Author: jameswagner

Paco Pomet Tiempo Muerto 2007 oil on canvas 27.5″ x 39.5″

[detail]

The Valencia and Madrid gallery My Name is Lolita showed some handsome monochromatic oils by Paco Pomet at Scope.

Alexander Vinogradov and Vladimir Dubossarsky Summer 1 2001 oil on canvas 57.75″ x 77.5″ [photo taken of installation, evincing uneven ambient lighting]

Now that I’ve checked out the artists, and know something about what they’re up to, my on-sight seduction at the Armory by this cutesy, sexy, pretty, porny, realisty, fairie and quite funny painting by Russians Alexander Vinogradov and Vladimir Dubossarsky makes better sense to me. I love the fat flying penguins and the quite-thick-around-the-middle youth with the four rosy cheeks. Deitch Projects showed the painting.
I also noticed the title, and the date of the painting’s completion. Was it before or after that beautiful summer day “when our world changed forever”?

Antwerp’s Zeno X Gallery showed work by Jenny Scobel at the Armory this year, including this large piece not accompanied by a descriptive label. The graphite, watercolor and wax painting showed more color than many of her works.

Matt Mullican Untitled (Learning from that Person’s work: I) 2007 acrylic and oilstick on canvas 48″ x 36″

Z�rich’s excellent Mai 36 Galerie showed a beautiful, rhythmic black and white language work by the indefatigable Matt Mullican at Armory.

John Finneran 9 Trash Cans 2007 oil on aluminum, rivets 57″ x 40″ [installation view]


John Finneran 7 Mouths 2008 oil and pen on aluminum 7″ x 5.5″ [cut showing full image found in installation, where it was surrounded by a mat and frame]

I now realize I’m loving everything [scroll down] I see by this artist, even as I’m also realizing how diverse John Finneran’s work really is. Two weeks ago I came across two more works on aluminum in the Rivington Arms booth at Armory.

Cathy Wilkes Alone 2004 broken glass, glass pane, battery, grinding machine, dimensions variable [installation view]

I was stopped in my tracks by this piece at the Armory stand occupied by Glasgow’s The Modern Institute and I haven’t been able to forget it. It looked like someone might have been casually pitched these things into the corner after some emergency repair, and I’m not sure that the rather casual installation of the work wasn’t totally appropriate to the artist’s purpose.
That artist is Cathy Wilkes.
I regret not asking about it at the time and I’ve found nothing about “Alone” on line, but I did find a copy of a 2004 Sunday Herald review by Jack Mottram of a Cathy Wilkes show, mounted in a “decaying Dennistoun hairdresser’s [salon]”, from which I’ve excerpted this:

Her prosaic collection of unremarkable items, matched with made objects that don’t exactly dazzle in isolation, are combined and placed in such a way that the relationships between them seems almost tangible, as if you could reach out and twang taut wires connecting each component part of the installation to its neighbour, and the surrounding space. This evocation of a tensile physical connection goes further still, seeming to engender a dumb complicity between inanimate objects and the space in which they find themselves.

I still don’t know enough, but I know I wish I had been there, especially now as I remember how I excited I was by the awesome show installed in a similar environment in Brooklyn by Jonathan VanDyke last June.

Youssef Nabil Red Egyptian Nightgown 2007 hand-colored silver gelatin print 15.75″ x 10.75″


Youssef Nabil Amir, New York 2006 hand-colored silver gelatin print 15.75″ x 10.75″

I just thought I had to think about these images a bit more, maybe look around on line and get some context before I could make any public judgments. during the press and VIP opening of Armory.
I’d seen work by Youssef Nabil at least once before. I was probably even more suspicious of my attraction to it then. When I saw these and several other photographs in the display of the Cape Town gallery Michael Stevenson the week before last I thought, maybe it was time to give them a chance. Even though it was early in our visit to Pier 94 Barry and I were already performing gallery triage and I ended up just taking a snapshot of one of the photographs shown above before we slipped past whatever they might end up to be offering.
Besides, I supposed my job that day was to look for the new and the fringe. Most of the work which I had seen by Nabil was softly illuminated by hand-colored images of beautiful young men, sometimes including their costumes and their bedclothes. This is a hook to whose appeal I cannot claim immunity, but I’m automatically suspicious of easy seductions when it comes to the claims of art.
I’m now willing to say that Nabil’s best work seems to be the real thing. It may just be a hangup of mine, but I think I still have some problem with his more straightforward portraits. I will admit however that in the context of the awesome world which describes this artist’s youth and his continued inspiration even what I would describe as the less anomalous images survive their more obvious lures.
Nabil is Egyptian. In fact he’s a Cairene, and therefore a citizen of one of* the world’s oldest and most sophisticated cities. It’s the vitality of early Egyptian cinema and his nation’s barely-expired tradition of the hand-colored photograph (portraits, streetscapes and landscapes) that inspire his own live narratives: Each of these photographs is very much a story to be shared with an audience disposed to watch, and read.
For more discussion of the work, see these essays which appear on the gallery’s own site.
I didn’t see this diptych at the fair, but I thought it was worth sharing here:

Youssef Nabil My time to go, self-portrait, Venice 2007 hand-colored silver gelatin prints (diptych) 15.75″ x 10.75″ each

*
Egypt is pretty old, but its cosmopolitan capitol was founded barely a thousand years ago

[all images from MichaelStevenson]

Scott Treleaven [installation shot of a small framed collaged drawing]

Now that’s an interesting headline, even if it is inadvertently misleading.
Scott Treleaven just opened a show at John Connelly here in New York. I haven’t made it over yet, although it is just down the street and there are any number of reasons why I have to call it a must-see. I’ve been under some weather until now, so I’ve had to be content with this unidentified drawing I saw at the Armory late last month, in the booth of the Athens gallery, The Breeder.

Rob Churm’s “Endless Hair” (Indian ink, biro and felt-tip pen on paper) on the left and “Untitled” (biro and felt-tipped pen on paper) on the right, each from 2007, the first 8.25″ x 6″ and the second 8.25″ x 6.25″ [installation view]

“Harry” from 2007 (Indian ink, biro and felt-tipped pen on paper) 16.5″ x 11.75″ [installation view]

The Glasgow gallery Sorcha Dallas displayed some terrific drawings by Rob Churm in their booth at Armory. There was never any doubt some of them would show up on this blog. The only question might have been which, but they were all so good I decided it didn’t matter.

Friedrich Petzel showed this wonderful/awful “Blue Mickey” by Joyce Pensato at Armory. The charcoal and pastel drawing measured 67 by 60 inches.