The TRUTH About Art Dealers

"People don't appreciate the creativity of dealing art. In the contemporary market, it is the dealer--not the artist--who does most of the work. Without us, there would be no Modernism, no Minimalism, no movements at all. All the contemporary legends would be painting houses or teaching adult education classes. Museum collections would grind to a halt after the Renaissance; sculptors would still be carving pagan gods; video would be the province of pornography; graffiti a petty crime rather than the premise behind a multimillion-dollar industry. Art, in short, would cease to thrive. And this is because--in a post-Church, post-patronage era--dealers refine and pipeline the fuel that drives art's engine, that has always driven it and always will: money.

"These days especially, there is simply too much material out there for any normal person to distinguish between good and bad. That's the dealer's job. We are creators, too--only we create markets, and our medium is the artists themselves. Markets, in turn, create movements, and movements create tastes, culture, the canon of acceptability--in short, what we think of as art itself. A piece of art becomes a piece of art--and an artist becomes an artist--when I make you take out your checkbook."

from The Genius by Jesse Kellerman, 2008

Self-Portraiture through Social Media with a Side of Crystal Meth

Dean Liscum

As a self-proclaimed art critic and reviewer, I was curious about/envious of/doubtful that Devon Britt-Darby's exhibition, Art Criticism and Reporting, could command my (or anyone else's) attention or interest for longer than it took me to inhale my drink. I went out of morbid curiosity because as a writer I know that art writing is many things: analysis, critical thinking, emotional insecurity, pettiness, and personal preference professed, but art it is not. I doubted that Britt-Darby's work could hold its own against Adela Andea's sculptures (think Donald Judd on acid)


Adela Andea's work in the Art League courtyard

or the mixed media complexity of Giovanni Valderas but I was willing to listen to his talk and check it out the work.

The talk wandered through the maze that has become the Art Guys Marry a Plant and Britt-Darby's response, a social sculpture/performance piece, The Art Gay Marries a Woman, and the antics that have followed. (It's all on his blog...at least the interesting parts.) The topic was germane, but  the presentation was more Jermaine Jackson in that you had a vague sense of why you were there but the show wasn't delivering what you wanted. For instance, I learned that according to Devon (Douglas Britt's nom de sex) being a sex worker in San Francisco is relatively easy and lucrative. Lots of artists moonlight as sex workers (according to one artist/ex-sex worker). Also, sex work is a cash business that makes crystal meth addiction that much easier.  Go figure.

However, the talk did eventually meander toward art and set the stage for the source of the works in the exhibit, the portraits. The works are monochromatic, text-based works composed of grey acrylic paint and glass particles on canvas. The legibility of the works shifts with the changes in the ambient light in the gallery.


Devon Britt-Darby, Doug69, HooBoy’s Male4Male Escort Review, 2013, Acrylic, glass microspheres and enamel on canvas

Britt-Darby cites Glenn Ligon's coal dust paintings, which play with legibility and text, as one of his influences.


Devon Britt-Darby, Peter Simek, Salon, 2013, Acrylic, glass microspheres and enamel on canvas

Britt-Darby added another visibility challenge to his canvases by borrowing a technique from the Los Angeles based artist Mary Corse. Corse uses glass microspheres, which are used to make painted lines on roads reflective.

The text consists of quotes taken from social media sites. Some of the media reviews art. Some of it reviews escorts/sex workers. All of it reviews Devon Britt-Darby. Britt-Darby deems these works on canvas as portraits of the people who wrote the art criticism and reporting. In his creation myth, he is the Rorschach test by which these reviewers reveal themselves. As he states of the works and himself in the third person, "[these texts] aren't by him, they are directed at him." As an artist selecting which textual passages to paint, he views himself as in control of his subject. He is the portrait artist with himself as a common, defining theme for his subjects.

The conceit becomes (as he presents it) portraits of the authors as seen through the lens of his sex worker-crystal meth addiction-plant marrying protest antics. And I reject that conceit. His assertion seems a little disingenuous to me. It's both silly and safe for Britt-Darby to position these works as portraits because the focus becomes these reviewers and the culture/audience that they represent. But it's not. Anyone who heard the talk or views the show will immediately understand that it's all about Britt-Darby. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Because there isn't. These portraits are unique and intriguing exactly because their medium is the words and perceptions of others about the artist.


Devon Britt-Darby, Robert Boyd, The Great God Pan Is Dead, 2013, Acrylic, glass microspheres and enamel on canvas

It is in this selection process that Britt-Darby portrays himself, that he self-actualizes for all the world to see. Not as a sex worker or meth addict or a gay-rights activist or a self-absorbed columnist, but as an artist. It is in these supposed "portraits" of his critics and reviewers that he creates his own revealing self-portraits.

The supposition of the show begs the question--if what a person (artist/critic/audience member) says about a subject (controversial or not) portrays who s/he is, then DOES NOT the criticism of someone that the criticized chooses to repeat/re-present to an audience through verbal or visual art self-portray (or betray) that person?

I say it does, and I'm not sure what that says about me. But I'm thegreatgodpanisdead, and I'm OK with that.

Big Frame Up in Austin

Robert Boyd


This giant blue genie had nothing to do with Frame besides being across the parking lot from Big Medium

East Austin has become a locus for Austin's art scene.  Of course there is EAST, the East Austin studio tour, but studios are the loam out of which other things grow--galleries, artists spaces, etc. Frame to me seemed to be about promoting the next stage of the evolution of an art district. Some institutions have sprung up, and to help people realize this, they join their voices like the citizens of Whoville, shouting "We are here!" The four participants were Tiny Park, MASS, Big Medium and Co-Lab. What's interesting is that this grouping includes a commercial gallery, a non-profit and a couple of artist-run spaces.

Big Medium is a nonprofit that organizes EAST and the Texas Biennial. Soon they will have their own storefront space in a new development called Canopy. Right now, Canopy is empty. I think they'd like to full of galleries and complimentary businesses. Big Medium arranged for two of the spaces to be used on a temporary basis. So on the day of Frame, Fahamu Pecou: All Dat Glitters Ain’t Goals (curated by Salvador Castillo) was having its closing night and The F.R. Etchen Collection; Selected Works and More was opening.


Fahamu Pecou at Big Medium

Fahamu Pecou is an Atlanta-based artist who uses self-portraiture, video and performance to reflect on images and stereotypes of black manhood in the era of hiphop. The big canvases were impressive and projected an ironic sense of overblown masculinity, but the videos were the star of the show. They came across as modest and homespun (although they included some clever effects), with forceful but ironic raps.



The other Big Medium show was a show of Russell Etchen's personal art collection. Obviously this is a curatorial idea I have no real objection to. In Etchen's case, a lot of his collection comes from his colleagues in Sketch Klubb, various folks on the Houston art scene who are about his age, bits of comics-related artwork, and other odds and ends. Etchen is a cash-poor collector, which makes his collection all the more interesting--each piece has a story and is not simply the result of a cash exchange.


Mark Flood, Blue Skies for Russell Etchen

For example, Etchen has an astonishing collection of Mark Flood paintings because he designs Flood's publications and is more-or-less a member of the Flood entourage.


Mark Flood, Kitchen Mirror


Clockwise from the top: Jonny Negron drawing; 2 Geoff Hippensteil paintings; Travis Kent, Fan



Johnny Ryan

I loved Johnny Ryan's tribute to D.J. Screw.


Tim Kerr, Coltrane

John Porcellino, Skunk Cabbage

My next stop was MASS Gallery, a co-op operation that includes studios and a giant exhibition space. They were opening with a group show called Wally, which was apparently about the relationship of art to the wall. Unless you are radically examining this concept as William Anastasi did with Six Sites, it seems like a trivial theme for a show. The ways that the work addressed "walls" were not particularly profound. But it was a group show, and the thing about group shows is that one can usually find a few things to like.


Leah Bailis, Cinderblocks, 2013, cardboard and paint

Something like Cinderblocks by Leah Bailis strikes me as painfully obvious in terms of "walls," but quite appealing in terms of being a piece of sculpture. Because of their cardboard structure, they have the feeling of cartoon cinderblocks--the kind that Popeye could bust through easily.


Lee Piechocki, I Have a Lot of Faith in This Model, 2013, plexiglass, wood, sculpy, paint, paper, vinyl, found objects on shelf

As someone whose job revolves around making computer models of real things, I liked I Have a Lot of Faith in This Model by Lee Piechocki. The models I make are generally opaque to the people I make them for, and a lot of what I do is convince them that I believe in the model and that they should as well. This mysterious grouping of objects is also asking us to take it on faith that it works. And I do.


Yashua Klos, Totem, 2011, woodblock prints collaged onto archival paper

And I thought Yashua Klos's Totem was simply beautiful.


Kansas City Plein Air Coterie (KC PAC) Open Session 

After checking out the show, I went out into the vast concrete "courtyard" where several people were set up painting. This was an activity open to all but led by the Kansas City Plein Air Coterie (KC PAC) with artist Lee Piechocki.

Then off to Co-Lab, which was having an exhibit and performance by Brooke Gassiot called The Stories Our Neurons Tell. It consisted of several sculptural objects, some incorporating video elements.

 
piece by Brooke Gassiot.

This one, whose title I didn't catch, was quite powerful. At first, you saw a large circular structure supporting a curtain that was about 7 or 8 feet high. You had to walk into the corner of the gallery space behind the structure to find a gap in the curtain. When you did, you saw the bathtub with a video projection in it above. I couldn't tell if the woman in the tub was crying or exhausted, but it's a strong image. And the way it provides a glow within the otherwise dimply-lit scene made it stronger. A projected image like this is a ghostly image--I didn't feel like it was meant to portray something existing now but rather the memory of something, possibly something very bad. Something that makes a woman cry in her bathtub.


scar piece by Brooke Gassiot

And memory is continued in this piece. You can't really see them in this photo, but the lightbox there is covered with little drawings. Gassiot was drawing these in the next room. People would sit down and show Gassiot a scar, which she would draw. As she drew, her subject told the story of that scar to her. Mine was a scar on my right palm, acquired in the late 80s on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico, stitched up in an emergency room in Houma, Louisiana. Then using needle and thread, she sewed up the drawing of your scar with the same number of stitches you actually got. Then you took the drawing and added it to the pile. It was a very personal experience between you and the artist. (And the artist got to hear a bunch of great stories, so she got something out of it as well.)

My favorite show was at Tiny Park, my last stop on my Frame Tour.  It was a show by Joel Ross and Jason Creps. Their work consists mainly of signs that they have made and left someplace. This is Ross's part of the process. The residue of the work are photos of the signs in situ (taken by Creps, who is also a commercial photographer. He did the cover photo for Neko Case's album Middle Cyclone.)


Joel Ross and Jacob Creps, IN THE FUTURE (Installed and abandoned, Bradley, IL), 2012, archival pigment print, 42 x 55 inches

In addition to the photographs, the show consists of signs and word pieces. Their power is somewhat diminished being in a gallery setting (instead of just being out in public), but Ross makes up for that by being so amusing and clever.


Joel Ross, #UC!&+%, 2012, vinyl and acrylic paint on pine, dimensions variable


Joel Ross, #UC!&+%, 2012, vinyl and acrylic paint on pine, dimensions variable


 Joel Ross, It Was a Bad Idea, 2010, flashe and graphite on paper, 60 x 30 inches

Still, the problem with these in the gallery setting is that they seem like clever one-liners of a sort. It's only out in the world that these things gain power. So Ross did an installation. He did it at the studio of OK Mountain over on Cesar Chavez, so he wasn't strictly removing it from an institutional setting. Nonetheless, it must have given people whiplash as they drove by it at night.


Joel Ross, TORTURE SOUNDS INCREDIBLE, 2006, electronic LED sign, 57 x 84 x 7 inches

All in all, I thought Frame was a success. But it would be even better if there were a bunch of galleries at Canopy. Frame is trying to force a beneficial clustering effect, and that may work, but it needs to get bigger and more dense in the long run.

Big Five Oh, part 3: Ellen Carey at JHB Gallery

Robert Boyd

LM, DC, Ford and I agreed to meet the day after Frieze in Greenwich Village. DC wanted us to see some photographs by Ellen Carey. We went over to JHB Gallery to check out this work. JHB Gallery has been around since 1982--the history of the gallery on its website describes it beginning in Midtown in 82, moving to Tribeca in 84, to Soho in 88 and finally closing the storefront in 95 and working as a private dealer. I suppose after you have built up a network of collectors, at some point the expense of having a storefront is not justifiable. But how do you get new clients? In this case, DC purchased a Carey photograph from a charity auction. I've often wondered if there was something a bit exploitative about charity auctions--I mean, what's in it for the artist, except for good feelings? Well, in Ellen Carey's case, she may have acquired a couple of new collectors. In any case, Baum must be doing something right--she represents 36 artists.

Now JHB Gallery is in Jayne Baum's apartment. Like most New York apartments, it is small and uses space efficiently. Two art drawers formed the base for a table with wings that, once opened, became the surface that she showed us Carey's photos.


left to right, foreground--Ford, DC, LM; background--Jayne Baum's husband (I think), Jayne Baum

Jayne Baum and her assistant (who I think is also her husband) patiently showed us hundreds of Carey's photos. DC was keen to expand his collection, and once he saw them in the flesh, LM was enthusiastic. Carey, a professor at Hartford Art School, specializes in photos made without the use of a camera. In the Dings and Shadows series, she crumples up photo paper and exposes it from various angles to colored light. The effect is of looking at a deep, intensely colored relief, abstract but with a real sense of space.


Ellen Carey, Untitled, 2011, unique c-print from the series Dings and Shadows, c-print, 24 x 20 inches

But seeing them in a reproduction doesn't really give you the true effect. The paper, although it has been flattened, still retains the creases and shallow folds it have from being crumpled up in the first place. So you have the physical deformation of the paper which is extremely exaggerated by the play of color and shadow. They aren't just images--they are beautiful, intriguing objects.


Ellen Carey, Untitled, 2011, unique c-print from the series Dings and Shadows, c-print, 24 x 20 inches

As we looked, we discussed each work, talking about the technique, the colors, the design, and so forth. LM and DC would occasionally ask that one be set aside to look at later. We were in that warm apartment for two hours, and they spent that whole time in deep contemplation. The amount of concentration spent on each piece was remarkable.


DC and LM concentrating hard

And they didn't buy anything on the spot. But I suspect they will. Baum will send them jpegs of the ones they set aside, and they'll roll it over some more, and then make a decision.

Up to now, they had no common artists in their respective collections. But I think Ellen Carey may be their first.

Brandon Araujo at Domy

Robert Boyd

In the Fall, Cody Ledvina will be opening a new art space in the current Domy space called Brandon. So it was a little confusing to see this sign in Brasil (the restaurant connected to Domy).



And it was funny that Ledvina's name was so much more prominent than Brandon Araujo's. But this exhibit may give us an idea of how Ledvina will use Domy's space. One one hand, you have the deliberate hilarious amateurism of the painted sign. On the other hand, you have this big sign in the restaurant where hundreds of people will see it. They'll laugh at the misspelling, but will be intrigued by it. Maybe they'll be too busy eating to go next door to Domy right away. That's OK--Ledvina has that covered, too.


Installation of Brandon Araujo paintings on the wall of Brasil


Brandon Araujo, untitled, 2013, acrylic and spray paint, 16 x 20 inches

There are three different kinds of paintings in this exhibit: chrome paintings (like the one above), blue paintings and Kapton paintings. Kapton is a high-tech polyimide film. (No, I have no idea what "polyimide" is.) Anyway, this film and tape seems to have a bunch of high-tech uses, and as far as I know, it is not a commonly used art material. The wing-shaped painting above is one of the Kapton paintings.


Brandon Araujo, untitled, 2013, spray paint, plaster and Kapton on canvas, 11 x 14 inches

You can see the Kapton tape at the top and bottom of untitled above. But for me, what was more interesting about these small paintings was the effect of the spray paint on the highly textured plaster. Because the spray paint hits it an an angle, it makes the relief seem deeper than it is. It's a very interesting visual effect.



For the three small Kapton paintings, Ledvina painted a trompe l'oeil brick shelf for them to rest on.


Brandon Araujo, untitled, acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20 inches

Araujo does something similar with the acrylic blue paintings as he does with the plaster and spray-paint on the Kapton paintings. I can't quite dissect the technique he's using, but it looks as if he lays down some thick acrylic, then after allowing it to dry, he goes back in and glazes it blue. This creates a strong relief effect which I find quite beautiful.


Brandon Araujo, untitled, acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20 inches


Brandon Araujo, untitled, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 inches

I can't find much about Brandon Araujo online. I know he's been in a few group shows locally and that he has a BFA from the University of Houston. But his biographical info is mostly irrelevant to the matter at hand, which is that this is a fine show. And it benefits from high quality curating (including the silly-ass sign).

An Open Letter to Homeowners in the Memorial Villages

Robert Boyd


Meredith jack sculpture in from of the Art Museum of Southeast Texas (AMSET)


at AMSET


In Meredith Jack's studio

Dear Memorial Villages homeowners,

Your big beautiful front yards would be immeasurably improved with the addition of a piece of sculpture by Meredith Jack.

love,
The Great God Pan Is Dead


at AMSET


At AMSET


In Meredith Jack's studio


In Meredith Jack's studio


At AMSET


In Meredith Jack's studio


In Meredith Jack's studio