Friday, May 31, 2013

Big Five Oh, part 5: Nina Katchadourian at Catharine Clark Gallery

Robert Boyd

After Pulse, DC left us and LM and I continued to our next stop, our second apartment gallery of the day, Catherine Clark Gallery. Catherine Clark will have a storefront opening in San Francisco in July and has this apartment gallery in New York: I guess this is a bi-coastal gallery. LM had been invited to this show, and when he got there, he knew a lot of people. Much more than DC or I, LM is plugged into the art world. I hate it when the person I'm with knows a ton of people and I don't know anyone. Actually, I sort of knew a couple of people--the first Houston people I had seen all weekend, Lea Weingarten and Richard Herskowitz. The show was a small group of photos of books by Nina Katchadourian, celebrating her new book, Sorted Books.


Nina Katchadourian, Kinds of Love, 2002, C-prints, each 12.5 x 19 inches

I had seen examples of these photos (such Kinds of Love above) where Katchadourian would take several books, arrange their spines facing the camera so that the titled were lined up, picking titles that told a little story or formed a sentence or an idea. Some of them were pretty clever, but as art it felt gimmicky. This seems to be work that has really caught on, though.


Nina Katchadourian, Self-Portrait as Sir Ernest Shackleton, 2002 , C-print, 6.5 x 4.5 inches

Looking at her website, I actually find some of her other work more appealing. These is current of humor that runs through all her work, but I enjoyed her series of Uninvited collaborations with nature better than the Sorted Book series. For instance, the serious quality of Self-Portrait as Sir Ernest Shackleton is completely undermined when you realize that her mustache is actually two caterpillars. But maybe using caterpillars this way is wrong. Hence Quit Using Us.


Nina Katchadourian, Quit Using Us, 2002, C-print mounted to aluminum, 18 x 96 inches

Most of the photos on display were a variation on Sorted Books idea. Instead of showing the spines of fairly recent books, as had been previously done, these photos each showed the covers of three or four quite old books. Once again these covers told a little story or joke using the titles of the books. This series is called Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Search of the Perfect Book.


Nina Katchadourian,  from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Search of the Perfect Book


Nina Katchadourian,  from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Search of the Perfect Book


Nina Katchadourian,  from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Search of the Perfect Book


Nina Katchadourian,  from the series Once Upon a Time in Delaware/In Search of the Perfect Book 

Katchadourian was interviewed by curator Veronica Roberts about Sorted Books. Needless to say, there is more to the project than mere clever juxtaposition of book titles. Any given grouping of books comes from the library of a particular person. Presumably it is the library of someone with a substantial number of books. Katchadourian is then given free reign to pick and choose any of the books in the library to photograph. Now if you believe that a personal library is a reflection of its owner (I do, and if I am in someone's home, I find myself examining what's on the shelves for insight into their owner), then you could see these selections as snapshots of the books' owner. Maybe. I don't know what Kinds of Love tells us about Linda Pace, whose library was used for that photo.


From left to right: Entertained adult, bored child, Veronica Roberts, Nina Katchadourian

The adults were perfectly entertained by this question and answer session, but the kids in the room were pretty bored. As soon as it was over, they ran outside and started playing on the stairs. They were still playing there when I left. LM and I discussed possibly meeting up for more art-viewing in Miami in December and then I said my goodbyes. I wish I could have found a cab, but that can be a challenge on a Friday night--I ended up walking back to the Lower East Side, and went to sleep exhausted.

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Thursday, May 30, 2013

Pan Recommends for the week of May 30 to June 5

Robert Boyd

There's a lot of stuff going on this weekend, of which the list below is just a small sample. The tough question is what to do Saturday--see all the exhibits opening in Houston (including most of the Colquitt galleries) or go down to Galveston and check out the openings there? (Of course you could try for both if you're willing to risk a speeding ticket.)

THURSDAY


Jeremy DePrez

Jeff Elrod and Jeremy DePrez: Fantasy Island at Texas Gallery, 6 pm (runs through July 6). Young Houston painter DePrez is teamed with established Brooklyn/Marfa artist Elrod--the combination is intriguing.

FRIDAY

 
The Opulent Project, Silver Digital Ring, sterling silver cast from 3-D printed model of digital ring designs found online

Ctrl+P featuring the Opulent Project, Bryan Czibesz and Shawn Spangler, Stacy Jo Scott, and the Ryder Jon Piotrs Nomadic Gallery at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, 5:30 pm (runs through September 8). Very interesting sounding show--with 2-D archival printing and now 3-D printing, the line between the craft world and the digital world has blurred.

 
Gary Schott, Plumb Bob Broach #2

Gary Schott: The Ornamental Plumb Bob at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, 5:30 pm (runs through September 8). Schott had a great show at Goldesbury Gallery in 2010, so I expect a this exhibit will be excellent.


Cerling (left) and Topek (right)

Penny Cerling and Toby Topek at Zoya Tommy Contemporary, 6 pm (runs through June 29 with an artist talk on June 1 at 2 pm). Two revered elders of the Houston art scene are joined for this exhibit.


Judy Ledgerwood, Composition in Yellow, Orange, and Pink, 2013, oil on canvas, 96 x 120 inches 

Judy Ledgerwood: Fields and Flowers at Barbara Davis Gallery at 6:30 pm (runs through July 5). I know nothing about artist Judy Ledgerwood, but I like pretty things.

 
Whatchoo talkin' bout, Willis?

Bill Willis: New Paintings at The Joanna Gallery at 7 pm. I love how the Joanna's website hasn't been updated since 2010. I guess it never will now. This is the last Joanna show. Our little girl is all growed up.

SATURDAY

 
Tracye Wear, Winter Evening, 2013, encaustic and oil stick, 30"x 20"

Tracye Wear at d. m. allison, 4 to 9 pm (runs through June 29). Thick encastic gives Wear's paintings a relief quality. You'll want to touch them, but please refrain from manhandling the art.

 
Devon Christopher Moore, Pontchartrain, Bracket – B, Etched acrylic lacquer on galvanized steel 

Devon Christopher Moore: The Gravity of Time at Nicole Longnecker Gallery at 5 pm (runs through July 6). With the Joanna ending, it's nice to be able to welcome a new gallery. Good luck, Nicole Longnecker Gallery on your first ever exhibit!

 
Zachery Zeke Podgorny

Galveston Artist Residency Exhibition featuring Josh Bernstein, Zachary Zeke Podgorny and Davide Savorani at 6 pm (runs through July 20). The GAR celebrates its second year with a show of its residents. And by the way, I think the parents who named their child Zachary Zeke are awesome.


Marcelyn McNeil, Good Day Bad Day, 2013

Marcelyn McNeil: Bent into Shape at Galveston Arts Center at 6 pm (runs through July 7). An excellent painter whose work can maybe be described as bold, cartoony abstraction has a show at the GAC.

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Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Bert Long's Overalls

Robert Boyd

I was at the Houston Museum of African American Culture a couple of weeks ago for an opening and noticed that in their front gallery there were a group of Bert Long, Jr., paintings and an old pair of overalls.


Bert Long's Overalls

There is nothing about this exhibit on the HMAAC website. I don't know the names of the pieces, except in one case where the name was written on it. I don't know when they were done. And I don't know how long they will be there. They may be gone already. I hope not; I want to go back and look at them again.



The last thing I would have expected Bert Long to paint is a self-portrait in a toreador outfit. But here it is and it's fantastic. It seems like something that may be from an art historical source, but I can't locate a similar toreador paintings by any of the usual suspects.

 
Bert Long, Spirit of Art

When Bert Long saw rapidly melting colored ice treats (or whatever these things are), he saw the Spirit of Art.



The thing that is great about this old ragged banner is the flower Long placed where the stars would normally go. I propose this design to replace our current flag.

The museum has an enclosed back yard that I had never visited before.



It's long and narrow and surrounded on two sides by freshly built tall townhouses. This makes it fairly shady and cool (depending on the time of year, of course). The lawn of clover (or something like clover) adds to the effect. It is a perfect setting for a sculpture garden. These are pieces that are related to Long's well-known Field of Vision sculpture group on Elgin. But I think this setting is more beautiful, and the scattering of eyes on pedestals here is just right.









This is a magic place.  I want to return and just sit for a while.


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Big Five Oh, part 4: Pulse

Robert Boyd

After Ford, LM, DC and I left JHB Gallery, Ford decided he was ready to check out some non-visual art aspects of New York. He wanted to hit the big comic stores and record stores and musical instrument stores and cool bars in Brooklyn and so forth. He had a list which DC, who has lived in NYC for decades, was able to add to and annotate for him.  Ford went off on his own adventure while LM, DC and I went to Pulse.

Last year, Pulse struck me as the cheesiest, most pandering of the three art fairs I went to New York. It retains its position this year, but the thing about art fairs is that the content can vary so much from gallery to gallery and even within a single gallery. There is an economic imperative that pushes work in a certain direction.
  1. Galleries pay a lot of money to be at Pulse
  2. Therefore, they necessarily must bring their work that is most likely to sell
  3. Which may include work with a high T 'n' A quotient
  4. Or work that makes viewers say things like "Boy, that's clever!" or "That's look great in the living room!"


Jordan Doner, Auto Dali II, 2006, C-Print, printed 2013 at Steven Kasher Gallery

Steven Kasher Gallery was a somewhat schizo gallery in that regard. You had high pander-rate photos like Auto Dali II (which recreates the famous 1951 Dali photo In Voluptas Mors but with modern sleek skinny models). But then you had super-charming photos like Untitled (Boy with Pipe at Shoreline) by Vivian Maier.


Vivian Maier, Untitled (Boy with Pipe at Shoreline), ca. 1960s, gelatin silver, printed 2012, 20 x 16 inches

You had this split-beaver collage by Ashkan Honarvar.


Ashkan Honarvar, Creed, The Apple 1, 2013, collage, 10.6 x 26.8 inches

But you also had these classic subway graffiti photos by Henry Chalfant. (I had and treasured copies of his books Subway Art and Spraycan Art in the 80s, which encouraged me to do my own large scale graffiti pieces in 1988.)


Henry Chalfant, top to bottom: Untitled (Soup Cans), ca. 1980; Crash Dealt, 1980; Revolt Min, 1979; Blades, 1979, printed 2011, Kodak Professional Endura metallic paper, 11 x 42 inches each

And some naked Kate Moss courtesy of Chuck Close is an easy 65 grand for Adamson Gallery. (Actually, I have no idea if this is true. Even for Kate, that's a lot of money.)


Chuck Close, Untitled (Kate), 2008, archival pigment print on Innova-F gloss paper, Chine-colléd to Fabriano watercolor paper, 60 x 40 inches

Then there was art that was cutesy and "clever", like the pieces by Jorge Perianes at PanAmerican Art Projects.


Jorge Perianes, Untitled, 2008, mixed media, 36 x 40 inches

But the work I hated most of all can at least say it wasn't trying to pander to anyone's baser tastes.


Kim Rugg, Are You Sitting Comfortably, 2012, hand-woven needlepoint on found object and carved wood chair, 32 x 23 x 21 inches at Davidson Contemporary

Kim Rugg's Are You Sitting Comfortably was so smug and self-righteous that I really did want to sit comfortably on it and maybe even take a nap.

But all in all, this year's Pulse didn't seem quite as crass as last year's Pulse. I saw plenty of art I liked such as this beautiful abstract photo by Amanda Means.


Amanda Means, Grid Abstraction #39, 2005, developer on Ilford matte gelatin silver fiber paper, 24 x 20 inches at Von Lintel Gallery


Aylin Langreuter at Galerie Wittenbrink

Aylin Langreuter had several "cars in the jungle" pieces, of which this was the best one.


Dawn Black, Conceal Project (24 Panels), 2013, Watercolor and gouache on paper, 5 1/2 x 7 1/2 each

\
Dawn Black, one of the panels in Conceal Project (24 Panels), 2013, Watercolor and gouache on paper, 5 1/2 x 7 1/2 each

I loved these weird little portraits by Dawn Black at Cynthia Reeves.


Jeffrey Gibson, Dances Hard for Who We Were, 2013 Wool US Army blankets, artist's own repurposed painting, glass beads, steel, artificial sinew, acrylic paint 60 x 16 x 16 inches

 Dances Hard for Who We Were by Jeffrey Gibson is a piece I'd be proud to hang in my gym.


Liset Castillo, Shopping Bag, 2011, Sand, cable, fabric, resin water, Matte Super Heavy Gel Medium and Plexiglass Box at Habana

Shopping Bag by Liset Castillo belongs in that category of art I noticed at Frieze: sculptures of modest containers.

And then there were pieces that made me laugh, and I value that highly.


Yoan Capote, Juntos, 2006, metal, wood, fabric at Habana

Juntos by Yoan Capote prompted DC, LM and I to speculate on the practical design of an umbrella for couples.


Michael Scoggins, Conan the Barbarian, 2008, marker,prismacolor on paper, 67 x 51 inches at Freight + Volume

Michael Scoggins' tribute to junior high notebook art is even funnier in person given that it is over five feet tall.


Adam Parker Smith, Untitled (Poster), 2013, acrylic on paper, 30 x 20 inches at Davidson Contemporary

It's hilarious that Davidson Contemporary felt it necessary to include a hand-written note reading "PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH!!!" on the wall label for Adam Parker Smith's piece. I guess people tried to rip the phone numbers off.

Book Art

If there was a trend at Pulse, it was art made our of books.


LongBin Chen, Bach, from Composer Series, 2013 at the West Collection


LongBin Chen, Bach, from Composer Series, 2013 at the West Collection


Jessica Drenk, Bibliophylum, books, wax, pins at Adeh Rose

Jessica Drenk somehow took books and carved them into these little feather-like objects.


Rune Guneriussen, Discipline Comsidered an Option, C-Print, 45 x 69 inches at Galerie Olivier Waltman

Pulse Projects

Every art fair brings in sculptures and performances as part of the experience. Pulse describes Pulse Projects as "the presentation and promotion of audience- engaging large-scale sculptures, installations and performances." I commend Pulse for this because I generally prefer this kind of work to audience-repelling sculptures, installations and performances.


Russell Maltz, Painted/Stacked, ongoing, Day-Glo enamel on concrete block with wood palette and banding iron; dimensions variable


Tristin Lowe, Comet: Nature, 2011, neon, glass, transformers, aluminum, steel; 101 x 29 inches

Duck!

Coagula

One of the inspirations for The Great God Pan Is Dead was Coagula. Coagula played with being a gossip tabloid in format, but what appealed to me is that in doing so, it went below the surface of the art world to display the machinations and personalities that animated it. It assumed that art could not be somehow isolated from the world in which it exists. After a few naive years of pollyanna idealism, this has become my belief, too. That's why this blog is so interested in such things as the mechanics of art fairs, for example.

Anyway, Coagula now puts its money where its mouth is with its own gallery space, Coagula Curatorial. They had one of the most interesting booths at Pulse. As for the magazine, it still exists on-line and you can read editor/publisher Mat Gleason's pieces regularly on HuffPost.



Mat Gleason (with the shocking red hair) at the Coagula booth


David Horii, Boys' Life (Henry), 2011, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 18 inches at Coagula


panties by Leigh Salgado at Coagula


Tim Youd, Typing Tropic, 2013, ongoing performance

Coagula had a performance in their booth, which set them apart from every other exhibitor as far as I could tell. Tim Youd was typing a copy of Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller on two pieces of paper run through the typewriter over and over again. The top piece gets the ink (as you can see in the photo below), some of which eventually leaks through to the bottom piece, I assume. The typewriter itself was the exact model that Henry Miller used to compose this novel.

This is the kind of pointless, absurd act that I associate with a certain strain of performance. The Art Guys' best performances are along these lines. It's the kind of performance that no one sees the entirety of. It's not theatrical or about entertainment. It's barely even about expression. It's about taking a banal act (like typing) and pushing it so far that it forces you to think about it in a different way. In engaging in this performance, Tim Youd is acquiring a new awareness of the act of typing and of Henry Miller and Tropic of Capricorn. And we get to watch.


Tim Youd, Typing Tropic, 2013, ongoing performance

Gleason printed up a newspaper give-away issue of Coagula for the show featuring interviews with the artists he showed. But true to Coagula's spirit, the cover article was about a Facebook flame war with David Rimanelli.

We Think Hard About Buying Some Art

Over at Adah Rose Gallery, DC noticed these paintings on metal tubes and square conduits by Brian Dupont. He was quite taken with them, and as it turned out, I knew Dupont. He had been in a two man show with Chris Rusak at Skydive in 2012. I even owned a postcard-sized piece by Dupont--my premium for supporting the Kickstarter that he and Rusak had to finance their travel and shipping. But my glancing familiarity with the artist wasn't what got DC interested--he saw the pieces before I even noticed them. But he was eager to get my opinion. We talked about them for a bit and then I moved on.


Brian Dupont, Pipe Piece III, oil on aluminum

A little while later, I returned to the Adah Rose booth, and DC was still there! He was chatting with the gallerist who had pulled out several more Brian Duponts from the back to show him. He was really weighing them carefully, examining each one. Many of them have fragments of text painted on them, and he wanted to know the source for each text piece. In the end, he didn't buy one there because if he liked the source of the text on a piece, he didn't like the painting, and when he liked the painting, he didn't like the text. In other words, he wanted the perfect combination of text and painting. But I also think he wasn't into the three-dimensionality of the pieces. That demands a lot of the viewer (there is a reason why paintings on tubes is not really a thing).

But a few weeks later, he asked me to look at some Dupont drawings online and give him my opinion. This is how DC buys art. He takes his time. He is the opposite of impulsive. In a sense, that makes him not the ideal art fair collector, but for DC, the benefit of an art fair is that you get introduced to a lot of artists' work. It's like speed-dating. And if after the introduction, you want to take that relationship deeper, you can.


Miki Taira, A Tale of Two Brother: the Long-armed Brother and His Long-Legged Sibling, 2013, linen, sumi ink, hanging scroll, acrylic mirror, 245 x 200 x 100 cm at Tokyo Gallery/Beijing Tokyo Art Projects

Miki Taira is a Japanese artist who studied calligraphy and now employs it in a way that deftly combines the contemporary with the folkloric. She writes out folktales onto linen and then makes objects (usually strange doll-like figures, but not always) with the linen.


Miki Taira, Charcoal-roasting Millionaire, 2012, linen, sumi ink,vinyl sheet, silk, acrylic case, 40.8 x 15.5 x 15.5 cm at Tokyo Gallery/Beijing Tokyo Art Projects

LM had first seen her work at an art fair in Hong Kong (And I think he said he bought one there). He had come to Pulse earlier in the week and bought another one. For an artist, this has to be one of the advantages of having your work shown at an art fair. It becomes possible for you to develop international collectors. 
 


There was an elaborate (and beautiful) process for packing up Miki Taira's piece. This level of attention to wrapping it up seems stereotypically Japanese. But I'm sure it is also highly practical when it comes to shipping the work.



LM had become acquainted with Galería Nieves Fernández in Spain at ARCO (LM is something of an art fair road warrior).  So gallerist Nerea Fernández took us on a guided tour of the work in her booth, including this suite of works by Danica Phelps. What Phelps does is to draw a picture of something she bought. The drawings are beautiful pencil contour drawings with no chiaroscuro for the most part. Then she indicates how much she paid for the thing with red hashmarks painted below the drawing. If she sells the drawing, she makes a copy of it (by hand), with the same red hashmarks, but adds green hashmarks to indicate how much she was paid for the drawing. She also includes on the new drawing the name of the person who bought the previous drawing and where it was bought. So she could conceivably sell drawings of the same subject many time, with the green painted hashmark area getting bigger in each iteration. And perhaps most eccentric of all, she puts a price on each piece.


Danica Phelps, McDonald's Coffee and Cookies, March 16, 2013, 2013, pencil on vellum, mounted onto paper which is in turn mounted onto wood

So I was looking at each of these drawings when I noticed that McDonald's Coffee and Cookies, March 16, 2013 had a price of $200 on it. That couldn't be right. I asked Fernández about it, and she confirmed with a sigh that this drawing was indeed selling for $200. (I later wrote to Phelps and asked about it--she said "It is an important part of my work that it be accessible to all kinds of different people." Including people like me!) I impulsively decided to buy it. I only had $180 in cash on me, so LM kicked in an additional $20.

Even though the first generation had been made less than two months earlier, it had already sold once to a guy named Knut Marten at the Cologne Art Fair. Phelps got $100 after the gallery's cut, which is indicated by the 100 green hashmarks. If she does another version of McDonald's Coffee and Cookies, March 16, 2013, it will have 200 green hasmarks on it and my name as the second buyer.

That was our Pulse experience. DC had to leave us at this point--he had a wife and children at home who wanted their daddy back. But LM, like me, was maximizing his art experience and had one more stop to make. He invited me along, and that's the subject of part 5.

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