“You’re just talking,” she persisted, holding her ground.
“Yes I am,” said the dealer, digging in his heels.
It was awkward. Eventually the artist turned on her heel and left.

Back in the day artists did go around with portfolios in hand. No more. I wonder, though: Is there something about their large shape that serves as a kind of psychic "shield," emboldening us to interrupt and insist?

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Don’t Be a Boor
A Boston dealer recounted this story to a group of students I brought to the gallery:

“An artist came in the other day with a portfolio and asked if she could show it to me. I was at the computer, obviously involved in something. I told her I was busy. She asked if I could just take ‘a quick look.’ I replied that I couldn’t just drop everything each time an artist came in, but that if she sent me material I would look at it during a time I set aside for just that job.

“‘But if you took a quick look, you could tell me whether or not the work was right for the gallery.’ she said. Now, a quick look is not going to do her work or anyone's work justice, which is why I set aside specific time to look at presentation material, but she was insistent. So I took a quick a look and told her it wasn’t right for the gallery. She left and I went back to what I had been doing.

"To tell you the truth, even if the work had been right for the gallery, there’s no way I would have wanted to work with such an obtuse personality. This is a business in which we work very closely with our artists. If we don’t think we can work well with an artist, there’s no point getting involved.”

Don’t Waste the Dealer’s Time
Olympia, who works in a gallery in Chelsea, left this story in the Comments section of a recent post (I’ve shortened it slightly):

“We had an artist come in to the gallery wanting to show us his portfolio. We asked him to please email his resume, statement and 6-10 images and said we’d get back to him. The artist kept pushing, saying ‘I want a show here next year.’

“We politely responded again that wed get back to him if his work is appropriate. He then asked us, ‘What is your gallery name?’ And he asked if our owner is a man or a woman [if he’d known the gallery name, he would have had his answer].

"We deal with this kind of thing on a VERY regular basis."

Pay attention to Body Language
One of the great things about the art fairs is that dealers are typically out from behind a desk, so conversation can take place more easily between artist and gallerist. But keep it short; they’re there to sell (and these days, the pressure is on for them to recoup at least their expenses).

At an art fair in New York a few years ago, a photographer stopped by a booth and proceeded to pull out a fairly large notebook of prints.

“So-and-so [whose work was on display] is a friend of mine. I wonder if he mentioned my work?” asked the photographer.
“No,” said the dealer, with her 'cordial' face on.
“Well, maybe I could show you my work?” she asked, thrusting the notebook at the dealer.
“This isn’t a good time for that,” said the dealer backing up slightly (her 'cordial' face now gone) .
“Well let me show you just this one,” said the photographer, pulling an image from the notebook.

The dealer backed up a bit. The photographer advanced and kept advancing. The dealer kept retreating until she hit the back wall of the small booth. The look on her face registered something just short of panic. I was there.

“Hey, it’s 2:30,” I said. “You have to call. . ." I made up a name.
The dealer grabbed her phone and went into the closet of the booth. The photographer left.
“You can come out now,” I whispered, a few seconds later.

She laughed, but in that moment I understood the reason for the often high desk that separates the dealer from the public in a gallery.

What's the Lesson Here?
Basic business sense coupled with elementary interpersonal communication skills may not get you into a gallery, but the lack of them will surely lock you out.
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(Relatedly, see Ed Winkleman's recent post on "Booth Away" (scroll down a few posts to get to it.)
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Armory Week: Salvage Operation

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Blogpix at Platform Project Space
Blogpix, The Show

Blogpix, The Panel

Armory: Show Me the Money

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Maybe it’s the economy, but it seems that more artists than usual have been trolling for trash. This is not a new development—artists have forever been transforming detritus (and who better to do so?)—but far greater numbers have put aside conventional, and expensive, artmaking materials in favor of stuff found on the street for free. I saw it at the Armory Show and at Volta, in the Chelsea galleries and in SoHo. It’s painting. It’s sculpture. It’s lowly junk turned into humble art—well, pseudo-humble, because if it gets shown in a high-rent New York gallery or art fair, presumably with high prices, it’s really not so humble.

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At the Armory Show: John Beech at Peter Blum Gallery, New York City

In this first installation, John Beech at Peter Blum Gallery, I kept thinking "car parts" but whatever they were, the transformation of Beech's objects was sublime. The installation had these elements almost dancing on the wall. (Coincidentally, the building's capped ductwork echoes the round shapes--and you'll see that this theme of art and not-art runs through the post.)

Detail below..

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I liked much of what I saw. I appreciated the crude refinement, or the refined crudeness of the work—and not surprisingly for me, the geometry of much of it. Yet walking through the fairs, I kept thinking, “Haven’t I seen this before?” In a manner of speaking, I have. In Unmonumental, an occasional series in her Newsgrist blog, Joy Garnett posts her photographs of castoff objects, often curbside trash, shot around town. In doing so she elevates the stuff to something worthy of a second look. I’ve interspersed these pics with the art. (Hint: Garnett’s pics are the smaller ones.)
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Sometimes, as with Garnett’s photographs, the castoffs are truly transcendent. El Anatsui is the master of transcendence, but there are other transformations here as well. I liked the work of Sarah Braman, who seemed to be drawing from multiple sources--Home Depot materials, Richard Prince autobody parts, and Ellsworth Kelly (if Kelly had a color sense)--but the result was startling and unique.

Armory Show: Sarah Braman at Museum 52, New York City, above and below

Joy Garnett: Unmonumental 126

Armory Show: Gyan Panchal at Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris

The stuff here consisted of plastic peeled from plexiglass squares, and an assortment of industrial plastics

Below: plastic sheeing covers either mirror glass or plexi

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I heard plenty of snickers as I hung around the Frank Elbaz booth snapping pictures. But I guess artist and dealer have the last laugh. An e-report from the Armory Fair notes that this gallery “sold the entire content of its booth, a solo exhibition of artist Gyan Panchal, on Friday to a prominent Washington D.C. collector.” Hope the price wasn’t too high.

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Unmonumental 112

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Armory Show: Leon Vrankow at Stella Lohaus Gallery, Antwerp
Below: a where the sculpture meets the floor

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Armory Show: This piece by Fabian Seiz was charmingly faux naive (sheetrock screws as a design element?)

Unmonumental 99

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Volta: Susan Colles at Seventeen, London

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Like the work of Ivin Ballen, which was at Edward Winkleman's booth at Pulse (sorry Ed and Ivin, my photos were blurry but you can see Ivin's work here), this is a simulacrum intended to better the original. The "paint" on the 2x2's was mother of pearl; on the dropcloth, stitching. Even the screws in the wall had a silvery glisten that suggested they were fabricated by the artist.

Unmonumental 107





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Armory Show: Richard Rovas at Galerie Sfeir-Semler, Hamburg and Beirut

This piece, about 30 inches high, may well be my favorite in all the shows. I loved the nicely delineated rectangle cut into the crudely stacked blocks of wood, and the slight curve of the stack in contrast to the carving. The earthy red is iron oxide, I'm guessing. And then that notch in the second block from the top becomes an almost anthropomorphic wink. What's not to love?

Unmonumental 108

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Armory Show: Angela De La Cruz at Lisson Gallery, London

Painting as sculpture, detail below

Unmonumental 111

Armory Show: Susan Hiller at Timothy Taylor Gallery, London

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The sculptures here are called Painting Block, and they consist of what look to be repurposed paintings. Susan, meet Angela. Actually, I don't mean to be flip. I like them.

Unmonumental 116

Not all the stuff I saw was at the fairs. There was plenty in the galleries. I picked three shows whose work transcended its origins. We start in SoHo with Gerry Keon at OK Harris, a modest-size show in which each small work was quietly poetic. Here I think the artist reconfigured his materials, crafting them rather nicely, and put his hand to the surfaces, finishing what time had begun.
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In Chelsea at Freight & Volume, Jim Lee (who also had work in the gallery's booth at the Armory Show), seems more interested in Frankensteinian recreation, and I mean that in a good way. These objects are crude but powerful. The show is up through April 4. And in the vast space at Reeves Contemporary, Wade Kavanaugh has created a river of sheetrock bricks. Go see it! You have a week. It's up through the 21st.

Gerry Keon at OK Harris, SoHo

Installation view with one work, below

Jim Lee at Freight & Volume, Chelsea, above and below





Wade Kavanaugh at Reeves Contemporary, Chelsea

The installation suggests both a river and the wall that is unable to hold it back.
Detail of the sheetrock bricks below

Unmonumental 118

I'm going to close this post with the sublime followed by the ridiculous. The sublime is El Anatsui, who continues to turn straw into gold, well pieces of aluminum into golden tapestries. The ridiculous, well, just scroll down to the bottom. Kudos to the gallery for coming up with "Nothing." It had to be the easiest transport and setup ever.

Armory Show: El Anatsui at Jack Shainman Gallery. These glimmering tapestries are constructed in the simplest way from the metal remains--neck and caps-- of liquor bottles. Read more about El Anatsui here. Detail below

Unmonumental 85

Armory Show: Perhaps fittingly, I didn't get the artist or the gallery

Unmonumental 122

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Thanks to Joy Garnett for permitting me to include her images in this post.

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Blogpix, The Panel

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Click here for Blogpix at Platform Project Space

Click here for Blogpix, The Show
Click here for first Armory post, Show Me the Money

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The Blogpix panel, which took place on Saturday, March 7, followed the Thursday opening of the Blogpix show at Denise Bibro's Platform Project Space in New York.

This is not a report. I was moderating, and totally focused on making sure the right questions got asked, that panelists got to respond, and that the audience got its pennies in, too. But Olympia Lambert, the organizer of both events, Twittered the event so you can access a running stream of comments.

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Here, let me show you some pictures of folks involved. Then I'll post some of what I remember (aided by the Twitter feed).

Denise Bibro, far left, welcomes bloggers to her gallery. Standing next to her is Blogpix organizer Olympia Lambert. The panel is identified in the picture below. In the audience Sharon Butler, Blogpix exhibiting artist and author of Two Coats of Paint , turns to face the camera.

The event took place not at Platform Project Space but at Denise Bibro Fine Art, the larger gallery next door. The work here is by Lisa Dinhofer

Our distinguished panel: Hrag Vartanian (www.hragvartanian.com); Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof (www.fallonandrosof.blogspot.com); Bill Gusky (www.artblogcomments.blogspot.com); and Brent Burket (www.heartasarena.blogspot.com)

Hrag, Roberta and Libby are curators, along with myself, of the Blogpix show; Bill and Brent were invited to round out the panel. If you're wondering about Brent's blog title, "Heart as Arena," we learned that he'd originally named it "I Love Mary Boone" but changed it to a phrase taken from a Basquiat painting

Martin Bromirski (www.anaba.blogspot.com) took all the pics except for the top one, which I snapped just before my moderating duties began. And if you're wondering what "Anaba" (accent on the first syllable) means, it's a Japanese term for "special place." See what you learn at a blogger panel?

That's me moderating

Here's the audience. Well, part of it; the chairs spread out in a wider arc and in deeper rows. I'd say we had about 40 attendees. I recognized a few folks: Sharon Butler at far left; Steven Alexander, exhibiting in Blogpix and author of www.stevenalexanderstudio.blogspot.com ; Alyce Nicole Dunn, an artist new to New York, welcome!; Loren Munk, aka James Kalm, author of The Kalm Report, whose video coverage of the New York art scene is rich and in depth; and Ben La Rocco, one of the Blogpix artists

Veken Gueyikian (www.veken.org) is seated behind James Kalm. And Olympia Lambert, our intrepid Twitterer, is at the laptop behind Veken

Here's Olympia, below. Did I mention she posted so many comments that she exceeded her Twitter allotment and got shut down?

Here's a snippet of the conversation:

Given the decline of print media, are we bloggers getting more power than we asked for, expected, or even want?

Roberta Fallon had the funniest and probably most honest answer: "We love pontificating." But Sharon Butler offers a good example of how that power can be used in a good--no, a great, way. After writing about how she got her portrait painted by Matt Held, who is working his way through a portrait project, all kinds of great things started happening for Matt (see Sharon's update at the bottom of her original post).

Brent sees blogs as "a supplement" to print media. But given that print publications are on the decline--here, several people rattled off a list of newspapers that are in trouble--we noted that only so much of their editorial space and budger can go to arts coverage. That's where we come in. And we can do it immediately.

"Is there a sense of ethics and protocol among you?"

The question came from Denise, and was primarily with regard to advertising, which some bloggers have, and some don't. We all said, essentially, "Ads or no ads, our voice and vision are our own." I must add that all of us have journalism in our backgrounds, and we take our mission seriously--even if we have fun while doing so. "When we started, we came out of a writing and journalism background," said Roberta of herself and Libby; both write for print in addition to blogging. Olympia, also, come out of J-school. Hrag writes for PBS's Art 21; Brent for the non-profit Creative Time; I spent 20 years as an editor

How do you know if the blog is worth reading?

This is not the exact question, but it captures the gist. I responded that readers make the evaluation. If you feel you're getting propaganda, relentless self promotion (beyond the normal stuff we all do; hey, we don't get paid for blogging!) back-scratching coverage because of advertising, or plain bad writing, you won't return. The blogosphere has much to offer, and you can access (or delete it) with a click. So trust your instinct and go with your taste.

Why are we blogging anyway?

Hrag: "I find I get more satisfaction from my blog than the other venues."

Fallon and Rosof: "We love that you can go to a blog in Philly and read about a show in London."

Panelist (sorry, I can't identify from the Twitter feed): "The direct response-- having people comment means something."

Bill: "I like to be the Rush Limbaugh of this stuff--but in a good way.

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Blogpix, The Show

Marketing Mondays will return to its regularly scheduled slot next week

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Click here for first Blogpix post

Click here for first Armory post, Show Me the Money

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Today and this week, I'll be posting pics from the Blogpix panel and reports from the various New York fairs.
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If you didn't attend the Blogpix opening, below is your first look at the show. I took these installation shots before the artists and their curators arrived for the opening on Thursday evening, March 5, at Denise Bibro's Platform Project Space. Denise, Almitra Stanley and the awesome Olympia Lambert, organizer of the show, installed the show wonderfully.

The opening itself has been posted on Vernissage TV.

It's also been picked by Art Cat and reviewed on NYC Art

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Let's enter the gallery and look left, shall we?
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From left: two by Julie Karabenick; two by Ben La Rocco (more below); and two (and a fraction) by Steven Alexander
Karabenick: Curator, Mattera

La Rocco: Curator, Vartanian

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. Continuing around: Steven Alexander's large painting, The Primrose Path; a bay of small paintings on panel by Sharon Butler (see below) and framed paintings on paper by Christopher Davison
Alexander and Butler: Curator, Mattera
Davison: Curators, Roberta Fallon & Libby Rosof
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. Above: Cosmically inflected geometry by Ben La Rocco in the alcove
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Below: Continuing around clockwise, Steven Alexander and a better view of Sharon Butler's five angular abstractions.

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Continuing around the gallery: Christopher Davison's mysterious dark narratives and his stuffed sculpture; Reese Inman's scintillating mathematical geometry (closer view at bottom)
Inman: Curator, Mattera
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Below: we swing around visually past the gallery entrance and end where we started, with Julie Karabenick's energetic grids


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Reese's paintings open the video on Vernissage TV, so I'll end this post here
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