Friday, March 5, 2010

Pulse Art Fair 2010

Pulse Art Fair 2010

Yesterday I went to Pulse and the Independent Art Fairs.  Here is the Pulse stuff.  Stay tuned for more . . .

Pulse had a pulse.  if you could wrap it up in a witty entendre that says it all. Okay well it was more marketable, more 'telegenic' to my camera than the Independent fair (at the old Dia building), but probably more predictable as well.  As you enter . . . 


Alexandra Arrechea
By the way, I am posting links to all of the artist's websites, or if not available, the gallery representing them.  Let me know if that's overkill or helpful.  I find these links helped me learn a lot more about the artists.  
So, basketball net tree, pretty straightforward. liked it.


Stellar painting.  That whole untouched squiggly line painting style is so delicate . . . it can work sometimes, but it can get overused quickly.  Case in point, Paul Kasmin Gallery at the Armory had nothing but James Nares paintings.  the whole point of the gestural line is that it doesn't feel overproduced.  But Nares has overproduced, and killed, it.  


This one's up for best of the show.  the image isn't so good, so you can't tell that the piece is huge.  I'll go on a limb here and say it's like Raymond Pettibone crossed with Sol Lewitt's wall drawings.  
Andrew Schoultz  - detail




The first of 3 aritsts I've got here from Washington DC's Conner Contemporary Gallery.  Taylor makes amazing sculpture, and is having a show at said gallery right now.  These 3 drawings are just some tantalizing bits. 

The piece is only like 8 x 10 " the detail is small.  I imagine Taylor hunched over his drawing table getting those lines straight.

This was one of many, many pictures in a grid.  He recently showed his work in the ICP Triennial.  And I went to a party that he hosted downtown.  He didn't pose like he does here, but then again, it was early, and maybe no one had a polaroid camera on them.


This is a small drawing with pencil and guache.  I thought the skull between the feet was so odd. And the flyswatter.  

His website is full of nude women paintings.  the one nude man selected on his site has his penis covered.  Just sayin'
I love the color of some of these;  in this one, the graffiti on the tree was great.  
These paintings have large globs of paint stuck to the surface.  
The young woman watching this print gallery booth (they were from New Brunswick, NJ) was helpful in explaining these stereoscopic prints.  I asked if the artist was from New Jersey.  She said, "I don't know, his name is Kentridge, he's having an opera open tonight, I'm just an art history major."  Well I told her she should learn about William Kentridge even if she is an art historian.  We figured it was a particularly unique process to make these works, that combined drawing, photography, printing, and digital editing.  but we couldn't figure out the order.
William Kentridge
Whoops wrong way.  
This one's called "Forced Labour"  
Here's the rest of it.
Almost didn't want to include these, I've seen the same work for years from this artist.  Say it with me:  "Shtick."     The colors are spools of thread.
Quirky, puzzling photographs.
The holy water is hitting the baby's head and turning red.  Like its turning to wine, or maybe blood.  
Matthew McConville
This painting is relatively small.  He's depicting (rather romantically) another artist's work. The piece, Floating Garden, was created recently from the late Robert Smithson's notes.
  
Here's Smithson's notes from the 70's, and the piece from 2000's.  Bruce High Quality Foundation, always looking to grab a footnote in the public realm, followed the garden around with a dingy outfitted with a recreation of one of Christo's Gates.  Now if only that had made it into McConville's painting.


Rather large painting.  below is a detail:
At first I thought they were colored thumbtacks.  Nope, just paint.
I just like me some animal painting, what can I say.  The colors are really  bright

Good artist, but crazy website.  This is fired clay with crocheted yarn.  Brilliant!

An old timey version of DeerHunter, or Duck Hunt, take your pick.  The video takes on a silent film style with stop animated bullets flying through a room, and  storyboard prompts telling you to get ready aim and fire...
This is another niche in the artworld (there are so many): nostalgia for early film antics. See Shannon Plumb and some Olaf Bruening.
Clifton Childree
The kids love it.  

I like this work.  Its poetic and simple, no?
Bill Smith
That's an emu egg floating in a fountain, with bubbles rising underneath it.  Occasionally it will tilt to one side, and attached antennae will brush one of the feelers around the perimeter.  Each is placed at 24 degree intervels, and a computerized voice anounces the degree the egg has chosen.  the information is then relayed to a computer program that plots a small vector drawing that's projected on the wall.  (or at least that's how I remember it)
This artist introduced himself to me, he was from St. Louis, and will be working at a residency at the Fabric Workshop in Philly soon. 


The container is vacuum formed plastic.  The artist stated that all of the shapes were completely functional.  Any decorative stylizations came from the organic nature of necessity.  
Oh, there was also baroque music in the background, and Bill had to stand by and fix it because it occasionally got stuck.  He said he was working the kinks out.  Still, pretty fascinating piece.  I told him I just had an emu egg omelette for the first time, which was true.

Bill Smith
Here's the computerized drawing.
Alexandra Arrechea
This is the same artist who made the basketball net tree. 

Hybrid animal art, done fairly well.  I love the irredescence of the fur (or it feathers?) on this walrus.  
This was his LA booth.  I told the gallerist he should do something like #class (Powhida's current sit-in rethinking of market structures at Winkleman gallery).  He yawned, asked for forgiveness, and said, "naww one is enough."  

I must use this space to admit that I purchased a Powhida print last night.  I couldn't deal with thinking up a barter to offer for the works on sale at Winkleman Gallery.  Somehow, even though I don't currently have money, and I'm supposedly a creative person, I couldn't think of a barter worthy or fitting enought.  It was easier to just pay for one on a credit card.  
($50, cheap, at www.20x200.com  you don't even have to leave the house!)
Darren Lago
Who loves Mickey?  Piet I'm looking at you!

I thought this guy wasn't too original, till i looked at his website, and see he's on point with some crazy good sculpture.  (Still another niche, the make-it-yourself-out-of-one-common material, crossed with the fascination-with-grown-up-boys-toys niche)

it is an edition, titled "om"
A photographer who I met recently while working at a musuem.  He doesn't restrict his subject too much with rationalization, but he works in series' that focus on a particular place.  These photos included architectural shots from the ground, from the sky, along with a few portraits on the street such as this one.
Steven happened to be in the right place at the right time to photograph the Associated Press image of the evacuation of flight 1549 that crashed in the Hudson last year.  On his website I noticed he also made paintings, a whole body of them five years ago, all about airplane evacuation diagrams.  Spooky.
Here's to the rare  slicing-your-books-with-a-jigsaw niche.  James Sham, this is for you.


All of these items are soft sculptures, fabric sewn together.   There were tons of them. They would sell together in groups or clumps.
Megan Whitmarsh
sorry it's a bit blurry.  Of course I had to take the 'meta' picture of the tool remade by itself.

Alfredo Barsuglia
Alfredo Barsuglia
My german doppleganger has been painted, ever so lightly, as if he is in the act of appearing or disappearing!
The material for this piece, in german, was "lasershow."  Which distinguished it from most video projections or LED screens (like Julian Opie).  No matter how far away the projector, it would never lose focus.


Hummer art is a niche all its own, that I know all too well about.  Many of you have seen my hummer piece.  Then there was Andrew Junge's styrofoam hummer that stole the show at Scope Miami 06.  Painter Jean Lowe made Hummer in the Park, and a simple google search will reveal other Hummer art here (made from lotto tickets), here (made with wagon wheels), and here. (Down Under Hummer)

So Jeremy learned how in the Great Depression, people hitched horses to their Ford Model T's because they couldn't afford the gas.  A simple leap forward in time and you get poetical justice for the HumVee.  
Jeremy Dean
Its no wonder that these cars have become a symbol for artists to latch on to.  They are a perfect indicator of the what the 2000's were all about.  Aggression, status, pomposity.

But I have to wonder about the scale of Jeremy's project.  He actually took his life savings and bought the car, and took his welding torch to it the same day.  Why is the spectacle of such a manuever necessary?  aren't these small models, that Jeremy also made, nice on their own?
Do we need the fully pimped out stage coach realized?  Wouldn't it be nicer to live with some space in our imaginations, as just an idea?



Word paintings.  Erik does them the best.  Except for Kay Rosen, but that's a whole different thing.
Misaki Kawai
This one's called "Spider Kiss."
(the spider's on her butt)

Sorry these are blurry.  They look like old record covers.  A closer inspection reveals they all have jokes, and and even close inspection reveals they are finely made oil paintings.  The "OUI" cover is a play on prog band "YES" albums.  The others were funny too. 


Wheew!  that's it for PULSE New York 2010.  
Scope and the Independent coming very soon . . .




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