Highlights of London Part 3

The 9th annual Frieze Art Fair opened on Wednesday morning...scattering the VIP entry times avoided the uncomfortable crunch witnessed at the opening of Art Basel in June.  Frieze hosted 173 of the world's leading contemporary galleries, representing 33 countries and presenting works by over 1000 artists. There are also satellite fairs including Pavilion of Art & Design.  Many galleries continue to impress and titillate the senses. Here are a few of my favorites:  Emmanuel Perrotin's booth showing a life-sized morgue wall and dead body sculpture by Elmgreen and Dragset, Thomas Dane's booth showing Michael Landy's kinetic sculpture, "Credit Card Destroying Machine" and White Cube's Marc Quinn "Zombie Boy."

Wednesday evening kicked off the contemporary auctions. Bonham’s, which opened on New Bond Street in their renovated premises, joined the auction brigade this season to become the fourth auction house to hold contemporary sales in London. The results of the evening sales varied as follows:

Christie's sale totaled GBP 38,000,000 with 89% sold, Sotheby's totaled GBP 17,800,000 with 77% sold, Phillips de Pury totaled GBP 8,200,000 with 67% sold and Bonham's totaled GBP 2,042,000 with 70% sold. The Christie's auction had the best quality and therefore had the best results. The lackluster works offered at the other auction houses did not attract lots of bidding, thus works went on the low side or did not sell. Quality always prevails!

On the way to the airport, four galleries caught my eye.  

Pilar Ordovas' exhibition, "Irrational Marks: Bacon, Rembrandt" in her new space on Savile Row, shows how Rembrandt's "Self-Portrait with Beret" from 1659 influenced Bacon. This can be seen in a video of Bacon discussing Rembrandt on the lower level of the gallery.

  

The Luxembourg-Dayan gallery inaugurated their new space on Savile Row with part I of "Grisaille" curated by Alison Gingeras, part II opening in New York on November 7th. Works inspired by the absence of color included the workshop of Durer, Picasso, Richter, Leger, Rob Pruitt and Twombly.  

On view on Mount Street at Modern Collections, the new secondary market gallery is, "Walker Walker Guyton Guyton" under the directorship of Iniigo Philbrick.  It features Kelly Walker and Wade Guyton who met many years ago and who are the darlings of the art world at the moment. 

My last stop was a visit to my friend Wim Delvoye's first solo exhibition at Robilant+Voena on Dover Street. This Belgian conceptual artist's work ranges from intricate steel sculptures to tattooed pig-skins. The Louvre will have an exhibition of Wim's works in the near future, many of which I saw in his studio in Ghent this summer. 

Off to Heathrow! 

Highlights of London Part 2

Tacita Dean, the British artist born in Canterbury, Kent in 1965, now based in Berlin was the latest artist to create a commission for Tate Modern's Turbine Hall as part of the Unilever Series. "Film" opened Monday evening. A flickering 11-minute silent color film is projected on to a vertical screen 13 meters high. This piece is intended to mourn and to celebrate celluloid at a time when 16mm film is no longer even printed in the UK.

It was possible to view Gerhard Richter's retrospective "Panorama" the same evening, which had opened a few days earlier.  Richter is known for his diversity in his approaches to painting. The title evokes the intention to look around at the range of Richter's practice, discovering contradictions and connections, continuities and breaks. The exhibition includes glass constructions, mirrors, drawings and photographs. He is inspired by Titian, Vermeer, Caspar David Friedrich and Duchamp. He was born in Dresden in 1932 and since 1983 lives and works in Cologne.  

Tuesday morning, October 12th was the press preview for Jacob Kassay at the ICA.  It was a pleasure to have the curator, Matt Williams, give me the tour. Kassay is a very young artist born in Buffalo in 1984. He lives and works in NY and LA. This is his first solo European exhibition. His canvases are simultaneously painting, sculpture and interactive installation. The silver-plated paintings on the lower gallery create expansive surfaces that come alive with the presence of the viewers. The installation is brilliant as it captures the changing light throughout the day. The wooden structure releases the canvases from their status as single units, combining them into a larger composite installation that functions as both architectural support and environment. In the upper galleries, a series of white shaped monochrome canvases appear in conversation with each other and the surrounding architecture. A stunning installation!

Tuesday evening marked the spectacular opening of White Cube Bermondsey in South London, Jay Joplin's third space. It boasts 58,000 square feet of interior space, designed by Casper Mueller Kneer Architects based in London and Berlin. A refurbished warehouse from the 1970's, the building includes three primary exhibition spaces, substantial warehousing, private viewing rooms, an auditorium and a bookshop. In the South Galleries, which will feature White Cube's expanding program of significant exhibitions, works could be viewed by various artists including Andreas Gursky, Wade Guyton, Eberhard Havekost, Damien Hirst, Jacob Kassay, Sterling Ruby Erin Shirreff and Jeff Wall in an exhibition entitled "Structure & Absences", a fresh look at contemporary abstraction. 

The night being young, the next opening was Josephine Meckseper's exhibition at Timothy Taylor's gallery. Josephine was born in Germany in 1964 and lives and works in NY.  She is a photo, video and installation artist who offers a striking, multi-layered account of the extent to which consumerism pervades our lives. Meckseper states, "The basic foundation of my work is a critique of capitalism."  Her politically engaged works highlight ongoing problems of corporate corruption, status anxiety, social privilege and representations of women. "There is no separation between materialism and political ideology: we are what we buy." Josephine will be included in the Saatchi Gallery's new exhibition entitled "New Art From Germany", November 18, 2011-April 30, 2012.

Highlights of London Part 1

My whirlwind week in London began on Monday morning with a visit to the White Cube gallery in Mason's Yard to view Raqib Shaw's "Paradise Lost", a new series of work by the London based artist. Shaw creates a visionary ode to his own childhood memories and imaginary paradise, inspired by Greek mythology. Do not miss the exquisitely painted bronze sculptures in the ground floor of the gallery.

Continuing on to White Cube's Hoxton Square gallery, Elad Lassry's first solo exhibition in London reveals a new departure in photography. The objects he chooses such as cats and vases are both banal and captivating.  His work questions representation and object hood. Lassry was born in Tel Aviv in 1977 and lives and works in LA.

The next stop was the Gagosian gallery on Britannia Street to view Mike Kelley's large-scale installation "Exploded Fortress of Solitude".  Kelley depicts Superman's Fortress of Solitude as a sort of bunker in ruins. The viewer is invited into the forbidden fortress, set within the cave's inner recesses, which is a glowing rose colored city in a bottle. The evocation of war and destruction and isolation creates a despairing dark ambience, from which one seeks a quick escape. Kelly was born in Detroit in 1954 and lives in LA.

On to Wharf Road to view Yang Fudong's "One half of August" at Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art.  He is a renowned artist and filmmaker and one of the most important artists to emerge in contemporary China. "One half of August" is an eight-screen, black and white, HD installation for which the artist projects scenes from earlier works onto architectural elements, props, structures and objects built for the purpose. He also includes artifacts, uses light and inverts external space. This creates new realities that challenge one's vision and mind. One wonders if one is watching a film or a film in a film.  Fudong was born in 1971 in Beijing and lives and works in Shanghai.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer in his studio

Last week, I visited my dear friend, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, the Mexican-Canadian artist, in his high tech studio in Montreal, where he has been living and working for many years. My first introduction to the work was at the Venice Biennial in 2007 when Rafa represented Mexico. His interactive installation entitled "Pulse Room" was the highlight of my visit to Venice.  This solo exhibition consisted of hundreds of light bulbs hanging uniformly throughout the room in the Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel. When a person held the sensors in his or her hands, it detected the heart rate of the participant. When the hands were released, the heartbeat was transferred to the bulb and the flashing light was the exact rhythm of his or her heart beat. After 100 participants, there were 100 flashing light bulbs pulsating with various heart beats ranging from slow to rapid. An extraordinary vision to behold!  Rafa was inspired to do this work after his twins were born. 

In 2009, when "Pulse Park" was installed in Madison Square Park in Manhattan for over two months, thousands of people interacted even into the late hours of the evening. In this venue, when participants held the sensors and their heartbeats were transferred to the lights, a sensation of an undulating lawn was created due to the large spot lights placed around the perimeter of the park.

Continuing with this concept, I experienced "Pulse Index", a recent work "which is an interactive installation that records participants' fingerprints at the same time as their heart rates. The piece displays data for the last 509 participants in a stepped display that creates a horizon line of skin. As new recordings are added, the oldest ones disappear - a kind of "memento mori." To participate, people introduce their finger into a custom-made sensor equipped with a 220x digital microscope and pulsimeter. Their fingerprint immediately appears on the largest cell of the display, pulsating to their heart beat.  As more people try the piece one's own recording travels upwards until it disappears altogether." 

What will Rafa think of next???


Rafa's many projects have been exhibited in museums and outdoor spaces worldwide including Mexico City, Rotterdam, Lyon, Japan, Dublin, Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. His work is in private and public collections such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Jumex collection in Mexico, the Daros Foundation in Zurich and the Tate in London. 


Rafa's groundbreaking ability to develop cutting edge technology requiring human participation to activate the works expresses his desire to confront us with the new media of the 2lst century. We become part of the technology and the art. 


"Pulse Index" will be included in an exhibition in Paris entitled "Trackers" at La Gaite Lyrique, September 29th - November 6th 2011.

Jessica Rankin "Mind and Language"

A clip from Jessica Rankin's Art21 interview "Mind & Language." Rankin uses text by running words together on embroidered organdy fabric to create mental maps, exploring ideas of memory, intuition and interpretation.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUtOVW8W6CY&feature=share

Dinner with Thomas Houseago in Edinburgh

Inverleith House in the Royal Botanic Garden hosted a dinner in celebration of Thomas Houseago's ongoing exhibition "The Beat of the Show" in Edinburgh, which I was honored to attend last Thursday. This marks the third venue for Thomas' sculptures this season.  He is now included in The Saatchi Gallery's show "The Shape of Things to Come" in London as well as being featured in Francois Pinault's Palazzo Grassi in Venice with a commissioned work of the striding figure outside titled "L'Homme Presse" (man in a hurry). See Venice blog July 12, 2011.  

Thomas, a Leeds-born, Los Angeles-based sculptor is one of the most original and compelling sculptors of his generation.  

His monumental figurative works are inspired by classical, primitive and modernist styles. His sculptures possess an urgent

brutal physicality that reveal the process of his own making, which is highly important in the work as seen in the use of tuf-cal, hemp, iron rebar, wood, charcoal and graphite, in addition to bronze.

Houseago's sculptures are charged with remarkable energy and vitality! 

Fabien Verschaere and U2's The Edge

Fabien was honored to draw on The Edge's guitar before U2 performed in Paris September 2010.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve71v4x7k4U

Visit to Fabien Verschaere's Studio in Paris

Visiting my friend Fabien Verschaere's studio in Paris was one of the highlights of my recent trip to Europe. His work is very personal and based on his  childhood. Because doctors thought he had an illness, he was often hospitalized. To keep him occupied, he was given art history books to read and markers to draw with. That's how it all began... He continued drawing everything around him and documenting the smallest things upon his return home. He also became interested in mythology in children's books. This has remained an important factor in his work. Fabien uses a repertoire of figures taken from cruel fairy tales and effigies combined with a legend of self and text. His unique language offers a world of opposites - angels and devils, life and death, princesses and skulls, happy and sad, clowns and ghosts.

He is equally versatile in drawings, paintings, sculpture, ceramics and video. Verschaere collaborated with Liquid Architecture on "Seven Day's Hotel", which composed the sound. 

Check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRrz6WpvETA

Fabien's many exhibition include A Novel for Life, Palais de Tokyo in 2003 and Seven Days Hotel, Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art in 2007.

 

Tracey Emin's "LOVE IS WHAT YOU WANT" at the Hayward Gallery

London's Hayward Gallery boasted Tracey Emin's "LOVE IS WHAT YOU WANT" (until August 29th). I had the privilege of touring this exceptional show with Cliff Lauson, one of the curators, which made it all the more fascinating.

The entire museum is taken over for Emin's first substantial survey exhibition of over 150 works. Emin's trials and tribulations in her life have been the inspiration for her subject matter. She suffered intensely in her early childhood and continues to battle her demons publicly. She courageously expresses her anger, fears, issues of abandonment, love and desire through the various media she has chosen including sculpture, painting, drawing, photographs and video (appliqué blankets and embroideries, wooden sculpture and neon signs). 


Influenced by Edvard Munch, Egon Schiele and Louise Bourgeois, she touches on taboo subjects and often shocks the viewer in her raw explicitness and language. In the sharing of the traumatic events in her life and letting it all hang out, Tracey triumphs and comes out on top!

Meeting Tracey Emin at her book signing that same day was the absolute highlight. "My Life in a Column" published by Rizzoli, is based on the four years she wrote a weekly column for "The Independent" newspaper. It is a "no holds barred" chronicle of the contemporary art world and her personal life expressed in her totally honest fashion. It's a must read!  

Tracey Emin is one of the most renowned British artists of her generation. 

Venice Biennale Highlights

The Venice Biennale after the opening is always much easier to navigate! 

However, it lacks the excitement of the art world celebs and glam parties as well as the hysteria of the pre-opening snafus and overcrowding.

What I loved about Venice: 

First stop on my list was the Prada Foundation, Ca' Corner della Regina, to see Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli's collection of early Italian contemporary art (1952-1964) curated by Germano Celant. The exceptional quality of works by Fontana, Burri, Castellani and Manzoni highlighted the first of many exhibitions to take place over the next six years. Also included in the exhibition are works by Kapoor, Heizer, de Maria, Koons, Bourgeois, Vezzoli, Demand, Ray, Hirst, Judd, Cattelan and Baldessari. It is an extraordinary experience to view contemporary art in this refined space!

Heading over to the Palazzo Grassi to see "The World Belongs To You" curated by Caroline Bourgeois, I was bowled over by Thomas Houseago's "L'Homme Presse" jutting out on the Grand Canal. Truly an imposing and powerful sculpture! His work is also featured in the Punta della Dogana, "In Praise of Doubt".  Inside the Palazzo, Francesco Vezzoli's videos are superb and well worth taking the time to watch in the little theatre. Other outstanding artists include David Hammons, El Anatsui, Friedrich Kunath, Matthew Day Jackson, Nicholas Hlobo, Urs Fischer, Rudolf Stingel and Maurizio Cattelan. 

Not to be missed on San Marco is "Permanently Becoming: Julian Schnabel and the Architecture of Seeing" at Correr Museum, curated by Sir Norman Rosenthal, following last year's highly acclaimed exhibition by David Moos at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.  Forty paintings and sculptures, exploring Julian's career from the 1970s to the present illustrate his unique aesthetic, influenced by the great American masters, Pollock, Twombly, as well as the great Europeans including Giotto, Goya, Gaudi and Picasso. MOCA LA will have a retrospective of Julian's work in 2012, which is now being organized by director Jefrey Deitch. 

Do not leave Venice without seeing "Penelope's Labor: Weaving Words and Images" at San Giorgio Maggiore. The exhibition of tapestries dating from the 15th century to today is beautifully installed.  My favorites are Grayson Perry's "Walthamstow" tapestry and Marc Quinn's "flowers" depicting our manipulated natural world. These artists and others rediscover weaving as a contemporary medium.

Roberta Smith on Christian Marclay

Roberta Smith's review, As in Life, Timing Is Everything in the Movies in the New York Times praises Christian Marclay's The Clock at Paula Cooper Gallery:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/arts/design/04marclay.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=christian%20marclay&st=cse

Christian Marclay: The Clock

Christian Marclay's new 24 hour, groundbreaking video work The Clock is now on view at the Paul Copper Gallery at 534 W. 21st Street until February 19, 2011.  I first caught a glimpse of this work when it debuted at White Cube in London during the Frieze Art Fair in October.  This mesmerizing video is a montage of clips from several thousand films put together to create an artwork that always states the correct time in real time.  There is all month to view this 24 hour work - even an hour at a time dazzles the mind!

Richard Phillips "Most Wanted"

Walking into Richard Phillips' studio last week to view his "Most Wanted" series I was bowled over by the sheer power and allure of each painting. There is no timelier artist than Phillips. The 10 portraits of the hottest young celebrities from Leo DiCaprio to Dakota Fanning opens on January 28th at White Cube Gallery in London.


http://artruby.com/richard-phillips’-most-wanted-a-true-teenage-and-collector’s-dream