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12.30.2008

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Welcome to 2009!


Drinking is overrated. Times Square is for tourists. And fireworks require you to be out in the cold. But these retinal bongs will propel you right into the New Year--and except for the bottom-most image, all the movement is in your brain.

(If you're nursing a hangover, you may want to return when your head stops hurting.)
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All images taken from the Internet

12.26.2008

Looking into 2009

Click here for FAIR WEATHER, my report from the Miami art fairs

We can see the new year from here, so this post is not about looking into the future so much as it is simply looking at what's planned for the next few months. Here are a few events and upcoming posts:

Blogger Events
. Sunday, January 18 Sharon Butler, artist and blogger (Two Coats of Paint), and Austin Thomas, artist and director of Pocket Utopia, are planning what Sharon calls a "Blogger Conference/Think Tank/Pre-Inauguration Party" at Pocket Utopia in Brooklyn at 4:00 pm. (Sharon is my Art Bloggers @ partner, and while I have nothing to do with the planning of this particular event, I'll be attending with enthusiam, support and opinions.)
. Saturday, March 7, I'll be participating on a blogger panel at Platform Project Space in New York City with Hrag Vartanian and the Fallon and Rosof Artblog duo, Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof. The panel is scheduled for late afternoon, around 5:00. Stay tuned for more, including info on a Twitter connection that Olympia's planning.
. . . . .The panel will follow the Thursday, March 5th, opening of Blogpix, a show at Platform curated by the four of us. Olympia Lambert, the gallery administrator at Platform and its support venue, Denise Bibro Fine Art, is directing the whole thing. I'll have a whole Blogpix post on the curators and artists as we get closer to the date, but here's the 411: Hrag has selected Ben La Rocco; Roberta and Libby have selected Christopher Davison; and I have gotten gluttinous in selecting four of my favorite painters: Steven Alexander, Sharon Butler, Reese Inman and Julie Karbenick.

Upcoming Features Here at JMAB
. Remembering Morandi An interview with New York gallerist Stephen Haller recalling his long-ago friendship with Giorgio Morandi
. 50 Over 50 A curated show of the work of 50 artists over 50, celebrating experience, perseverance and damn fine work. (Update 1.11.09: This is a change from the original premise, which was to have been from submissions; I got overwhelmed when my post went out to the list serve of several large arts organizations.)

12.21.2008

FAIR WEATHER: Eye Benders

With this post, my reporting of the Miami art fairs is over
Already posted:
FAIR WEATHER: Deal or No Deal
FAIR WEATHER: Prologue
FAIR WEATHER: Art Basel
FAIR WEATHER: The Containers
FAIR WEATHER: Art Miami
FAIR WEATHER: Art Imitates Art
FAIR WEATHER: Pulse
FAIR WEATHER: Trends and Coincidences-Animals
FAIR WEATHER: Trends and Coincidences-Cut Paper
FAIR WEATHER: Trends and Coincidences-Looms with a View
FAIR WEATHER: Aqua Hotel
FAIR WEATHER: Aqua Wynwood
FAIR WEATHER: Trends and Coincidences-Stacks and Bales
FAIR WEATHER: Trends and Coincidences-Giants
FAIR WEATHER: Trends and Coincidences-Manual Labor
FAIR WEATHER: Scope
FAIR WEATHER: Red Dot
FAIR WEATHER: Bridge, Both Locations
FAIR WEATHER: Trends and Coincidences-Suspense
FAIR WEATHER: Trends and Coincidences-"We Are the Borg"
FAIR WEATHER: Geometry (First of Two)
FAIR WEATHER: Geometry (Second of Two)



Art Basel Miami Beach: Jon Thompson, The Toronto Cycle #2--The Beach Midday Sunlight, at Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London



I saw the painting above on the evening of the second day of viewing. It had a wonderfully unsettling quality, like heat rising up off the surface of a road on a 95-degree day. Those dots vibrated. But as the days wore on and my eyes wore out, subtleties like this just registered as blur.

I saved the most retinally intense for last--not because I saw them all on the last day, but because by the sixth day of looking at art, this is what looking felt like. I liked all of these paintings. Just not all at once.


Supernova at Art Basel Miami Beach: Ara Peterson at John Connelley Presents, New York




Supernova at ABMB: Ignacio Uriarte, 4 x 4 Single Line Labyrinth #1 and #2 at Nogueras Blanchard, Barcelona

Individual work below, with detail below that





.Aqua Hotel: Thomas Burke, OS3: Spiral Scratch, Version 2. 23 inches in diameter, at Western Projects, Culver City, California
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12.20.2008

FAIR WEATHER: Geometry (Second of Two)

Miami Art Fairs, Art Basel Miami Beach, Aqua, Art Miami, Bridge, Pulse, Red Dot, Scope, Rubell Collection
Already posted:


ABMB: Sarah Morris at Capitan/Petzel, above,
and at White Cube, London, below



It wouldn't be Art Basel Miami Beach if the crystalline compositons of Sarah Morris were not on exhibition. These are splendid paintings! Made with household gloss on canvas, they are typically shown on an outside wall and they stop you in your tracks.
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With Morris thus setting the scene, there was a range of geometry--not just angles but curves, as flat pattern, or with a suggestion of depth, or with actual dimension. One surprise was the degree of decorative pattern, which I'll talk about more when we get to that section of the post.


ABMB: Heimo Zobernig at Galeria Juana de Aizpuru, Madrid




Scope: Ted Larsen's two- and three-dimensional geometry at Pan American Projects, Dallas and Miami

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Art Miami: Merrill Wagner at Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York and elsewhere

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ABMB: Odili Donald Odita at Jack Shainman, New York

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ABMB: Gert and Uwe Tobias, Team Gallery, New York


. Art Miami: Amy Ellingson at Charles Cowles, New York

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I'm not focusing on materials in these posts because keeping track of the information is more than I can do, but a few mediums stand out. Ellingson's paintings are encaustic, noteworthy because the substantiveness of the medium creates a dimensionality that complements the deep visual space of her compositions.

David Poppie's work, below, is a mosaic made from Prismacolor pencils sliced lengthwise. (His pencil-point mosaic opened the Pulse post.)


Pulse: David Poppie at Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York



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In the fairs this year, there was a whole set of geometric expression that refered directly to pattern and decoration, and to textiles. For instance, Philip Taaffe's paintings, one of which is shown below, channel tie dye, stained glass, and the Alhambra; Delson Uchoa's unstretched painting referenced tapestries, or more specifically, Colonial floorcloths (the poor-person's "carpet"); and several other artists seem to have incorporated Amish quilt patterns. Interestingly, all of this decorative geometry was made by men.
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ABMB: Philip Taaffe at Jablonska Galerie, Berlin
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ABMB: Jorge Pardo at Capitain/Peztel

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Scope: Jacob Ouillette at Dean Project, New York


ABMB: Delson Uchoa at Galeria Brito Cimino, Sao Paolo



Channeling the Amish "pinwheel" pattern: The ubiquitous Heimo Zobernig at Capitain Petzel, above, and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, below


Aqua Hotel: Matthew Rich at OH+T Gallery, Boston



From textile-referenced patterns, there's an easy flow to geometry in which curvilinear elements prevail, sometimes within the matrix of a grid.



ABMB: Bridget Riley at Pace Wildenstein, New York and elsewhere

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Art Miami: Charles Arnoldi at Modernism, San Francisco
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ABMB: Gabriel Orozco at Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris
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Pulse: Linda Besemer acrylic painting at Angles Gallery, Santa Monica, California



ABMB: Jessica Stockholder sculpture and Chris Martin painting at Mitchell-Innes and Nash, New York
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Pulse: Ronnie Hughes colored-pencil drawings at Rubicon Gallery, Dublin, with one work from the grouping, below:




Red Dot: Julie Gross gouache-on-Mylar paintings at Eo Art Lab, Chester, Connecticut















Pulse: Four views of Leo Villareal's ever-changing light sculpture at Conner Contemporary Art, Washington, D.C.















ABMB: Beatriz Milhazes prints at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London
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12.19.2008

FAIR WEATHER: Geometry (First of Two)

ABMB: Frank Stella "protractor" painting, John Chamberlain sculpture, Josef Albers painting (another Chamberlain/Albers pairing) at Waddington Galleries, London


I feel like the marathoner who has hit the wall and pushed past it. I'm almost there! To those of you who have commented here on the blog, mentioned my effort on your own blog, or e-mailed me directly, thank you. You've been like the folks on that 26-mile route handing out water.
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If you follow this blog, you know that I write regularly about geometric abstraction. My own work falls into this category, and I'm intellectually and visually engaged by the endlessly inventive ways artists have employed a few basic shapes with a variety of materials (a few in these Geometry posts: household gloss on canvas, tempera on canvas, wax on panel, plastic tape, lights, paper and pins, needlepoint, cast resin, plexi, collage, painted wood and aluminum, and colored pencil as both drawing material and collage element).
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I've included many splendid examples of the genre in the posts from the various venues, but I wanted a dedicated post on geometry. Turns out there will be two. Even after I edited and re-edited my selections, I still had too much for one post.
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ABMB: Alfred Leslie, Cough Control, 1961-62, at Allan Stone Gallery, New York
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So let's start with some works from the Sixties and Seventies, and then follow a visual narrative of shape, color, proportion and material as one image leads into the next.



Art Miami: Artist and date to be identified at McCormick Gallery, Chicago


Art Miami: Jesus Rafael Soto, Mural Cinetico, 1983, painted wood, aluminum and other materials, at Leon Tovar Gallery, New York

Detail below


Art Miami: Frederick Hammersley (two paintings at left dated 1965), Jeremy Thomas and William Metcalf at Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe



ABMB: John McLaughlin, paintings from the 1960s, including 1963, foreground, at Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles



ABMB: Jo Baer, Untitled (White Square Lavender), 1964-1974, and Dan Walsh at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York


ABMB: Esther Stocker at Galerie Krobath Wimmer, Vienna

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ABMB: Francesco Vezzoli, Galerie Neu, Berlin



ABMB: Robert Mangold at Pace Wildenstein, New York and elsewhere


ABMB: Richard Tuttle, also at Pace Wildenstein

Closer view of one work below




ABMB: Rachel Whiteread at Luhring Augustine, New York


Scope: Pepe Lopez at Hardcore Contemporary, Miami


Art Miami: Joseph Goldberg at Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle



Art Miami: Regine Schumann at Galerie Renate Bender, Berlin

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Art Miami: Carlos Estrada Vega at William Siegel Gallery, Santa Fe



Aqua Hotel: Cecilia Biagini at The Hogar Collection, Brooklyn



Art Miami: Mark Fox at Larissa Goldston, New York
Detail below


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Pulse: Ivelisse Jiminez at Diana Lowenstein Fine Art, Miami

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Pulse: Beat Zoderer at FTC Gallery, Berlin
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