DLK COLLECTION

The Checklist: 5/24/12

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Thu, 24 May 2012 11:56:00 +0000

Current New York Photography Shows
New reviews added this week in red.
(Rating: Artist/Title: Venue: Closing Date: link to review)

Uptown

ONE STAR: Photography Is: Higher Pictures: May 26: review
TWO STARS: Francesca Woodman: Guggenheim: June 13: review
ONE STAR: Spies in the House of Art: Met: August 26: review
ONE STAR: Naked before the Camera: Met: September 9: review

Midtown

ONE STAR: August Sander: Edwynn Houk: May 26: review
THREE STARS: Cindy Sherman: MoMA: June 11: review
THREE STARS: Weegee: ICP: September 2: review
ONE STAR: Taryn Simon: MoMA: September 3: review
TWO STARS: The Shaping of New Visions: MoMA: April 29: review

Chelsea

TWO STARS: Cindy Sherman: Metro Pictures: June 9: review
ONE STAR: Ari Marcopolous: Marlborough Chelsea: June 16: review
ONE STAR: Lisa Oppenheim: Harris Lieberman: June 16: review
TWO STARS: Gilbert & George: Lehmann Maupin: June 23: review
TWO STARS: Gilbert & George: Sonnabend: June 23: review

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown

ONE STAR: Lillian Bassman: Staley-Wise: May 26: review
ONE STAR: Jessica Labatte: Golden: May 27: review
ONE STAR: Ryan McGinley (Grids): Team: June 2: review
ONE STAR: Ryan McGinley (Animals): Team: June 2: review
ONE STAR: David Benjamin Sherry: Salon 94 Bowery/Freemans: June 2: review
ONE STAR: Chris Wiley: Nicelle Beauchene: June 3: review
TWO STARS: Gilbert & George: Lehmann Maupin: June 23: review

Elsewhere Nearby

TWO STARS: Rising Dragon: Katonah Museum of Art: September 2: review

Forward Auction Calendar
New auctions added this week in red.
(Sale Date: Sale Title: Auction House: link to catalog)

May 30: Photographie: Villa Grisebach: catalog
June 6: 19th-21st Century Photography: Bassenge: catalog
June 20: Photography: Van Ham: catalog

Taryn Simon: A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I-XVIII @MoMA

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:05:00 +0000

JTF (just the facts): A total of 9 multi-panel mixed-media works, framed in brown wood with cream colored mounts, and hung in a divided two room gallery space on the 3rd floor of the museum. Each work is made up of three sections: an ordered group of pigmented inkjet prints displayed in 1-4 panels, a single narrow panel of explanatory text and image details, and a third panel containing other related photographs and ephemera. All of the works are dated 2011. A think monograph of this entire body of work was published in 2011 by MACK books (here) and is on display in a glass case. A newspaper style catalog is available for free in a rack outside the exhibit. As an aside, most of the works on view came from the collection of Michael and Jane Wilson. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Taryn Simon's newest photographic project dives deeper into the nature and definition of history than any of her previous work. It explores how photographs, text, and other documents can be used to piece together a story, providing clues and context while still leaving many questions unanswered. Her works are like exploded files from an archive, presented with an eye for order and classification, teasing out buried multi-generational narratives of struggle, violence, and survival.

From afar, Simon's panels are totally indecipherable. Row upon row of deadpan faces (and in one case, rabbits in vitrines), strictly laid out in a genealogical tree from eldest to youngest, stare out at the viewer, devoid of recognizable context. Only after the textual background on the middle panel is read can the stories start to unfold. The people are surviors (or remains) of the Srebrenica massacre, or Ukranian orphans, or Jewish settlers, or the countless offspring of a Kenyan polygamist healer. Tied up in each of these narratives is the study of inherited consequences, of descendants being trapped by the decisions (or fate) their ancestors. An Indian man was mistakenly declared dead by the local land office, thereby throwing the ownership of the land into confusion for his entire family. A legal adviser to Hitler and a PFLP airplane hijacker permanently alter their family histories. And hundreds of Australian rabbits die testing poisonous strains of viruses used to control the exploding population, descendants from an original group of 24 introduced over 150 years earlier. It seems there is no escape from the effects of choices made long ago.

The third panel of each work is a kind of grab bag of evidence; photographs, documents, and other ephemera are offered as related facts or footnotes to the larger stories. These items and artifacts further probe the idea of how historians edit and connect, and how seemingly random pieces of information are tied together to tell a broader, more comprehensive story. In one work, Simon documents a family chosen to represent China by the State Council Information Office. Alongside these photographs and the accompanying background text, Simon has included a gift bag provided by the SCIO. It is a surprisingly resonant data point (almost ominously comic) used to reinforce just how controlled her interaction with this agency was, deftly undermining the veracity of the family story she is supposedly telling.
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In these works, the documentary photographs are just one element that supports the creation of an entire narrative. And while all of the stories (constructed from both text and visuals) are presented with a kind of cohesive, scientific rigor, the structured, conceptual analysis isn't conclusive; the patterns are there to be observed, but the process of creating the history itself is also on view. In the end, these works are an examination of the components of history, and how they are fit together to uncover and discern meaning.

Collector's POV: Given this is a museum show, there are of course no posted prices. Taryn Simon is represented by Gagosian Gallery in New York (here) and Almine Rech Gallery in Paris and Brussels (here). Simon's work has only recently begun to enter the secondary markets, so no definitive pricing history has yet emerged. As such, gallery retail is likely the only real option for interested collectors at this point.

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

Transit Hub:

Artist site (here)
Features/Reviews: Aesthetica (here), Artnet (here), Cool Hunting (here), Photograph (here), Independent (here)

Taryn Simon: A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I-XVIII
Through September 2nd

Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY 10019

Core Samples of Contemporary Photography

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Tue, 22 May 2012 21:40:00 +0000

I've been thinking a bit lately about what a useful history of contemporary photography for the recent decade (2000-2010) should or might look like, and I've come up wholly frustrated by the status quo. If you go to any book store, the kind of thing you will find on this topic (if you find anything at all) is a theme-based selection of representative photographers, bunched into buckets (staged, appropriated, manipulated, process driven, performance, etc.), with a few images from each along for the ride as examples. Perhaps there will be backgrounds on each photographer, discussions of high level prevailing trends and a stab at a comprehensive essay. All well and good, but this kind of analysis isn't particularly useful or actionable from my point of view, mostly because it glosses over the important chronological details of what was happening year to year. What I think needs to be understood is the interaction between photographers and their projects on an annual basis, so it is possible to trace who came first and in what order original ideas percolated through the artistic world.

As a starting point, what I think someone needs to do is build out a list of the top 50 photographers of the period (by whatever definition you might choose), and then detail each of the projects they did during the decade (good and bad, known and unknown) and the years in which they worked on those projects. As an example of what I mean, see my amateur hour infographic below of 5 photographers who I think would be in the top 50 (I'm no graphic designer, and I don't warrant that the data presented is either complete or correct - in fact I know it isn't, but it's good enough for illustrative purposes):

What I think this kind of presentation does is that it gives clarity on the progression of an artist's own projects and makes it much clearer to see the interactions with other artists working contemporaneously. Look at the three vertical lines, in 2001, 2004, and 2007. By ticking down the chart (or drilling a core sample), it is now possible to see what each of these photographers was doing at the time. If you want to overlay political (say 9/11, elections or the economic crisis), social, technological, or art world events, it becomes easy to see what the responses were and how long they took to percolate through the system.

So to build out the history of 2000-2010 in contemporary photography, you start with the top 50 as I mentioned before, to get a comprehensive visual on overall trends. Then you drill down into the top subgenres we already use as a rough and ready taxonomy (say abstract, or portraiture, or street etc.), and pick a top 15-25 or so in each genre (with particular attention to major influencers), repeating the ones from the top 50 that are relevant and adding others, thereby expanding the overall coverage further. Slicing and dicing this way would really generate some surprising insights I would think (as would some multi-layered Venn diagrams of intersecting genres, but that's an idea for another post). What is critical to success here is meticulous data collection and superlative graphic design. From there, example images and tying the findings into a coherent narrative (driven by what the data says) are the last tasks. The one drawback I can see here is handling those photographers whose work is not easily separated into discrete projects, series, books, or the like. In this case, I think the easiest and best solution is to select a few highlight images that stand in as representatives of a photographer's changing interests, subject matter, or style, even though this glosses over some work to work variation and evolution.

What I like about this kind of approach is that it is far more data driven than most art history texts or coffee table surveys. It uses fine-grained chronology to filter ideas and provide context in ways that we overlook far too often I think. To make sense of the confluence of ideas, approaches, and technologies that have driven contemporary photography in the chaotic past decade, I think we need to reconsider the tired "group show" summary approach and search for new ways to synthesize, analyze, intepret and communicate the wealth of data that is already available.

Lisa Oppenheim: Equivalents @Harris Lieberman

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Tue, 22 May 2012 14:49:00 +0000

JTF (just the facts): A total of 25 black and white photographs, framed in brown wood and unmatted, and hung in the entry, the main gallery space and the smaller back room. 20 of the works are unique black and white photographs, each sized 24x20 and dated 2012. The original negatives for these images were dated 1870s, 1876, 1908, 1913 and 2011. The other 5 works in the show are unique photograms, sized 24x20 and dated 2012. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Lisa Oppenheim's photographs lie in one of those intersections of overlapping ideas and methods that are so increasingly crowded it is hard to categorize her work into one discrete genre. Her images often start with appropriation, followed by an in-depth investigation of process bordering on performance, all wrapped up in a sense of conceptual rigor and knowing historical reference. It's a heady mix of background steps and visual allusions, perfect for those who like to parse an artwork into its component parts.

In the Smoke series, Oppenheim begins with images of swirling smoke-filled skies from both long ago oil field fires, refinery explosions, and volcanic eruptions and more recent looting and rioting, and crops them down to abstract billows of cloud formations. She then exposes and solarizes these images using actual fire, both connecting to the original events being depicted and exploring the nuances of the photographic process. A handful of versions are made from each negative, creating a small series of minute variations of light and dark in the clouded sky. Areas of brightness and shadow shift and solidify, in some cases reversing tonality entirely. The title of the show, Equivalents, is of course a reference to Stieglitz' ephemeral cloud photographs, so it's clear that Oppenheim is not only aware of the footsteps in which she is following, she is interested in exploring some of the same subtleties of abstraction, albeit in a multi-layered contemporary manner.

The successively folded layers of delicate lace found in the Leisure Work series are a direct reference to Fox Talbot's early experiments, but with a more conceptual performative twist. In a progression of five images, Oppenheim folds the lace on top of itself over and over again, the final image looking like the unrecognizable dense output from a microscope; seen together, the works are both brainy and intricate. The series of four photographs in the back room starts with a 19th century long exposure view of the moon passing overhead, and then using differing amounts of moonlight to reexpose the negative, Oppenheim creates a set of variations, from a misty grey wash to a high contrast arc. Once again, the subject of the photographs becomes one with the process.

While all of these images have roots in the past, there is a deep sense of both new thinking being applied and real physical involvement taking place. Her works provide both the surface enjoyment of getting lost in the tiny nuances of the ever morphing clouds, watching as the edges of a static form brighten and darken in successive iterations, as well as the thoughtful sense of historical awareness, giving the images an added layer of rich conceptual context.

Collector's POV: All of the prints in this show are priced at $6500 each. Oppenheim's work has not yet become consistently available in the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

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

Transit Hub:

Artist site (here)

Lisa Oppenheim: Equivalents
Through June 16th
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Harris Lieberman
508 West 26th Street
Ground Floor
New York, NY 10001

Ari Marcopolous: Wherever You Go @Marlborough Chelsea

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Mon, 21 May 2012 14:21:00 +0000

JTF (just the facts): A total of 10 large scale black and white photographs and 1 video projection, framed in white and unmatted, and hung in the main gallery space and the entry area. All of the prints are pigment prints, most on rice paper. 3 of the 89x60 works are unique, while 1 is available in an edition of 3+2AP. The other 6 photographs are 55x36 (or reverse), in editions of 3+2AP. All of the photographs are dated 2012. The digital video is 65 minutes long, in an edition of 5+2AP. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Ari Marcopolous' photographs have an imperfect, grainy roughness that gives his work a sense of unadorned, rebellious authenticity. Taken with a simple point and shoot camera and often decorated with the built-in digital time stamp, his snapshots are then further degraded by multiple layers of printing, not unlike a zine photocopying process, resulting in images that are both starkly straightforward and surprisingly soft given their textural grittiness.

Three large black prints dominate this show, the multiple layers of printing making them nearly abstract. While a shadowy form emerges from one and white stripes slip along the sides of the other two, the lush surface texture of the prints is what is unusual; the content has become illegible, allowing the process to become the subject.

The rest of the photographs inhabit a dirty middle grey, where the shoulders and fingers of young men are covered with grime, and graffiti (or its muted, painted over absence) lingers nearby. Two images of the massive body of New York Knicks center Tyson Chandler are the most striking of this group, his muscled shoulders and narrow waist creating an exaggerated triangular form when seen from behind. In the second image, Chandler rears back pulling up his black t-shirt to show a paragraph of inspirational text tattooed along his right side. Both photographs are powerfully sculptural, while still retaining Marcopolous' smudged underground realism.

While not every one of these images resonated with me, I was most interested by the recurring idea of an alternate photographic aesthetic, where traditional crispness and clarity have been traded for something purposefully rougher and less controlled. Marcopolous' photocopy look reminded me of Moriyama and the Provoke era Japanese photographers, as applied to facets of contemporary American subculture. His visual approach matches his chosen subject matter well, capturing its truths and spirit without cleaning them up.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows. The unique 89x60 prints are $18000 each. The editioned 89x60 print of Tyson Chandler is $15000. The smaller 55x36 prints are $8500 each. Marcopolous' work has not yet become consistently available in the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

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

Transit Hub:

Artist site (here)
Features: Wall Street Journal (here), New York (here), Tyson Chandler's blog (here)
Exhibit: 2010 Whitney Biennial (here)

Ari Marcopolous: Wherever You Go
Through June 16th

Marlborough Chelsea
545 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001

Cindy Sherman @Metro Pictures

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Fri, 18 May 2012 12:02:00 +0000

JTF (just the facts): A total of 9 large scale color photographs, framed in brown wood and unmatted, and hung against white walls in the three adjoining gallery spaces on the first floor. No specific print process information was given beyond "color photograph" on the checklist. The works are available in editions of 6, and range in size from 64x91 to 80x140. The images are dated either 2010/2011 or 2010/2012. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Cindy Sherman's current show of new work is surprisingly full of risks and experiments, announcing with authority that whatever you may have seen over at the MoMA, there will be no resting on her laurels; she is still challenging herself to extend the boundaries of her artistic practice. In these photographs, Sherman's picture making approach has been more directly influenced by new digital tools, impacting both the look of her characters and the scope and texture of their surroundings.
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For the first time, Sherman has used broad natural landscapes as backdrops to her portraits. Taken primarily in Iceland after the recent volcanic eruption, her photographic views are full of rocky hillsides, barren river valleys, and open pastures weighed down by moody grey skies. Dusty flat plains give way to mossy outcroppings, the exploding ash in the sky swirling like the clouds in a Turner painting. Sherman's characters float in front of these bleakly beautiful settings, seemingly disconnected from their environments. The landscapes provide some clues (or blind alleys) for potential narratives, but the characters themselves make no attempt to clarify any meaningful connections. Unlike the interiors from the recent society portraits (which provided some useful context), the landscapes upend our ability to find any thread of a plausible story.

Sherman's use of fine-grained digital manipulation is also much more pronounced in these works. The landscapes have been minutely textured to look like painterly brush strokes, softening their harshness just a bit, and the faces of Sherman's characters have been digitally altered to elongate noses, widen eyes, and flatten severe expressions. While she has substituted post-production editing for her previous eccentricies of makeup and stagecraft, as always, her handiwork is still somehwat visible, intentionally reminding us just how far from reality these people are. Dour bloodless faces peer down with steely intensity, with just a touch of puzzling distorted detail to keep us off balance.
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I haven't yet mentioned the elaborate and often delightfully improbable costumes these women are wearing, and here again we see some experimentation by Sherman. All of these gowns and outfits came from the Chanel archive, but these images don't look anything like traditional fashion photographs. The poses are wrong, the scenes totally incongruous; the haute couture fashions are at once entirely misplaced and quietly celebrated. A yellow and green belted jacket and puffy skirt combination takes on a prim Western pioneer look against its mountainous backdrop, while a shimmery gold and blue concoction looks like the ceremonial garb of some nomadic tribeswoman when set against furrowed grassy hills. The lush intricacy of the fashions and the starkness of the terrain make for odd bedfellows.

The end result of all this innovation is a set of intense pictures that have some of the trappings of broad, romantic landscape scenes of the past, but with an overall feeling that lies somewhere between defiant loneliness and quirky, confrontational glamour. All of the component parts are inconclusive and disconnected, leaving the viewer incapable of really figuring out what is going on. While Sherman is clearly exploiting some of the aesthetic freedoms that these larger digital tableaux can offer, she continues to purposefully avoid giving us any easy answers, forcing us to find our own meanings amid the feathers and the dirt.

Collector's POV: The photographs in this show are priced at either $400000 or $450000 based on size. With Sherman's excellent retrospective still on view at the MoMA (review here), there has been a flood of her works into the secondary markets this spring, likely hoping to capitalize on all the attention. I believe there were 26 different Shermans for sale in the Contemporary Art sales at the big three auction houses, plus countless others at the various New York art fairs, particularly the Armory. In general, recent auction prices have ranged from as low as roughly $2000 (for one of her large edition prints) to as high as her then world record $3.89 million price set in 2011. A print from that same edition (the orange sweater centerfold) was sold this spring by the Akron Art Museum and fetched roughly $1 million less than the record, perhaps a sign that prices are stabilizing with so much material now becoming available.

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

Features/Reviews: NY Times (here), New Yorker (here)

Cindy Sherman
Through June 9th

Metro Pictures

519 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011

The Checklist: 5/17/12

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Thu, 17 May 2012 13:07:00 +0000

Current New York Photography Shows
New reviews added this week in red.
(Rating: Artist/Title: Venue: Closing Date: link to review)

Uptown

ONE STAR: Photography Is: Higher Pictures: May 26: review
TWO STARS: Francesca Woodman: Guggenheim: June 13: review
ONE STAR: Spies in the House of Art: Met: August 26: review
ONE STAR: Naked before the Camera: Met: September 9: review

Midtown

ONE STAR: August Sander: Edwynn Houk: May 26: review
THREE STARS: Cindy Sherman: MoMA: June 11: review
THREE STARS: Weegee: ICP: September 2: review
TWO STARS: The Shaping of New Visions: MoMA: April 29: review

Chelsea

TWO STARS: Alex Prager: Yancey Richardson: May 19: review
TWO STARS: Tim Hetherington: Yossi Milo: May 19: review
TWO STARS: Gilbert & George: Lehmann Maupin: June 23: review
TWO STARS: Gilbert & George: Sonnabend: June 23: review

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown

ONE STAR: Mary Ellen Carroll: Third Streaming: May 19: review
ONE STAR: Liu Bolin: Eli Klein: May 20: review
ONE STAR: Lillian Bassman: Staley-Wise: May 26: review
ONE STAR: Jessica Labatte: Golden: May 27: review
ONE STAR: Ryan McGinley (Grids): Team: June 2: review
ONE STAR: Ryan McGinley (Animals): Team: June 2: review
ONE STAR: David Benjamin Sherry: Salon 94 Bowery/Freemans: June 2: review
ONE STAR: Chris Wiley: Nicelle Beauchene: June 3: review
TWO STARS: Gilbert & George: Lehmann Maupin: June 23: review

Elsewhere Nearby

TWO STARS: Rising Dragon: Katonah Museum of Art: September 2: review

Forward Auction Calendar
(Sale Date: Sale Title: Auction House: link to catalog)
New auctions added this week in red.

May 17: Photographs: Phillips de Pury London: catalog
May 17: Photographs: Bonhams London: catalog
May 21: Fotografia: Bloomsbury Rome: catalog
May 22: Photographs: Bloomsbury London: catalog
May 23: Photographs: Lempertz: catalog
May 30: Photographie: Villa Grisebach: catalog
June 6: 19th-21st Century Photography: Bassenge: catalog

Gilbert & George, London Pictures @Lehmann Maupin and Sonnabend

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:35:00 +0000

JTF (just the facts): A total of 66 multi-image works spread across 3 gallery venues. Each mixed-media work is made up a grid of individual images hung edge to edge, each framed in black and unmatted. The works range in size from 4 panels (2x2, sized 60x50 in total) to 36 panels (4x9, sized 119x225 in total). All of the works are unique and were made in 2011. A catalog of of all 292 of the works in this London Pictures series was recently published by Hurtwood Press (here) and is available from the galleries for $30. (Installation shots at right, from all three galleries.)

For each of the venues below, I have used the panel configuration as the method for tallying the number of works on view (in parentheses):

Lehmann Maupin Chrystie Street (18)

Front Room

2x2 (1)

4x4 (1)

5x4 (1)

Main Space

4x4 (3)

4x6 (4)

4x9 (2)

Upstairs Room

2x2 (6)

Lehmann Maupin West 26th Street (23)

Main Space

3x3 (2)

3x4 (5)

3x6 (2)

4x6 (4)

Back Room

2x2 (6)

2x3 (4)

Sonnabend (25)

Side Front Room 1

2x2 (2)

2x3 (1)

3x5 (1)

3x6 (1)

Side Front Room 2

2x2 (1)

3x4 (2)

3x6 (1)

Entry Room

2x2 (1)

Back Center Room

2x2 (2)

2x4 (1)

3x4 (1)

Back Left Room

2x3 (3)

3x3 (2)

Back Right Room

2x2 (2)

2x4 (1)

3x3 (2)

3x5 (1)

Comments/Context: Gilbert and George's sprawling new series London Pictures is really the final outcome of a rigorously academic linguistics study, delivered in the form of contemporary art. It is a meticulous and exhaustive examination of words and their charged relationships in our attention starved modern culture, thrown back at us in carefully ordered groups of shouting, hysterical headlines from the tabloid press. Spread across three galleries here in New York (and countless others across the globe from London to Hong Kong), the works are a taxonomy of urban horrors, collated and ordered into surprisingly universal patterns.

The back story to these pictures starts with the tearsheets found displayed outside newsstands across London. Gilbert and George managed to discretely steal a total of 3712 of these disposable posters over the period of several years, providing them with the raw material for their further sorting and classification of subjects and key phrases. The resulting clusters of common topics tell the story of 21st century urban life, with an eye for the shock factor that catches eyes and sells papers. Citizens are STABBED, HANGED, KNIFED, and MURDERED, while a parade of troublemakers and undesirables run rampant: ADDICT, MUGGER, PLAYBOY, BANKER, BURGLAR, RAPIST, GUNMAN, HOOKER, KILLER, DRUNK. TERROR, SEX and DEATH are never far behind (see the entire list in the installation shot from Sonnabend above). Displayed in large block letters and highlighted in vibrant red, these repetitive words and phrases dominate the artworks, the rest of the text (in black) fading into the background. The effect is both initially startling and ultimately dulling, as the weight of the text piles up.

The black and white photographic images that lie behind the graphic design elements are often patterned or kaleidoscopic, but in a supremely unassuming manner. Tree limbs and brick paving provide angled patterns, while rows of faceless windows, sidewalks, and car reflections are distorted by fish eye lenses. Gilbert and George appear as peach-faced, dapper-suited characters, like grim pedestrians on the street. And the profile of the queen (taken from various coins) makes an appearance in the corner of each work, hovering over the messiness of life with stiff upper lip formality. But all of this imagery is secondary to the bold overlaid text, which relentlessly pounds the viewer into submission.

I visited all three NY venues for this mega-show, and there is certainly a sense that once you have seen a few of these works, you've seen them all. This is entirely a function of visual overstimulation; seen as stand alone works, these will all pop off the wall, but when seen together over and over again, they quickly lose their punch - the shocking is no longer so urgent once you've seen it a dozen times, which is perhaps an apt reflection of our media saturated lives. In any case, if you're only going to visit one of the three spaces, I'd suggest going to Lehmann Maupin's Chrystie Street venue, as it has both the largest grids its towering main gallery, as well as a selection of the small grids upstairs, so you can see the whole breadth of the project in one place.

In the end, I like the mix of appalling truth and the can't-make-this-stuff-up wackiness that is found in these grids of words. Gilbert and George have reminded us how the odious and the offensive have become everyday entertainment, and how commonplace and universal these tawdry tales really are. They have mapped the sensational, dumbed-down vocabulary of big city living, exposing the lurid extremes that we now take for granted.

Collector's POV: The works in these shows range in price from £50000 for the smallest 2x2 grids to £160000 for the largest 4x9 grids. Using an average selling price of £75000, the 292 works in the full series represent roughly £21900000 of primary market value; collectors should get used to seeing these works, as they are likely to become a fixture in the secondary markets for years to come. In general, works by Gilbert & George can be found at auction with regularity at this point, mostly in Contemporary Art sales as opposed to Photographs sales. Prices for their multi-panel works have ranged between roughly $50000 and $900000 in the past decade, with a few single image or editioned works at lower prices.

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

Features/Interviews: Art in America (here), Wall Street Journal (here), Telegraph (here), Daily Beast (here), Economist (here), Huffington Post (here)

Gilbert & George, London Pictures (here, here, and here)
Through June 23rd

Lehmann Maupin
540 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001

Lehmann Maupin
201 Chrystie Street
New York, NY 10002

Sonnabend Gallery
536 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

David Benjamin Sherry, Astral Desert @Salon 94 Bowery and Freemans

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:35:00 +0000

JTF (just the facts): A two-part show, split between the Bowery and Freemans Alley gallery spaces. The Bowery show consists of 13 large scale color photographs, framed in white and unmatted; a few are hiding in back offices. All of the works are chromogenic prints from 2012, sized either 30x40 (in editions of 3), 48x58 (in editions of 2) or 60x72 (in editions of 1). The Freemans show consists of 15 unique works (framed in white and unmatted): 7 chromogenic photograms and 8 chromogenic prints covered in adhesive, sand and colored pigment. The photograms are each sized 30x40, while the sand images are sized either 20x24, 40x50, 48x58, or 60x72 (or reverse). All of these works are also from 2012. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: David Benjamin Sherry's use of vibrant, electric color is much more than a simple love affair with oversaturation. His monochrome images jump off the wall in a rainbow of Easter egg hues, as though they were recently dipped in pure bowls of food coloring, taking on uniform tints of plum and tangerine, ice blue and mint. His palette is strikingly bold, almost overpowering in its sunny, jelly bean brightness.

In the Bowery space, Sherry has applied this audacious color to tightly cropped, skyless images of American desert dirt and rock formations, turning jumbles of stones, gully washes and smooth erosions into otherworldly landscapes in crimson and acidic lime green. Craggy patterns of swirls and lines, pits and deformations become almost abstract when swimming in such unexpected incandescent color. Each one is like a scene from some dusty uninhabited planet, lit by some strange combination of nearby stars.

In the Freemans space, Sherry mutes the eye-popping color by applying a layer of fine sand to the surface of the photographs, making the lumpy rock formations more delicate and tactile. His tints move closer to pastels, and in some cases, the sand obscures the detail in the photographs to the point where the works become extremely subtle, striated gradients. This abstraction is taken one step further in a series of colored photograms, where the angles and shapes of the rock walls are used as inspiration for simple layered patterns, once again executed in a spectrum of undiluted radiance.

To my eye, the bolder forms in the Bowery space are the more radical and unusual. I can imagine one of the large colored rock walls punctuating a survey show of photographic landscapes and truly throwing viewers off guard. These works bring something original to the view of the land, while still being tied to historical precedents (imaging hanging a bright purple Sherry rock wall adjacent to a 19th century view of Canyon de Chelly by O'Sullivan). I think I would actually like the photograms better if they were taken out of this desert sand context and allowed to function as stand alone abstractions. In this case, their extreme use of color would separate them from traditional darkroom practices and show off their innovation better.

Color this buoyantly joyful might have a tendency to become too easily decorative, but I think Sherry has found ways to keep the edginess in many of the pictures. Effectively harnessing and applying such powerful color without becoming gimmicky is undeniably a stiff challenge. But Sherry's use of color here is clearly original, and seems likely to lead to further unexpectedly brazen chromatic explorations in the future.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced as follows. The standard chromogenic prints are either $8000 (30x40), $12000 (48x58), or $18000 (60x72). The photograms (30x40) are $12000 each, while the sand covered prints are either $8000 (20x24), $14000 (40x50), $16000 (48x58), or $22000 (60x72). Sherry's work has not yet entered the secondary markets in any significant manner, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

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

Artist site (here)
Features/Reviews: Interview (here), ARTINFO (here)

David Benjamin Sherry, Astral Desert

Through June 2nd
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Salon 94
Salon 94 Bowery
243 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
and
Salon 94 Freemans
1 Freemans Alley
New York, NY 10002

Ryan McGinley, Animals @Team

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:17:00 +0000

JTF (just the facts): A total of 23 large scale color photographs, framed in white and unmatted, and hung in the main gallery space and the smaller back room. All of the works are c-prints, available in editions of 3, and made in 2012. Physical dimensions range from 14x9 to 72x108, with most 30x45 (or reverse). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Wild animals and nude bodies are an unlikely visual combination, and Ryan McGinley's unusual pairings of man and beast provide for some startling juxtapositions. Using exotic zoo animals and posing them with young men and women against candy-colored studio backgrounds, McGinley has made pictures that are alternately elegant and comic, but always bold and eye-catching. Bites, scrapes and even trickles of blood are evidence of the the untamed nature of this project, with feral chance clearly playing a role in the photographic outcomes.

The best of these photographs are the ones where the lyricism of the forms is dominant. Green and white parakeets fly through enveloping pastel blue, partially obscuring a model with her arms outstretched like wings. The long white feathers of an albino peacock cover a model like windswept wisps of clouds against the rose red backdrop. And the curve of a guineafowl fits perfectly into the hollow of a woman's side, its densely patterned plumage a stark contrast to her pale skin. In each, the body, the animal, and the background color come together gracefully.

Many of the rest of the images on view are more like jokes or one-liners, with varying degrees of harsh silliness. A bushy baby porcupine lies between a woman's legs, an albino skunk sniffs a bare bottom, a monkey's arms surround a man's torso, and countless animals nestle in crotches of men and women alike. There's even an homage to Avedon's Natassja Kinski and the Serpent, this time with an iguana doing the licking. But even in the funniest of these pairings, there is something frantic about the look in the eyes of some of these animals, a natural savageness that was held in check for just a moment. Put together with the vulnerability of the human nudes, every picture has an element of lively tension, just at the breaking point.

All in, the contrast of human and animal bodies and the inherent anxiety in the poses gives these pictures some odd, agitated freshness. I think the more ornamental matches will ultimately be more durable than the salty wisecracks and the sexy horsing around, so look out for the handful of images that have a more refined sense of unexpected opulence.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced by size, as follows:

14x9: $5500
13x20: $7000
24x16: $8000
30x45: $14000
57x38: $21000
48x72: $25000
72x108: sold out

McGinley's photographs have become more available in the secondary markets in the past few years, with prices ranging between $2000 and $33000.

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

Transit Hub:

Artist site (here)
Features/Reviews: NY Times T magazine (here), Huffington Post (here), Hint (here)

Ryan McGinley, Animals

Through June 2nd

Team Gallery

83 Grand Street

New York, NY 10013

Ryan McGinley, Grids @Team

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:57:00 +0000

JTF (just the facts): A total of 3 large scale grids of color photographs, individually framed in white and unmatted, and hung in the main gallery space. Each of the grids is made up of an array of c-prints. The largest grid includes 55 prints, each 20x20. The smaller grids include 12 prints (each 30x38) or 10 prints (each 40x40). All three grids come in an edition of 1+1AP and are dated 2012. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Ryan McGinley's rock concert photographs aren't interested in the big productions or the wild performers. Instead of pointing his camera at the action on stage or taking wide shots of the seemingly endless sea of music fans, he gets right down in the throng, singling out individual up-close faces and capturing the variety in their fresh expressions. Blown up to larger than life size and arranged in neat grids, his kids shout and swagger with fierce energy.

With sweaty shaking hair, countless tattoos and piercings, and plenty of skin, McGinley's pictures document the wide range of reactions of these fans: ecstasy, shock, wild screams, blissful fatigue, amazement, disbelief, stoned incomprehension, unadulterated joy, stupefied wonder, and maybe even momentary fear. Bathed in a rainbow of lights coming from the stage, the faces are tinted in hues from acidic yellow and throbbing red to pale blue and pastel green. When seen as grids up on the wall, they become bright kaleidoscopes of earnest, juiced-up emotion. While McGinley's subjects will likely always be knocked for being too universally pretty, these works are certainly credible as a taxonomy of unguarded expressions; they feel real and authentic, supported by the unfailing optimism of youth. There are few jaded fans here, no snarky cynics, no cold water throwers. These kids are reveling in the moment, being exposed to events that are, in one way or another, blowing their minds; boundaries are being stretched and indelible memories are being made.

Purely photographically, these grids are in many ways unremarkable; it's not even clear from the press release that McGinley made all the pictures himself. What is of more interest though is the cropping, editing, and packaging of these images that transforms the concert snaps into the refined and potent elixir of youth. In these works, McGinley has tapped into the genuine rush of excitement that comes from the collective experience of live music, and reminded us what it was like to be young and crazy and free, screaming at the top of our lungs.

Collector's POV: The three grids in this show are priced at $80000, $85000, and $95000 each, and two of the three were already sold when I visited the show. McGinley's single image photographs have become more available in the secondary markets in the past few years, with prices ranging between $2000 and $33000.

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

Transit Hub:

Artist site (here)

Ryan McGinley, Grids
Through June 2nd

Team Gallery
47 Wooster Street
New York, NY 10013

The Checklist: 5/10/12

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Thu, 10 May 2012 11:56:00 +0000

Current New York Photography Shows
New reviews added this week in red.
(Rating: Artist/Title: Venue: Closing Date: link to review)

Uptown

ONE STAR: Photography Is: Higher Pictures: May 26: review
TWO STARS: Francesca Woodman: Guggenheim: June 13: review
ONE STAR: Spies in the House of Art: Met: August 26: review
ONE STAR: Naked before the Camera: Met: September 9: review

Midtown

ONE STAR: August Sander: Edwynn Houk: May 12: review
THREE STARS: Cindy Sherman: MoMA: June 11: review
THREE STARS: Weegee: ICP: September 2: review
TWO STARS: The Shaping of New Visions: MoMA: April 29: review

Chelsea

ONE STAR: Anne Collier: Anton Kern: May 12: review
TWO STARS: Alex Prager: Yancey Richardson: May 12: review
TWO STARS: Tim Hetherington: Yossi Milo: May 19: review

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown

ONE STAR: Liu Bolin: Eli Klein: May 11: review
ONE STAR: Michael Collins: Janet Borden: May 15: review
ONE STAR: Mary Ellen Carroll: Third Streaming: May 19: review
ONE STAR: Lillian Bassman: Staley-Wise: May 26: review
ONE STAR: Jessica Labatte: Golden: May 27: review
ONE STAR: Chris Wiley: Nicelle Beauchene: June 3: review

Elsewhere Nearby

TWO STARS: Rising Dragon: Katonah Museum of Art: September 2: review

Forward Auction Calendar
(Sale Date: Sale Title: Auction House: link to catalog)

May 10: Contemporary Art Day: Sotheby's: catalog
May 10: Contemporary Art Evening: Phillips de Pury: catalog
May 11: Contemporary Art Day: Phillips de Pury: catalog
May 12: Photographica: WestLicht: catalog
May 13: Photographies: Millon: catalog
May 15: Photographies: Sotheby's London: catalog
May 16: Photographs: Christie's London: catalog
May 16: Photographs - 1840s to the Present: Christie's London: catalog
May 17: Photographs: Phillips de Pury London: catalog
May 17: Photographs: Bonhams London: catalog
May 21: Fotografia: Bloomsbury Rome: catalog
May 22: Photographs: Bloomsbury London: catalog
May 23: Photographs: Lempertz: catalog
May 30: Photographie: Villa Grisebach: catalog

JR at Mulberry and Prince

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:59:00 +0000

On a recent gallery swing through SoHo and the Lower East Side, I passed this huge (roughly six stories tall) photographic mural by JR on a building near the corner of Mulberry and Prince. Apparently, it is part of his Inside Out Project (here), from the subseries of North Dakota Native Americans. Its brash energy, mixing raw anger and frustration, is unexpectedly jolting and memorable. I have no idea how long it will be on view, so swing by a take a look before it gets torn down. By the way, JR is represented by in New York by Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery (here).

Lillian Bassman: Lingerie @Staley-Wise

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:35:00 +0000

JTF (just the facts): A total of 20 black and white photographs and 9 contact sheets, variously framed and matted, and hung in the winding main gallery space and the reception area. 14 of the black and white works are gelatin silver prints, ranging in size from 11x14 to 30x40. The other 4 black and white works are archival pigment prints, ranging in size from 42x52 to 44x57. The 9 contact sheets are 8x10 gelatin silver prints. No edition information was available for any of the prints. There are also 2 gelatin silver prints of Bassman taken by her husband, Paul Himmel. All of the works were taken between 1945 and the 1960s, except one new image from 2012. A monograph of this body of work was recently published by Abrams (here). (Installation shots at right.)
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Comments/Context: The late resurgence in the photographic career of Lillian Bassman is a story that is probably already well known to readers here. An influential fashion photographer for Harper's Bazaar in the 1950s and 1960s, she was largely forgotten until roughly a decade ago, when some of her old negatives were rediscovered and she began to reprint and reinterpret them, often in larger sizes. A collection of her many photographs of lingerie models has recently been gathered into a monograph, but her death last winter has added a more melancholy note to this accompanying show.
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Bassman's images of women's lingerie capture a wide spectrum of forms and styles: corsets and girdles, slips and nightgowns, underwear and pajamas. She was fond of seductive silhouettes, with arms raised and faces averted, drawing our attention to anonymous feminine curves and confident stances. But the darkroom was where the real magic occurred. Bleaching and burning (and later making digital manipulations), she broadened the contrasts to harsher blacks and whites, increased the graininess to an expressionistic, painterly blur, and heightened shadows and softened highlights to transform her models into stylized, monochrome representations of elegance and glamour. The resulting images have a dreamy, ephemeral quality, the wispy grace of a pose threatening to disappear in a blink of an eye.

What makes these pictures work is their self-assured boldness. In many ways, the lingerie is just a subject matter detail; what is being offered is a combination of poise and coolness, made stronger by the punch of the black and white polarization. As Bassman extended the range of her signature aesthetic techniques, she took her images to new levels of sophistication and femininity, and further separated them from mainstream fashion photography.

Collector's POV: Surprisingly, the prints in this show are not for sale; it seems that since the photographer's recent death, the arrangements with the estate have not been finalized. Bassman's prints (both vintage and later, generally 11x14 or smaller) have been available from time to time in the secondary markets, with prices ranging between $4000 and $15000 in the past few years. Her larger pigment prints and other recent works are likely only available at gallery retail prices.

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

Transit Hub:

Features: Vanity Fair (here)
Obituary: NY Times (here)

Lillian Bassman: Lingerie

Through May 26th

Staley-Wise Gallery
560 Broadway
New York, NY 10012

Chris Wiley, Technical Compositions @Beauchene

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:56:00 +0000

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 color photographs, framed in custom plywood frames, and hung in the small single room gallery space. All of the works are archival inkjet prints, made in 2012. The works come in two sizes: 26x18 (in editions of 4+2AP) and 41x27 (also in editions of 4+2AP). There are 4 large prints and 9 small prints in the show. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Chris Wiley's photographs of found architectural geometries are executed with an exacting sense of compositional rigor. They are strict and precise, the juxtapositions of textures and shapes deftly controlled to maximize formal contrast in a two dimensional plane. While this nothing particularly new in photography, Wiley has taken this idea to near its logical extreme, crafting images with an undeniable affinity for visual structure, plucked from the chaos of city streets and pared down with almost mathematical austerity.

The best of the images on view here are a patchwork of competing patterns and textures. Zig-zag stairs contrast with the smooth concrete of a nearby wall, which is punctuated by the slash of a handrail and its shadow, abutting the corrugated metal of a security door. It is a symphony in muted grey, with sharp edges and uncompromising severity. Similarly, a jumble of discarded materials becomes a sculptural puzzle: wavy cement slabs hold down a flecked orange carpet pad, which is covered by blue tarps and intersected by rusty green pipes. Other images are built on the meticulous alignment of lines and angles, with just a hint of wear and tear. Brick walls intersect with plywood squares, gridded orange tiles come loose, and curved arcs in yellow and brown converge into stripes. Large interlocking tiles give way to fluted columns and finally to a rough expanse of light blue paint.

If these photographs were printed large and mounted as glossy objects, you might for a moment mistake them as a conceptual product of 1980s Dusseldorf. But the bright sunlight in the streets and the striped plywood frames upend that preliminary hypothesis; so perhaps they are distant relatives of some of Lewis Baltz' 1970s prototype works or Anthony Hernandez' tile walls, or just the extension of formal photographic ideas that have been around for years. All in, I liked the feeling of ordered delight in these photographs, and of the complex wonder of man-made surfaces being seen again for the first time.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows. The 26x18 prints are $3000 each and the 41x27 prints are $6000 each. Wiley's work has not yet entered the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
.

Transit Hub:

Artist site (here)
Review/Feature: Artefuse (here)
Towards a Warm Math at On Stellar Rays, curated by Wiley (here)

Chris Wiley, Technical Compositions

Through June 3rd

Nicelle Beauchene Gallery

21 Orchard Street

New York, NY 10002

Photography at the 2012 Frieze New York Art Fair, Part 3 of 3

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Mon, 07 May 2012 17:32:00 +0000

This is Part 3 of my review of the photography at the 2012 Frieze New York Art Fair. Part 1 can be found here, along with some background information on the fair and an explanation of the format I'm using for the the booth by booth details. Part 2 can be found here.

Purple Section

Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery (here): Barney Kulok (1)

Kaufmann Repetto (here): Shannon Ebner (1). Another entry in the "built to be photographed" category; this large graphic symbol in cinder blocks by Ebner was priced at $12000.

Rampa (here): Huseyin Bahri Alptekin (3)

Galerie Eva Presenhuber (here): Steven Shearer (3), Amy Granat (1). These floral photograms by Granat are reminiscent of similar images made by Kunie Sugiura, although these have been cropped, reoriented, and transformed into a repetitive, high contrast grid. The work was priced at $20000.

Regina Gallery (here): Nikolay Bakharev (5). I've seen a few of these engaging 1970s beach portraits from Bakharev of late, and they're starting to grow on me. They were priced at $3000 each.

Maureen Paley (here): James Welling (2), Wolfgang Tillmans (2), David Salle (1), Gillian Wearing (1). If there was any one photographer whose work was ubiquitous at this fair, it was Wolfgang Tillmans. This was the best image of his that I saw (due to the complex use of color), a new one priced at $57000 and already sold.

Stuart Shave/Modern Art (here): Linder (10)

Galerie Perrotin (here): Sophie Calle (4 diptychs)

Galleria Continua (here): Mona Hatoum (1 Polaroid triptych). A simple idea, well executed - deadpan portraits with hair exploded by static electricity. This unique set of three prints by Hatoum was priced at $30000.

Frith Street Gallery (here): John Riddy (1), Tacita Dean (1 set of 14). Extra large versions of these Dean film strip works were recently on view at the Tate Modern. The set of 14 prints (offset not photographic) was priced at £45500.

Sikkema Jenkins & Co. (here): Vik Muniz (1). Washington Crossing the Delaware in Muniz' most recent style, a dense collage of magazine scrap imagery. Priced at $45000, and not surprisingly, already sold.

Galerie Bucholz (here): Wolfgang Tillmans (2), Sam Lewitt (1 set of 10). I liked Lewitt's layered NY Times transparencies, algorithmically reconstructed and subtracted to zero. Priced at $18000.

Kukje Gallery (here): Candida Hofer (1), Jenny Holzer (1)

Alison Jacques Gallery (here): Robert Mapplethorpe (3). I had never seen these particular Mapplethorpe florals before. The single blossoms are bathed in ghostly, almost garish, colored light. Priced at $35000.

Sprüth Magers (here): Andreas Gursky (1), Astrid Klein (4 collages), Thomas Demand (1), John Baldessari (1), Cindy Sherman (1). The reason I included this $285000 Baldessari image in this review has nothing to do with the pig, or the hands, or the composition really. What is impossible to see in this installation shot is that the work had surprising depth; the different colored portions are built up in inch thick layers. Yet another example of reimagining photography with sculptural qualities.

Pink Section

Wallspace (here): Daniel Gordon (1), Shannon Ebner (1), John Divola (1). Textures and patterns abound in this new work from Gordon, playing with idea of the sculptural bust, priced at $5800.

Galerie Neu (here): Bernadette Corporation (3), Tom Burr (1)

Galeria Fortes Vilaça (here): Jac Leirner (1)

Victoria Miro (here): Alex Hartley (1), William Eggleston (1), Isaac Julien (1 diptych)

303 Gallery (here): Hans-Peter Feldman (4), Collier Schorr (1), Stephen Shore (1 set of 8). This is an early conceptual series by Shore from the late 1960s (recently reprinted), where he stands and rotates in a circle, the desert background changing in each shot. Probably been done before and since, but still effective. Priced at $25000 for the set.

White Cube (here): Jeff Wall (1), Gilbert & George (1 set of 9)

Galerie Martin Janda (here): Roman Signer (1 set of 5, 1)

Photography at the 2012 Frieze New York Art Fair, Part 2 of 3

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:17:00 +0000

This is Part 2 of my review of the photography at the 2012 Frieze New York Art Fair. Part 1 can be found here, along with some background information on the fair and an explanation of the format I'm using for the the booth by booth details.

Yellow Section

Metro Pictures (here): Cindy Sherman (1 set of 35, 1 diptych), Louise Lawler (2), Olaf Breuning (1)

Regen Projects (here): James Welling (3), Wolfgang Tillmans (1), Gillian Wearing (1), Walead Beshty (1 diptych), Doug Aitken (1). It was hard to miss the eye-catching blast of saturated color in these photograms by Beshty. Priced at $48000 and already sold.

Renwick Gallery (here): Talia Chetrit (8). The Renwick booth was a solo show of Chetrit's recent work, with up-close fragments of textural skin, hair and body parts. This chain and nipple image was priced at $3500.

Marcelle Alix (here): Charlotte Moth (1 set of 8, 1 )

Hollybush Gardens (here): Benoit Maire (2)

Galleria Raffaella Cortese (here): William Jones (5), Marcello Maloberti (2), Roni Horn (6), Yael Baratana (2). The floor of this booth was covered in magazine cut outs of mountain ranges, echoing Maloberti's photograph of the process.

Karma International (here): Carissa Rodriguez (3)

The Third Line (here): Youssef Nabil (2)

Gallery Hyundai (here): Seung-Taek Lee (15)

Johann König (here): Annette Kelm (2)

47 Canal (here): Michele Abeles (6). The 47 Canal booth was a solo show of Abeles' work, with densely layered still lifes/photo collages. They were priced at $3600 each and all sold.

Carlier Gebauer (here): Paul Graham (1 diptych)

Galerie Diana Stigter (here): Nathaniel Mellors (1), Amalia Pica (slide show)

Laura Bartlett Gallery (here): Cyprien Gaillard (5), John Divola (3), Becky Beasley (1 set of 3). I liked the changing definition of space in this hybrid of sculpture and photography by Beasley. It was priced at £11500.

Andrea Rosen Gallery (here): Josephine Meckseper (5), Walker Evans (3), Wolfgang Tillmans (7), Aaron Bobrow (1 diptych, 1). I found Meckseper's assemblages of commercial items, complete with fog, fluorescent lighting, and shiny mannequins and backdrops unexpected and odd. They were priced at $7000 each. And while I have seen them before, I continue to enjoy the big Tillmans abstractions of misty color. This one was priced at $78000.

A Gentil Carioca (here): Thiago Rocha Pitta (3)

Orange Section

The Modern Institute (here): Luke Fowler (2)

Galerie Gisela Capitain (here): Alina Szapocznikow (1 set of 20), Christopher Williams (1 diptych), Zoe Leonard (5), Barbara Bloom (3)

Galerie Guido W. Baudach (here): Rashid Johnson (1), Jurgen Klauke (1)

Marc Foxx (here): Luisa Lambri (3), Anne Collier (1)

Mitchell-Innes & Nash (here): Amanda Ross-Ho (1). This Ross-Ho sculptural wall arrangement follows along from similar work show at MoMA in 2010. It was priced at $40000.

Alfonso Artiaco (here): Gilbert & George (1 set of 9), Vera Lutter (1 diptych), Darren Almond (2)

Galerie Francesca Pia (here): Elad Lassry (3, 1 set of 4)

Galerie Meyer Riegger (here): Helen Mirra (3)

Corvi-Mora (here): Anne Collier (1)

Galerie Krinzinger (here): Frank Thiel (1), Valie Export (1), Gunter Brus (2), Otto Muehl (1), Oleg Kulik (2), Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy (1), Thomas Zipp (1), Rudolf Schwartzkoger (1 set of 7), Marina Abramovic (1 set of 3), Vito Acconci (1). This large peeling paint image by Thiel is a recent addition to his Stadt series; it was priced at $34000.

Xavier Hufkens (here): Robert Mapplethorpe (4)

Galerie Praz-Delavallade (here): Amalia Saban (1)

Kerlin Gallery (here): Willie Doherty (2)

Richard Telles (here): Dan Finsel (1 diptych), Josephine Pryde (1)

Vermelho (here): Claudia Andujar (3), Rosangela Renno (1), Odires Mlaszho (2 collages)

Sean Kelly Gallery (here): Frank Thiel (1), Alec Soth (2), James Casebere (1), Robert Mapplethorpe (2), Iran do Espirito Santo (1), Yves Klein (1)
Galerie Chantal Crousel (here): Wolfgang Tillmans (2), Jean-Luc Moulene (3)

Salon 94 (here): Liz Cohen (1 set of 150, 1 diptych), David Benjamin Sherry (7), Carlo Mollino (39 Polaroids), Lorna Simpson (19 collages). While still life images of tools have been done before many times, I liked both the choice of smaller individual scale and the wall-filling volume of this typology; it was priced at $72000.

Sommer Contemporary Art (here): Yael Bartana (3), Gregor Hildebrandt (3)

Experimenter (here): Bani Abidi (1 installation). While the content and message of this piece were of less interest to me, I was intrigued by the agglomeration of photographic layers, of the pictures of pictures (in various sizes) then stacked and placed in spatial relationship to each other in a single collection.

Cheim & Read (here): William Eggleston (2), Jack Pierson (1)

Part 3 is here.

Photography at the 2012 Frieze New York Art Fair, Part 1 of 3

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Sun, 06 May 2012 18:34:00 +0000

In a single audacious shot across the bow, Frieze New York has decisively, at least in my mind, challenged the Armory as the king of the local contemporary art fairs. There is no changing the visual overload or the wearying onslaught of "merch" inherent at such a place, but the organizers have at least made a real attempt to get the surrounding details right. The overall art-seeing experience in meaningfully better: the halls are wider and less cramped, the booths are roomier and more open, and the light is bright and airy. Even when the fair got more crowded and the sun came out to raise the temperature and cook the occupants during my visit Friday, every few yards a blast of arctic air conditioning would whoosh up from a grate under my feet for a shuddering moment of relief.

Photography-wise, the key thing to note about this fair is that there are NO photography specialist galleries included. Not one. So the available photography is broadcast throughout the fair population like tiny seeds, to be searched out and discovered amidst the rest of the contemporary art. There are also very few secondary market photographic trophies on offer (unlike the parade of Shermans in seemingly every booth at the Armory). This is first and foremost a primary market show, with galleries and dealers showing (for the most part) the work they represent.

For each gallery below (grouped by color coded section, starting near the North entrance), I've listed the photographers/artists with work on view, with the number of images on display in parentheses. In some specific cases where something caught my eye, I've added additional information, pricing (watch for different currencies), and installation shots.

Blue Section

Wilkinson Gallery (here): Anna Parkina (3), Laurie Simmons (1), Jimmy DeSana (1)

Anton Kern Gallery (here): Anne Collier (1)

Art:Concept (here): Jeremy Deller (1)

Galerija Gregor Podnar (here): Ion Grigorescu (1), B. Wurtz (1, with paired sculptural object)

Simon Lee Gallery (here): Hans-Peter Feldmann (1 set of 70). A classic of 1970s conceptual ordering, showing the entire wardrobe of a woman, from shirts on hangers to pairs of shoes. Priced at €35000.

Friedrich Petzel Gallery (here): Robert Heinecken (9)

Team Gallery (here): Sam Samore (2), Cory Arcangel (1), Ryan McGinley (6). Death at the foot of a playground slide never looked so wacky and offbeat (Samore's 1973 image from The Suicidist, priced at $20000.) In a side room painted yellow/orange, a series of new cut photo collages by McGinley has a small solo show. The works are densely covered in his signature young men and women, Xacto knifed into a exuberant sea of tiny faces and bodies; this one was priced at $35000 and already sold.

Anthony Reynolds Gallery (here): Paul Graham (1 diptych, 3)

Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle (here): Thomas Ruff (2), Thomas Struth (2), Candida Hofer (1), Goshka Macuga (1). A all-over composition of pipes and pumps by Struth, from his recent series of scientific labs and facilities, priced at €85000.

Green Section

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (here): Uta Barth (1), Gillian Wearing (1), Phil Collins (1 set of 32). Wearing as a creepy rubber masked August Sander, priced at £35000.

Hauser & Wirth (here): Roni Horn (1), Rodney Graham (1 diptych)

Tomio Koyama Gallery (here): Mika Ninagawa (4). Ninagawa's unorthodox use of vibrant color continues to astonish. From her recent series Noir, priced at $1200.

Harris Lieberman (here): Matt Saunders (2), Lisa Oppenheim (3). The delicate lace photogram gets an update by Oppenheim, folded over again and again into a layered progression of increasing complexity. One from the recent series of five, priced at $6500.

Galleri Nicolai Wallner (here): Joachim Koester (6)

Galerie Sfeir-Semler (here): Wael Shawky (8), Akram Zaatari (1), Yto Barrada (1). A haunting set of portraits of crusader puppets by Shawky, priced at €6000 each.

The Approach (here): Lisa Oppenheim (4), John Stezaker (1 set of 3 collages, 3 collages)

Almine Rech Gallery (here): Taryn Simon (3), Curtis Mann (1). Unlike Mann's previous bleached images, in this recent work, he has scraped thin wavy lines across the surface of the emulsion in a completely abstract striped design, a bit reminiscent of Marco Breuer. Priced at $8800.

Timothy Taylor Gallery (here): Susan Hiller (1 set of 9)

Lehmann Maupin (here): Robin Rhode (1 set of 12). I'm a big fan of Rhode's set piece wall drawings. Here cartoon chairs and a curled piece of white tubing provide the raw materials for a flip book story. Priced at $70000, with a solo show at the gallery coming in 2013.

Galerie Jocelyn Wolff (here): Guillaume Leblon (1)

Broadway 1602 (here): Penny Slinger (2 collages)

Air de Paris (here): Sturtevant (5), Jospeh Grigley (3)

Altman Siegel (here): Trevor Paglen (3). A long exposure image of the striated trails of dead satellites and space junk flying across the nighttime sky. Priced at $12000.

Galerie Thaddeus Ropac (here): Robert Mapplethorpe (2), Gilbert & George (1 set of 9)

Galerie Lelong (here): Alfredo Jaar (1 set of 5, 1 set of 3), Helio Oiticica (3), Cildo Meireles (1), Ana Mendieta (2). A Mendieta mud sculpture, printed large and priced at $75000.

Taka Ishii Gallery (here): Yuki Kimura (1)

Annet Gelink Gallery (here): Wilfredo Prieto (1), Yael Bartana (1 diptych), Ryan Gander (1)

Sies+Höke (here): Kris Martin (1 set of 10), Etienne Chambaud (1 set of 3)

Andrew Kreps Gallery (here): Goshka Macuga (1), Roe Ethridge (4)

Miguel Abreu Gallery (here): Liz Deschenes (2), Eileen Quinlan (3), Pamela Rosenkranz (1)

Part 2 is here; Part 3 is here.

Jessica Labatte @Golden

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Fri, 04 May 2012 12:22:00 +0000

JTF (just the facts): A total of 3 large scale color photographs, framed in black and unmatted, and hung in the small single room gallery space. All of the works are archival inkjet prints, made in 2012. Each is sized roughly 73x57, and available in editions of 3. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: If you only take a passing glance at the installation shots at right, you might think Jessica Labatte's photographs are merely decorative, in a colorfully angular and pleasingly abstract way. But what is hard to see in these images (and is really only evident when you stand in the gallery) is that these works are elaborately and meticulously constructed environments made of shards of mirror, which are reflecting colored lights being projected on paper in the surrounding installation. They are actually three-dimensional studio arrangements, which are then flattened by the camera into two-dimensional compositions.
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So while saturated colors pop against the enveloping black background, what is really going on here is a rigid formalist exercise in the alignment of shape and space, a bit reminiscent of the work of Barbara Kasten. Sharp edges arc and slash across the layers of mirror, creating clean geometries and crisp shadows that cross invisible depths. Squared off forms are broken into jagged jutting slivers and fragments. Tiny remnants of tape and paper reflected in the mirrors are subtle evidence of Labatte's painstaking process, while perfect gradients offer unanswered technical questions. This simmering jumble of overlapping colors is actually very carefully controlled chaos.
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I like the idea of moving back and forth between studio reality and abstraction, and being allowed to explore the assembled world in multiple ways, where figure and ground alternation shift to the investigation of a turned mirror or a curve of shadow, and back again. Labatte proves there is plenty of unexamined territory in the still life genre, especially when complicated, made-to-be-photographed constructions are used to create nuanced illusions. While there are only three pictures in this tiny show, they offer plenty of excellent opportunities to get lost in the details.
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Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced at $10800 each. Labatte's work has not yet entered the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:

Artist site (here)
Exhibit: MCA Chicago, 2010 (here)

Jessica Labatte

Through May 27th

Golden Gallery

120 Elizabeth Street

New York, NY 10013

The Checklist: 5/3/12

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Thu, 03 May 2012 11:56:00 +0000

Checklist 5/3/12
Current New York Photography Shows

New reviews added this week in red.
(Rating: Artist/Title: Venue: Closing Date: link to review)

Uptown

ONE STAR: Leonard Freed: Museum of the City of New York: May 6: review
ONE STAR: Photography Is: Higher Pictures: May 26: review
TWO STARS: Francesca Woodman: Guggenheim: June 13: review
ONE STAR: Spies in the House of Art: Met: August 26: review
ONE STAR: Naked before the Camera: Met: September 9: review

Midtown

ONE STAR: Frank Gohlke: Howard Greenberg: May 5: review
ONE STAR: August Sander/Boris Mikhailov: Pace/MacGill: May 5: review
TWO STARS: Magnum Contact Sheets: ICP: May 6: review
ONE STAR: Perspectives 2012: ICP: May 6: review
ONE STAR: Grey Villet: ICP: May 6: review
ONE STAR: August Sander: Edwynn Houk: May 12: review
THREE STARS: Cindy Sherman: MoMA: June 11: review
THREE STARS: Weegee: ICP: September 2: review
TWO STARS: The Shaping of New Visions: MoMA: April 29: review

Chelsea

ONE STAR: Brian Ulrich: Julie Saul: May 5: review
ONE STAR: Moyra Davey: Murray Guy: May 6: review
ONE STAR: Anne Collier: Anton Kern: May 12: review
TWO STARS: Alex Prager: Yancey Richardson: May 12: review
TWO STARS: Tim Hetherington: Yossi Milo: May 19: review

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown

ONE STAR: Liu Bolin: Eli Klein: May 11: review
ONE STAR: Michael Collins: Janet Borden: May 15: review
ONE STAR: Mary Ellen Carroll: Third Streaming: May 19: review

Elsewhere Nearby

TWO STARS: Rising Dragon: Katonah Museum of Art: September 2: review

The Shaping of New Visions: Photography, Film, Photobook @MoMA

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Wed, 02 May 2012 15:49:00 +0000

JTF (just the facts): A total of 210 photographs, films, and photobooks, from 80 different photographers/artists, variously framed and matted, and hung in a series of connecting rooms on the third floor of the museum. The works span the period from 1910 to 2009, and are drawn the museum's permanent collection of photography. The exhibit was curated by Roxana Marcoci. (Installation shots at right.)

In each room, a list of photographers with work on view is provided, with the number of photographs/films/books and image/publication dates in each in parentheses:

Gallery 1
Man Ray (5 gelatin silver prints, 4 photogravures, 1 book and 1 film, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1927, 1931)
Paul Eluard and Man Ray (1 book, 1935)
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (5 gelatin silver prints and 1 film, 1923-1925, 1925, 1926, 1930)
Florence Henri (1 gelatin silver print, 1928)
Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler (1 film, 1921)
Edward Steichen (1 gelatin silver print, 1932)
Berenice Abbott (1 gelatin silver print, 1935)
Charles Sheeler (1 gelatin silver print, 1927/1941)
Paul Strand (1 photogravure, 1916)
Alfred Stieglitz (1 gelatin silver print, 1910)
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Gallery 2
Herbert Bayer (1 gelatin silver print, 1928)
Florence Henri (1 gelatin silver print, 1937)
El Lissitzky (1 gelatin silver print, 1 book and 2 magazines, 1924, 1928, 1929)
Paul Citroen (1 gelatin silver print and 1 book, 1923, 1927)
Aleksandr Rodchenko (7 gelatin silver prints and 12 magazines, 1923, 1924, 1926, 1927, 1928, 1928-1930, 1930)
Gustav Klutsis, Aleksandr Rodchenko, and Sergei Senkin (1 magazine, 1924)
Gustav Klutsis (1 magazine, 1931)
Solomon Telingater (1 magazine, 1931)
Dziga Vertov (1 gelatin silver print and 1 film, 1929, 1930)
Walker Evans (1 gelatin silver print and 1 book, 1936, 1938)
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1 gelatin silver print and 1 book, 1933/1968, 1952)
Tina Modotti (1 gelatin silver print, 1928)
Claude Cahun (1 gelatin silver print, 1928)
Andre Kertesz (2 gelatin silver prints, 1929, 1933)
Horst P. Horst (1 gelatin silver print, 1939)
Jan Lukas (1 gelatin silver print, 1933)
Hans Bellmer (1 gelatin silver print and 3 books, 1934, 1935-1937, 1936, 1949)
Grete Stern (1 gelatin silver print, 1949)
Georges Hugnet (1 collage, 1935)
Imogen Cunningham (1 gelatin silver print, 1932)
Edward Weston (1 palladium or platinum print, 1925)
Man Ray (1 gelatin silver print and 1 book, 1924, 1927)
Unknown (1 gelatin silver print, 1921)
Jacques-Andre Boiffard (2 books, 1929, 1930)
Germaine Krull (1 gelatin silver print and 1 book, 1927, 1929)
Albert Renger-Patzsch (1 gelatin silver print and 1 book, 1928, 1930)
August Sander (2 gelatin silver prints and 1 book, 1928, 1929)
Max Burchartz (1 gelatin silver print, 1928)
Josef Albers (1 set of 12 gelatin silver prints, 1931)
Umbo (1 gelatin silver print, 1927)
Raoul Hausmann (1 gelatin silver print, 1931)
Berenice Abbott (1 gelatin silver print, 1930/1950)
Maurice Tabard (1 gelatin silver print, 1929)
John Heartfield (1 gravure, 1932)
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (2 photomontages, 1925)

Gallery 3 (small side room)
Gerhard Ruhm (1 set of 17 photomontages/text, 1959)

Gallery 3
Lee Friedlander (21 gelatin silver prints, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987)
Helen Levitt (40 color slides in projection, 1971-1974)
Michael Schmidt (4 gelatin silver prints, 1965-1967)
Kikuji Kawada (1 gelatin silver print, 1960-1965)
Daido Moriyama (1 gelatin silver print and 1 book, 1967, 1968)
Tetsuya Ichimura (1 gelatin silver print, 1964)
Ryoji Akiyama (1 gelatin silver print, 1970)
Shomei Tomatsu (1 gelatin silver print and 1 book, 1961, 1966)
Robert Frank (2 gelatin silver prints and 2 books, 1955, 1956, 1959)
William Klein (1 gelatin silver print and 1 book, 1955, 1956)
Harry Callahan (1 gelatin silver print, 1959)
Roy DeCarava (1 gelatin silver print, 1952)
Dorothea Lange (1 gelatin silver print, 1957)
Garry Winogrand (2 gelatin silver prints, 1969)
Diane Arbus (1 gelatin silver print, 1967)
Richard Avedon (1 set of gelatin silver prints, 1971)

Gallery 4A
Valie Export (2 gelatin silver prints with ink, 1972, 1976)
Mel Bochner (1 set of cards/envelope, 1970)
Eleanor Antin (1 set of postcards, 1971-1973)
On Kawara (3 sets of postcards, 1977)
Stephen Shore (9 postcards and 1 chromogenic print, 1972, 1973/2002)
William Eggleston (1 dye transfer print, 1969)
Robert Adams (6 gelatin silver prints, 1968, 1969, 1970)
Bernd and Hilla Becher (2 gelatin silver prints, 1970, 1982)
Joel Sternfeld (1 chromogenic print, 1979/1987)
Ed Ruscha (15 books, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968)
John Baldessari (1 set of gelatin silver prints with oil tint and polymer paint, 1986)
Gordon Matta-Clark (1 silver dye bleach print and 1 film, 1974, 1978)

Gallery 4B
Robert Heinecken (6 silver dye bleach prints, 1988)
Philip-Lorca diCorcia (2 chromogenic prints, 1990-1992)
Martha Rosler (12 pigmented inkjet prints, 1967-1972/2011)
Sigmar Polke (9 gelatin silver prints with applied color, 1970, 1971, 1973, 1975)

Gallery 5
The Atlas Group/Walid Raad (1 set of 100 pigmented inkjet prints, 1996-2004)
Paul Graham (1 set of 6 pigmented inkjet prints and 1 book, 2004/2008, 2007)
Carter Mull (1 chromogenic color print with pasted chromogenic color print, 2009)
Joann Verburg (1 set of 2 chromogenic color prints, 1991)
Jules Spinatsch (1 pigmented inkjet print and 3 videos, 2003)
Harrell Fletcher (7 sets of pigmented inkjet prints, 2005)
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Comments/Context: With the job of head photography curator currently vacant, this year's annual rehanging of the permanent collection of photography at MoMA marks a period with the team in transition. In the past, this show was the work of the curators as a group and had a more institutional point of view, but in recent years, the rehang has been given a more personal feel under the hand of a single curator. This year's effort has been organized by Roxana Marcoci, and its thematic construct tilts away from a traditional history of the medium, taking a more anti-establishment view of the progression of artistic ideas. Instead of a parade of beloved and easily recognizable photographic masterworks, this exhibit follows the path of avant-garde and experimental movements of various kinds, tracing lines of criticism, dissent, and rejection of the mainstream. It's a more radical history than we're used to, riskier and less obvious than the one we all carry around in our heads.

The kind of vanguardism that Marcoci is interested in doesn't really begin until the early 1900s, so the entire 19th century is thrown overboard here. The story starts with Man Ray and Dada, Moholy-Nagy and the Bauhaus, and a handful of images awash in the glory of skyscrapers and industry. The playfulness of Many Ray's rayographs is juxtaposed with the intellectual rigor and sobriety of Moholy-Nagy's photographs and still lifes, and Steichen and Sheeler carry the banner of Modernism. Each mini-section is puctuated by a film, making the differences in vision more clear; Moholy-Nagy's A Lightplay, Black White Gray is a mesmerizing onslaught of rotating, shifting, abstract forms and interplays of light, while Sheeler and Strand's Manhatta captures the frenetic pace of the city.

The next room continues the between the wars theme with samples of Constructivism, Surrealism, and works from the New Objectivity movement. An entire wall is devoted to images by Rodchenko, offset by examples of letterpress pamphlets and magazines using many of the same images combined with vivid typography and graphic design. Surrealism is led by Bellmer and Kertesz, with an additional dividing wall covered with distorted eyes and faces. Krull, Renger-Patzsch and Sander make up the short history of New Objectivity (where is Blossfeldt?), matched by iconic photobooks from each, including Krull's geometric masterpiece Metal.

As we cross into the 1950's, the named artistic movements start to disappear, and the definition of the avant-garde starts to shift. As a result, the narrative of this show becomes more diffuse, with individually driven social and political criticism coming to the forefront a bit more. A small selection of gritty Japanese works (both photographs and books from the likes of Moriyama, Tomatsu and others) is well-paired with Michael Schmidt from Germany (an excellent choice) and Frank, Klein and Arbus from America, as they all developed unique and ultimately influential visual vocabularies. The rest of the room felt less in line with the "new visions" construct, especially the out of chronological order Friedlanders from the 1980s.

Moving into the 1970s in the next room, Conceptual photography takes the lead, followed closely by the New Topographics and the emergence of American color. Books, postcards, and other materials are seamlessly merged with the photographs, giving Bochner, Kawara, and Ruscha appropriately equal footing with the likes of the Bechers, Robert Adams, and Matta-Clark. The entire corner containing Valie Export's body configurations, Eleanor Antin's lines of rubber boots, and Stephen Shore's dull small town postcards is particularly strong.

As is often the case in these historical summary shows, when we reach the 1980s and beyond, the prints and the series projects get physically larger, so less diversity tends to get shown in the last few rooms. This is a real problem, as complex trends get boiled down to a small number of not necessarily representative works. In a room meant to encompass the 1980s and 1990s, we have a group of 1970s experimental works by Polke, a series of Martha Rosler's Vietnam war-charged collages (also from the 1970s), a group of Heinecken's magazine composites, and a pair of diCorcia portraits. All of these work inside the construct of opposition to mainstream cultural values and the creation of new aesthetics. I'm just not convinced however that these four adequately tell the entire story of changes that were going on during that twenty year period. As an example, while we might argue about whether the Dusseldorf school was avant-garde enough or not in this definition, it was undeniably an influential movement/vision and leaving it out altogether seems puzzling. Perhaps we're just back to small rooms that won't hold all the pictures we might like to see.

The final room highlights new visual motifs from Graham's time-lapsed series work to Walid Raad's exploration of archival material (car bombs). Given the newness of the work here, the vanguardism and eventual downstream influence is less clear, although all of the pieces have an angle of social or political commentary. Whether these disparate themes congeal into nameable historical movements is too early to tell, but experimental questioning in all its forms is still very much alive and well.

In general, I like the fact that the MoMA is offering alternative views of history for us to examine and evaluate; we'd be bored by the same old anointing of champions. But if you're looking for Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Irving Penn, or many other household names, this show will both sorely disappoint you and perhaps open your eyes to some new perspectives. While its overarching scholarly theme gets stretched thin in places, the exhibit does provide a coherent outline of the development of avant-garde ideas in photography and their ongoing and continued relevance to the evolution of the medium. The story peters out a bit toward the end, but that may have more to do with the ever changing definitions of what is in and outside the mainstream and the atomisation of trends, than with any lack of pushing the edges of the artistic envelope.

Collector's POV: Given this is a broad museum show, there are, of course, no posted prices, and with such a wide range of work on view, we'll pass on the usual secondary market analysis for this exhibition.
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Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

Previous permanent collection installations: 2011 (here), 2010 (here), 2009 (here), 2008 (here)

The Shaping of New Visions: Photography, Film, Photobook
Through April 29th (2013)

Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY 10019

Photography Is @Higher Pictures

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Tue, 01 May 2012 14:41:00 +0000

JTF (just the facts): A group show consisting of a total of 27 photographic works by 20 different photographers/artists, variously framed and mounted, and hung against white walls in the main gallery space and the back viewing room. All of the works were made between 2008 and 2012. Edition size/information for each piece was not available on the checklist. (Installation shots at right.)

The following photographers/artists are included in the show, with the number of works on view and image details in parentheses:

Lucas Blalock (1 c-print, 2011)
Matthew Brandt (1 c-print soaked in Fall Creek Lake water, 2009)
Talia Chetrit (1 gelatin silver print, 2011)
Joshua Citarella (1 c-print, 2011)
Jessica Eaton (1 archival pigment print, 2010)
Sam Falls (1 acrylic, pastel, and watercolor on archival pigment print, 2011)
K8 Hardy (2 c-prints, 2011)
John Houck (2 archival pigment prints, 2012)
Katherine Hubbard (4 Polaroids, 2012)
Sarah Anne Johnson (2 chromogenic prints, embossed and screen printed, 2011)
Anouk Kruithof (1 inkjet on Hahnemuhle Baryta paper with favorite color sheets, 2011)
Andrea Longacre-White (1 archival inkjet print, 2012)
Adam Marnie (1 inkjet photographs mounted on displaced wall, 2011)
Aspen Mays (1 archival inkjet print, 2008)
MPA (1 c-print, 2012)
Illiana Ortega (2 archival pigment prints, 2010)
Emily Roysdon (1 gelatin silver print, 2010)
Matthew Stone (1 archival inkjet on wood, 2011)
Arite Vierkant (1 uv print on sintra, 2012)
Letha Wilson (1 cement, c-prints, 2012)

Comments/Context: Trying to pin down an exacting definition of "contemporary photography", an ultimate list of what's in and what's out, has proven to be an elusive, frustrating, and perhaps even delusional, pastime. Do we distinguish between or eliminate camera-less images, photograms, darkroom effects, collage, montage, and rephotography/appropriation? Or do we just include anything and everything that has its output as a photographic print, regardless of the intermediate processes used to make it? Where are the edges and bright lines? These kinds of questions and debates have become even more puzzling with the increasingly broad use of digital technology and the advent of countless new printing processes. The boundaries of our photographic playing field are getting murkier every day.

This smart show declares this kind of old school thinking tired and outdated. It sees contemporary photography at the nexus of interdisciplinary art making, where the definitional intersections between traditional photography and painting, sculpture, performance art, collage, computer-based art, and other less well defined genres are less clear or even important. Processes and techniques from various disciplines are layered on top of each other, creating hybridized end products that defy easy categorization. We're now living in the in-between spaces and borderlands of art, where the rules are less well enforced and the outcomes less predictable, and this multivalent thinking is offering new avenues for exploration and experimentation.

There really isn't a single straightforward "photograph" in this entire exhibit. Letha Wilson merges nature photographs and cement into an abstract object with textural roughness and slashing elegance. John Houck starts with computer-generated all-over grids of color, which are then repeatedly folded and rephotographed to create subtle undulations and angles. Jessica Eaton’s piece begins with a pile of sculptural blocks which are then painstakingly masked off in-camera in small squares, resulting in a single aggregate exposure that becomes a shifting, chance-driven geometric mass of color. Matthew Stone starts with a seemingly classical nude, overlays it with a draped fabric reproduction, and outputs the image on wood, creating a multi-layered, fleshy distortion with unexpected textural warmth. Talia Chetrit resizes everyday coins into a deceptive trail of conceptual breadcrumbs. And Lucas Blalock turns Tums (or are they SweetTarts) into a decorative pattern of pink and purple spots. Performances are staged, photographs are overpainted, collage elements are added, and unconventional ideas and methods are free to spread and evolve, sometimes melding two or three previously separate approaches or discrete steps into a unconventionally heady brew.

I think this kind of show is a message from the future. It indicates that the simplistic Photoshop effects of a decade ago are far in the rear view mirror. What lies ahead, at least on the bleeding edge, is the mature investigation of multiple media in concert, with the artist employing increasingly sophisticated levels of control to achieve his/her desired results. The camera is just one tool in the overstuffed tool box, and the thought patterns we bring from the world of vintage photography will be increasingly irrelevant. This show is fresh, and challenging, and unexpected, and this new style of "photography" is going to knock us out of our comfort zone until we begin to accept that the edges we once drew around the medium have been erased.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced as follows, listed alphabetically by photographer/artist:

Lucas Blalock: $3300
Matthew Brandt: $4500
Talia Chetrit: $2500
Joshua Citarella: $1800
Jessica Eaton: $6500
Sam Falls: $6000
K8 Hardy: $6000 each
John Houck $4000 each
Katherine Hubbard: $1200 each
Sarah Anne Johnson: $4500 each
Anouk Kruithof: $1500
Andrea Longacre-White: $2000
Adam Marnie: $3000
Aspen Mays: $2800
MPA: $1500
Illiana Ortega: $3300/$3400
Emily Roysdon: $8000
Matthew Stone: $8500
Artie Vierkant: $4000
Letha Wilson: $3000

In general, none of these photographers/artists has much, if any, secondary market history. As a result, gallery retail will be the best option for those collectors interested in following up.

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

Transit Hub:

Lucas Blalock artist site (here)
Talia Chetrit artist site (here)
Jessica Eaton tumblr (here)
John Houck artist site (here)
Matthew Stone artist site (here)
Letha Wilson artist site (here)
Feature: ARTINFO (here)

Photography Is

Through May 26th

Higher Pictures

980 Madison Avenue

New York, NY 10075

August Sander: Citizens of the Twentieth Century @Houk

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:33:00 +0000

JTF (just the facts): A total of 34 black and white photographs, framed in black and mounted, and hung against almond colored walls in the main gallery space. All of the works are posthumous gelatin silver prints with black borders, printed by Gerd Sander in 1990. 29 of the prints are roughly 10x7, in editions of 12. There are also 5 larger prints, ranging from 23x13 to 23x18 in size. The images were originally made by August Sander between 1906 and 1940. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: I doubt that there are any words worth adding to the celebration of August Sander's landmark photography project Citizens of the Twentieth Century. His ambitious and exhaustive portrait of the German people has influenced generations of photographers from across the globe, as evidenced by recent paired showings here in New York with both Seydou Keïta (here) and Boris Mikhailov (here). Edwynn Houk as recently taken on representation of the August Sander family collection, and this show is a foundation sampler of images from this iconic project.

The prints in this exhibit are not vintage rarities, but posthumous prints made by Gerd Sander relatively recently. So instead of the warm patina of age, they have a sharp crispness of silver tonality, making them seem surprisingly modern. The pastry cook, the bricklayer, the boxers, the three young farmers, the pairs of children, the soldier, they are all brisk and refreshed rather than tired. Several of the images have been enlarged to roughly twice the original size (I had never seen these before), but they too are clean and lively.

While this show doesn't give us any particularly new or original insights on August Sander, seeing a strong grouping of his portraits like this one never fails to impress. It's proof that greatness doesn't age, and that the true masters of the medium can be revisited time and again without becoming stale.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows. The 10x7 prints are either $4500 or $6000. The larger prints (roughly 23x16) are either $12000 or $18000. Sander's photographs are widely available in the secondary markets, including portraits, landscapes, and later prints/portfolios made by both Gunther and Gerd Sander. As a result, prices vary widely, from as little as $1000 for lesser known images to more than $100000 for iconic vintage portraits.

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

Transit Hub:

Feature: Wall Street Journal, 2008 (here)
Exhibit: SFMOMA, 2002 (here)

August Sander: Citizens of the Twentieth Century

Through May 12th

Edwynn Houk Gallery
745 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10151

Mary Ellen Carroll: Federal, State, County and City @Third Streaming

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:16:00 +0000

JTF (just the facts): A total of 70 black and white and color photographs, framed in white and matted, and hung in a single room gallery space with small dividing walls. 24 of the images are a set of cibachrome prints entitled Federal, each 20x24, editions of 5+1AP, from 2003. The other 66 images are a set of black and white Polaroids entitled Kruder and Dorfmeister, each 4x5, in a unique edition, from 1999-2000. The show also includes various letters, permits, and other ephemera from the Federal project, along with 2 large silkscreens on vellum, 3 watercolors, 1 neon sign and 1 work made of enamel on metal. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Mary Ellen Carrol's unassuming photographs of public architecture in Los Angeles raise a surprisingly rich set of conceptual questions. In two separate projects, she set out to document local government buildings, loosely drawing on formulas introduced by Ed Ruscha and the Bechers. But her results aren't bound up in clever groupings or rigorous variations; instead they probe both the nature of forgettable public structures and the changes in attitudes toward government after 9/11.

In Kruder and Dorfmeister, Carroll took straightforward black and white pictures of all 66 public libraries within the Los Angeles city limits. While most of the buildings are modest one story structures, an amazing variety of styles and approaches have been employed. There are libraries in strip malls, on street corners, in leafy neighborhoods, and in shopping storefronts, in every manner of brick, stucco, and institutional concrete imaginable. Unadorned and unimposing, they fade into the background, a nondescript government service both inextricably woven into the community and taken for granted. Nearly all of the libraries front the street in one way or another, a nod to the realities of LA's car culture.

In the Federal project, Carroll used a Guggenheim fellowship to fund an effort to film the Los Angeles Federal Building for 24 hours straight. While this project was clearly related to her previous work documenting other government buildings, in the aftermath of 9/11, the atmosphere of security and fear had dramatically changed the willingness to support such an activity. The countless letters, permits, approvals, and hoops she had to jump through over the course of a year and a half are evidence of just how reluctant the government was to cooperate. In effect, she was turning the tables, watching those who were now watching us (the FBI is one of the departments housed in this building), almost like a piece of performance art. The photographs themselves document a view from the LA National Cemetery, the bulky structure covered in a grid of windows. As the hours pass from day to night and back again, the lights in the offices go on and off, creating changing patterns of small blocks. There is an eerie sense of surveillance, in both directions.

I came away impressed by the symbolic nuances that Carroll has uncovered in government architecture, and by the shifting sense of what those buildings represent to us as citizens. While these photographs have a deadpan aesthetic, there is nothing cool and detached about them - the looking going on here is much more active and urgent than it appears.

Collector's POV: The photographs in this show are priced as follows. The Federal project portfolio of 24 prints is $38000, while the Kruder and Dorfmeister project set of 66 prints is also $38000. Carroll's work has little secondary market history, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

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

Transit Hub:

Artist site (here)
Reviews: Artforum (here, scroll down), Artcritical (here)

Mary Ellen Carroll: Federal, State, County and City
Through May 19th

Third Streaming
10 Greene Street
2nd Floor
New York, NY 10013

The Checklist: 4/26/12

noreply@blogger.com (DLKCOLLECTION) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Checklist 4/26/12
Current New York Photography Shows

New reviews added this week in red.
(Rating: Artist/Title: Venue: Closing Date: link to review)

Uptown

ONE STAR: Leonard Freed: Museum of the City of New York: May 6: review
TWO STARS: Francesca Woodman: Guggenheim: June 13: review
ONE STAR: Spies in the House of Art: Met: August 26: review
ONE STAR: Naked before the Camera: Met: September 9: review

Midtown

ONE STAR: Peripheral Visions: Hunter College Art Galleries: April 28: review
ONE STAR: Matthew Pillsbury: Bonni Benrubi: April 28: review
ONE STAR: Frank Gohlke: Howard Greenberg: May 5: review
ONE STAR: August Sander/Boris Mikhailov: Pace/MacGill: May 5: review
TWO STARS: Magnum Contact Sheets: ICP: May 6: review
ONE STAR: Perspectives 2012: ICP: May 6: review
ONE STAR: Grey Villet: ICP: May 6: review
THREE STARS: Cindy Sherman: MoMA: June 11: review
THREE STARS: Weegee: ICP: September 2: review

Chelsea

ONE STAR: Stan Douglas: David Zwirner: April 28: review
ONE STAR: Brian Ulrich: Julie Saul: May 5: review
ONE STAR: Moyra Davey: Murray Guy: May 6: review
ONE STAR: Anne Collier: Anton Kern: May 12: review
TWO STARS: Alex Prager: Yancey Richardson: May 12: review
TWO STARS: Tim Hetherington: Yossi Milo: May 19: review

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown

ONE STAR: Liu Bolin: Eli Klein: May 11: review
ONE STAR: Michael Collins: Janet Borden: May 15: review

Elsewhere Nearby

TWO STARS: Rising Dragon: Katonah Museum of Art: September 2: review