Art Basel Miami Beach 2009
Posted by Lacy Davisson Doyle
There was a confident, upbeat tone to Art Basel Miami, www.artbaselmiamibeach.com, this year where the expanded offerings included 265 international and U.S. galleries. On view were an array of artworks by many blue-chip modern artists as well as contemporary masters. Artists like Picasso, Matisse, and Calder reflected the galleries’ current more conservative strategy. Robert Motherwell, Frank Stella, and Wayne Thiebaud were represented in depth and great examples of their work were available. This more conservative approach resulted in an extremely high level of quality and serious collectors took note and purchased accordingly. Acquisitions happened in a more reflective and selective way, an excellent process for discerning collectors as compared to the rush to acquire of recent years. Miami still has its glitter and glamour, and booths such as Emi Fontana’s showed Monica Bonvicini’s larger than life mirrored letters spelling the work “Desire” summarizing the Art Basel experience.
Lower East Side Galleries:
Posted by Ann Fensterstock
Not having been the little piggy that went to market this weekend (see Lacy’s blog on Art Basel Miami) I was the one who stayed home – right here in my own Lower East Side neighborhood. Here is an overview of some of the work I saw. Start at the New Museum and you will come full circle.
Urs Fischer at the New Museum
www.newmuseum.org
This was every bit as intriguing a show as we might expect from this stylistically elusive artist. Working from the fourth floor down, it feels like a group show but for the dream-like sense of other worldliness that pervades every disparate piece. The monumental blobs on the fourth floor were less persuasive than they might have been by virtue of their fabrication seams and the need to wire at least one of them to the ceiling. But perhaps I quibble there. The melting Daliesque, chewing gum pink lamppost was surreal as was the floating birthday cake and the luminous lavender piano on the floor below. The much-hyped tongue clunked rather than slurped its way out of the wall and so was less devilish than I had hoped. The second floor was pure Alice in Wonderland though and I lingered longest here delighting in the highly mirrored obelisks with their perversely selected and arbitrarily scaled imagery.
Paola Ferrario at Sue Scott Gallery
www.suescottgallery.com
Next, around the corner to 1 Rivington Street to look at Paola Ferrario’s photographs. In just the right fame of mind after having tried to fathom the connecting logic of Fischer’s apparently random imagery, Ferrario was a joy to behold. Fragments of initially dislocated urban imagery gradually fused into a rebus of lyrical connection and I found myself relaxing into a deeply satisfying reading of this beautifully cohesive work. In the back gallery a road trip film created the night that Italy won the World Cup in 2006 held my attention. With road signs for the Nice-Cannes auto route flashing by in the dark, I realized that I had been close by the night that the artist was filming – rooting, I’m sorry to say Paola, for France! Regardless of your particular whereabouts, however, the power of film work to transcend the limits of time and space was very much affirmed here. Up through January 10th.
Tracey Emin at Lehman Maupin
www.lehmanmaupin.com
Not thus far a big fan of Ms. Emin’s work, here I felt I could really understand what all the fuss is about with this bad girl of British art. While her subjects are still love, loss and self-loathing, in-your-face sex, the sheer tenderness and extraordinary beauty of the delicate, smudgy blue monotypes quite took my breath away. Equally light touch embroidery pieces brought Louise Bourgeois to mind while other images invoked the spidery, sexually charged line of Egon Schiele or perhaps more recently Chloe Piene’s autoerotic drawings. 201 Chrystie Street. Up through December 19th.
Figment at Kumukumu
www.kumukumugallery.com
Another example of the excellent use to which this tiny gallery puts its space. A two-person installation of Gina Ruggeri’s illusionistic, flush to the wall paintings on Mylar in the front and Rob Wynne’s exquisitely rendered glass and beaded works in the back. Ruggeri’s work feels ephemeral in form and broaches issues of transmutation and decay while Wynne’s blown, poured and mirrored glass mushrooms gave off a particularly trippy aura and lead to yet another mind bending ‘Alice’ moment. 42 Rivington. Up through December 13th.
Andrzej Zielinski at DCKT
www.dcktcontemporary.com
Dennis Chrystie and Ken Tyburski can always be relied upon to show something interesting in their 195 Bowery space. This time Andrzej Zielinski shows his joyfully bravura studies of shredders – that’s right shredders. With almost child-like painterly exuberance Zielinki seems to fling himself at his task. A call to the gallery revealed that the artist had requested no press release preferring presumably that the viewer go figure for themselves. Michael Craig-Martin’s equally loopy quotidian objects come to mind here but Zielinski is looser, more maniacal in his rendering. Despite their coloring book palette, however, the shredders inevitably needle our sinister modern day anxieties around identity theft and the covering of tracks. Previous bodies of work by this Yale trained painter prodded at cell phones, lap tops, ATMs and other supposedly benign new technologies and similarly tweaked our ever-increasing societal need to whistle (or paint) in the dark.