Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Frieze New York part 3

by Robert Boyd

(continued from Frieze New York part 2)

Let's dispense with the art fair punditry in this part of my Frieze report and go straight to the art.

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Michael Sailstorfe, Ellenbogensammlung at Johann König

Those colorful thingies in this Michael Sailstorfer sculpture are casts of bent elbows.

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Los Carpinteros, Conga Time at Sean Kelly

The salsa of Los Carpinteros is so caliente that the conga drum melted.

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Lisa Williamson, The Front and The Back of a Head (detail), 2012, at Shane Campbell Gallery

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Lisa Williamson, The Front and The Back of a Head (detail), 2012, at Shane Campbell Gallery

I can't explain it, but I like art that droops on the wall. For example, Robert Morris's felt pieces. That's one reason I liked these Lisa Williamson pieces.

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Matt Golden, House of Nguyen, 2012, Mahogany Veneer, at Limoncello

As a work of art, House of Nguyen seems elegant but minor. As a balanced object, though, it's pretty amazing.

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Daniel Firman, Lea, 2012 resin

I thought Lea was a real person at first. What's interesting is constructing a story that would fit this pose. She isn't just taking her sweater off--why would she be leaning against a wall for that? Is she hiding her head in shame? Playing hide-and-seek?

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Lara Schnigter, Double D, 2012, wood and fabric, at Anton Kern

Double D by Lara Schnigter is interesting to me because it's erotic while being fundamentally abstract. I guess you could say there is a "body" there (or at least breasts) but it doesn't feel like a representation of a woman. Instead, it uses the stretchy lacy material as a metonymy for eroticism.

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Lari Pittman, How Sweet the Day After This and That, Deep Sleep is Truly Welcomed, 1988 at Regen Projects

This knockout by one of my favorite artists, Lari Pittman, was one of the highlights of the fair for me.


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Joshua Abelow at James Fuentes

I follow a lot of pure art blogs. By this, I mean all they post is images--little or no text. One of the ones I follow is simply called Art Blog Art Blog, and it's by a painter named Joshua Abelow. So the weird thing is that I'm kind of familiar with his artistic tastes (assuming Art Blog Art Blog is an accurate reflection of those tastes), but not with his work. James Fuentes displayed three walls full of Abelow's paintings and drawings, including the work above.

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Joshua Abelow

There is a lot of funny self-aggrandizement in these cartoonish paintings. I'll sound like a hypocrite for liking them, because they can be offensive in a way not dissimilar to the Jennifer Rubell nutcracker mentioned in my previous post. But I feel like Abelow is more obviously ironic, portraying himself as a macho, insensitive artist, kind of like Jonathan Richman's "Pablo Picasso." The cartoony simplicity and exaggeration amplify this--the overblown self-image Abelow affects is drastically at odds with the presentation.

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Joshua Abelow

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Joshua Abelow

Joshua Abelow
Joshua Abelow

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Jorge Méndez Blake at Meessen De Clercq

Another artist who took up an entire booth was Jorge Méndez Blake. As I walked by, I noticed the pieces above. They are difficult to see in this photo--they were pretty difficult to see in real life. But I could see they were versions of a well-known photo of the great Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges. I asked the booth attendant to explain it for me.

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Jorge Méndez Blake at Meessen De Clercq

She explained that prior to Frieze, Mendez Blake had gone to all the public libraries in New York and checked out any available copy of books by Borges. The maps above indicate locations of the libraries he visited.

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Jorge Méndez Blake at Meessen De Clercq

Then for the duration of the show, he put them all in this wooden box.  The two portraits, the black Borges and the white Borges, represent his blindness. The curious, quixotic and bookish nature of this artwork struck me as Borgesian. But I wondered about it as a work of art that might be owned by a collector. After all, all those library books have to be returned. But perhaps an empty box and the memory of what it once contained will be enough.

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John Ahearn booth

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John Ahearn sculpture

Back in the 80s, John Ahearn's South Bronx Hall of Fame was big deal. I remember as a young art history student reading about it all the time in art magazines, and I really dug the photos of the painted casts of various residents from the neighborhood. It seemed like a gritty, socially-conscious kind of art, which makes it somewhat surprising that he had a space at Frieze. It was one of Frieze's special projects (which included a Tim Rollins and K.O.S. thing, too). I liked seeing the Ahearns, but the whole notion of Frieze sponsoring this seemed pretty weird. Here was a highly elite art fair which exists in order to sell extremely expensive artwork to very wealthy collectors, and here's John Ahearn and his South Bronx cast of characters.


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Banks Violette, untitled (88), 2011, at Team Gallery

I heard that Banks Violette's giant damaged steel "88" is a tribute to Dale Earnhardt, Jr., which proves that art isn't so elitist after all or something. I don't know if the tribute thing is actually true, but have to say this sculpture looks pretty bad-ass.

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George Condo, Lost in Chartres, 1997 at Sprüth Magers

Modern Sculpture by Brian Jungen
Brian Jungen, Modern Sculpture (After Iceland) (detail), 2005 at Catriona Jeffries

These very cool sculptures by Brian Jungen were apparently made out of lava rock from Iceland and the material they use on soccer balls. Don't kick them.

Continued in Frieze New York part 4


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