Author: jameswagner

Aaron Krach Houston Street, New York 2 2006 digital C-print mounted on Plexiglas 30″ x 40″ (31″ x 41″ framed) [installation view]

DCKT showed this large, very beautiful and totally New York-ish abstract by Aaron Krach in their booth at Pulse.

Chris Duncan Seriously, It’s Dark Out 2006 India ink, latex paint, gouache, wood putty, marker, graphite, colored pencil on panel 71.75″ x 96″ [installation view]

First, I have to apologize for the highlights at the top of this image, but when you’re perched inside an historic armory dedicated to a noble citizen militia neither a gallery nor a photographer can entirely control of the ambient lighting. Fortunately the beauty of this large painting by Chris Duncan is evident even with lighting that is less than ideal.
Jeff Bailey showed this grand painting at Pulse. There are a many more images of the artist’s work on the gallery’s site.

Heather Cantrell A Valentine 2006 ink-jet print on silver rag paper 18″ x 24″

Heather Cantrell Circus Family 2006 ink-jet print on silver rag paper 24 x 30″

L.A.’s Sixspace had another great booth at Pulse New York this year, including new work by Chad Robertson, gouaches by Kozyndan and some drawings by Wendy Heldmann, but I thought these photographs by Heather Cantrell were especially remarkable, even before I learned anything about the artist or the work.
I enjoyed relying on my own imagination and associations, but the gallery supplies some context with this excerpt from a press release which introduced the artist’s solo show last fall:

Heather Cantrell has continuously explored issues of family, tribes, cults, subcultures, and the historical (both worldly and personal) as a way to parallel metaphors with states of realism and folklore. Influenced by the portraits, photography, and painting at the end of the 19th century, she continues her exploration in Century’s End by utilizing staged scenes of her “community” (mainly artist friends, mentors, and musicians) to create a body of work that deals with the polarities of fact and fable.

[images from Sixspace]

Paul Pagk Lexicon Series #60 2006 oil tempera on linen 26″ x 25″ [installation view]


Paul Pagk Lexicon Series #16 2004-05 oil tempera on linen 24″ x 25″ [installation view]

Moti Hasson was showing a number of gallery artists in their booth at the Scope fair, but as Paul Pagk hasn’t yet shown up on these pages and I haven’t yet seen his current solo show in the gallery, I was anxious to show these two paintings now.
I have however seen enough of his work elsewhere to confirm that they are always even more beautiful than these images suggest.

Tony Swain Stuck Cuts 2006 acrylic on newpaper 26.5″ x 25.25″ [installation view]

Glasgow’s The Modern Institute showed this handsome drawing by the artist and musician Tony Swain (Hassle Hound) in their booth at the Armory.
Swain is one of the six artists chosen to represent Scotland at the Venice Biennale this year.

As I’m admiring these Satoshi Ohno images (from the artist’s “acid garden” and “prism” series), and several other pictures of his work which I am not uploading here, I’m reminded of the hazards, at least for the visitor, of a crowded art fair booth, and especially a busy one. Tokyo’s Tomio Koyama Gallery had a large number of pieces by Ohno at the Armory last month, and while the installation succeeded in attracting a lot of attention in the midst of the serious competition arrayed over these several acres of concrete, sometimes a good drawing or painting just needs to be left [more] alone*.
I apologize for the lack of documentation on the drawings. The fault is at least partly my distraction and my haste.
If the installation of which they were a small part was a little overwhelming, I have to admit these two images aren’t really going to be enough to represent a good artist, even in their poor capacity as reproductions of three good drawings. So maybe we should think of each of these shows as essentially just another market fair in an important market town. Certainly one totally appropriate approach would then be for those who rent the stalls to show us everything they’ve got; we can sort out the fresh produce for ourselves, until we drop from fatigue.

*
don’t ask me why this doesn’t apply to the salon-hung, and definitely-not-for-profit walls of our apartment, but my answer would probably be not much different from that which a for-profit gallery might advance: leaving more luxurious areas of white space would mean having to hide that much other good talent under a bushel basket

Eliezer Sonnenschein By the Book 2007 oil on wood 31.5″ x 47.25″ [installation view]

A number of exciting artists, including Israelis whose work isn’t seen nearly enough on this side of the Atlantic, could be found at the Armory once again this year in the booth of Sommer Contemporary. Among the pieces shown by the Tel Aviv gallery’s director, Irit Mayer-Sommer, was this beautiful painting by Eliezer Sonnenschein, whose work had first excited me in 2004, when it was part of Sommer’s invitational at Lehman Maupin, and who I remember as someone whose output is not easily compartmentalized.

Adrian Ghenie Fragile 2007 oil on canvas 19.75″ x 37.5″


Cristi Pogăcean The Abduction from the Seraglio 2006 woolen carpet, manufactured 43.25″ x 70″ [installation view]


Victor Man none 2006 oil on canvas on board 10.5″ x 13.25″; Victor Man mmm, remember anthia, nick? 2004-2006 oil on canvas 18″ x 23.5″ [installation view]


Alexandra Croitoru Untitled (Prime Minister) 2004 lambda print 31.5″ x 26.5″ [installation view]

For me one of the most pleasant surprises at the Armory was the presence of galeria Plan B, an 18-month-old Romanian gallery making its first appearance at the show this year. In fact when the owners and directors originally formed the gallery they installed themselves not in that nation’s capital, Bucharest, which might have seemed the obvious choice, but in an elegant old building in Cluj, the provincial capital of Transylvania. All six of the artists which project director Mihal Pop showed here are themselves Romanian.
Romania, with its natural links to both the Latin West and the Greek, Slavic or even Islamic worlds, can boast of a much more sophisticated history and culture than even the most informed Americans would ever imagine, especially since even in its modern history most of it was hidden from or ignored by the capitalist West for almost fifty years. It’s good to be reminded of what we (and much of Romania) have missed, and to be made aware that nothing now prevents this nation and its people from adding its own strength and cultured genius to Europe and a larger, vibrant contemporary art world becoming increasingly less geographically limited.
All of the work shown in Plan B’s booth here last month was very, very good, even if I can only show a few images here. The artists were Alexandra Croitoru, Adrian Ghenie, Victor Man, Ciprian Mureşan, Cristi Pogăcean and Gabriela Vanga.

Erik van Lieshout drawings [detail of wall installation]

The Antwerp gallery Stella Lohaus, appearing at the Armory for the first time, devoted their entire booth to the drawings of a single artist, Erik van Lieshout, who is increasingly known in Europe for his ambitious installations.
It was an excellent move, for the work is very good, and being also very striking (not always a corollary) it managed to attract considerable attention even without the larger bells and whistles of which van Lieshout seems more than capable. This shot of a part of one wall of the gallery’s booth is necessarily a very inadequate representation of the artist’s New York installation, and it’s totally incapable of even suggesting this native Brabants artist’s complexity.

Anya Kielar Untitled 2007 mixed media 39.5″ x 31.5″ [installation view]

Anya Kielar, Untitled 2007 mixed media 39.5″ x 31.5″ [installation view]

Daniel Reich was showing these two wonderful scrim-layered collage pieces by the young New York artist Anya Kielar at the Armory.
Small note: These works, by an artist known as much for her sculpture, have such a physical presence themselves that I was slightly surprised to discover, as I copied their sizes from the gallery list just now, that a third dimension was not included.