Cindy Sherman @Metro Pictures

JTF (just the facts): A total of 9 large scale color photographs, framed in brown wood and unmatted, and hung against white walls in the three adjoining gallery spaces on the first floor. No specific print process information was given beyond “color photograph” on the checklist. The works are available in editions of 6, and range in size from 64×91 to 80×140. The images are dated either 2010/2011 or 2010/2012. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Cindy Sherman’s current show of new work is surprisingly full of risks and experiments, announcing with authority that whatever you may have seen over at the MoMA, there will be no resting on her laurels; she is still challenging herself to extend the boundaries of her artistic practice. In these photographs, Sherman’s picture making approach has been more directly influenced by new digital tools, impacting both the look of her characters and the scope and texture of their surroundings.
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For the first time, Sherman has used broad natural landscapes as backdrops to her portraits. Taken primarily in Iceland after the recent volcanic eruption, her photographic views are full of rocky hillsides, barren river valleys, and open pastures weighed down by moody grey skies. Dusty flat plains give way to mossy outcroppings, the exploding ash in the sky swirling like the clouds in a Turner painting. Sherman’s characters float in front of these bleakly beautiful settings, seemingly disconnected from their environments. The landscapes provide some clues (or blind alleys) for potential narratives, but the characters themselves make no attempt to clarify any meaningful connections. Unlike the interiors from the recent society portraits (which provided some useful context), the landscapes upend our ability to find any thread of a plausible story.

Sherman’s use of fine-grained digital manipulation is also much more pronounced in these works. The landscapes have been minutely textured to look like painterly brush strokes, softening their harshness just a bit, and the faces of Sherman’s characters have been digitally altered to elongate noses, widen eyes, and flatten severe expressions. While she has substituted post-production editing for her previous eccentricies of makeup and stagecraft, as always, her handiwork is still somehwat visible, intentionally reminding us just how far from reality these people are. Dour bloodless faces peer down with steely intensity, with just a touch of puzzling distorted detail to keep us off balance.
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I haven’t yet mentioned the elaborate and often delightfully improbable costumes these women are wearing, and here again we see some experimentation by Sherman. All of these gowns and outfits came from the Chanel archive, but these images don’t look anything like traditional fashion photographs. The poses are wrong, the scenes totally incongruous; the haute couture fashions are at once entirely misplaced and quietly celebrated. A yellow and green  belted jacket and puffy skirt combination takes on a prim Western pioneer look against its mountainous backdrop, while a shimmery gold and blue concoction looks like the ceremonial garb of some nomadic tribeswoman when set against furrowed grassy hills. The lush intricacy of the fashions and the starkness of the terrain make for odd bedfellows.

The end result of all this innovation is a set of intense pictures that have some of the trappings of broad, romantic landscape scenes of the past, but with an overall feeling that lies somewhere between defiant loneliness and quirky, confrontational glamour. All of the component parts are inconclusive and disconnected, leaving the viewer incapable of really figuring out what is going on. While Sherman is clearly exploiting some of the aesthetic freedoms that these larger digital tableaux can offer, she continues to purposefully avoid giving us any easy answers, forcing us to find our own meanings amid the feathers and the dirt.

Collector’s POV: The photographs in this show are priced at either $400000 or $450000 based on size. With Sherman’s excellent retrospective still on view at the MoMA (review here), there has been a flood of her works into the secondary markets this spring, likely hoping to capitalize on all the attention. I believe there were 26 different Shermans for sale in the Contemporary Art sales at the big three auction houses, plus countless others at the various New York art fairs, particularly the Armory. In general, recent auction prices have ranged from as low as roughly $2000 (for one of her large edition prints) to as high as her then world record $3.89 million price set in 2011. A print from that same edition (the orange sweater centerfold) was sold this spring by the Akron Art Museum and fetched roughly $1 million less than the record, perhaps a sign that prices are stabilizing with so much material now becoming available.

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

  • Features/Reviews: NY Times (here), New Yorker (here)
Cindy Sherman
Through June 9th

Metro Pictures

519 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011

Gilbert & George, London Pictures @Lehmann Maupin and Sonnabend

JTF (just the facts): A total of 66 multi-image works spread across 3 gallery venues. Each mixed-media work is made up a grid of individual images hung edge to edge, each framed in black and unmatted. The works range in size from 4 panels (2×2, sized 60×50 in total) to 36 panels (4×9, sized 119×225 in total). All of the works are unique and were made in 2011. A catalog of of all 292 of the works in this London Pictures series was recently published by Hurtwood Press (here) and is available from the galleries for $30. (Installation shots at right, from all three galleries.)
For each of the venues below, I have used the panel configuration as the method for tallying the number of works on view (in parentheses):
Lehmann Maupin Chrystie Street (18)
Front Room
2×2 (1)
4×4 (1)
5×4 (1)
Main Space
4×4 (3)
4×6 (4)
4×9 (2)
Upstairs Room
2×2 (6)
Lehmann Maupin West 26th Street (23)
Main Space
3×3 (2)
3×4 (5)
3×6 (2)
4×6 (4)
Back Room
2×2 (6)
2×3 (4)
Sonnabend (25)
Side Front Room 1
2×2 (2)
2×3 (1)
3×5 (1)
3×6 (1)
Side Front Room 2
2×2 (1)
3×4 (2)
3×6 (1)
Entry Room
2×2 (1)
Back Center Room
2×2 (2)
2×4 (1)
3×4 (1)
Back Left Room
2×3 (3)
3×3 (2)
Back Right Room
2×2 (2)
2×4 (1)
3×3 (2)
3×5 (1)
Comments/Context: Gilbert and George’s sprawling new series London Pictures is really the final outcome of a rigorously academic linguistics study, delivered in the form of contemporary art. It is a meticulous and exhaustive examination of words and their charged relationships in our attention starved modern culture, thrown back at us in carefully ordered groups of shouting, hysterical headlines from the tabloid press. Spread across three galleries here in New York (and countless others across the globe from London to Hong Kong), the works are a taxonomy of urban horrors, collated and ordered into surprisingly universal patterns.
The back story to these pictures starts with the tearsheets found displayed outside newsstands across London. Gilbert and George managed to discretely steal a total of 3712 of these disposable posters over the period of several years, providing them with the raw material for their further sorting and classification of subjects and key phrases. The resulting clusters of common topics tell the story of 21st century urban life, with an eye for the shock factor that catches eyes and sells papers. Citizens are STABBED, HANGED, KNIFED, and MURDERED, while a parade of troublemakers and undesirables run rampant: ADDICT, MUGGER, PLAYBOY, BANKER, BURGLAR, RAPIST, GUNMAN, HOOKER, KILLER, DRUNK. TERROR, SEX and DEATH are never far behind (see the entire list in the installation shot from Sonnabend above). Displayed in large block letters and highlighted in vibrant red, these repetitive words and phrases dominate the artworks, the rest of the text (in black) fading into the background. The effect is both initially startling and ultimately dulling, as the weight of the text piles up.
The black and white photographic images that lie behind the graphic design elements are often patterned or kaleidoscopic, but in a supremely unassuming manner. Tree limbs and brick paving provide angled patterns, while rows of faceless windows, sidewalks, and car reflections are distorted by fish eye lenses. Gilbert and George appear as peach-faced, dapper-suited characters, like grim pedestrians on the street. And the profile of the queen (taken from various coins) makes an appearance in the corner of each work, hovering over the messiness of life with stiff upper lip formality. But all of this imagery is secondary to the bold overlaid text, which relentlessly pounds the viewer into submission.
I visited all three NY venues for this mega-show, and there is certainly a sense that once you have seen a few of these works, you’ve seen them all. This is entirely a function of visual overstimulation; seen as stand alone works, these will all pop off the wall, but when seen together over and over again, they quickly lose their punch – the shocking is no longer so urgent once you’ve seen it a dozen times, which is perhaps an apt reflection of our media saturated lives. In any case, if you’re only going to visit one of the three spaces, I’d suggest going to Lehmann Maupin’s Chrystie Street venue, as it has both the largest grids its towering main gallery, as well as a selection of the small grids upstairs, so you can see the whole breadth of the project in one place.
In the end, I like the mix of appalling truth and the can’t-make-this-stuff-up wackiness that is found in these grids of words. Gilbert and George have reminded us how the odious and the offensive have become everyday entertainment, and how commonplace and universal these tawdry tales really are. They have mapped the sensational, dumbed-down vocabulary of big city living, exposing the lurid extremes that we now take for granted.
Collector’s POV: The works in these shows range in price from £50000 for the smallest 2×2 grids to £160000 for the largest 4×9 grids. Using an average selling price of £75000, the 292 works in the full series represent roughly £21900000 of primary market value; collectors should get used to seeing these works, as they are likely to become a fixture in the secondary markets for years to come. In general, works by Gilbert & George can be found at auction with regularity at this point, mostly in Contemporary Art sales as opposed to Photographs sales. Prices for their multi-panel works have ranged between roughly $50000 and $900000 in the past decade, with a few single image or editioned works at lower prices.
Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Features/Interviews: Art in America (here), Wall Street Journal (here), Telegraph (here), Daily Beast (here), Economist (here), Huffington Post (here)

Gilbert & George, London Pictures (here, here, and here)
Through June 23rd

Lehmann Maupin
540 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001

Lehmann Maupin
201 Chrystie Street
New York, NY 10002

Sonnabend Gallery
536 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

David Benjamin Sherry, Astral Desert @Salon 94 Bowery and Freemans

JTF (just the facts): A two-part show, split between the Bowery and Freemans Alley gallery spaces. The Bowery show consists of 13 large scale color photographs, framed in white and unmatted; a few are hiding in back offices. All of the works are chromogenic prints from 2012, sized either 30×40 (in editions of 3), 48×58 (in editions of 2) or 60×72 (in editions of 1). The Freemans show consists of 15 unique works (framed in white and unmatted): 7 chromogenic photograms and 8 chromogenic prints covered in adhesive, sand and colored pigment. The photograms are each sized 30×40, while the sand images are sized either 20×24, 40×50, 48×58, or 60×72 (or reverse). All of these works are also from 2012. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: David Benjamin Sherry’s use of vibrant, electric color is much more than a simple love affair with oversaturation. His monochrome images jump off the wall in a rainbow of Easter egg hues, as though they were recently dipped in pure bowls of food coloring, taking on uniform tints of plum and tangerine, ice blue and mint. His palette is strikingly bold, almost overpowering in its sunny, jelly bean brightness.

In the Bowery space, Sherry has applied this audacious color to tightly cropped, skyless images of American desert dirt and rock formations, turning jumbles of stones, gully washes and smooth erosions into otherworldly landscapes in crimson and acidic lime green. Craggy patterns of swirls and lines, pits and deformations become almost abstract when swimming in such unexpected incandescent color. Each one is like a scene from some dusty uninhabited planet, lit by some strange combination of nearby stars.

In the Freemans space, Sherry mutes the eye-popping color by applying a layer of fine sand to the surface of the photographs, making the lumpy rock formations more delicate and tactile. His tints move closer to pastels, and in some cases, the sand obscures the detail in the photographs to the point where the works become extremely subtle, striated gradients. This abstraction is taken one step further in a series of colored photograms, where the angles and shapes of the rock walls are used as inspiration for simple layered patterns, once again executed in a spectrum of undiluted radiance.

To my eye, the bolder forms in the Bowery space are the more radical and unusual. I can imagine one of the large colored rock walls punctuating a survey show of photographic landscapes and truly throwing viewers off guard. These works bring something original to the view of the land, while still being tied to historical precedents (imaging hanging a bright purple Sherry rock wall adjacent to a 19th century view of Canyon de Chelly by O’Sullivan). I think I would actually like the photograms better if they were taken out of this desert sand context and allowed to function as stand alone abstractions. In this case, their extreme use of color would separate them from traditional darkroom practices and show off their innovation better.

Color this buoyantly joyful might have a tendency to become too easily decorative, but I think Sherry has found ways to keep the edginess in many of the pictures. Effectively harnessing and applying such powerful color without becoming gimmicky is undeniably a stiff challenge. But Sherry’s use of color here is clearly original, and seems likely to lead to further unexpectedly brazen chromatic explorations in the future.

Collector’s POV: The works in this show are priced as follows. The standard chromogenic prints are either $8000 (30×40), $12000 (48×58), or $18000 (60×72). The photograms (30×40) are $12000 each, while the sand covered prints are either $8000 (20×24), $14000 (40×50), $16000 (48×58), or $22000 (60×72). Sherry’s work has not yet entered the secondary markets in any significant manner, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Features/Reviews: Interview (here), ARTINFO (here)

Through June 2nd
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Salon 94
Salon 94 Bowery
243 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
and
Salon 94 Freemans
1 Freemans Alley
New York, NY 10002

Ryan McGinley, Animals @Team

JTF (just the facts): A total of 23 large scale color photographs, framed in white and unmatted, and hung in the main gallery space and the smaller back room. All of the works are c-prints, available in editions of 3, and made in 2012. Physical dimensions range from 14×9 to 72×108, with most 30×45 (or reverse). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Wild animals and nude bodies are an unlikely visual combination, and Ryan McGinley’s unusual pairings of man and beast provide for some startling juxtapositions. Using exotic zoo animals and posing them with young men and women against candy-colored studio backgrounds, McGinley has made pictures that are alternately elegant and comic, but always bold and eye-catching. Bites, scrapes and even trickles of blood are evidence of the the untamed nature of this project, with feral chance clearly playing a role in the photographic outcomes.

The best of these photographs are the ones where the lyricism of the forms is dominant. Green and white parakeets fly through enveloping pastel blue, partially obscuring a model with her arms outstretched like wings. The long white feathers of an albino peacock cover a model like windswept wisps of clouds against the rose red backdrop. And the curve of a guineafowl fits perfectly into the hollow of a woman’s side, its densely patterned plumage a stark contrast to her pale skin. In each, the body, the animal, and the background color come together gracefully.

Many of the rest of the images on view are more like jokes or one-liners, with varying degrees of harsh silliness. A bushy baby porcupine lies between a woman’s legs, an albino skunk sniffs a bare bottom, a monkey’s arms surround a man’s torso, and countless animals nestle in crotches of men and women alike. There’s even an homage to Avedon’s Natassja Kinski and the Serpent, this time with an iguana doing the licking. But even in the funniest of these pairings, there is something frantic about the look in the eyes of some of these animals, a natural savageness that was held in check for just a moment. Put together with the vulnerability of the human nudes, every picture has an element of lively tension, just at the breaking point.

All in, the contrast of human and animal bodies and the inherent anxiety in the poses gives these pictures some odd, agitated freshness. I think the more ornamental matches will ultimately be more durable than the salty wisecracks and the sexy horsing around, so look out for the handful of images that have a more refined sense of unexpected opulence.

Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are priced by size, as follows:

  • 14×9: $5500
  • 13×20: $7000
  • 24×16: $8000
  • 30×45: $14000
  • 57×38: $21000
  • 48×72: $25000
  • 72×108: sold out

McGinley’s photographs have become more available in the secondary markets in the past few years, with prices ranging between $2000 and $33000.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Features/Reviews: NY Times T magazine (here), Wall Street Journal (here), Huffington Post (here), Hint (here)

Through June 2nd

83 Grand Street
New York, NY 10013

Ryan McGinley, Grids @Team

JTF (just the facts): A total of 3 large scale grids of color photographs, individually framed in white and unmatted, and hung in the main gallery space. Each of the grids is made up of an array of c-prints. The largest grid includes 55 prints, each 20×20. The smaller grids include 12 prints (each 30×38) or 10 prints (each 40×40). All three grids come in an edition of 1+1AP and are dated 2012. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Ryan McGinley’s rock concert photographs aren’t interested in the big productions or the wild performers. Instead of pointing his camera at the action on stage or taking wide shots of the seemingly endless sea of music fans, he gets right down in the throng, singling out individual up-close faces and capturing the variety in their fresh expressions. Blown up to larger than life size and arranged in neat grids, his kids shout and swagger with fierce energy.

With sweaty shaking hair, countless tattoos and piercings, and plenty of skin, McGinley’s pictures document the wide range of reactions of these fans: ecstasy, shock, wild screams, blissful fatigue, amazement, disbelief, stoned incomprehension, unadulterated joy, stupefied wonder, and maybe even momentary fear. Bathed in a rainbow of lights coming from the stage, the faces are tinted in hues from acidic yellow and throbbing red to pale blue and pastel green. When seen as grids up on the wall, they become bright kaleidoscopes of earnest, juiced-up emotion. While McGinley’s subjects will likely always be knocked for being too universally pretty, these works are certainly credible as a taxonomy of unguarded expressions; they feel real and authentic, supported by the unfailing optimism of youth. There are few jaded fans here, no snarky cynics, no cold water throwers. These kids are reveling in the moment, being exposed to events that are, in one way or another, blowing their minds; boundaries are being stretched and indelible memories are being made.

Purely photographically, these grids are in many ways unremarkable; it’s not even clear from the press release that McGinley made all the pictures himself. What is of more interest though is the cropping, editing, and packaging of these images that transforms the concert snaps into the refined and potent elixir of youth. In these works, McGinley has tapped into the genuine rush of excitement that comes from the collective experience of live music, and reminded us what it was like to be young and crazy and free, screaming at the top of our lungs.

Collector’s POV: The three grids in this show are priced at $80000, $85000, and $95000 each, and two of the three were already sold when I visited the show. McGinley’s single image photographs have become more available in the secondary markets in the past few years, with prices ranging between $2000 and $33000.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

  • Artist site (here)

Ryan McGinley, Grids
Through June 2nd

Team Gallery
47 Wooster Street
New York, NY 10013

JR at Mulberry and Prince

On a recent gallery swing through SoHo and the Lower East Side, I passed this huge (roughly six stories tall) photographic mural by JR on a building near the corner of Mulberry and Prince. Apparently, it is part of his Inside Out Project (here), from the subseries of North Dakota Native Americans. Its brash energy, mixing raw anger and frustration, is unexpectedly jolting and memorable. I have no idea how long it will be on view, so swing by a take a look before it gets torn down. By the way, JR is represented by in New York by Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery (here).

Lillian Bassman: Lingerie @Staley-Wise

JTF (just the facts): A total of 20 black and white photographs and 9 contact sheets, variously framed and matted, and hung in the winding main gallery space and the reception area. 14 of the black and white works are gelatin silver prints, ranging in size from 11×14 to 30×40. The other 4 black and white works are archival pigment prints, ranging in size from 42×52 to 44×57. The 9 contact sheets are 8×10 gelatin silver prints. No edition information was available for any of the prints. There are also 2 gelatin silver prints of Bassman taken by her husband, Paul Himmel. All of the works were taken between 1945 and the 1960s, except one new image from 2012. A monograph of this body of work was recently published by Abrams (here). (Installation shots at right.)
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Comments/Context: The late resurgence in the photographic career of Lillian Bassman is a story that is probably already well known to readers here. An influential fashion photographer for Harper’s Bazaar in the 1950s and 1960s, she was largely forgotten until roughly a decade ago, when some of her old negatives were rediscovered and she began to reprint and reinterpret them, often in larger sizes. A collection of her many photographs of lingerie models has recently been gathered into a monograph, but her death last winter has added a more melancholy note to this accompanying show.
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Bassman’s images of women’s lingerie capture a wide spectrum of forms and styles: corsets and girdles, slips and nightgowns, underwear and pajamas. She was fond of seductive silhouettes, with arms raised and faces averted, drawing our attention to anonymous feminine curves and confident stances. But the darkroom was where the real magic occurred. Bleaching and burning (and later making digital manipulations), she broadened the contrasts to harsher blacks and whites, increased the graininess to an expressionistic, painterly blur, and heightened shadows and softened highlights to transform her models into stylized, monochrome representations of elegance and glamour. The resulting images have a dreamy, ephemeral quality, the wispy grace of a pose threatening to disappear in a blink of an eye.

What makes these pictures work is their self-assured boldness. In many ways, the lingerie is just a subject matter detail; what is being offered is a combination of poise and coolness, made stronger by the punch of the black and white polarization. As Bassman extended the range of her signature aesthetic techniques, she took her images to new levels of sophistication and femininity, and further separated them from mainstream fashion photography.

Collector’s POV: Surprisingly, the prints in this show are not for sale; it seems that since the photographer’s recent death, the arrangements with the estate have not been finalized. Bassman’s prints (both vintage and later, generally 11×14 or smaller) have been available from time to time in the secondary markets, with prices ranging between $4000 and $15000 in the past few years. Her larger pigment prints and other recent works are likely only available at gallery retail prices.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

  • Features: Vanity Fair (here)
  • Obituary: NY Times (here)

Through May 26th

Staley-Wise Gallery
560 Broadway
New York, NY 10012

Chris Wiley, Technical Compositions @Nicelle Beauchene

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 color photographs, framed in  custom plywood frames, and hung in the small single room gallery space. All of the works are archival inkjet prints, made in 2012. The works come in two sizes: 26×18 (in editions of 4+2AP) and 41×27 (also in editions of 4+2AP). There are 4 large prints and 9 small prints in the show. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Chris Wiley’s photographs of found architectural geometries are executed with an exacting sense of compositional rigor. They are strict and precise, the juxtapositions of textures and shapes deftly controlled to maximize formal contrast in a two dimensional plane. While this nothing particularly new in photography, Wiley has taken this idea to near its logical extreme, crafting images with an undeniable affinity for visual structure, plucked from the chaos of city streets and pared down with almost mathematical austerity.The best of the images on view here are a patchwork of competing patterns and textures. Zig-zag stairs contrast with the smooth concrete of a nearby wall, which is punctuated by the slash of a handrail and its shadow, abutting the corrugated metal of a security door. It is a symphony in muted grey, with sharp edges and uncompromising severity. Similarly, a jumble of discarded materials becomes a sculptural puzzle: wavy cement slabs hold down a flecked orange carpet pad, which is covered by blue tarps and intersected by rusty green pipes. Other images are built on the meticulous alignment of lines and angles, with just a hint of wear and tear. Brick walls intersect with plywood squares, gridded orange tiles come loose, and curved arcs in yellow and brown converge into stripes. Large interlocking tiles give way to fluted columns and finally to a rough expanse of light blue paint.If these photographs were printed large and mounted as glossy objects, you might for a moment mistake them as a conceptual product of 1980s Dusseldorf. But the bright sunlight in the streets and the striped plywood frames upend that preliminary hypothesis; so perhaps they are distant relatives of some of Lewis Baltz’ 1970s prototype works or Anthony Hernandez’ tile walls, or just the extension of formal photographic ideas that have been around for years. All in, I liked the feeling of ordered delight in these photographs, and of the complex wonder of man-made surfaces being seen again for the first time.
Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows. The 26×18 prints are $3000 each and the 41×27 prints are $6000 each. Wiley’s work has not yet entered the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Review/Feature: Artefuse (here)
  • Towards a Warm Math at On Stellar Rays, curated by Wiley (here)
Chris Wiley, Technical Compositions

Through June 3rd

21 Orchard Street

New York, NY 10002

Photography at the 2012 Frieze New York Art Fair, Part 3 of 3

This is Part 3 of my review of the photography at the 2012 Frieze New York Art Fair. Part 1 can be found here, along with some background information on the fair and an explanation of the format I’m using for the the booth by booth details. Part 2 can be found here.

Purple Section

Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery (here): Barney Kulok (1)

Kaufmann Repetto (here): Shannon Ebner (1). Another entry in the “built to be photographed” category; this large graphic symbol in cinder blocks by Ebner was priced at $12000.

Rampa (here): Huseyin Bahri Alptekin (3)

Galerie Eva Presenhuber (here): Steven Shearer (3), Amy Granat (1). These floral photograms by Granat are reminiscent of similar images made by Kunie Sugiura, although these have been cropped, reoriented, and transformed into a repetitive, high contrast grid. The work was priced at $20000.

Regina Gallery (here): Nikolay Bakharev (5). I’ve seen a few of these engaging 1970s beach portraits from Bakharev of late, and they’re starting to grow on me. They were priced at $3000 each.

Maureen Paley (here): James Welling (2), Wolfgang Tillmans (2), David Salle (1), Gillian Wearing (1). If there was any one photographer whose work was ubiquitous at this fair, it was Wolfgang Tillmans. This was the best image of his that I saw (due to the complex use of color), a new one priced at $57000 and already sold.

Stuart Shave/Modern Art (here): Linder (10)

Galerie Perrotin (here): Sophie Calle (4 diptychs)

Galleria Continua (here): Mona Hatoum (1 Polaroid triptych). A simple idea, well executed – deadpan portraits with hair exploded by static electricity. This unique set of three prints by Hatoum was priced at $30000.

Frith Street Gallery (here): John Riddy (1), Tacita Dean (1 set of 14). Extra large versions of these Dean film strip works were recently on view at the Tate Modern. The set of 14 prints (offset not photographic) was priced at £45500.

Sikkema Jenkins & Co. (here): Vik Muniz (1). Washington Crossing the Delaware in Muniz’ most recent style, a dense collage of magazine scrap imagery. Priced at $45000, and not surprisingly, already sold.

Galerie Bucholz (here): Wolfgang Tillmans (2), Sam Lewitt (1 set of 10). I liked Lewitt’s layered NY Times transparencies, algorithmically reconstructed and subtracted to zero. Priced at $18000.

Kukje Gallery (here): Candida Hofer (1), Jenny Holzer (1)

Alison Jacques Gallery (here): Robert Mapplethorpe (3). I had never seen these particular Mapplethorpe florals before. The single blossoms are bathed in ghostly, almost garish, colored light. Priced at $35000.

Sprüth Magers (here): Andreas Gursky (1), Astrid Klein (4 collages), Thomas Demand (1), John Baldessari (1), Cindy Sherman (1). The reason I included this $285000 Baldessari image in this review has nothing to do with the pig, or the hands, or the composition really. What is impossible to see in this installation shot is that the work had surprising depth; the different colored portions are built up in inch thick layers. Yet another example of reimagining photography with sculptural qualities.

Pink Section

Wallspace (here): Daniel Gordon (1), Shannon Ebner (1), John Divola (1). Textures and patterns abound in this new work from Gordon, playing with idea of the sculptural bust, priced at $5800.

Galerie Neu (here): Bernadette Corporation (3), Tom Burr (1)

Galeria Fortes Vilaça (here): Jac Leirner (1)

Victoria Miro (here): Alex Hartley (1), William Eggleston (1), Isaac Julien (1 diptych)

303 Gallery (here): Hans-Peter Feldman (4), Collier Schorr (1), Stephen Shore (1 set of 8). This is an early conceptual series by Shore from the late 1960s (recently reprinted), where he stands and rotates in a circle, the desert background changing in each shot. Probably been done before and since, but still effective. Priced at $25000 for the set.

White Cube (here): Jeff Wall (1), Gilbert & George (1 set of 9)

Galerie Martin Janda (here): Roman Signer (1 set of 5, 1)

Photography at the 2012 Frieze New York Art Fair, Part 2 of 3

This is Part 2 of my review of the photography at the 2012 Frieze New York Art Fair. Part 1 can be found here, along with some background information on the fair and an explanation of the format I’m using for the the booth by booth details.

Yellow Section

Metro Pictures (here): Cindy Sherman (1 set of 35, 1 diptych), Louise Lawler (2), Olaf Breuning (1)

Regen Projects (here): James Welling (3), Wolfgang Tillmans (1), Gillian Wearing (1), Walead Beshty (1 diptych), Doug Aitken (1). It was hard to miss the eye-catching blast of saturated color in these photograms by Beshty. Priced at $48000 and already sold.

Renwick Gallery (here): Talia Chetrit (8). The Renwick booth was a solo show of Chetrit’s recent work, with up-close fragments of textural skin, hair and body parts. This chain and nipple image was priced at $3500.

Marcelle Alix (here): Charlotte Moth (1 set of 8, 1 )

Hollybush Gardens (here): Benoit Maire (2)

Galleria Raffaella Cortese (here): William Jones (5), Marcello Maloberti (2), Roni Horn (6), Yael Baratana (2). The floor of this booth was covered in magazine cut outs of mountain ranges, echoing Maloberti’s photograph of the process.

Karma International (here): Carissa Rodriguez (3)

The Third Line (here): Youssef Nabil (2)

Gallery Hyundai (here): Seung-Taek Lee (15)

Johann König (here): Annette Kelm (2)

47 Canal (here): Michele Abeles (6). The 47 Canal booth was a solo show of Abeles’ work, with densely layered still lifes/photo collages. They were priced at $3600 each and all sold.

Carlier Gebauer (here): Paul Graham (1 diptych)

Galerie Diana Stigter (here): Nathaniel Mellors (1), Amalia Pica (slide show)

Laura Bartlett Gallery (here): Cyprien Gaillard (5), John Divola (3), Becky Beasley (1 set of 3). I liked the changing definition of space in this hybrid of sculpture and photography by Beasley. It was priced at £11500.

Andrea Rosen Gallery (here): Josephine Meckseper (5), Walker Evans (3), Wolfgang Tillmans (7), Aaron Bobrow (1 diptych, 1). I found Meckseper’s assemblages of commercial items, complete with fog, fluorescent lighting, and shiny mannequins and backdrops unexpected and odd. They were priced at $7000 each. And while I have seen them before, I continue to enjoy the big Tillmans abstractions of misty color. This one was priced at $78000.

A Gentil Carioca (here): Thiago Rocha Pitta (3)

Orange Section

The Modern Institute (here): Luke Fowler (2)

Galerie Gisela Capitain (here): Alina Szapocznikow (1 set of 20), Christopher Williams (1 diptych), Zoe Leonard (5), Barbara Bloom (3)

Galerie Guido W. Baudach (here): Rashid Johnson (1), Jurgen Klauke (1)

Marc Foxx (here): Luisa Lambri (3), Anne Collier (1)

Mitchell-Innes & Nash (here): Amanda Ross-Ho (1). This Ross-Ho sculptural wall arrangement follows along from similar work show at MoMA in 2010. It was priced at $40000.

Alfonso Artiaco (here): Gilbert & George (1 set of 9), Vera Lutter (1 diptych), Darren Almond (2)

Galerie Francesca Pia (here): Elad Lassry (3, 1 set of 4)

Galerie Meyer Riegger (here): Helen Mirra (3)

Corvi-Mora (here): Anne Collier (1)

Galerie Krinzinger (here): Frank Thiel (1), Valie Export (1), Gunter Brus (2), Otto Muehl (1), Oleg Kulik (2), Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy (1), Thomas Zipp (1), Rudolf Schwartzkoger (1 set of 7), Marina Abramovic (1 set of 3), Vito Acconci (1). This large peeling paint image by Thiel is a recent addition to his Stadt series; it was priced at $34000.

Xavier Hufkens (here): Robert Mapplethorpe (4)

Galerie Praz-Delavallade (here): Amalia Saban (1)

Kerlin Gallery (here): Willie Doherty (2)

Richard Telles (here): Dan Finsel (1 diptych), Josephine Pryde (1)

Vermelho (here): Claudia Andujar (3), Rosangela Renno (1), Odires Mlaszho (2 collages)

Sean Kelly Gallery (here): Frank Thiel (1), Alec Soth (2), James Casebere (1), Robert Mapplethorpe (2), Iran do Espirito Santo (1), Yves Klein (1)
Galerie Chantal Crousel (here): Wolfgang Tillmans (2), Jean-Luc Moulene (3)

Salon 94 (here): Liz Cohen (1 set of 150, 1 diptych), David Benjamin Sherry (7), Carlo Mollino (39 Polaroids), Lorna Simpson (19 collages). While still life images of tools have been done before many times, I liked both the choice of smaller individual scale and the wall-filling volume of this typology; it was priced at $72000.

Sommer Contemporary Art (here): Yael Bartana (3), Gregor Hildebrandt (3)

Experimenter (here): Bani Abidi (1 installation). While the content and message of this piece were of less interest to me, I was intrigued by the agglomeration of photographic layers, of the pictures of pictures (in various sizes) then stacked and placed in spatial relationship to each other in a single collection.

Cheim & Read (here): William Eggleston (2), Jack Pierson (1)

Part 3 is here.

Photography at the 2012 Frieze New York Art Fair, Part 1 of 3

In a single audacious shot across the bow, Frieze New York has decisively, at least in my mind, challenged the Armory as the king of the local contemporary art fairs. There is no changing the visual overload or the wearying onslaught of “merch” inherent at such a place, but the organizers have at least made a real attempt to get the surrounding details right. The overall art-seeing experience in meaningfully better: the halls are wider and less cramped, the booths are roomier and more open, and the light is bright and airy. Even when the fair got more crowded and the sun came out to raise the temperature and cook the occupants during my visit Friday, every few yards a blast of arctic air conditioning would whoosh up from a grate under my feet for a shuddering moment of relief.

Photography-wise, the key thing to note about this fair is that there are NO photography specialist galleries included. Not one. So the available photography is broadcast throughout the fair population like tiny seeds, to be searched out and discovered amidst the rest of the contemporary art. There are also very few secondary market photographic trophies on offer (unlike the parade of Shermans in seemingly every booth at the Armory). This is first and foremost a primary market show, with galleries and dealers showing (for the most part) the work they represent.

For each gallery below (grouped by color coded section, starting near the North entrance), I’ve listed the photographers/artists with work on view, with the number of images on display in parentheses. In some specific cases where something caught my eye, I’ve added additional information, pricing (watch for different currencies), and installation shots.

Blue Section

Wilkinson Gallery (here): Anna Parkina (3), Laurie Simmons (1), Jimmy DeSana (1)

Anton Kern Gallery (here): Anne Collier (1)

Art:Concept (here): Jeremy Deller (1)

Galerija Gregor Podnar (here): Ion Grigorescu (1), B. Wurtz (1, with paired sculptural object)

Simon Lee Gallery (here): Hans-Peter Feldmann (1 set of 70). A classic of 1970s conceptual ordering, showing the entire wardrobe of a woman, from shirts on hangers to pairs of shoes. Priced at €35000.

Friedrich Petzel Gallery (here): Robert Heinecken (9)

Team Gallery (here): Sam Samore (2), Cory Arcangel (1), Ryan McGinley (6). Death at the foot of a playground slide never looked so wacky and offbeat (Samore’s 1973 image from The Suicidist, priced at $20000.) In a side room painted yellow/orange, a series of new cut photo collages by McGinley has a small solo show. The works are densely covered in his signature young men and women, Xacto knifed into a exuberant sea of tiny faces and bodies; this one was priced at $35000 and already sold.

Anthony Reynolds Gallery (here): Paul Graham (1 diptych, 3)

Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle (here): Thomas Ruff (2), Thomas Struth (2), Candida Hofer (1), Goshka Macuga (1). A all-over composition of pipes and pumps by Struth, from his recent series of scientific labs and facilities, priced at €85000.

Green Section

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (here): Uta Barth (1), Gillian Wearing (1), Phil Collins (1 set of 32). Wearing as a creepy rubber masked August Sander, priced at £35000.

Hauser & Wirth (here): Roni Horn (1), Rodney Graham (1 diptych)

Tomio Koyama Gallery (here): Mika Ninagawa (4). Ninagawa’s unorthodox use of vibrant color continues to astonish. From her recent series Noir, priced at $1200.

Harris Lieberman (here): Matt Saunders (2), Lisa Oppenheim (3). The delicate lace photogram gets an update by Oppenheim, folded over again and again into a layered progression of increasing complexity. One from the recent series of five, priced at $6500.

Galleri Nicolai Wallner (here): Joachim Koester (6)

Galerie Sfeir-Semler (here): Wael Shawky (8), Akram Zaatari (1), Yto Barrada (1). A haunting set of portraits of crusader puppets by Shawky, priced at €6000 each.

The Approach (here): Lisa Oppenheim (4), John Stezaker (1 set of 3 collages, 3 collages)

Almine Rech Gallery (here): Taryn Simon (3), Curtis Mann (1). Unlike Mann’s previous bleached images, in this recent work, he has scraped thin wavy lines across the surface of the emulsion in a completely abstract striped design, a bit reminiscent of Marco Breuer. Priced at $8800.

Timothy Taylor Gallery (here): Susan Hiller (1 set of 9)

Lehmann Maupin (here): Robin Rhode (1 set of 12). I’m a big fan of Rhode’s set piece wall drawings. Here cartoon chairs and a curled piece of white tubing provide the raw materials for a flip book story. Priced at $70000, with a solo show at the gallery coming in 2013.

Galerie Jocelyn Wolff (here): Guillaume Leblon (1)

Broadway 1602 (here): Penny Slinger (2 collages)

Air de Paris (here): Sturtevant (5), Jospeh Grigley (3)

Altman Siegel (here): Trevor Paglen (3). A long exposure image of the striated trails of dead satellites and space junk flying across the nighttime sky. Priced at $12000.

Galerie Thaddeus Ropac (here): Robert Mapplethorpe (2), Gilbert & George (1 set of 9)

Galerie Lelong (here): Alfredo Jaar (1 set of 5, 1 set of 3), Helio Oiticica (3), Cildo Meireles (1), Ana Mendieta (2). A Mendieta mud sculpture, printed large and priced at $75000.

Taka Ishii Gallery (here): Yuki Kimura (1)

Annet Gelink Gallery (here): Wilfredo Prieto (1), Yael Bartana (1 diptych), Ryan Gander (1)

Sies+Höke (here): Kris Martin (1 set of 10), Etienne Chambaud (1 set of 3)

Andrew Kreps Gallery (here): Goshka Macuga (1), Roe Ethridge (4)

Miguel Abreu Gallery (here): Liz Deschenes (2), Eileen Quinlan (3), Pamela Rosenkranz (1)

Part 2 is here; Part 3 is here.

Jessica Labatte @Golden

JTF (just the facts): A total of 3 large scale color photographs, framed in black and unmatted, and hung in the small single room gallery space. All of the works are archival inkjet prints, made in 2012. Each is sized roughly 73×57, and available in editions of 3. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: If you only take a passing glance at the installation shots at right, you might think Jessica Labatte’s photographs are merely decorative, in a colorfully angular and pleasingly abstract way. But what is hard to see in these images (and is really only evident when you stand in the gallery) is that these works are elaborately and meticulously constructed environments made of shards of mirror, which are reflecting colored lights being projected on paper in the surrounding installation. They are actually three-dimensional studio arrangements, which are then flattened by the camera into two-dimensional compositions.
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So while saturated colors pop against the enveloping black background, what is really going on here is a rigid formalist exercise in the alignment of shape and space, a bit reminiscent of the work of Barbara Kasten. Sharp edges arc and slash across the layers of mirror, creating clean geometries and crisp shadows that cross invisible depths. Squared off forms are broken into jagged jutting slivers and fragments. Tiny remnants of tape and paper reflected in the mirrors are subtle evidence of Labatte’s painstaking process, while perfect gradients offer unanswered technical questions. This simmering jumble of overlapping colors is actually very carefully controlled chaos.
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I like the idea of moving back and forth between studio reality and abstraction, and being allowed to explore the assembled world in multiple ways, where figure and ground alternation shift to the investigation of a turned mirror or a curve of shadow, and back again. Labatte proves there is plenty of unexamined territory in the still life genre, especially when complicated, made-to-be-photographed constructions are used to create nuanced illusions. While there are only three pictures in this tiny show, they offer plenty of excellent opportunities to get lost in the details.
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Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are priced at $10800 each. Labatte’s work has not yet entered the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Exhibit: MCA Chicago, 2010 (here)

Through May 27th

120 Elizabeth Street

New York, NY 10013

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