Contents for June 20, 2016
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1. Victoria Keddie & Scott Kiernan (E.S.P. TV), FF Fund recipients 2016-17, at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, July 16
2. John Kelly, Ann Magnuson, FF Alumns, at EAI, Manhattan, June 22
3. Emma Amos, FF Alumn, at The Newark Museum, NJ, opening June 17
4. Jeffrey Isaac, FF Alumn, now online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=0COojoerWNg and more
5. Alicia Grullon, FF Alumn, now online at hyperallergic.com and more
6. Steven Dubin, FF Member, in The New Yorker, June 19
7. Robin Tewes, FF Alumn, now online at inconundies.com
8. Frank Moore, FF Alumn, now online at https://vimeo.com/channels/letmebefrank .
9. Liliana Porter, FF Alumn, at Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston, MA, thru July 30
10. Barbara Rosenthal, FF Alumn, at Studio Baustelle, Berlin, Germany, June 24-28
11. Emily Mast, FF Alumn, at University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, June 22-Sept. 18
12. Pope.L, Christopher Wool, FF Alumns, in the New York Times, June 16
13. Alison Knowles, Joseph Kosuth, FF Alumns, in The Wall Street Journal, June 17
14. Saya Woolfalk, FF Alumn, in The New York Times, June 17
15. M. Lamar, FF Alumn, receives Material Art Prize
16. RT Livingston, FF Alumn, at Box Gallery, West Palm Beach, CA, opening July 8
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1. Victoria Keddie & Scott Kiernan (E.S.P. TV), FF Fund recipients 2016-17, at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, July 16
Victoria Keddie and Scott Kiernan (E.S.P. TV), FF Fund recipients 2016-17, Unit 11 Residency Launch and Performance, at Pioneer Works with Clocktower Radio, Brooklyn, July 16
July 16, 7-10pm
Pioneer Works, 159 Pioneer St. Brooklyn NY, 11231
Unit 11 is a mobile residency that focuses on transmission based research and practice. Site/Phase One was launched in April 2016 with artist, Ed Bear from the host location of Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn. For his residency, Bear has installed a new iteration of the radioOrgan, a hand-crafted modular FM transmission system built from obsolete electronics, in E.S.P. TV’s Unit 11 mobile studio. The residency culminates in a live performance from the van at Pioneer Works with live radio broadcast recording via Clocktower Radio.
The evening performances include:
Ed Bear
Emilie Mouchous
Jaiko Suzuki and Benoit
Joe DeNardo and Ben Greenberg
More info about the event: http://clocktower.org/event/unit-11
More info about Unit 11: http://www.esptv.com/mobile-residency/
The Unit 11 residency, named after its former ID-tag for Austin Channel 8 News, is a studio- on-wheels that engages in site-specific transmission based projects with other artists, technological innovators, scientists, and engineers. Collaborations with colleagues in creative and technical realms will assist in the studio buildout for Unit 11. To date, Unit 11 has been fully outfitted for live video mixing and broadcast using both analog and digital media. Unit 11 hopes to be a mobile studio that will be self sufficient as well as energy conscious. The residents that work within the van in specific sites are chosen for their expertise, ingenuity, and dedication to alternative means of theory and practice.
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2. John Kelly, Ann Magnuson, FF Alumns, at EAI, Manhattan, June 22
“Edited at EAI”: Videos by Tom Rubnitz John Kelly in Conversation
EAI continues our 45th anniversary “Edited at EAI” series with an evening celebrating the work of Tom Rubnitz (1956-1992), whose deliriously camp genre parodies and music videos capture the anarchic spirit and talents of the 1980s East Village scene of Club 57 and the Pyramid Club. The rich body of work that Rubnitz edited at EAI includes TV spoofs, music videos, and the musical parody Psykho III The Musical (1985). Downtown performance and drag luminaries, such as Lady Bunny, Sister Dimension, John Kelly, Ann Magnuson, Hapi Phace, John Sex, and Tabboo! star in videos that can seem like screwball TV broadcasts from another dimension. Artist John Kelly, featured in Psykho III The Musical and Drag Queen Marathon (1986) (as drag persona Dagmar Onassis), will be in conversation following the screening.
Wednesday, June 22, 2016 6:30 pm
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) 535 West 22nd Street, 5th floor New York, NY 10011 www.eai.org
$7/ $5 Students Free For Members
RSVP: info@eai.org
The works Rubnitz edited at EAI span multiple genres and spotlight many of the de ning talents of 1980s downtown New York. Created with and starring performance artist and Club 57 manager Ann Magnuson, Made for TV (1984) artfully recreates the experience of channel- ipping, as it cuts between Magnuson in multiple guises, from housewife to televangelist to Nina Hagen/Lena Lovich style “scream queen” “Lina Hagendazovich.” Psykho III The Musical satirizes-and puts a decidedly queer gloss on-the original Psycho (1960) and features Pyramid stars John Kelly, Tabboo!, and Hapi Phace. Based on the stage musical conceived by Mark Oates, following the movie release of Psycho II (1983) and rst performed at the Pyramid Club, its 1986 premiere was co-presented by EAI and PS122. Mock-rockumentary John Sex: The True Story (1983) gives a view of the eponymous Vegas-styled performance artist, seeking to answer such questions as, “Are you a unique blend of the Appolonian male ideal and Dionysiac orgiastic frenzy?” In the music video for his single “Hustle with My Muscle,” it is Sex doing the questioning: “Can you handle all the man below my belt?” Finally, Drag Queen Marathon nds Lady Bunny and fellow drag denizens of the Pyramid Club out on the town and turning heads from Lincoln Center to the Guggenheim to Soho.
Special thanks to Video Data Bank in Chicago for their generous collaboration on this program. VDB, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, has been instrumental in preserving and distributing Tom Rubnitz’s video works.
Organized in conjunction with EAI’s 45th anniversary, the “Edited at EAI” series highlights a historically signi cant but less well-known area of EAI’s programs: EAI’s Editing Facility for artists, one of the rst such creative workspaces for video in the United States.
Program
Made For TV, Tom Rubnitz, Ann Magnuson, 1984, 15 min, color, sound
Psykho III The Musical, Tom Rubnitz, 1985, 23 min, b&w and color, sound
John Sex: The True Story, Tom Rubnitz, 1983, 4:17 min, b&w and color, sound
Hustle with My Muscle, Tom Rubnitz, 1986, 4 min, color, sound
Drag Queen Marathon, Tom Rubnitz, 1986, 5 min, color, sound
Total Running Time: 51 min.
Born in Chicago, Tom Rubnitz (1956-1992) captured the personalities and energy of the 1980s and early 90s East Village drag and performance scenes in videos that parodied pop culture and celebrated New York nightlife. His collaborators and stars in these videos included the B-52s, Lady Bunny, Ann Magnuson, RuPaul, John Sex, and David Wojnarowicz. Much of his work responds to and brilliantly parodies TV. Made for TV, which he made with Ann Magnuson, originally aired on PBS. Other TV parodies, such as his off-kilter cooking tutorial Pickle Surprise, have gone on to viral success on YouTube, decades later. Rubnitz died from AIDS-related causes in 1992.
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3. Emma Amos, FF Alumn, at The Newark Museum, NJ, opening June 17
“Modern Heroics – 75 years of African American Expressionism at the Newark Museum”
Opening on June 17, and on June 18 to the public
June 18, 2016-January 8, 2017
http://www.newarkmuseum.org/Modern-Heroics
MODERN HEROICS
75 Years of African-American Expressionism at the Newark Museum
June 18, 2016-January 8, 2017
This exhibition presents selected works from Newark’s permanent collection of African-American art. Taking a fresh look at heroic themes in modern and contemporary art, this unique exhibition features 34 paintings and sculptural works with an emphasis on storytelling and expressive imagery. Mythical and universal subject matter, the bold use of color and dramatic scale, and the artists’ direct physical engagement with their materials are all themes explored in this exhibition.
Modern Heroics brings together rarely exhibited works by leading historical and contemporary African-American artists, placing in dialogue several generations and a range of self-taught and formally trained approaches. This exhibition includes works by the following artists:
Charles Alston
Emma Amos
Kenseth Armstead
Romare Bearden
Chakaia Booker
Ed Clark
Emilio Cruz
Beauford Delaney
Thornton Dial, Sr.
Minnie Evans
Herbert Gentry
Sam Gilliam
Gladys Grauer
Claude Lawrence
Norman Lewis
Ronald Lockett
Nellie Mae Rowe
Kevin Sampson
Shinique Smith
Mickalene Thomas
Bob Thompson
Shoshanna Weinberger
Dmitri Wright
Purvis Young
Modern Heroics is organized by Tricia Laughlin Bloom, PhD, Curator of American Art
Sponsored by:
The Robert Lehman Foundation
Newark Museum Volunteer Organization
Arlene Lieberman
Judy Lieberman
Additional support provided by:
The Marie and Joe Melone Exhibition Fund for American Art
Elizabeth Richards Family Exhibition Endowment Fund
Related Events:
Members Reception: Friday, June 17, 2016, 7-9 pm
(Not yet a member? Call 973.596.6686)
Symposium: Saturday, October 15, 2016
The Newark Museum will present a one-day symposium, bringing together
scholars of African-American art and artists from the exhibition.
Stay tuned for registration information.
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4. Jeffrey Isaac, FF Alumn, now online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=0COojoerWNg and more
Jeffrey Isaac, FF Alumn, Earthly Delights at Performing Santa Caterina, Foligno, Italy, May 2016
Links to short videos of Earthly Delights:
Installation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0COojoerWNg
Performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo9zKMH3rik
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5. Alicia Grullon, FF Alumn, now online at hyperallergic.com and more
Alicia Grullon, FF Alumn in
Hyperallergic “The Political Art of Alicia Grullon” by Louis Bury http://hyperallergic.com/304597/the-political-art-of-alicia-grullon/
and Creative Time Reports Editor’s Letter
“Stepping into History” by Rachel Reiderer http://creativetimereports.org/2016/06/08/alicia-grullon-filibuster/
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6. Steven Dubin, FF Member, in The New Yorker, June 19
PHOTO BOOTH
LOST AND FOUND PHOTOS FROM A SOUTH AFRICAN PORTRAIT STUDIO
By Andrea DenHoed
JUNE 19, 2016
Five years ago, Dr. Steven Dubin, a sociologist at Columbia, was on a research trip in South Africa when a friend suggested that he should take a look at a box full of photo negatives that she had in her garage. They had been discarded by a museum, she said, but he might find them interesting. Inside the box, he discovered about fourteen hundred photos taken between 1972 and 1984 in the city of Pietermaritzberg, at a neighborhood portrait studio called Kitty’s.
Kitty was the nickname of the studio’s owner, S. J. Moodley. He opened the business in 1957, after getting fired from the local shoe factory for fighting with his boss, and he operated it until his death, thirty years later. People who lived in the area at the time have told Dubin that the studio was a hub for the social and political life of the community-Dubin compares it to African-American barber shops in the U.S. It was a time of turmoil in South Africa, and Kitty was politically engaged (his shop was sometimes used to distribute printed materials for the anti-Apartheid marches that were taking place in the streets), but the pictures from his studio show a quieter side of everyday life during those years.
Almost all of Kitty’s patrons were nonwhite-black, Indian, and what is known in South Africa as “colored”-and from poor or working-class backgrounds. (Among the fourteen hundred negatives, Dubin found only one picture of a white family.) The portraits are formally staged, with a pleated curtain as a backdrop and with decorative props, but there’s a casual jauntiness about many of them that is appealing. The sitters often wore their best clothes, which would sometimes be expensive Western designs and, other times, elaborately beaded traditional outfits. In one family portrait, everyone is dressed in Western clothes except for two young women, who are, by Zulu custom, bare from the waste up, indicating that they’re still single. In another pair of pictures, of two young women, one of the subjects appears in traditional dress in one photo and in Western clothes in the other. Such images show the influence of American culture, Dubin said, and how “people would move between categories with great ease, with no hard divide between traditional and modern, rural and urban.”
This crossing of categories was, in fact, the reason the photos had ended up in Dubin’s friend’s garage in the first place. After Kitty’s death, a larger collection of his work had been purchased by an archive at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. A young curator had gone out on a limb in purchasing them-the higher-ups at the institution weren’t very interested in photography, but the curator thought that she would find valuable documentation of traditional clothes in the pictures. She was dismayed when so many of the portraits instead showed people in suits and ties and dresses, so she got rid of the photos that didn’t show only tribal costumes. Dubin met this curator years later. “She realized her mistake, of course,” he said-that the photos she discarded provide a wider and richer portrait of South African life than one cherry picked to fit a prescribed narrative.
Every detail in the photos hints at an untold story. A full-length portrait of a woman bedecked in intricate beads and bracelets, her breasts covered, was probably taken to send to a fiancé who had left a rural home to find work in the city. Two dapper young men in pageboy caps and khaki trousers are wearing the outfit that young Xhosa men would wear for about six months after their coming-of-age circumcision ceremony. A woman sits for a straight-ahead portrait, possibly a picture for the identification document that all non-white South Africans were required to carry during apartheid. (In a shot of the exterior of Kitty’s studio, this service is advertised on a sign using the colloquial, objecting term “dompass,” literally, “dumb pass.”) She has a steely gaze, and you wonder how she got the keloid scar on her chest. One pair of images, which Dubin calls the most important in the collection, shows the same woman, in almost the same pose, but wearing two different outfits. In one, she has on the skirt and ankle bracelets that a Zulu woman would wear. In the other, she’s wearing a style of trousers worn exclusively by Zulu men. “If a woman were to dress like this outside, she would risk being beaten,” Dubin said. Like most of the sitters, her identity is unknown, and one can only speculate about why she visited Kitty’s studio to have her picture taken.
An exhibit of photographs from Kitty’s studio, “Who I Am: Rediscovered Portraits from Apartheid South Africa,” is on display through September 3rd at the Walter Collection Project Space.
Andrea DenHoed is a Web producer at newyorker.com.
The complete article with illustrations is at this link:
Thank you.
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7. Robin Tewes, FF Alumn, now online at inconundies.com
Please visit this link for an illustrated interview with Robin Tewes, FF Alumn:
Thank you.
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8. Frank Moore, FF Alumn, now online at https://vimeo.com/channels/letmebefrank .
Frank Moore, FF Alumn, featured in a new episode of the web video series about his life and art, LET ME BE FRANK
Let Me Be Frank is a video series based on the life and art of shaman, performance artist, writer, poet, painter, rock singer, director, TV show host, teacher and bon vivant, Frank Moore.
The series is partly a biography, but also a presentation of Frank’s philosophy on life and on art. Twenty-plus episodes have been planned based on Frank’s book, Art Of A Shaman, which was originally delivered as a lecture at New York University in 1990 as part of the conference “New Pathways in Performance”. Each episode will feature readings by people who played an important part in Frank’s life, either as friends, lovers, students, artistic collaborators or supporters of his art.
Episode 2, “A Wounded Healer” features readings by long-time friend Stephen Emanuel.
Let Me Be Frank presents Frank’s exploration of performance and art as being a magical way to effect change in the world … performance as an art of melting action, of ritualistic shamanistic doings/playings. Using Frank’s career and life as a “baseline”, it explores this dynamic playing within the context of reality shaping.
The series is available on Frank’s website at http://eroplay.com/letmebefrank/ and on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/channels/letmebefrank
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9. Liliana Porter, FF Alumn, at Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston, MA, thru July 30
Barbara Krakow Gallery is pleased to announce
BLOCK PARTS
Featuring works by Josef Albers, Robert Barry, Michael Beatty, Mel Bochner, Ellsworth Kelly, Allan McCollum, Liliana Porter, Stephen Prina, Kate Shepherd, Richard Smith, and Ana Tiscornia
June 1 – July 30, 2016
Barbara Krakow Gallery proudly presents “Block Parts”, a group show featuring the work of 11 artists made over the past 50 years.. Curated as an aesthetically cohesive experience, the show provides myriad opportunities to explore themes of repetition, familiarity, memory, history and the viewer/subject relationship both within and between works. The individual pieces have as consistent a dedication to specificity of material as they do to more subjective themes, and yet no work looks older or newer than another, which speaks to the timelessness of both the works and the issues investigated therein.
The show can be visited during regular gallery hours:
Tuesday – Saturday, 10 – 5:30, in June
and
Tuesday – Friday, 10 – 5:30 in July
BARBARA KRAKOW GALLERY
10 Newbury Street Boston Massachusetts 02116
+1 617 262 4490 www.barbarakrakowgallery.com
info@barbarakrakowgallery.com
JUNE: Tuesday – Saturday, 10-5:30 / JULY: Tuesday – Friday, 10-5:30 / AUGUST: By appointment only
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10. Barbara Rosenthal, FF Alumn, at Studio Baustelle, Berlin, Germany, June 24-28
BERLIN
Fri, June 24 – Sun, June 28
Alien Fetuses in Jars, 0044, St Petersburg, Russia, 2007
in 48 Stunden Festival / 48 Hours in the Neukölln Art District curated by Monika Berstis
Studio Baustelle
Berthelsdorfer-str. 11
Neukölln / Berlin
info@studio-baustelle.or
Barbara Rosenthal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Rosenthal
http://www.barbararosenthal.org/
463 West Street, #A629
NY, NY, USA 10014-2035
+1-646-368-5623 (voice and voicemail, no texts)
eMediaLoft@gMail.com
Skype: barbararosenthal
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11. Emily Mast, FF Alumn, at University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, June 22-Sept. 18
Dear friends,
I will be presenting The Cage is a Stage, a multi-compositional project composed of two gallery exhibitions and a billboard at the University of Toronto’s Blackwood Gallery, an evening-length performance that premieres onstage at The Power Plant’s Harbourfront Centre Theatre in Toronto, and a full color publication. The gallery exhibitions and billboard will be visible from June 22nd through September 18th. The performances take place on June 29th & 30th. More information can be found at:
http://blackwoodgallery.ca/exhibitions/2016/TheCage.html
http://www.thepowerplant.org/Exhibitions/2016/Summer-2016/The-Cage-is-a-Stage.aspx
Please come join me if you can & tell your friends in Toronto!
XX
emily
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12. Pope.L, Christopher Wool, FF Alumns, in the New York Times, June 16
The New York Times
At Art Basel, Upbeat Dealers and Brisk Sales
Inside Art
By ROBIN POGREBIN JUNE 16, 2016
BASEL, Switzerland – An art fair like the one here this week can feel as hermetic and all-consuming as a casino, so focused are the crowds on buying art – arguably its own form of gambling – and double-kissing that they lose track of time or what’s happening outdoors (in this case, gray skies and sporadic drizzle).
That laser-focused quality was particularly true on Tuesday, V.I.P. opening day at the fair, Art Basel 2016, when even boldfaced names were willing to wait in a long line in the rain to be first to sample the wares of more than 280 international dealers in the sprawling exhibition hall on Messeplatz.
“I feel like I’m in Oklahoma in 1900,” said Richard Armstrong, director of the Guggenheim Museum, referring to the land rush there in the late 1800s.
Because of the decline in auction houses guarantees, said Neal Meltzer, a New York art adviser, “a lot of top-quality material has shifted to the dealers.”
Some collectors would also rather consign their artwork privately, industry experts say, so that it won’t be shunned if it fails to sell at auction.
The resulting bumper crop of good material, along with many items priced under $1 million, made for brisk sales even before the first hour was up (though gallery tallies must be taken with a grain of salt, since some pieces have been presold).
Indeed, Dominique Lévy arrived without the centerpiece of her booth – a large canvas by the Russian artist Nicolas de Staël (1914-55) – because a collector bought it before the fair began. (She would not say who, or for how much.) Her gallery also sold its Frank Stella and its Alexander Calder, each for about $5 million.
The collector Peter M. Brant bought Claes Oldenburg’s “Four Pies in a Glass Case” (1961), from Paula Cooper for more than $1 million. The collector and dealer Adam Lindemann purchased a cast-aluminum sculpture by Nairy Baghramian, an Iranian-born artist, from Marian Goodman, for 100,000 euros or about $112,000.
Jack Shainman, in the main part of the fair for the first time, sold Barkley L. Hendricks’s “The Twins” (1977) for $450,000; Kerry James Marshall’s “Untitled (Looking Man)” (2016) for $350,000; and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s “Peregrine” (2016) for $100,000.
Some dealers tested demand by bringing high-priced items, like Sigmar Polke’s 1988 “Great Luck,” which David Zwirner sold to a private European collection for 6.5 million euros, or more than $7.2 million. Acquavella sold a 1964 Tom Wesselmann still life for $3.5 million; Mitchell Innes & Nash sold one from the same year for $2 million.
Marc Glimcher, the president of Pace, proudly showed off the section of his booth devoted to Julian Schnabel, whom the gallery just started representing again.
Photo
“This is how you relaunch an artist,” Mr. Glimcher said, referring to the walls covered by Mr. Schnabel’s new series of purple paintings, priced at $375,000 each. “This is Julian 3.0,” he said to Edward J. Minskoff, a real estate developer and collector who passed through.
“We had the Julian who changed art history, the Julian who made films,” Mr. Glimcher added. “Now we have Julian reborn as a painter.” (By Wednesday, three had sold.)
Christophe Van de Weghe, a Madison Avenue dealer specializing in blue-chip work, said he sold two Basquiats, one for $4 million and the other for $5.5 million, and that the market was “much better than six months ago.”
“You can feel that people are coming here to buy art,” he said.
Luhring Augustine had built its booth around a $6 million Christopher Wool from 1999; Lawrence Luhring, a founder of the gallery, said Mr. Wool didn’t like to introduce his newest work at a fair, “because you have less control” over who buys it. (By Thursday, it hadn’t sold.)
Mr. Luhring said that six to seven pieces in his booth did sell quickly – including a
Rachel Whiteread and a Glenn Ligon (both priced under $1 million) – adding that
buying was “more immediate than last year.”
There was life – and art – outside the main exhibition hall, namely the highest number of installations (88) in the fair’s Unlimited sector, devoted to large-scale works for sale and located in a hangar-like space near the main fair.
Curated for the fifth year by Gianni Jetzer of the Hirshhorn Museum, Unlimited offered a number of attention-getting pieces at the V.I.P. opening, including Hans Op de Beeck’s eerily monochromatic “The Collector’s House” and Davide Balula’s “Mimed Sculptures,” featuring performers in white uniforms and hot-pink gloves.
The dealer Per Skarstedt said he had sold his Mike Kelley installation at Unlimited, 50 illustrations from the artist’s “Reconstructed History,” to an unidentified American museum trustee for $1.5 million.
Nicholas Baume, the director and chief curator of the Public Art Fund, said he was particularly struck by William Pope.L’s performance at Unlimited’s opening, in which the artist wandered through the fair in a white gorilla suit before departing in a white limousine.
“One of the things this fair can do is bring together galleries, curators and artists from all over the world and create some unique experiences,” Mr. Baume said.
Across the Rhine on Rittergasse Street – seemingly a world away from blue-chip booths like Mr. Van de Weghe’s, with his Henry Moore and Magritte – the Tennessee-born artist Virginia Overton had installed a dismantled pickup truck in the Parcours sector of Art Basel, its collection of site-specific sculptures and performances.
As it happened, the artist was present, having placed her truck piece before heading back to New York – she lives and works in Brooklyn – for the opening this week of her exhibition “Sculpture Gardens” at the Whitney Museum.
“I wanted recognizable pieces – ‘Oh, there’s the windshield,’ or, ‘That’s the radio speaker,'” she said of her Basel artwork, for which she piled the vehicle’s parts into the truck bed. “I’ve got the grease on my hands.”
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13. Alison Knowles, Joseph Kosuth, FF Alumns, in The Wall Street Journal, June 17
http://www.wsj.com/articles/crowds-caution-at-art-basel-1466098563
Crowds, Caution at Art Basel
Though collectors and dealers appeared cautious at Art Basel, the fair’s first days saw some big sales of established names. Each year, collectors, dealers, museum directors, and artists descend on Switzerland for the contemporary art fair Art Basel. This year’s edition, the 47th, featured 286 galleries from 33 countries
by ANNA RUSSELL
June 16, 2016 1:36 p.m. ET
Steady rain fell on the open-air Champagne breakfast at Art Basel Tuesday, but the VIPs present had their drinks and hors d’oeuvres outside all the same. Collectors and dealers determined to make the best of it, huddled beneath umbrellas outside the exhibition halls.
That sanguine attitude persisted through the Swiss fair’s opening days, as visitors navigated 286 gallery booths from across 33 countries. The annual weeklong event, a who’s who of dealers, artists, curators, museum directors and big-name collectors that last year drew 98,000 visitors, opened a month after disappointing May auctions in New York, where sales totaled around $1 billion, compared with $2.3 billion in a similar round last year. The auction houses will test the market again in London next week.
Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, founder of Italy’s foundation of the same name, called the market “delicate” and noted a high volume of relatively safe modern works on display. “Purchases are cautious,” she wrote in an email.
Even so, the fair’s first days saw some big sales for established names. Hauser & Wirth sold Paul McCarthy’s raunchy, oversized installation “Tomato Head (Green)” for $4.75 million. A Frank Stella went for $1.1 million at Sprüth Magers, while Van Doren Waxter sold a suite of Richard Diebenkorn’s works on paper for over $1 million. But other pricey works, like a $7 million sculpture by abstract expressionist David Smith at Hauser & Wirth, had failed to sell by the end of the VIP preview Wednesday, when many big sales take place.
In the curated “Unlimited” section for oversized works, the mood was cheery and circuslike. Bird calls propelled by a sound cannon echoed through the hall as part of Hong Kong-based artist Samson Young’s piece “Cannon.” California-born artist James Turrell’s “Cross Cut” light installation drew long lines, while Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota captivated audiences with a hanging work of dozens of vintage suitcases on red string. New York-based artist Alison Knowlesprepared and served an enormous salad for visitors in her signature performance piece entitled “Make A Salad.” “Is it good?” she asked as guests munched. (It was.)
Here, key players offer their take on Art Basel 2016:
The Museum Directors
Hirshhorn director Melissa Chiu saw works by British sculptor Tony Cragg and crowd-favorite Alexander Calder pop up at several booths. Pedro Gadanho, director of Lisbon’s new MAAT museum, which opens in October, was on the lookout for emerging talent and edgy video art, like Frank Heath’s “The Hollow Coin,” at Simone Subal’s booth in the curated “Statements” section of the fair.
The Dealers
Peter MacGill, director of Pace/MacGill Gallery, which specializes in photography, was showing at Art Basel for the first time since the 1970s. Long hesitant to join the fair circuit, he called it an inevitability now. “We’ve slowly been building up the number we do, and this is the best of them,” said Mr. MacGill, who brought images by Richard Avedon and Richard Misrach to his stand. Swiss dealer Iwan Wirth, of Hauser & Wirth, said he wanted his booth to highlight the work of Brazilian modernist Lygia Pape. Her “Night and Day Book” occupied one wall. Elsewhere at the fair, Mr. Wirth had eyed an illuminated sculpture by Alina Szapocznikow, which Andrea Rosen gallery sold for €1.9 million ($2.1 million).
The Curators
Gianni Jetzer, who has chosen works for the fair’s separate section “Unlimited” for five years, said he prepares by working out every day for two months ahead of Art Basel, “to be full of oxygen for the full week.” He named French artist Davide Balula’s “Mimed Sculptures,” in which mimes shape invisible sculptures by Louise Bourgeois, Alberto Giacometti and others, as among his favorite works this year. Samuel Leuenberger,curator of Art Basel’s site-specific “Parcours” section, which is spread throughout the city, said pop artist Jim Dine’s immersive work “Muscle and Salt,” had caught his eye.
The Artists
Fairs can be strange places for artists. “It’s not like it’s an exhibition,” said Joseph Kosuth,an early pioneer of conceptual art, who showed a neon work, among others, at Sean Kelly’s booth. “People are trying to get rid of [the art], to get money for it,” he said. Mr. Kosuth said he enjoyed a project by a former student, Tim Rollins, and his group K.O.S., which was just a few paces from his own installation in “Unlimited” composed of several definitions of the word “nothing.” Ms. Knowles, whose salad-making performance is in part a contemplation of solitude, said she’s “not much on shows and fairs.” “I’m not a hustly-bustly type,” she said.
The Collectors
Art Basel regulars Verena and Niklaus Müller-Senz were struck this year by sculpture, including work by British sculptor William Tucker at Buchmann Galerie, but the collectors were still weighing their options Wednesday. “We don’t know what to buy-and usually we did, the past few years,” said Mr. Müller-Senz, who lives outside Zurich. Seoul-based collector Kyunghwa Nam, who also attended Art Basel in Hong Kong and Miami this year, had already made her decision: a whimsical time-traveler’s clock by Rirkrit Tiravanija, the Argentinean-born son of a Thai diplomat, offered for $12,000 by STPI. “I don’t want to break the bank buying art,” she said. “Everything comes and goes, you know?”
Write to Anna Russell at anna.russell@wsj.com
The complete illustrated article is at this link:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/crowds-caution-at-art-basel-1466098563
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14. Saya Woolfalk, FF Alumn, in The New York Times, June 17
The New York Times
DANCE
Review: ‘ChimaTEK’ Offers Crystal Visions at a Transit Hub
By GIA KOURLAS
JUNE 17, 2016
With all public art, the real test is making an audience out of those most elusive beings: passers-by. On Thursday night at the Fulton Center, the challenge was even greater – to delay the subway ride home. One transfixed man in the crowd was filming the scene when he received a call. “I’m going to hit the train in a minute,” he told the person on the other end, “but I’ve gotten caught up with some interpretive dance.”
The artist Saya Woolfalk has a healthy imagination – one that may be infused with a greater sense of the fantastical than most. In “ChimaTEK: ChimaCloud Control Center,” she creates a virtual world that lives inside the Fulton Center in Lower Manhattan. And if a work can make you forget, even for a few minutes, about the assault of garish pink neon that permeates that transit hub, it’s art.
Part of the River to River Festival, commissioned by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and presented with Times Square Arts and Times Square Advertising Coalition, “ChimaTEK” combines dance, video, animation and sculpture. In the 35-minute piece performed on Thursday, the control center, according to an informational brochure, “collects and crystallizes human and solar energy to create virtual crystals from the ChimaCloud.” (A helpful fact: It’s fiction.)
As three dancers – the piece’s choreographer, Aimee Meredith Cox, as well as Fréyani Patrice and Kenya Joy Gibson – make their way down escalators and a winding staircase to the lower base of the multilevel center, three-dimensional crystals featuring diamond mosaics and propellers dance alongside them.
Some preparation is in order: To see these floating crystals, you must first download the Refrakt application and aim your smartphone on a design on the dancers’ dresses. When it works – and you have to be close enough – a crystal suddenly appears to hover around the dancer’s body. Spookily beautiful, these crystals help you reimagine space and time. Are the dancers impersonating the crystals, or is the crystal a guise? As the barefoot dancers incorporate lush African undulations and hold still positions with such focus and poise that they could be sculptures, even the hectic Fulton Center quiets down.
When they reach ground level, Ms. Cox, the leader of the group, dances before Ms. Patrice and Ms. Gibson while holding an iPad to reveal the crystals; it’s as if she’s demonstrating, wordlessly, how the application works. But the action also enhances the dreamlike quality of the dance in which a duet – with the help of a crystal – becomes a trio. Their exit is most haunting: Ascending escalators, they glide away.
Saya Woolfalk continues performances on Tuesday and Thursday at Fulton Center, Broadway at Fulton Street; rivertorivernyc.com.
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15. M. Lamar, FF Alumn, receives Material Art Prize
Congratulations to M. Lamar, FF Alumn, second recipient of The Material Art Prize. For complete information please visit www.materialvodka.com and www.mlamar.com
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16. RT Livingston, FF Alumn, at Box Gallery, West Palm Beach, CA, opening July 8
HOT POSSE is in a show in a show at the Box Gallery in West Palm Beach. I’m half of HOT POSSE.
http://palmbeachfineartgallery.blogspot.com/2016/06/weddings-and-burlesque-show-included-in.html
LIFELINES SBTC Santa Barbara, CA July 8-Aug 5, 2016
RT Livingston
Francine Kirsch
Pamela Hill Enticknap
RT Livingston is a conceptual artist who in 2006 moved from New York to Santa Barbara where she continues making art that focuses on the environment. Paintings from her series “THE CiC:I draw the line where the water meets the sky” and PETRIFIED TRUNKS are visual metaphors for clean water and air: LIFELINES to existence on Earth.
Francine Kirsch immigrated to the US in the 70’s from France. After studying ceramics at SBCC, she ventured to Japan where for five years she immersed herself in the study of ceramics.The recurrent themes of her sculptures are inspired by the harmonious lines found in nature.
Pamela Hill Enticknap moved to Santa Barbara in 1998 from the Princeton, NJ area to focus on fine arts after a career as Creative Director at Rivermead Design Studio. Her black bird paintings focus our attention on the small Brewer’s Black Birds that forage on the California beaches. These delicate black characters gather in groups, vigilant and wary, social and highly aware, as they try to coexist with beachgoers.
Reception: July 8th, 2016, 5:30 – 7:30pm
Exhibition Dates: July 8th – Aug 5th, 2016
Gallery Hours: 10am – 9pm, Daily
Susan Tibbles
Curator/ Director
SBTC
2375 Foothill Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93105 • 805.862.4722 www.2ndFridaysArt.com
RT Livingston
www.rtlivingston.com
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Goings On is compiled weekly by Harley Spiller
