Philip-Lorca diCorcia: ELEVEN @David Zwirner

JTF (just the facts): A total of 26 color works, framed in white with no mats, and hung in large divided gallery space. All of the works are archival pigment prints, made between 1997 and 2008. Physical dimensions range between 32×40 and 32×50, and each image is printed in an edition of 15+2AP. The photographs were made on assignment for W magazine, in Paris, New York, Cairo, Havana, Los Angeles, Bangkok, and Sao Paulo. A monograph of all 11 commissions has recently been published by Freedman Damiani (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Coming into this show, I will freely admit that I brought along a healthy dose of blunt skepticism. The fashion photographs on display were made by diCorcia over the past decade on commission for W magazine, and having not seen them before (I’m not a W subscriber), I assumed they would be the normal kind of sell-out we often see, where commerce trumps art and the results are less than inspiring. In a photographic year that has so far been generally unremarkable, I am happy to report that these pictures entirely undermined my expectations. I think this is the first photography show of the year that is truly worth a special trip to see, if only because it so consistently defies the standard fashion photography framework.

DiCorcia’s careful staging of seemingly authentic scenes is by now entirely familiar to most collectors I would guess. What is different here is that he has broken down the walls of the fashion genre and mashed up his uncertain atmospheric narratives with traditional clothing-centric sales shots. In his pictures, the fashions have been placed in the context of a specific moment or life; they no longer stick out front-and-center to be pawed and gawked at – instead they have been muted, as though just one minor detail in the setting of a larger story (often in some exotic locale). As such, these photographs look like “diCorcias” rather than ads; sure, there are some stylish people here and there, but they are incidental to the larger theater taking place.

What I found most engrossing about these images is how uncertain they are. Nearly every work is a multiplicity of situations and perspectives in one frame, as though the complex action was paused for just a second. Gestures, stances, and glances give us clues to the relationships, but the layers are ultimately disconnected and unknowable, and we are left to fill in the gaps with our own conjectures. A naked man stands in a glass shower stall on display in the middle of a fancy New York apartment, a young woman poses ringside watching a kickboxing match in Bangkok, a headscarfed young woman in Cairo looks at a natural history exhibit of flamingos while a nearby man looks away, a bride stands on a ladder adjusting the elaborate light fixtures in an otherwise nondescript ballroom, a young woman sits in a chair while three chorus girls with chandelier headdresses stand nearby. What is going on in these pictures? Every single image in this show has this uneasy ambiguity, a light touch of sophistication and glamour mixed into silent cinematic stills. Again and again, we see women standing powerfully, while men, children, and other random people provide a carefully orchestrated backdrop open to interpretation. But diCorica has avoided the wild flights of fancy and crazy over-the-top scenes that have become a fashion photography cliche; his staged situations stand right on the edge of seeming truth and something slightly off kilter.

I guess what impressed and surprised me most about this body of work is how stubbornly diCorcia retained his own artistic voice in these commissions. The works on view consistently bear his hallmarks, and quite a few are strong, memorable compositions that will stand well with the best of his many other projects and series from his long career. All in, these pictures were FAR better and more nuanced than I expected they would be, and as such, they kicked me out of a deep rut of thinking that normally undervalues commissioned work.

Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are priced at $30000 each. DiCorcia’s work is widely available at auction, with recent secondary market prices ranging between $5000 and $72000, with a sweet spot between $10000 and $25000.

While I can say that I liked quite a few images in this show, my favorite was W, September 1997, #5, 1997; while it’s not easy to see, it’s the image in the center of the top installation shot. I like the way the red brick wall bisects the picture plane, with one story (a guy washing his car with a power sprayer) on one side and another (a young woman dressed in black on the street near a pawn shop) on the other. The two stories are unrelated, but somehow ambiguously connected.

Rating: *** (three stars) EXCELLENT (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

  • Reviews: Daily Beast (here), T Magazine blog (here), La Lettre de la Photographie (here)

Philip-Lorca diCorcia: ELEVEN
Through March 5th

David Zwirner
525 West 19th Street
New York, NY 10011

Michael Benson, Beyond @Hasted Kraeutler

JTF (just the facts): A total of 12 large scale photographic works, framed in black with no mats, and hung in the entry and the first two rooms of the gallery space. All of the works are digital chromogenic prints mounted on Dibond, made between 2003 and 2011. There are 11 single images, 1 triptych, and 1 video in the show. Square format dimensions range from 35×35 to 72×72, while more panorama style works range from 35×70 to 18×77; some of the images are available in multiple sizes. The works have generally been printed in editions of 8 regardless of size, with one exception in an edition of 3. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Since the invention of the medium, photography and science have been inextricably intertwined. From the very beginning, photographs were used to document and illustrate physical phenomena, from Atkins’ cyanotypes of British algae to Muybridge’s motion studies (see Brought to Light, the terrific SFMOMA exhibit of a couple of years ago for more on 19th century scienfic photography, here). Decades later Tasker would use X-rays to plumb the depths of natural floral geometries and Abbott would set up elaborate experiments to examine the fundamental properties of physics. Unquestionably, all of these photographs had aesthetic value and became part of our visual education. And yet even today, the line between science and art continues to be a blurry one, open to interpretation and agrument – are certain pictures categorized as art or science? Do they belong in National Geographic or in a white cube? And are these questions even relevant?

Michael Benson’s photographs of interstellar space fall into this art/science trap in a 21st century manner. Starting with digital files buried in space agency databases all over the world, Benson sifts and sorts hundreds of images, stitching together larger mosaics from thousands of fragments taken over time as a probe or spacecraft whizzed by something of interest. There is a meticulousness required of this kind of craftsmanship: correcting distortions, filling in gaps, matching, tweaking, synthesizing. Unlike Thomas Ruff’s recent Cassini images which used the same kind of space imagery as a starting point for further simplification and manipulation, Benson stays close to the science, interpreting the data yes, but ultimately aiming at some definition of the heretofore invisible “truth”.

His results are printed in vibrant color at monumental scale, further enhancing their power to astound: the sun is a fiery red ball covered in angry flashes, a tiny moon is dwarfed by the enormity of Jupiter, Saturn’s rings create layered arcs and shadows, a swirling dust storm rushes across the face of Mars. These are incredible sights most of us have never seen, and it’s hard not to be drawn into the sheer, cool, “otherness” of what is on display. Even the most jaded and skeptical of gallery goers will have to admit that these are intellectually interesting; they may not agree that they are “art” in any traditional or conceptual sense (and may discount them as a result), but as pure visual theater, they’re pretty astonishing.

Collector’s POV: The images in this show are generally priced based on size, ranging from $5500 for the smallest works to $25000 for the largest, with a few intermediate prices in between ($7500, $12500); the triptych is $18000. Benson’s work is not consistently available in the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

My favorite image in the show was Uranus with Rings, Voyager, January 24, 1986, 2010; it’s the picture second from the right in the top installation shot. I liked the perfect, almost abstract geometry of the central white orb, surrounded by the cluster of tiny, delicate, nearly invisible rings.
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Features: Wall Street Journal (here), Photo Booth (here)
  • Recent exhibit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (here)
  • Book: Beyond: Visions of Interplanetary Probes (here)
Through March 26th

Hasted Kraeutler Gallery
537 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011

Marcia Resnick, Bad Boys: Punks, Poets, and Provocateurs @Deborah Bell

JTF (just the facts): A total of 29 black and white photographs, generally framed in black and matted, and hung against blue and white walls in the single room gallery space; one group of 6 images is unframed and pinned directly to the wall under glass. All of the works are vintage gelatin silver prints, taken between 1974 and 1982. The prints vary in size from roughly 6×10 to 16×20, with most roughly 9×13 or reverse. Individual image captions written by the artist are available in the checklist. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Marcia Resnick’s New York portraits from the late 1970s and early 1980s are a gritty, raw time capsule, capturing the diverse personalities of famous “bad boys”, running the entire spectrum from from Iggy Pop to Divine.
Moving between close-in faces and more theatrical stagings taken a bit further back, Resnick documented musicians, artists, authors, and actors, always with a sense of heightened drama: Johnny Thunders wearing a wide brimmed hat and elongated hair like a Hassidic Jew, John Belushi hiding behind the crook of his arm, Jean-Michel Basquiat surrounded by looming shadows, Quentin Crisp in dapper profile. The images have a down and dirty reality, mixed with the feeling that something special was going on; in one picture, Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol, and William Burroughs share a tense meal together, apparently eating in silence.

In addition to the various portraits, there is a terrific series of images of a chaotic dinner table, overstuffed with littered plates, cigarettes, crumpled napkins, half full beers, and discarded bones, photographed from slightly different vantage points and moments in time, creating a messy overlapping testament to excess. It’s grungy, disorderly, confrontational, and full of kinetic energy, just like the many larger-than-life characters peering down from the walls nearby.

Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are priced between $2000 and $4500. Resnick’s prints are not regularly available in the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

My favorite image in the show was Charles Ludlum, NYC, 1979; it’s actually hanging in one of the small side alcoves and isn’t pictured in the installation shots above. The up-close portrait is slightly off center, and the formal qualities of the various textures (shirt, tie, jacket, whiskers, fingers, and folds of skin) make for an intricately layered composition.

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

Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Review: Flavorwire (here)
  • Interview: Papermag (here)
Through February 26th

511 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001

Big Shots: Andy Warhol’s Portraits of Celebrities @Danziger

JTF (just the facts): A total of 38 color photographs, framed in white and matted, and hung in the single room gallery space. All of the works are unique Polacolor Type 108 Polaroid prints, each roughly 4×3; the images were taken between 1971 and 1986. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: By now, it’s common knowledge that Andy Warhol used photography as an intermediate process step in making many of his paintings, particularly his commissioned portraits. This small show gathers together a selection of his head shot Polaroids from the 1970s and 1980s, capturing the biggest celebrities of the times from the worlds of fashion, music, art, and politics, reflected in the glow of his own massive fame.

While these pictures were originally taken as source material for later manipulation and appropriation, they have a compelling and unmistakable style; Warhol clearly had a aubtle eye for the composition of photographic portraits and imposed that originality on his subjects, making them his own. Given that the images would later be pared down to lines and then screen printed, the compositions needed to have strong formal outlines. To heighten the contrast, many of the women were made up in bright red lipstick and white foundation, or have billowing explosions and swirls of hair; Diane von Furstenberg, Diana Ross and Jane Fonda all look particularly extreme. The men are often seen from the side or in profile, sometimes with a prop, like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bulging arm or Truman Capote’s fedora.

As I have seen more and more of these portraits over the years, I have come to the conclusion that while his signature style has become overexposed and ubiquitous, we discount Warhol’s talents at our own peril. Think about what he accomplished with these pictures: he took the most famous and most photographed people of the decade, sat them down, and in a matter of moments, transformed them into something completely new with a seemingly simple head shot. Perhaps we can call this a situation where his fame superseded that of his sitters (an amazing feat of its own), but I remain impressed by his ability to consistently place his carefully controlled artistic mark on rock stars, presidents and other icons who would normally resist such treatment. Try this test when you’re in the gallery: block out who the famous person actually is and just look at the way each portrait is structured. Yes, this show is a parade of incandescent stars, but in the end, it’s Warhol on display, not his subjects.

Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are priced between $10000 and $15000. Warhol’s Polaroid portraits can be regularly found in the secondary markets, with prices ranging between $3000 and $21000 in recent years, mostly based on the relative fame of the person pictured.

My favorite image(s) in the show were the group of four images each entitled Self Portrait in Fright Wig, 1986; they’re on the right in the bottom installation shot. The background for these pictures is black, so Warhol, his wild wig and big black sunglasses emerge from the darkness; when he later turned them into two color paintings, the portraits became even freakier.

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

Transit Hub:

  • Review: Flavorwire (here)
  • Exhibit: @Nasher, 2009 (here)

Big Shots: Andy Warhol’s Polaroids of Celebrities
Through February 26th

Danziger Projects
534 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011

Michael Huey, China Cupboard @Newman Popiashvili

JTF (just the facts): A total of 17 color images, generally framed in grey with no mat, and hung in the one room basement gallery (down the stairs from the street level). The works are c-prints mounted on aluminum, made between 2007 and 2011. Nearly all of the prints are 16×21, with 1 larger print at 45×59, and 1 smaller print at 18×16 (in a special red frame); all of the prints (regardless of size) come in editions of 5+2AP. (Installation shots at right.)
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Comments/Context: The delicate china display still life has been a popular motif since the very beginnings of photography, starting most notably with William Henry Fox Talbot and continuing on through the 19th century with artists like Giorgio Sommer. Michael Huey has taken an updated look at this genre, making images of stacked dinnerware, shelves of everyday plates and cups, and display cases brimming with figurines and fancy collectibles.

The 21st century difference here is that Huey has reversed the palette, taking the negative values and then infusing some of them with pastel color. The effect is something like an x-ray or wearing night vision goggles, or perhaps an echo of Vera Lutter with a dash of painterly color. Light blue, aquamarine and soft orange diffuse through shelf backgrounds, while dishes and teapots turn pink and blue. The largest print on display is an enlargement of figurines, with finger sized people blown-up into imposing ghost statues with eerie coloration.

These kinds of images have always had a layer of simple formal beauty on the surface and deeper questions of who and why underneath. What does this collection of objects represent? Why were they chosen? What kind of person collects or uses these things? The complex visual effects that Huey has employed make the formal elements of these pictures more pronounced, familiar shapes and outlines becoming otherworldly, repetitions and patterns creating all-over compositions. But the questions of use and purpose remain obscure, seemingly obvious and yet surprisingly elusive.
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Collector’s POV: The images in the show are priced as follows. The small prints, either 18×16 or 16×21 are $4000 each; the single larger print (45×59) is $10000. Huey’s work has not yet appeared in the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.
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My favorite image in the show was China Cupboard (no. 12), 2010; it’s the center image in the bottom row in the middle installation shot. I liked both the ethereal contrasts of black/white and pink/blue on the modern forms and the black grid lines created by the framing of the shelves.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:

  • Artist site (here)
  • Reviews: New Yorker (here), New York Observer (here)
  • Feature: Art in America (here)

Michael Huey, China Cupboard
Through February 23rd
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Newman Popiashvili Gallery
504 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

Allen Ginsberg @Greenberg

JTF (just the facts): A total of 52 black and white photographs, framed in black and matted, and hung in groups against light brown and cream walls in the main gallery space and the book alcove. All of the works are gelatin silver prints, taken between 1945 and 1996, with most made in the 1950s and 1960s. The 15 photobooth and “drugstore” prints range in size from 2×2 to 4×5; the 37 regular prints range between 8×10 and 16×20, with many at 11×14. The show includes a mix of vintage and later prints, many with hand written captions; no edition information was available. One portrait of Ginsberg with Peter Orlovsky taken by Richard Avedon in 1963 is also included at the beginning of the exhibit. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Back in 2002, Howard Greenberg Gallery acquired over 1000 photographs from the estate of the famous poet and activist Allen Ginsberg. This show is a sampler of Ginsberg’s photographic work from his entire career, including many vintage and later prints of himself and his fellow Beat writers.
I think Ginsberg’s pictures are of interest for two main reasons. First, they provide a time capsule view of the 1950’s Beat writers and poets: Ginsberg himself, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso et al. The images are an insider’s snapshot of this small group of men: caught at the typewriter, joking around in Ginsberg’s apartment, walking on the street, traveling in Tangier, meeting other now-famous people. They reconstruct their days in New York and San Francisco, and provide insights into the real personalities of these influential writers.

Second, and I think more durably, Ginsberg explored the idea of combining text with his images, often via elaborate hand-written captions and inscriptions right on the white space of the prints themselves. Sometimes these words are merely descriptions of people and locations, but in many cases, Ginsberg provides personal scene setting and story telling details: what books an author was working on at the time, evidence of first or last meetings between people, who was strung out, or what someone was eating that day. While not every caption is particularly poetic, I think Ginsberg successfully broke down some of the barriers between text and imagery in ways that hadn’t been crossed before, and these written words transform relatively straightforward pictures into something deeper and more unexpected. The front-and-center captions make the history come alive.
As such, this show works on two levels: one for fans of Ginsberg and the other Beat writers who want to live vicariously through these stolen moments, and one for photographers interested in expanding the boundaries of portraiture thought the addition of text.
Collector’s POV: The works in this show are generally priced in two groups: the vintage photobooth and “drugstore” prints range in price between $9000 and $22000, with several intermediate prices, and the larger prints range between $4000 and $25000, again with a variety of prices in the middle. A small number of Ginsberg’s prints seem to come up at auction every year, with prices ranging between $1000 and $16000 in the past few seasons.
My favorite photograph in the show was Eager Kerouac, East 7th Street, New York, 1963; it’s the image on the bottom left in the cluster of four prints in the top installation shot. I like the way the bookshelf and the vertical shadows obscure the author’s face, making the portrait a little less obvious.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Exhibit: Beat Memories @NGA, 2010 (here)
  • Feature: Smithsonian magazine (here)
Allen Ginsberg
Through March 12th

41 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

Introducing the Checklist

I was recently paging through the Art listings in the back of New York magazine and I was thinking to myself that they were pretty ineffective for me as a photography collector. In any given issue, there might be a handful of photography shows listed in various museums and galleries, perhaps even a few marked in red as Editor’s Picks, maybe chosen by Jerry Saltz or maybe chosen by someone else (not entirely clear from the explanatory text). But these listings neither appear to be a list of the most “important” or most well-publicized shows, nor do they seem to reflect a particularly careful selection based on incisive opinions of quality. Instead, they seem to be an eclectic, edited mix of known and unknown, good and bad, some not yet even open. And as I said, not hugely helpful as far as a systematic review of current photography goes.

The blurb listings in the New York Times on Fridays in the Arts section are no better, mostly because they hardly ever stray from the major museum exhibits or a select few gallery shows of photography. The list is always tightly edited, with very few surprises, since the blurbs are drawn from longer articles (features and blurbs from Art in Review) that were previously published. But for someone trying to figure out what photography to go see this weekend, they’re only really helpful if you’ve missed something extremely obvious.

And then I thought about the Art related blurbs in the Goings On About Town section of the New Yorker – essential reading, but once again imperfect I’m afraid. This isn’t because Vince Aletti’s photography reviews aren’t the best thing going, but mostly because they vanish from week to week, and unless you are an extremely vigilant reader, it’s hard to remember what Vince said about a show he reviewed three or four weeks ago (unless your favorite gallery has kindly emailed you a copy); this is especially true of long running museum shows which may have been blurbed months ago. So in any given week, while there are 4 or 5 fresh reviews, there is really no way to see the entire expanse of what he has reviewed or use his reviews to make prioritized decisions on what to go see.

Other listing options include the website The Two Percent (here), which uses a promising aggregation approach (a grid which tallies which shows have been reviewed by which major publications) and Photograph magazine (here), with its simple but comprehensive listings of photo shows and venues. The challenge with the former is that there is no way to tell whether the reviews being tallied were good, bad, or indifferent, and there are typically only a handful of photography shows in the mix, so it’s hard to draw too many insightful conclusions from the data; the challenge with the latter is that even though it generally includes everything that is out there on view, photography-wise, there are no ratings, so it provides no help in separating the wheat from the chaff.

The more I thought about this, the more it seemed entirely crazy to me. This is New York, the hypothetical center of the art world. How can there be no weekly listings that actually deliver value via thoughtful, systematic opinion? That you would actually use to plan your Saturday gallery tour of photography?

Regular readers here will know that I consistently visit and review photography shows at local museums and galleries. So I’ve decided to try and step into this newly identified void with a concise checklist of every photography show I have reviewed that is currently still open, to be updated on a weekly basis (adding new reviews and removing those for ones that have closed). Of course, this approach also has it’s flaws, the major one being that shows I haven’t yet reviewed aren’t included in the list; the list is inherently tied to my quirks of timing. Each entry is painfully simple: rating, followed by artist, followed by venue, followed by closing date, followed by a link to the review if you want more context/detail, all sorted by by neighborhood and closing date (closest first). I hope that it gives you a clear answer to the cocktail party questions I get constantly: so what photography shows should I go see? What’s the best out there right now? Depending on where you are, or where you’re going, my answer is below. Print it out, stick it in your pocket, and start checking them off.

Uptown

ONE STAR: Between Here and There: Met: February 13: review
TWO STARS: Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand: Met: April 10: review

Midtown

ONE STAR: Hai Bo: Pace/MacGill: February 26: review
ONE STAR: Ray K. Metzker: Laurence Miller: February 26: review

TWO STARS: Pictures By Women: MoMA: March 21: review

ONE STAR: Abstract Expressionism New York: MoMA: April 25: review
TWO STARS: The Mexican Suitcase: ICP: May 8: review

Chelsea

TWO STARS: Todd Hido: Bruce Silverstein: February 12: review
TWO STARS: McDermott & McGough: Cheim & Read: February 12: review
ONE STAR: David Allee: Morgan Lehman: February 19: review
ONE STAR: Stuart Hawkins: Zach Feuer: February 19: review
ONE STAR: Richard Misrach: Yancey Richardson: February 19: review
ONE STAR: Sam Samore: D’Amelio Terras: February 19: review
ONE STAR: Jeri Eisenberg: Kathryn Markel: February 26: review
ONE STAR: E.V. Day: Carolina Nitsch: March 5: review

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown

ONE STAR: Sam Lewitt: Miguel Abreu: February 27: review
ONE STAR: Paolo Woods: Anastasia Photo: March 5: review
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Elsewhere Nearby

No current reviews

Hai Bo, Recent Work @Pace/MacGill

JTF (just the facts): A total of 9 large scale photographic works, generally framed in black and not matted, and hung against red and putty colored walls in the divided gallery space. The prints are either pigment or LightJet prints mounted to Dibond, available in editions of 5, 8, or 12. Physical dimensions range from roughly 20×62 to 55×110, with each image its own specific size. There are 8 color single images and 1 black and white triptych in the show. All of the works were made between 2007 and 2009. There is no photography allowed in the gallery, so the installation shots at right are via the Pace/MacGill website.

Comments/Context: One of the main criticisms of the recent boom in Chinese contemporary art was that much of the work seemed to have been specifically made for Western audiences and collectors: big, bold images, full of Chinese cliches and Western consumerism, easily reproducible by armies of staff members; in short, the ultimate get-rich-quick luxury commodity. Hai Bo’s photographs clearly come from somewhere much more authentic and personal. His recent works examine small contemplative moments of quiet, where the burdens of time weigh heavily, and where the people in his pictures have the chance to consider both their own mortality and their place in the larger span of history.

Most of Hai Bo’s subjects are elderly men, perhaps moving a bit more slowly than in their busier younger days. His images capture the rhythms of endless days, where lonely figures walk on desolate roads amid the frozen stubble of winter fields and handfuls of men sit on garden seats, trading stories and taking stock of village life on a rural timescale. One man leans his head against the trunk of a tree, in a gesture of supplication or anguish, while another wrinkled face peers out from the darkness, the plastic ear bud dangling from one ear the only clue to his modern existence. These are the men left behind by the wave of migration to the big cities, born into a world of agriculture and living out their twilight years fatigued and forgotten, some recast as faceless black silhouettes clustered outside a frigid nursing home.

There is a marked sense of poignancy in these pictures, a depressing empty feeling that these men are repeating the age old ritual of being ground up and erased by the tides of collective history. For these individuals, the struggle for meaning against the backdrop of centuries of Chinese history seems palpably real; the hardships are many and insignificance once again knocks ominously on the door. Hai Bo takes an unwavering glance at these lives, and his photographs provide a compassionate, but ultimately heavy-hearted foil to the popular narrative of China’s ever-accelerating economic transformation.
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Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are priced between $16000 and $40000. Hai Bo’s photographs have recently begun to enter the secondary markets, with prices ranging between $5000 and $44000 at auction in the past two years.

To my eyes, Passing Traveller, 2008, is by far the standout image in the show; it’s on the left in the top installation picture. It has an iconic feel, depicting a solitary older man walking down a potholed dirt road, surrounded by the expanse of flat land, Chinese history, and time itself, dissolving into the nothingness of the enveloping yellow haze.

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

Transit Hub:
  • Reviews/Features: Daily Beast (here), Wall Street Journal (here), Artslant (here)
Through February 26th

32 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

Auction Previews: Contemporary Art Evening and Day Sales, with the Valencia Collection, February 17 and 18, 2011 @Phillips London

Phillips seems to have lost the battle of the recent photography consigments, as its first offering of photography in 2011 is decidedly underwhelming. In contrast to the total photo value on offer at Sotheby’s (roughly 3 million pounds) and Christie’s (roughly 4 million pounds) earlier in the week in London, Phillips’ sale is a distant third, hardly within shouting distance. Overall, there are a total of 29 lots of photography available across the three Phillips sales (none in the high end Evening sale), with a Total High Estimate for photography of £458000.

Here’s the statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including £5000): 3
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): £11000

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between £5000 and £25000): 21
Total Mid Estimate: £287000

Total High Lots (high estimate above £25000): 5
Total High Estimate: £160000

The top lot by High estimate is tied between two works: lot 298, Fischli and Weiss, Untitled (SAS and Concorde, NY), 1988/1989, image at right, middle, and lot 306, Marilyn Minter, Runs, 2005, image at right, bottom, both at £25000-35000. (Images via Phillips.)

Here is the very short list of the photographers who are represented by more than one lot in the three sales (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Marilyn Minter (3)
Vik Muniz (2)
Thomas Ruff (2)

(Lot 310, Jörg Sasse, 2075, 2003, at £4000-6000, image at right, top, via Phillips.)

The complete lot by lot catalogs can be found here (Evening), here (Day) and here (Valencia).
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Contemporary Art Evening Sale
February 17th
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Contemporary Art Day Sale
February 18th

Valencia Contemporary Art Collection
February 18th

Phillips De Pury & Company
Howick Place
London SW1P 1BB

Auction Previews: Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening and Day Auctions, February 16 and 17, 2011 @Christie’s King Street

Christie’s begins its 2011 photo season with a solid selection of contemporary photography in its Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening and Day auctions at King Street on the 16th and 17th. The top eight lots consist of work by just four artists: Gursky, Sugimoto, Sherman, and Gilbert & George. Overall, there are 41 photography lots on offer across the two sales, with a Total High Estimate of £3920000, an increase in estimate value of over 240% compared to the same sale last year.
Here’s the breakdown:
Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including £5000): 1
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): £4000
Total Mid Lots (high estimate between £5000 and £25000): 23
Total Mid Estimate: £351000
Total High Lots (high estimate above £25000): 17
Total High Estimate: £3565000
The top lot by High estimate is lot 17, Andreas Gursky, Untitled V, 1997, at £800000-1200000. (Image at right, top, via Christie’s.)
Here is the list of photographers who are represented by two or more lots in the two sales (with the number of lots in parentheses):
Andreas Gursky (5)
Hiroshi Sugimoto (5)
Candida Höfer (3)
Anselm Kiefer (3)
Zhang Huan (3)
Nobuyoshi Araki (2)
Gilbert & George (2)
Vik Muniz (2)
Shirin Neshat (2)
Cindy Sherman (2)
(Lot 54, Hiroshi Sugimoto, The Last Supper, 2000, at £400000-600000, image at right, bottom, and lot 15, Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still (#34), 1979, at £200000-300000, image at right, middle, via Christie’s.)
The complete lot by lot catalogs can be found here (Evening) and here (Day).
Christie’s
8 King Street, St. James’s
London SW1Y 6QT

Paolo Woods @Anastasia Photo

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 color photographs, framed in black and matted, and hung in the single room gallery and office alcove. The prints are square format archival inkjet prints, and come in two sizes: 36×36 (in editions of 5) and 16×16 (in editions of 10). There are 9 images in the large size and 4 images in the small size in the show, and all of the photographs were made between 2005 and 2009. Each image is accompanied by a text caption provided by the photographer. A monograph of this body of work, entitled Marche Sur Mes Yeaux, was published by Editions Grasset (here) in 2010. (Installation shots at right.).

Comments/Context: In recent years, the West’s view of Iran has become increasingly polarized, largely driven by questions of extreme politics and the country’s nuclear aspirations. Photojournalist Paolo Woods has spent the past five years making pictures inside Iran, and his images provide a much more nuanced and complex picture of Iranian society than the stereotypes to which we have become accustomed might otherwise imply.

Nearly every picture in this show tells a story, either of an individual or of a facet of current society embodied by the scene (or both), further embellished by detailed captions providing additional background information. Wood’s photographs touch on women’s rights/roles, youth culture, the influence of the West, Islamic religious traditions, the increasing wealth of the middle class, and the multiplicity of political activity. Along the way, he finds plenty of contradictions and changing behaviors: centerfold nudes woven into high quality Persian carpets, 20-somethings in a mix of fancy Western and Middle Eastern fashions standing in drained swimming pools, regular folks taking classes at the Tehran Laughing School, modern women on the ski slopes, a teenager in his room surrounded by rock posters and graffiti drawings.

Many of these portraits have a formality that implies the cooperation of the sitters, rather than simply snatched moments from passing life. As such, the pictures often seem careful and condensed, their contrasts sharpened through composition. Together, they provide a glimpse of today’s Iran that isn’t so easily summed up, a nation with plenty of conflicting ideas and strong traditions, struggling to merge the old and new into some kind of creative workable equilibrium.

Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows. The 36×36 prints are $3300 and the 16×16 prints are $1600. Woods’ work has little secondary market history, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

My favorite image in this show was the portrait of Maryam and her mother (no exact titles and dates were available); it’s the image on the far left in the middle installation shot. I liked the pairing of mother and daughter in the kitchen, looking away from each other, their contrasting styles and attitudes each clearly apparent via clothing and posture.

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

Transit Hub:

  • Artist site (here)
  • Feature: Lens (here)

Paolo Woods
Through March 5th

Anastasia Photo
166 Orchard Street
New York, NY 10002

E.V. Day: Seducers @Nitsch

JTF (just the facts): A total of 16 color photographs, framed in white with no mats, and hung in the small, single room gallery space. All of the works are chromogenic archival prints, made in 2010-2011. 3 of the works are 72×72, in editions of 5. There are two portfolios of six images each, where each individual image is 32×32; these portfolios are available in editions of 8. A single 24×24 print is also on display, in an edition of 5. A catalog of all 50 images from the series, including a single 12×12 print, is available in an edition of 36. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Aggressive isn’t a word that usually gets applied to flower photography; elegant, intimate, dainty, yes, but not aggressive (except perhaps in the case of Nobuyoshi Araki). E.V. Day’s images of flowers from her recent series Seducers are about as confrontational and aggressive as I have seen of late, without crossing into the realm of garish. They boldly look down from the walls and alternately assault and attract viewers with their wild extravagance.

Day’s process introduces a bit of science and technology into the making of flower pictures, almost hearkening back to the work of Anna Atkins in the mid 19th century. During an artist in residence stint at the Claude Monet Foundation in Giverny, France, she collected blooms, pressed them in a microwave, digitally scanned them, and then mirrored them left to right to create perfectly symmetrical close-ups, which were then enlarged to monumental size. The result is a set of electric images with extreme geometries, full of vibrant, saturated, almost psychedelic color (reminiscent of the Acid Bloom colors of Mika Ninagawa). Whether cropped to reveal just the inner core of the flower or stepped back to see the outline against a white backdrop, each idealized bloom drew me in, enveloping me in seemingly endless patterns and kaleidoscope repetitions. At this scale, a few of the flowers have an unsettling explicitness, a sense of almost going too far in the attempt to attract pollinators. Fragile and delicate have given way to ornate and flamboyant, embellishment piled on embellishment in fantastic layers.
I think the huge prints are the most successful in this show. Their size changes the normal human/floral dynamic; instead of peering down into a tiny natural wonder, we are drawn into the carefully laid trap like a passing insect. Seek out these big prints for the weird feeling of being hypnotized and mesmerized by plants adept at the art of seduction.

Collector’s POV: The photographs in this show are priced as follows. The large 72×72 prints are $15000 each. The two 6 image portfolios are $18000 each as sets; individual 32×32 images from the portfolios are also available for $4500 each. The single 24×24 image is $3500. The 12×12 prints from the larger series are $1200 each. Day’s work is not widely available in the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

My favorite image in this show was Water Lily, 2010-2011; it’s the image on the left in the bottom installation shot. I like the provocative intensity of the interwoven patterns, combining orange arcs, overlapping pink and purple petals, and the small yellow center.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
Through March 5th

534 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

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