Author: jameswagner

Nayland Blake The Big One 2003 white nylon 192″ x 180″ x 6″ [large detail of installation]

This is almost certainly going to be the last post to include an image from the December Miami shows.
I found this wonderful outsize work by Nayland Blake so irresistable – on many levels – that I had to share it. “The Big One” dominated the booth of London’s Fred at PULSE.
Were the edition large enough, and if I had an extra, aircraft hanger-size bedroom and a trust fund I’d get me two of these humungous sleeping bags. One would be kept for contemporaries and posterity, museum-virginal, displayed or loaned, and the other would always be available at home when, . . . needed.
Sure it’s scary [see next paragraph], but it’s also damn delightful.
For anyone new to Blake, here is an excerpt from Sarah Valdez’s review in Art in America of Blake’s show at Matthew Marks last fall:

Bunnies and extreme physical ordeals–the two main ingredients of Nayland Blake’s work–turned up again in his latest show, “Reel Around.” The recent offerings also found the artist treading, typically, between the sinister and the hilarious, between the transcendent and the banal. A huge, fluffy, white rabbit suit some 16 feet in length, The Big One (2003) was sprawled out like an enormous animal-skin rug on the floor of the main gallery, doing a good job of controlling the cavernous space. The oversize costume also brought to mind other times the bunny has shown up throughout Blake’s oeuvre. Though probably inscrutable to the uninitiated, Blake’s lop-eared albino mascot references a range of cultural signifiers related to the artist’s identity as a biracial gay man, including Brer Rabbit, Playboy, drugs and the real-life rabbit’s proclivity for fucking. To those not in the loop, however, the piece may have appeared a good, soft spot to take a nap.

I suspect it’s down-filled.

Jack Pierson Psycho Killer 2000 plastic [sic] 10″ x 40″ x 36″ [view of work as installed lying on floor, with ambient lights eliminated]


Jack Pierson Black Jackie 1991 acrylic paint, plywood, silver and black rain curtain, cigarette and ash, christmas lights, color gel (dimensions variable) [large detail of installation, with ambient lights eliminated]


Jack Pierson Breakfast, Hope  Dinner, Fear 1982 plastic panels and lettering 20″ x 15.75″ each [installation view]

While we were still in the midst of this wonderful installation Barry had said that the Jack Pierson show at Daniel Reich felt like a small museum retrospective. I totally agree, but I would add that it’s a interestingly selective survey, since there are almost no photographs. in “Jack Pierson: Early Works and Beyond – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”.
Hmmm. Would I be reading too much into the curious omission of examples from a medium through which most people came to know Pierson’s art if I were to dwell very long on it? I mean, is photography supposed to be over?
I certainly hope not, and not just because it’s the only form I’ve ever worked in myself. For at least thirty years I haven’t been able to think of photography as distinct from the aggregate of the other visual arts, and so I’ve always thought it strange to see “photography” indicated as a separate category in so many gallery listings. Also, ever since I began regularly visiting galleries I’ve been uncomfortable with the fact that some only show photography, while others show everything but photography. While it survives in some quarters, the distinction has gradually dissolved over the years as even smaller and less nimble imaginations within the wider world of monied art [shopkeepers and hoarders] have had to come to terms with the fact the artists themselves have increasingly refused to have their work pigeonholed.
Pierson of course should not be described as a “photographer”, and he never could be. Actually, in 1992, when I first saw his work it was in Tom Cuglioni’s SOHO gallery and there wasn’t a photograph in sight. Instead I saw just a breathtaking, but incredibly casual installation of a lot of hand-written notes (mostly to self) on white paper.* They expressed, individually or collectively, what appeared to be the lovesick (sexsick?) longings of an artist who seemed to know some of my own private obsessions very well.
He still does.
Anyway, it’s a great show and you still have until the end of this month to see it.

*
I couldn’t find texts or images from the 1992 show, but see Alison Jacques Gallery for examples of relatively recent word drawings by perhaps a more grownup [and more cynical?] Pierson

Valerie Hegarty Among the Sierras with Woodpecker 2005 [pretty large detail of both installation and admiring naturalist]

Guild & Greyshkul showed this wonderful paper creation by Valerie Hegarty in their booth at NADA Miami early this month.
Note that Hegarty seems to have installed an ivory-billed woodpecker as the villain of the [Bierstadt] piece. This magnificent bird was recently sighted in Arkansas after having been declared extinct in 1920.

Big, wonderful surprise when I rounded a partition and found these two beautiful new images by Scott Treleaven inside John Connelly‘s booth at NADA! Treleaven will have a show in the gallery’s new space on 27th Street in February.

not barefoot, but with cheek of tan to be sure

Some gallerists have a more casual approach to the concept of office space than others.
I found this very distracted Daniel inside his gallery‘s booth at NADA in Miami on December 1.

Brian Ulrich Edinburgh, UK 2003 (Shoe) Lightjet C-print 30″ x 40″


Brian Ulrich Chicago, IL 2003 (Freezers) Lightjet C-print 30″ x 40″


Brian Ulrich Smithhaven, NY 2003 (Sugar Plum) Lightjet C-print 40″ x 50″


Brian Ulrich Chicago, IL 2002 (Paper Towels) Lightjet C-print 30″ x 40″

I told myself I’d only put up one image, and then just say a few words, since I’d already written about Brian Ulrich in the past.
It was just going to be an encomium to this wonderful artist, but as Christmas was fast approaching I thought I would also have to say something about my weird choice for a holiday-time post after a week of silence.
As far as the number of uploaded images is concerned, I realized that one Ulrich is clearly never enough.
Now, even though I’m looking at these images two days before December 25th, I’m forced to recognize the obvious, that Ulrich himself is not commenting on Christmas here, and perhaps not even on the familiar deformities of an enormous consumer society no longer confined to North America [the first image is of a store in Edinburgh].
I think he’s in fact very much in love with his subjects, however sad their world appears in his art, and I think his passion is quite contagious.
I first saw his images on line a year and a half ago, but because of travel I’d never seen the real pieces until yesterday [I can’t quite count the work I had seen at Exit Art earlier this year, since it was installed much to high on the wall]. We finally met Brian while he was visiting New York for, yeah . . . , Christmas. He stopped by our apartment in the afternoon with a roll of perhaps a couple dozen large work prints under his arm.
I was absolutely astounded by the quality and the incredible beauty of these prints when seen up close. Even familiar images which had totally haunted me before now assumed a stature I could not have imagined possible. It was like hearing a live performance of your favorite music for the very first time.
I’d like all of New York to see this work; I can’t imagine him not being picked up by a good gallery soon.
In New York or anywhere else, for anyone who is (for now) out of range of the physical prints, a visit to his excellent on-line gallery will be a real treat nevertheless.

[images from Brian Ulrich]