Armory Week: Stacked

(Marketing Mondays will return next week with "The Rogue Consultant")
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More Armory Week here, here and here .

Armory: Joachim Schonfelt at Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg

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Seeing so much stacked work at the fairs, it occurred to me that the format represented a large slice of what was being shown throughout the fairs: taxidermy, abject or commonplace materials, textiles, structure, materiality. If the medium is obvious, or shown in detail, I'm not mentioning it. Those of you who were there, I'd love to hear how your impressions jibe with mine.

Armory: Artist unknown at Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin

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I love these little sculptures, the way the different lengths of pencil fit together, the way the points meet the surface of the shelf, and the way the artist selected particular rubber bands to bind the stacks. But it's also true that you can put almost anything on a shelf or pedestal and call it art.

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Armory: Tony Tasset at Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago
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Armory Modern: Peter Hallery at Galerie Forsblom
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Armory: Rosa Brun at Galeria Oliva Arauna, Madrid

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Armory: Ebru Eygun at Dirimart, Istanbul
Full view below
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Armory: Lisa Lapinski at Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles

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Detail below

(I think they're squares of wallpaper that have been overprinted or painted)
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Armory: Jim Lambie, painted or polished aluminum, at The Modern Institute, Glasgow

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Installation view below
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Armory: Jose Pedro Croft at Galeria Senda, Barcelona
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Armory: Omar Careno at Faria Fabregas Galeria, Caracas

(Painting inset with painted and stacked wooden blocks)

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Volta: Nikolai Bendiz Skyum Larsen at Galerie Vanessa Quang, Paris
(Stacked and glued business cards)

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Armory: Jacob Dahlgren at Andrehn-Schipjenko, Stockholm
(Stacked plastic hangers)
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Armory: Niko Luoma, photographs, at Bryce Wolkowitz, New York
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Armory: David Brooks at Museum 52, London

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Armory: Rachel Whiteread at Galleria Lorcan O'Neil, Roma

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Armory: Michaela Meise at Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles
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Armory: Takaaki Isumi at unknown gallery
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Armory: Jessica Jackson Hutchins at Laurel Gitlin, New York
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Pulse: Megan Whitmarsh at Michael Rosenthal, San Francisco
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Armory: Richard Nonas at Sfeir-Semler, Hamburg and Beirut
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Detail below
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Armory: Leslie Wayne at Jack Shainman

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Installation, above, and closeup below
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Armory: Nari Ward at gallerie unknown (possibly Lehman Maupin)

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Armory Modern: Elizabeth Turk

Detail of a work, above, through which we see the works below:
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Armory: Antony Gormley at White Cube, London

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Detail below

So we started with stacked animals and ended with the stacked figure of a person. Next (and last) post: some geometry. Did you think I wouldn't cover that? Oh, no, you dittn't.

Five Uneasy Pieces

More Armory Week here and here

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Sometimes the fairs are not about the big picture so much as they are about about smaller, idiosyncratic expressions. That's the case with these five works. I found them all compelling. If I had to give you one formal word for them, it would be materiality; one personal word would be uneasy. And I mean that in a good way. I didn't instantly like several of them but I found myself circling back to view them, and then spending time thinking about how I wanted to show them to you. What do you think?

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At Independent: Artist unknown, at GB Agengy, Paris

The Independent fair was short on information, so I don't know whom to credit (or blame) for this work, which consists of toothpicks stuck into a crudely shaped block of mattress foam, kind of an art fair hedgehog. I think I like it.

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At the Armory Show: Hilary Harnischfeger at Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York

The whole booth was given over to smallish pieces like this, which resonated with a sense of geology and geometry. The artist works with paper over plaster, embedding materials like glass, crystals and stones. I also like that a small Lower East Side gallery run by a young woman--Rachel Uffner and her gallery are clearly on the ascent-- features the work of a (presumably young) woman on a similar trajectory.

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At Volta: Kim Jones at Pierogi

I think this is a wig, but no matter, it's the quirkiness of the painted object--creepy, like a scalp, yet clearly synthetic.

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At the Armory Show: Richard Allen Morris at Peter Blum

This is a substantial work for a painting that measures about nine by six inches. I love the slather, the undulation and the odd palette. The artist was new to me, and while he's not an art household name, he's been painting in San Diego for about 50 years. .

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At the Armory Show: Monika Baer at Galerie Barbara Weiss

Is it me, or does this painting suggest lingerie? And does that flesh pink suggest sex? And does that cigarette placed at the top left of the stretcher suggest the post-coital puff? Or maybe this cut-canvas painting is simply about geometry and negative space.

Armory Week Report: The Overview

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Wandering the fairs last week, there was a brief moment when I couldn’t remember where I was. Call it Art Fair Alzheimer’s. Was I in Miami? New York? Maybe Basel? It's not that I was like The Sleepwalker, left, but that the same galleries had brought many of the same artists they always bring. No wonder I didn't know where I was.

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Tony Matelli, Sleepwalker, at Leo Koenig, New York. Armory Show

Here’s a quick rundown of where I went. I’ll have a few thematic posts next week.

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The Armory Show

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Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery booth at the Armory Show

This two-venue show (Modern in one, Contemporary in the other) is always interesting, and this time was no different. Fair bashers can bash all they want, but for me the opportunity to see a world’s worth of art in one place is a gift: 289 booths and some 2000 artists to peruse at my (tightly planned) leisure. The eye-opener for me was Spanierman Gallery’s booth at the Modern pier dedicated to the work of the late, celebrated dealer Betty Parsons, who was an accomplished artist in her own right.

Betty Parsons at Spanierman Gallery, New York. Armory (Modern)

To orient you, the Armory show takes place on two piers that jut into the Hudson at about 52nd Street. The piers, two of several dozen that line the Hudson, are remnants of the days of the ocean-going vessels. A few cruise ships still pull into the berths, and the Intrepid aircraft carrier, now a museum, is moored in the area, as well as the Circle Line that takes tourists around the island, and the Ferry which takes you to Weehawken. But you’ll recognize the Armory piers: the taxi parade is non stop, and there are hordes of skinny people smoking furiously out front. There’s much more from this fair coming up in the thematic posts.

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The ADAA Show

June Kelly Gallery booth at the ADAA show, with a James Little painting at the center of the installation
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The Art Dealers Association of America is a self-juried group, so only members participate. Just to confuse the out of towners, it was held at the Park Avenue Armory (formerly artillery storage, now a swords-into-ploughshares venue where cultural events take place). The walls are gray, the carpet is gray. The work tends toward the blue chip, but I saw some fresh, and even challenging, contemporary work. It’s a less frenzied fair than the big kahuna across town. I like that.

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The Independent

A view of The Independent, Chelsea's answer to the art fairs
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This event scored the first time out. Founded by Chelsea's Elizabeth Dee and London's Darren Flook and held on 22nd Street in the old Dia Foundation building, it was the anti-art fair. The four floors were open, and large enough to accommodate the throngs of people who milled, gawked, looked and talked. It felt fresh. But (there's always a but) that openness was also its weakness, as it was hard to locate the booth names, harder still to get information about the artists. I loved the anti-fair concept, but I needed some fair constructs, like information.

Winkleman Gallery had the most impressive installation there: Eve Sussman’s recreation of the Soviet-era office of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. “This detailed recreation, by Sussman and Nicolas Locke, is inspired by the museumification of the real office of Gagarin,” according to the info on the gallery website. I’d seen the piece in the gallery last year, but here it was thrillingly mysterious, a foreign stage set within a carnival of whirring mirrors, parked automobiles and all that anti-art-fair hipness.

Winkleman Gallery installation at the Independent with Eve Sussman and Rufus Corporation's White on White: The Pilot (just like being there)

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Volta

Samson Projects booth with Todd Pavlisko, the artist, foreground, and Camilo Alvarez, gallery owner. Pavilsko's video is playing on the left wall; his painting of Stephen Hawking is on the far wall

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Held on the 11th floor of an office building in the shadow of the Empire State Building, this was a smart and engaging show. Walking off the elevator I saw Samson Projects, the cutting-edge gallery in Boston run by Camilo Alvarez. Last year he’d shown pornography and I wondered if he could top that shock factor. He did, with Todd Pavlisko, whose video shows the Bushwick artist nailing his foot to the floor. “Is that real?” many fairgoers were heard to say. Indeed. (I’m not showing the work here; you can see a clip in the Art Newspaper link if you dare to watch).

The artist was there, as nice and normal as you can imagine. He said it took his foot six months to heal. And why such an act? The painting of Stephen Hawking shows a man floating free who is normally unable to more, said the artist; in something of an exchange, Pavlisko's extreme action made himself unable to move.

Volta is a solo-project fair, a nice counterpart to the visual surfeit of the other fairs. After the crucified foot, I went in search of other visually satisfying but less emotionally demanding fare. I found the work of Nancy Lorenz at the PDX Gallery from Portland, Oregon. Lorenz had recreated the teahouse experience. Her surfaces are gilded and inlaid, so it’s the most meditative bling you’ll ever see. Lorenz couldn't serve tea to everyone who stopped by so she did something better: she painted a cup with her sum'i brush dipped into green tea. My small painting on rice paper, left, is #201.

PDX Gallery at Volta, with a teahouse installation by Nancy Lorenz
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Pulse

Diana Lowenstein Gallery at Pulse, with the work of Clemencia Labin, foreground, and Shirley Kaneda
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What happened? This used to be a throbbing, vibrant fair. But it appears many of the regulars have departed—to Volta and the Armory, some just not showing this year—and the pulse was, well, weak. I liked the offerings at Diana Lowenstein, above, a venerable Miami venue; and the solo presentation of Megan Whitmarsh at the Michael Rosenthal Gallery, San Francisco, where the artist created her ideal workspace.

.Megan Whitmarsh at Michael Rosenthal Gallery

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Rosenthal was at Aqua in Miami, where I also liked the work, a good deal in thread and fiber (though not exclusively) and I appreciate that he shows a lot of women. “What can I say? I like the work,” he said of his choices.

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Other likes: Morgan Lehman made the most of a small space with a large painting, below. The Gallery Joe booth was located as you walked in or out, but you had to look close. The Philadelphia-based gallery shows work on paper, much of it so subtle and under glass that it's impostible to photograph—an esthetic that’s anti-art fair for sure. Visit them on line where you can see the work better.

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As for the not-so-much, that would go to Miami's Spinello Gallery, which showed recombinant taxidermy--birds with fur and felines with beaks, stuff like that. A vegetarian's nightmare. Oddly, the backdrop for these objects, all of which were on pedestals, were two walls of large-scale drawings of naked men. The drawings were beautifully rendered, but if there was a connection it escaped me. One man recoiled, joking: "Just don't taxidermy the penises."

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Morgan Lehman booth, with painting by Andrew Schoultz
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More coming Monday (Marketing Mondays will return on the 22nd)..

Get Your Retinas In Shape!

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Manfred Kuttner at Johan Konig Gallery, Berlin. Independent Art

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My month is busy. I have two openings in the area in the next two weeks, and another just after that in Tucson (links to all three here), so for the recent Armory Week you're not getting anything close to my Miami coverage. Still, I have several posts in the works. This is the first of them. The vertiginous, eye-watering quality of the work here gives you a little taste of my five days of fairgoing. And I like these!
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Jared Sprecher at Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston. Volta

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Jim Isserman at Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles. Armory Show
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Lucky Seven

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I'm running late with art fair reporting so in the meantime, a little quiz.

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What do these things have in common:

. a pickled shark . . .

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.a topiary puppy . . .
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Louis Vuitton bags in candy colors . . .
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.tangled skeins on canvas . . .
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.Basquiat on the screen . . .
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.a giant dome of oleagineous red wax . . .
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.and a target in green encaustic?
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They were made by the seven richest artists in the world, a testicular club that consists of Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Brice Marden, Julian Schnabel, Anish Kapoor and Jasper Johns.
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Not surprisingly--and this may make you feel better, or maybe not--it takes money to make money. Hirst has a business manager, Koons was a commodities broker on Wall Street, Marden made his fortune in real estate. And of course early in their careers, several of them were championed by powerful dealers. You can read the report by Amber Vilas in Artinfo.

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My images top and bottom (Hirst, top; Johns, bottom); Anish Kapoor's red wax dome courtesy of the ICA, Boston; the others from the Internet

Marketing Mondays: When Your Dealer Won't Tell You Who's Bought Your Work

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Q: “The gallery that represents me does not want to give me the names of, and information about, the people who have bought my paintings. It's gotten so I am afraid to even ask. I understand their rationale but am wondering what you think of that practice. I have lost track of my work.” –Susan M.

A: I think it’s a terrible practice! I write a lot on this blog that we’re in the same boat, meaning the artist and the dealer. When I hear of a situation like this, I realize that some artists and dealers are traveling not just in separate boats but on separate oceans.

A good and reputable dealer should create an invoice with the name and contact information of the person who buys your work. There should be three copies: one for the collector, one for you, and one for the gallery. In some states, this is the law. In other states it’s up to the gallery owner. An attorney affiliated with Volunteer Lawyer for the Arts can tell you what the law is in your state (Google that name as well as the name of the nearest big city near you).

Even if a dealer is not legally bound by state law to reveal the name of the collector, it's a shitty practice not to. This is your artwork we're talking about!

The best artist/dealer relationships are built on transparency. It's not only common practice for the dealer to give you the information, it's often the case that she'll introduce those artists and collectors at openings, perhaps even host social events that bring them together. That has been my experience, anyway.

I consulted Ed Winkleman's book, How to Start and Run a Commercial Art Gallery, and here's what he had to say:
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"There is a big difference of opinion throughout the industry on the importance of guarding your collectors' information. I fall on the side of advocating transparency but understand how having been betrayed can make some dealers more cautious. Trust and credibility on both sides remain as important a part of the dealer-collector relationship as they are of the dealer-artist relationship."
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(I know this is not just theoretical. At an opening of mine a few years ago, a cockily self-assured type who identified himself as a collector proffered his card and said, "Call me after the show comes down and we'll talk." I've also received email from collectors who state their desire "to work outside the gallery system"--or as one more honest person put it, "I make it a policy never to pay retail." Dude, go to Loehmans.)

Not to get all Dr. Phil on you here, Susan, but if your dealer won’t give you the name of the folks who buy your work, he doesn't trust you. How can you trust him to work on your behalf? It's a bad relationship. If you can't resolve this issue, you may want to look around quietly for other options. I think you know what you have to do.

Now I'm going to turn to my experts: you.
. Artists, have you dealt with this issue successfully?
. Have you left a gallery because of this problem?
. Dealers, do you divulge or not divulge?
. Collectors, your thoughts?
. Do we have any lawyers reading who want to weigh in?
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Free Entry! Really

Going to the Armory Show?

Click here to access free tickets. Artists and dealers have been using it. The pass will get you a discounted entry into Volta as well. The Independent Art Fair is free.

Out of the Blue

Silk Trail 47, unique digital print, paper size 11 x 8.5 inches

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This is what happens when a printer starts to run out of ink as you're printing an image: Lines appear in the print field. Less prominent colors in the image appear stronger because the ink for the main color is almost gone. Color gets deposited at the beginning of the print, or along the sides--the cartridge's vain attempt at producing the image it was programmed to do. I used to hate when that happened. Now I live for the ink to run low.

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What you see here is what happened when I exploited all of that by printing, overprinting and reprinting several images on the same page, using the fast draft and normal printing features to vary the amount of ink laid down, as well as feeding the paper so that the images are out of register. I'm not giving you any more specifics except to say that the images I printed are from my Silk Road series. I'm calling this print series Silk Trail. Although each pass is a pale version of the original image--a trail--the image becomes a full and unique print through my printing process. (The images you see here are small-scale digital scans of the originals.)

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What I'm doing with the ink is not all that different from that I'm doing when I paint: laying down successive layers of fairly transparent paint to build up a small color field. You can see some Silk Road paintings here and here and elsewhere on this blog.

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The print series is up to #113. I'm waiting for the cartridge to run out so that I can bring the series to 100. After that, I don't know. Some of these prints will be shown by Conrad Wilde Gallery in Tucson next month. I'll keep you posted. Meanwhile, I'm having a blast.
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Silk Trail 44
Silk Trail 7

Silk Trail 8

Silk Trail 9

Silk Trail 39
Silk Trail 46
Silk Trail 33
Silk Trail 18
Silk Trail 45

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Thanks to Julian Jackson for the title, which came in conversation.

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Marketing Mondays: Demystifying the Art World

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"To me the first rule in the art world is there are no rules in the art world! (If there were I am sure I would not be allowed to be in it! I am a critic simply because I say I am! I have no training in this! I am making it up as I go along. Like you. Like everyone, we're learning on the job, doing the best we can as honestly as possible."--Jerry Saltz*

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I get frequent emails from readers who tell me this column helps them demystify the business of art and the art world in general. I’m glad to hear that; thanks. Certainly the dealers, curators, critics and collectors I’ve talked with and worked with over the years have helped to demystify the art world for me, so I’m happy to pass along whatever wisdom or information I’ve gained.

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Early on it was a revelation to learn dealers were in it for the same reasons as artists. Here's Stephanie Walker, owner of Walker Contemporary in Boston: "We do this because we have to, like artists. There is simply nothing else we can picture ourselves doing. It's certainly not for the money! This is a tough business and if you're not in it for passion, you're not going to make it."

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It was a bigger revelation to realize that dealers also struggle. Back in a previous downturn, one prominent dealer confided that he'd mortgaged his home to be able to keep his gallery running. In November, just after the crash, I was making the rounds in Chelsea and I got an earful: who was downsizing, who was going cyber, who was considering sharing space with another gallery. A number of galleries did close, and those dealers are now consulting privately or running a gallery for someone else.

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"I need a job!" said more than one dealer, meaning, of course, that they needed another job. In this regard, artists have the advantage, as most have always juggled artmaking with the other job. We have learned, by necessity, to do a lot of things.

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Critics are not exempt from the struggle. Here's uber critic and Facebook provocateur Jerry Saltz: "There are only a tiny tiny handful of critics being published at all. And only five or six in the US making their living from art criticsim alone (I am lucky enough to be one of that tiny handful)." And even he teaches and lectures.

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Wonder what an art critic earns? Here's Saltz again: “A review in an art mag. earns a critic $125; an article, $800. The Village Voice now probably pays brilliant critics like C. Viveros-Faune and M[artha] Schwendener around $400 (before taxes). The most well-known critic, if she/he is super lucky makes around $35,000 a year (before taxes). . . . I just wanted you to know that the annoying critics you sometimes hate are as bad off as you are.” *

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So let's stop putting dealers and critics and other art world folks on Mt. Olympus while we tremble before them. Let's consider them as equals instead. As colleagues. Yes they have power, but they don't have jobs without artists and art. Walker again: "I don't understand the reverence artists have for dealers. The relationships I establish with my artists are a true give & take partnership." As for a power imbalance, she says, "If you feel your relationship with a dealer is lopsided, run!"

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In terms of demystifying the art world in a bigger and broader way--i.e. how to find or create a place for yourself in it--I noted a number of books and online resources in a recent post, Useful Reading.

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And of course your frequent comments in these posts help draw back the curtain as well. Here’s my e-buddy Steve Eichenberger telling me about a panel discussion sponsored by an arts council in his area of the Pacific Northwest: “By the end of the presentation I felt I'd learned enough to proceed with confidence in approaching new galleries. It demystified the process, answering all my major questions, so I can now expend less mental angst on worrying about getting into galleries and turn that energy toward sculpting instead. ("It's the work!!") You can read his blog report here.

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As for understanding the curatorial point of view, let me refer you to two posts in this blog (click here first, then here), in which the curator of a regional museum helps demystify the process. As for the more bizarre and byzantine politics of New York curating, click here for Paddy Johnson's Curators on Display in City Arts.
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What has helped demystify your relationship to the art world? Please share what you have found helpful: info, quotes, books, blogs or websites, links--and of course your own experience.

Both images from the Internet

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*On a Facebook thread recently I invited Jerry to write for my blog, since the thread was about critics and artists starting ‘zines and blogs and writing for free. He turned me down in a generous way: “Thank you for the invitation to write for your blog. I wish I could. Feel free to take anything off this FB and use it in anyway you'd like; for free, of course.”