Julie Blackmon: Line-Up @Robert Mann

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 color photographs, framed in white with no mats, and hung in the single room gallery space (with a small dividing wall). All of the works are archival pigment prints. The images on view come in three physical sizes with corresponding edition sizes: 22×29 in editions of 25, 32×42 in editions of 10, and 40×53 in editions of 5. There are 2 of the smallest size, 6 of the middle size, and 5 of the largest size in the show. All of the works were made between 2008 and 2010. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Since our home has a couple of young kids running wild inside, Julie Blackmon’s stylized images of the loosely controlled chaos of childhood seem all too familiar. With a touch of humor and an eye for situations that border on the realistically absurd, her pictures are digitally staged vignettes that at once seem both wildly artificial and surprisingly and ironically plausible.
My favorite picture in the show is High Dive, where a gaggle of mismatched and unmonitored children fire straggly dolls off the second floor deck of a suburban house toward a blue plastic wading pool, while the parents sit outside on the lawn and drink wine in the twilight, generally oblivious to the action going on nearby. An appropriate assortment of abandoned clothing and shoes is strewn across the landscape. It captures both the imagination of summertime childhood play as well as the stress release of communal parenting. I can entirely imagine the scene devolving into tears (likely from a now remorseful or angry doll owner), or perhaps a back-handed shout of “No Injuries!” from one or another of the otherwise happily distracted parents.
Blackmon’s pictures both pare down and exaggerate typical family-life scenes, making them almost perfect caricatures of the reality they portray. A girl practices her violin while her brother plugs his ears, a boy climbs the built-in shelving of the library, and kids scatter in the street as a parent loads the trunk of a car. Carefully placed props (a scooter, a half-eaten doughnut, a pile of confetti, a bunch of tinker toys, a Godzilla action figure) make the stories more enigmatically complex, referring to other related but unmentioned narratives that have already played out at some time in the recent past. Or maybe they’re just the discarded remnants of everyday, messy life with kids.

While the overt staginess of these pictures can be a bit distracting, their mixing of obvious unreality with telling glimpses of underlying truth is what makes these pictures work. We’ve certainly experienced variations on this kind of surreal, random weirdness; perhaps lacking the candy-colors, shiny floors, and perfect lighting, but close enough to have resonance and create knowing chuckles. Blackmon references the Dutch Renaissance painter Jan Steen in her artist statement, and the images do have a constructed, painterly feel, drawn from memory and recreated using the powerful tools of digital photography.

Overall, I came away more impressed with these pictures than I expected to be. In the best of the works, Blackmon’s imaginary craziness is a subtle mirror of our own lives, simultaneously mocking and sympathetic. The terrified baby launched into the air by his father is both oddly ridiculous and eerily reminiscent of things we have all done.
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Collector’s POV: The works in the show are priced by size and place in the edition. The 22×29 images are priced at $2800 or $3600; the 32×42 images are priced at $3800, $4200 or $5000, and the 40×53 images are $6900 or $8500. Blackmon’s work has only recently started to trickle into the secondary markets, so no robust pricing history is really available. As such, gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point. Blackmon is also represented by Catherine Edelman in Chicago (here), Robert Klein in Boston (here), Fahey/Klein in Los Angeles (here), Photo-Eye in Santa Fe (here), and Gail Gibson in Seattle (here).
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Reviews: New Yorker (here), Photo Booth (here), Boston Globe (here)
Through October 23rd
Robert Mann Gallery
210 Eleventh Avenue
New York, NY 10001

Auction Preview: Contemporary Art, September 27, 2010 @Sotheby’s

Sotheby’s has its own version of the Fall Contemporary Art warm-up sale in New York later this month, with a decidedly mixed bag of photography (both known and unknown) buried among the paintings, sculpture and other artworks. There are only 24 lots of photography on offer in this sale, with a total High estimate for photography of $329700.

Here’s the statistical breakdown:
Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000): 11
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $52700
Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 13
Total Mid Estimate: $277000
Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 0
Total High Estimate: NA
The top photography lot by High estimate is lot 245, Elger Esser, Saone, France, 2001, at $30000-40000. (Image at right, top, via Sotheby’s.)
Here’s the very short list of photographers represented by more than one lot in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Vanessa Beecroft (2)

Philip-Lorca diCorcia (2)
Laurie Simmons (2)
The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here.
Contemporary Art
September 27th
Sotheby’s
1334 York Avenue
New York, NY 10021

Adam Fuss, Home and the World @Cheim & Read

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 works, displayed in the small front room and the larger main gallery (divided by a single wall). The front gallery contains three full plate daguerreotypes framed in black and hung against grey walls. Two of the works are each 28×42 and are unique; the third is 28×24 and is available in an edition of 9. While the larger images are hung on opposing side walls, the smaller image is displayed on the floor in the middle of the room. All of the works in the main gallery space are unique gelatin silver print photograms mounted on canvas, framed in white (without mats) and hung against white walls. Five of the images are 103×60, two are 58×54, two are 62×104, and one is 76×63. All of the works in the show were made in 2010. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: In the past twenty years or so, Adam Fuss has taken the seemingly simple process of the photogram and created a radical, innovative and original body of contemporary art. He has alternately experimented with water droplets and smoke, rabbit guts and sunflowers, lacy baptism dresses and babies in puddles, creating large scale organic silhouettes and patterns in a spectrum of saturated colors, adding layers of symbolism and spiritual meaning to everyday objects.

While Fuss has previously explored the imagery of snakes (swimming through water or skittering through powder), his new works dive deeper into this subject matter via a pared-down monochrome palette. Inky black forms tangle and swirl in intertwined and overlapping bunches, creating graceful gestural movements that echo the elegance of Chinese calligraphy or the kinetic energy of Jackson Pollock’s abstractions. Blurs in the process make it clear that these are not static frozen forms, but active living beings, bringing an element of chance and a sense of motion into the compositions.

The resulting jumble of slithering black lines and curves is then superimposed on several different backgrounds: a grid of newspapers, a vertical shaft, or pure expansive white. The alternate contexts pile on symbolic connections to the game Snakes and Ladders, the myth of Tiresias and the caduceus, and the alternately positive and negative views of snakes throughout history. I found the simplest images with white backgrounds to be the most powerful and refined, the arrangement of lines uncluttered by competing ideas. When the knot of snakes coalesces into just the right graphic design, something magical happens.

In the smaller front room, the uncertainty of motion found in the photograms is exchanged for the precision detail of the daguerreotype process. In matching large scale plates, an empty mattress sits alone, or is adorned with a coil of black snakes; in this case however, the process picks up every reptilian scale and highlight, making the snakes look all too real. Nearby, a close-up view of a vagina sits on the concrete, like a fleshy opening in the floor. For me, the symbolism here was a little too heavy-handed, and as such, I found the abstract arabesques in the other room much more compelling and beautiful.

Overall, Fuss’ high contrast black and white photograms are both jolting and harmonious, finding a polished balance between the literal and figurative, the threatening and the lyrical. It’s an impressive and mature display of the continuing evolution of his craft and ideas. Most importantly, the images themselves are wholly original and memorable, tied back to any number of traditions, but at the same time, exciting and expressively new.
Collector’s POV: The works in this show are priced between $40000 and $65000. Fuss’ images have become more consistently available in the secondary markets in the past five years or so, with prices ranging from $2000 to $90000, depending both on size and subject matter. The artist is also represented by Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco (here) and Xavier Hufkens in Brussels (here).
Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Reviews: NY Times, 1999 (here), NY Times, 2002 (here)
  • Features: NY Times, 1999 (here)
  • Exhibition: MFA Boston, 2002 (here)
Through October 23rd

Cheim & Read
547 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001

Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao, BQMB @Saul

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 large scale color images, generally framed in black with no mat and hung in the entry and main gallery spaces. All of the works are pigment ink prints, most mounted on sintra (two are face mounted to plexi and luster laminate respectively). Physical dimensions range from 20×48 to 60×96, with several images printed in the 30×72 size. Edition sizes vary from 4 to 12. The works on display come from a number of different photographic projects and commissions, and were made between 2005 and 2010. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: If you walk into Jeff Chien–Hsing Liao’s show at Julie Saul Gallery and do a five second visual scan of the photographs on the walls, your first reaction might very well be “panoramas of New York, seen this kind of thing before, time to move on”. Times Square, the Cyclone at Coney Island, you know the drill. But if you resist the temptation to walk right back out and instead stand up close to these images and look at them for several minutes, the works will reveal a depth of detail that is entirely unexpected and therefore initially quite puzzling.

What you’ll then begin to realize is that these images are not standard, boring panoramas but actually meticulous digital composites of dozens of large format images, seamlessly integrated into wide views that capture far more than human vision can normally handle. They reminded me of the work of Clifford Ross, where a viewer can dive deeper and deeper into nearly any section of an image and the details remain crisp and sharp, even though normal photographs often become blurred or distorted on the periphery.

Liao has applied this technique to two basic types of compositions: bird’s eye views that capture the broader context of the local urban fabric, and street level views that chronicle the chaotic melting pot of crowded humanity in New York’s neighborhoods and public spaces. I particularly enjoyed the elevated views of the city’s changing baseball stadiums and the surrounding landscape of Queens and the Bronx. The works capture the expansive density of city planning, of roadways and rail lines slashing through endless low rise developments, warehouses and non-descript blocks, with old and new juxtaposed and continually evolving over time. They successfully document the vibrant scope of the boroughs – the landmarks and gathering places as well as the warren of everyday streets and commercial districts.

I think the challenge for Liao lies in using his obvious technical skills to make durable and memorable images about the changing nature of these New York neighborhoods without falling into the trap of overly-easy eye-catching gimmicks. His technical approach offers the ability to construct complicated, multi-layered stories and to show us the conflicts, contrasts and personalities that we take for granted in this complex city; his tools offer him the potential to expose facets of our lives we haven’t seen before. As a result, this show seems most like a promise, a gathering of current evidence (with a few early highlights) that makes me anticipate what will come next as he digs even deeper.

Collector’s POV: The prints on display in this show range in price from $5000 to $14500, with many intermediate prices ($5800, $7000, $8500, $10000, and $11000) apparently based on relative size or place in the edition. Liao’s work has only recently begun to enter into the secondary markets, so no real pricing pattern can be discerned from the few lots that have come up for sale. As such, gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

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

Transit Hub:

  • Reviews: New Yorker (here), DART (here), NYTimes, 2009 (here)
  • Urban Panoramas @Getty, 2010 (here)
  • Book: Habitat 7 (here)

Jeff Chien–Hsing Liao, BQMB
Through October 28th

Julie Saul Gallery
535 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

Auction Preview: First Open, September 22, 2010 @Christie’s

Christie’s begins the Fall Contemporary Art season in New York next week with its warm up First Open sale. Photography-wise, it’s a generally solid mix of usual suspects; there are a total of 35 lots of photography on offer, with a total High estimate for photography of $775000.

Here’s the simple statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000): 10
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $69000

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 22
Total Mid Estimate: $436000

Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 3
Total High Estimate: $270000

The top photography lot by High estimate is lot 134, Thomas Struth, Kunsthistorisches Museum III, Vienna, 1989, at $100000-150000(image at right, top). The next highest lot by High estimate is lot 13, Vik Muniz, Marlene Dietrich (Pictures of Diamonds), 2004, at $40000-60000 (image at right).

Here’s the complete list of photographers represented by two or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Thomas Struth (4)
Wallace Berman (2)
Richard Prince (2)
Hiroshi Sugimoto (2)
James Welling (2)

The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here. The eCatalogue is located here.

First Open
September 22nd

Christie’s
20 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10020

Izima Kaoru, One Sun @Von Lintel

JTF (just the facts): A total of 6 large scale color images, displayed in artist-designed white frames with no mat in the single room gallery space. All of the works are c-prints with acrylic diasec from 2006 and 2007. The circular prints are each 47 inches in diameter, in editions of 5. A thin monograph of this body of work was published by Akio Nagasawa Publishing in 2009. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Japanese photographer Izima Kaoru is perhaps best known for his series of cinematic images where models imagine their own ideal deaths, complete with dramatic locations, fabulous couture fashions, and elegant pools of blood. After more than a decade of staged death, his new body of work, entitled One Sun, is a radical departure from this morbid fascination, a life-affirming look skyward.

Using a fish-eye lens and day-long exposures, Kaoru’s images trace the path of the sun across the sky, resulting in images of sparkling bright lines against light blue orbs of hazy color. Depending on his location (near the Equator, in the northern Norway, or at various other locations around the globe) and the time of year/season, the sun creates a variety of concave and convex arcs, straight lines and even perfect circles, with cloudy weather periodically adding a dashed effect. These beams of light parade across a spectrum of soft blue, light purple and fuzzy pink pastel backgrounds, with only a few silhouetted palm tress, buildings, or other minuscule points of landscape around the edges to provide local context. They are like big blue marbles, or vibrating discs, or portholes.

In the past few years, we have seen quite a few photographers point their cameras up, following stars, satellites, and the sun and moon, mixing science and abstraction to generate unexpected landscapes or simulated line drawings. Kaoru’s images bear some resemblance to the recent Sunburn pictures by Chris McCaw, but their glossy object quality, large size and strict conceptual geometries create an altogether different feeling than McCaw’s intimate chance-driven solarized burns. The works feel much wider, capturing the incandescent radiance of the sun and the immense 360 degree breadth of the sky. I think the layers of roundness (the fish-eye distortion, the underlying shape of the earth and sun, the shape of the physical prints themselves) all contribute to making the conceptual construct effective.

Overall, while we have seen variations on these ideas before, Kaoru has added some new twists to the tracking of the sun, creating contemporary photographs that pulsate with collective optimism. He reminds us that wherever we might be on this diverse planet, the sun puts on a spectacular show if we would only take the time to look up and notice.

Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are priced in rising editions, starting at $16000 and moving up to $19500 and eventually to $23000. Kaoru’s work has only recently come into the secondary markets, with a few of his large scale images from the Landscapes with a Corpse series coming up for sale in the past few years. Prices for these works have ranged between $9000 and $30000.

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

Transit Hub:

  • Reviews: DLK COLLECTION, 2009 (here), NY Times, 2004 (here)

Izima Kaoru, One Sun
Through October 9th

Von Lintel Gallery
520 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011

Auction Preview: Post-War and Contemporary Art, September 16, 2010 @Christie’s South Kensington

The upcoming Post-War and Contemporary Art sale at Christie’s South Kensington office in London marks the opening of the second half of the auction year for photography, and can be thought of as a warm-up for the heavier action which will take place later in October and November. Mixed in with works from a variety of other mediums, there are a total of 46 lots of photography on offer in this auction, with a Total High Estimate of £337700.

Here’s the statistical breakdown:
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Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including £5000): 27
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): £83700
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Total Mid Lots (high estimate between £5000 and £25000): 16
Total Mid Estimate: £144000
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Total High Lots (high estimate above £25000): 3
Total High Estimate: £110000
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The top lot by High estimate is lot 160, David LaChapelle, Deluge: Museum, 2007, at £35000-45000. (Image at right, top, via Christie’s.) The next highest lot by High estimate is lot 14, Thomas Ruff, m. d. p. n. 28, 2003, at £25000-35000. (Image at right, via Christie’s.)
Here is the list of the photographers who are represented by two or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):
Nobuyoshi Araki (6)
Garry Fabian Miller (3)
Cindy Sherman (3)
Richard Artschwager (2)
Zarina Bhimji (2)
John Coplans (2)
Elger Esser (2)
Robert Mapplethorpe (2)
Thomas Ruff (2)
Andy Warhol (2)
The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here. The eCatalogue is located here.
Christie’s
85 Old Brompton Road
London SW7 3LD

David LaChapelle, American Jesus @Paul Kasmin

JTF (just the facts): A total of 5 large scale color photographs and 5 preliminary studies hung in two adjoining gallery spaces. The 5 photographs are all chromogenic prints, framed in white with no mats, made in editions of 3 from 2009. 3 of the works are 96×72, the other two are 84×72 and 52×120 respectively. The studies are a mixture of watercolor, collage, and graphite drawings on paper, and are framed in white and matted; they show initial ideas/iterations/versions of the image The Rape of Africa.

Comments/Context: Given the intensity of our celebrity-obsessed, pop culture soaked culture, it is not surprising that artists have sprung up who have been drawn to a heavy dose of slick commercialism and aggressive public relations. In recent years, David LaChapelle has made a steady stream of outrageous magazine covers, music videos, and elaborately staged celebrity portraits that walk the knife edge of fabulous and trashy, mixing vibrant garish colors, kitchy scene setting and a myriad of art historical symbols and references. Whether or not they fit our traditional definitions of great art, they hold up a mirror to our society and capture one view of the over-the-top spirit of the times.
In his newest photographs, LaChapelle has posed the ultimate pop icon, Michael Jackson, in a variety of quasi-biblical poses: held Pieta style by a bearded Jesus lookalike in the woods (complete with fallen sequined glove), standing on top of a devil with hands in prayer wearing white angel wings, and hand in hand with a saint on his day of beatification. His carefully constructed images depict Jackson as a prophet or martyr, reenvisioning the suffering and persecution brought on by his unmatched celebrity. The works have surreal, dramatic freakiness that verges on religious folk art, albeit on a massive scale with glossy production values, almost like album covers.
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The other two images in the show take on religious corruption and African exploitation, the latter seen as an updating of Botticelli’s Venus and Mars, complete with Naomi Campbell, cherubs holding rocket launchers, goats, golden treasure, and backhoes. While the rework itself is a bit awkward and overly symbolic, I enjoyed seeing LaChapelle’s preliminary drawings and collages hung nearby. These show a photographer who is undeniably building up his imagery in a painterly way, constructing and reconstructing ideas and motifs to achieve his desired results.
On one hand, I must admit that these pictures didn’t do much for me, and I can see how many will dismiss them as ridiculous, disposable camp (coming soon to a t-shirt near you). But having said that, the outlandish weirdness of the Michael Jackson images is such that I can actually imagine them finding their way into some museums and contemporary collections, where they will successfully hold down large walls and make people gawk, point and fight, some in visceral dislike, others in star-worshipping positive awe. While they are not exactly shocking, given Jackson’s astounding fame, it would be hard to walk by one of these photographs without some kind of reaction. And so while I can’t exactly recommend these works, they are undeniably polarizing and memorable, and therefore worth seeing, if only to choose for yourself on which side to stand.
Collector’s POV: The large photographs in this show are priced between $95000 and $125000. LaChapelle’s work has jumped in value in recent years, with prices now routinely running between $10000 and $140000.
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Reviews: New Yorker (here), Independent (here), Stylelist (here)
  • Interview: Nowness (here)
Through September 18th
Paul Kasmin Gallery
293 Tenth Avenue
New York, NY 10001

Arnold Odermatt @Koenig Projekte

JTF (just the facts): A total of 30 black and white photographs, pinned directly to the wall under glass, and hung in the simple single room gallery space. All of the works are vintage gelatin silver prints, made in editions of 8 between 1953 and 1983. Most of the prints are sized at 12×16 or reverse, with a few at 12×12, and one at 7×16. A monograph of this body of work, entitled Karambolage, was published by Steidl in 2003 (here).

Comments/Context: The unlikely back story to the work of Swiss photographer Arnold Odermatt makes his black and white sculptural images of car crashes all the more unusual. During his long career, Odermatt was the official police photographer in the canton of Nidwalden, where he documented everyday auto accidents for police and insurance files. When he finished with his work, he often took another set of images of the crash site for himself, and it is these images that have resurfaced in the last decade, eventually finding their way to the Venice Biennale and a solo show at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Unlike the gritty urban voyeurism of Weegee’s crime scenes, Odermatt’s car crashes are pensive and wistful, where crumpled hoods, broken barriers, and snowy skid marks are captured with crisp, pared down elegance. His photographs document the moment after the ambulance has gone and the glass has been swept up, leaving just the quiet aftermath of the car abandoned in the roadway, flipped over down a hill side, or filled with water in the river. While people are generally absent from these pictures, their lush tonalities somehow prevent the images from becoming too clinical or antiseptic. Chalk lines on the road are swirling and gestural, a knocked down light pole creates compositional chaos, and a boat in the roadway or a police officer doing a handstand offer a few moments of subtle and unexpected comic relief. Evidence has been turned into quiet art, the personal tragedy moved into the background, allowing the formal beauty of muddy roads, spin outs, and crushed cars to come forward.

Collector’s POV: The vintage prints available in this show are priced between $3200 and $4500. Odermatt’s work has not been widely available in the secondary markets, although a handful of prints have come up for auction in the past few years; prices for these lots have ranged between $2000 and $4000.

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

Transit Hub:

  • Reviews: Artforum (here, scroll down), New Yorker (here), NY Times (here), Flavorwire (here)

Arnold Odermatt
Through September 10th

Leo Koenig Inc. Projekte

541 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011

Summer Hiatus

At this point, we’re going to drop off the grid for a while and enjoy a summer hiatus. Think of this as the equivalent of a public radio membership drive, where they withhold the content you so desperately want while they deliver an earnest message about becoming a member, but in this case, we’ll be using a silent message. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?

Consider becoming a subscriber to the feed, so you don’t miss us when we return. We’ll see you again after Labor Day, when the photographic art world reawakens.

Greater New York 2010 @MoMA PS1

JTF (just the facts): A large group show of recent contemporary work made by New York-based artists, displayed across all four floors of the PS1 building. A total of 68 artists have been included in the exhibit, 19 of which (roughly 28%) can be called photographers (using a broad definition of that term). The show was curated by Klaus Biesenbach, Connie Butler, and Neville Wakefield. Unfortunately, PS1 has both prohibited photography in the galleries and failed to provide images of the included works on its public website, so annoyingly, this review has neither installation shots or image highlights.

The following photographers are included in the exhibit, with the number of images on view in parentheses:

Michele Abeles (7)
Deville Cohen (3, 1 video)
LaToya Ruby Frazier (12, 1 video)
Zipora Fried (3)
Daniel Gordon (5)
K8 Hardy (18)
Alisha Kerlin (8)
Deana Lawson (6, 1 large installation)
Leigh Ledare (22, 1 stack of images, 3 videos)
Alice O’Malley (12)
Lucy Raven (1 photo animation, 1 video, 1 case of ephemera)
Mariah Robertson (8)
David Benjamin Sherry (19)
Erin Shirref (28)
Xaviera Simmons (1 grid of 42, 2 others)
A.L. Steiner (1 three wall installation)
Elisabeth Subrin (4)
Hank Willis Thomas (1 set of 82)
Pinar Yolacan (8)

Comments/Context: Given our passionate interest in photography, sprawling group shows like Greater New York always feel like a bit like a treasure hunt; we wander through the galleries in search of the photography, never knowing what might be beyond the next white wall. With this show’s thematic focus on brand new work from emerging contemporary artists from the New York area, we expected to be surprised and challenged by some work and to be bored by much of the rest, and hoped to be introduced to some new names worth keeping an eye on. I think our expectations were realistically low, and I think the show delivers the ungainly mixed bag that we expected.

Trying to discern themes or patterns in such a diverse body of photography is a tricky prospect, but given the high highs and the low lows we have experienced in the past five tumultuous years, the fact that so much of the photographic work on display is inward looking and self reflective, with a heavy dose of performance, was a surprise. Perhaps this is a result of early career artists still looking to refine their voices and seeking that clarity by peering inward, but I came away a bit troubled by the tin ear the New York artists seem to be showing toward the important issues of the day. I’m a sucker for big meaty new ideas that make my eyes bug out, but most of the photography I found here was both preoccupied with personal nuances and lacking in radical innovation.

That isn’t to say that there wasn’t plenty of work to enjoy on display. I’ve detailed a handful of favorites and special attractions below:

  • I stood in front of Xaviera Simmons’ large array of appropriated images of boat people and refugees hung in the entry of the show for quite a long time, feeling the combination of isolation, desperation and wild hope of being packed in like sardines on a makeshift raft or rusting barge, heading for the unknown. This was one of the only pieces in the exhibit that I thought tried to get at the uncertain spirit of the times, that sense of unease and lack of control that has been so common of late.
  • Deville Cohen’s sparse constructed scenes, made up of ladders, step stools and shredded paper, and pictures of ladders and step stools, have intriguing layers in their simple conceptual inversions. The video of the fake car wash (once again made from these primary materials) mixes humor and creative inventiveness to successfully evoke an everyday object. These works seem like a promising set of ideas worth further exploration.
  • Pinar Yolacan’s Mother Goddess series also uses a relatively simple construct to generate something more powerful. In these works, Yolacan completely covers her models from head to toe, wrapping them like mummies in skin tight cocoons of denim, black latex, or patterned fabric. They are then posed against monochrome colored backgrounds, lounging like odalisques. The resulting images are weirdly mute, like ancient fertility figurines or fetish objects.
  • LaToya Ruby Frazier is clearly another emerging photographer with some momentum behind her. Her formally crisp and sinuously elegant black and white studies of falling down houses, piles of trees, bedside tables and a burger on a countertop are entirely evocative of a certain set of personal life circumstances. In this case, a look inward has produced something that isn’t overly self-conscious, but is rather abstracted just enough to be universal, both unflinching and quietly beautiful at the same time.
  • The work of Mariah Robertson, Hank Willis Thomas, and Daniel Gordon on view is generally a repeat or a refinement of work we have seen recently at other NY venues. Robertson’s 88 is different than her single, ragged edged works in that it is a long ribbon of overlapping imagery, billowing across the ceiling and piling up on the floor, mixing checkerboards, piles of books, petrified wood, and chemical drips in her signature darkroom style; her aesthetic is growing on me over time. It was also terrific to see Thomas’ full Unbranded series (82 images), where appropriated advertisements have been stripped of their logos, leaving behind a distorted history of black culture since 1968; while the pictures stand on their own as individual artworks, seeing the series together adds a layer of elapsed time and a view into the evolution of cultural stereotypes.
  • K8 Hardy’s self portraits have a playfulness that is infectious. Across the wall, she shape shifts, alternately posing with purple hair, puckered lips, orange sunglasses, wearing a wrestling belt, or standing with lawn mowers, often adding in a seemingly random photogram for effect. It sounds overly staged I know, but somehow it all works, successfully mixing eccentric personal style and play acting.
  • I can’t really say that I liked Leigh Ledare’s erotic images of his mother’s sex life, but they certainly push on cultural taboos and get your attention. They combine a sense of tragedy with creepy repulsiveness; they’re explicit, confrontational, disturbing, and sad all at the same time. My guess is most people will truly hate these pictures, but like them or not, they’re challenging and weirdly memorable.

Overall, I think there are a few nuggets of photographic promise to be found amidst the slurry here if you are willing to invest the time in exploring the endless jumble of rooms filled with art. While I was pleased to see how much photography has become intertwined with the general practice of contemporary art making, particularly in the NY scene, I have to say I was a bit disappointed that so few in this emerging bunch seem to have found a singular voice of durable originality.

Collector’s POV: Since most of these artists are early in their careers and the work is generally fresh out of the studio, none of it has yet migrated to the secondary markets. So the only real option for interested collectors is to follow up with gallery representatives or directly with the artists themselves. Below is a first pass list of easily identifiable gallery relationships and artist websites; if I’ve missed (or misidentified) important relationships or sites, please add them in the comments for the benefit of all:
.
Michele Abeles: artist site (here)
Deville Cohen: Nowhere Gallery (here)
LaToya Ruby Frazier: Higher Pictures (here), artist site (here)
Zipora Fried: On Stellar Rays (here)
Daniel Gordon: Zach Feuer Gallery (here), artist site (here)
K8 Hardy: Reena Spaulings Fine Art (here)
Alisha Kerlin: artist site (here)
Deana Lawson: artist site (here)
Leigh Ledare: was Rivington Arms (here); not sure now
Alice O’Malley: Isis Gallery (here), artist site (here)
Lucy Raven: artist site (here)
Mariah Robertson: Marvelli Gallery (here), artist site (here)
David Benjamin Sherry: artist site (here)
Erin Shirref: Lisa Cooley Fine Art (here), artist site (here)
Xaviera Simmons: unknown
A.L. Steiner: unknown
Elisabeth Subrin: Sue Scott Gallery (here)
Hank Willis Thomas: Charles Guice Contemporary (here), artist site (here)
Pinar Yolacan: was Rivington Arms (here), not sure now; artist site (here)

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

Transit Hub:

  • Reviews: NY Times (here), Village Voice (here), WNYC Gallerina (here), L Magazine (here), Huffington Post (here)

Greater New York 2010
Through October 18th

MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Avenue
Long Island City, NY 11101

The Dawn of Modernism: Early Twentieth-Century Mexican Photography @Throckmorton

JTF (just the facts): A group show containing a total of 34 black and white photographs, framed in thick black and matted, and hung in the elevator lobby and main gallery space (divided by several linen interior walls). The prints are a mix of vintage and later prints, in both gelatin silver and platinum. The majority were made between the 1920s and the 1940s. (Installation shots at right.)

The following photographers are included in the exhibit, with the number of images on view in parentheses:

Lola Alvarez Bravo (2)
Manuel Alvarez Bravo (8)
Hugo Brehme (1)
Anton Bruehl (4)
Hector Garcia (2)
Fritz Henle (2)
Leo Matiz (4)
Tina Modotti (6)
Edward Weston (4)

Mariana Yampolsky (1)
Comments/Context: Mexican modernism from the first half of the 20th century really has a special flavor all its own, meaningfully different from the photographic “modernisms” of Europe or America from the same time period. It combines the political fervor of the post-revolutionary period, a renewed attention to the symbols of traditional Mexican life, the historical mind set of the Mexican muralist painters, and the radical ideas of a number of influential artistic transplants into a potent stew of ideas, tinged with a bit of romance and bathed in the harsh, pure light of Mexico’s geography.
This show gathers together a sample of work from the main figures of the period, along with work from a group of somewhat lesser known contributors to the movement. While the aesthetic is modernist, with clean lines, pared down compositions, and found abstractions, the subject matter is uniquely Mexican: men in sombreros, women with water jugs, street markets, cacti, agave, and portraits of famous artists like Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. There are plenty of excellent Modottis, Westons, and Alvarez Bravos on display that will be familiar to collectors, as well as some secondary images that are worth a look. I particularly enjoyed Manuel Alvarez Bravo’s wood pile and peeled jicamas, spare still lifes with geometric clarity. While this exhibit isn’t a definitive or exhaustive scholarly study of Mexican modernism, it does successfully provide a taste of what makes the pictures from this period so distinctly intriguing.
Collector’s POV: The prints in this show range in price from $2500 (Brehme) to $35000 (Modotti and Weston), with most under $10000.
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
  • Reviews: New Yorker (here), Village Voice (here)
The Dawn of Modernism: Early Twentieth-Century Mexican Photography
Through September 11th
145 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

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