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A View on Art
A point of view
December 2005
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– 1. MIAMI: A SYNOPSIS
– 2. LOVED
– 3. LOATHED
– 4. NOTICED…
– 5. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE:
– 6. MARTHA ROSLER - excerpt from my review in the current issue of C magazine
– 7. GEOFFREY FARMER & JOELLE TUERLINCKX - excerpt from the current Art Papers
– 8. ON THE HORIZON
– 9. AND FINALLY..

Hello,

Welcome to my newsletter - the Miami edition!

A brief and hopefully enlightening monthly look at the art world - from Toronto and abroad - wherever my travels take me.

I was in Miami only very briefly, and opted to focus on three events: Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB), New Art Dealers Association Fair (NADA), the Design fair (MIAMI 05) and some talks..

..so I didn’t get to the younger fairs Pulse or Aqua..and only breezed through Scope, the hotel fair.

But following are some abstract musing on some things I’ve recently read, noticed, experienced and want to recommend to you, along with short pieces of my writing and upcoming projects.

This letter goes to over 100 curators, artists, dealers, editors and collectors in London, Florence, Rome, New York, California, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver.

Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested! Thanks and enjoy!

With very best wishes,

Andrea

1. MIAMI: A SYNOPSIS
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Say what you will about Miami, the week(end) offered an incredibly stimulating environment.

NADA: my favorite galleries at the fair: Hales Gallery (London), Murray Guy (New York), Daniel Reich (New York)

Hales Gallery

ART BASEL MIAMI: items of interest: Carlier Gebauer gallery, a brilliant Rodney Graham silkscreen on mirror entitled A Glass of Beer at Christine Burgin Gallery and a lovely Thomas Schutte architectural maquette sculpture at Marian Goodman.

The Georg Herold sculptures at Capitain/Petzel were fantastic!

Galerie Gisela Capitain

I met Olivier Blanckart, a New York-based French artist, who had a large super-realist packing-tape sculpture at Loevenbruck Gallery.

Blanckart was shortlisted this year for the Marcel Duchamp prize - the french art prize sponsored by the Centre Georges Pompidou.

ART BASEL: CONVERSATIONS I heard a lecture entitled Architecture for Art/Museum Architecture with Kutlug Ataman, Doug Aitken, Minerva Cuevas, moderated by Terence Riley (chief curator of architecture at MoMA, of course) and Stefano Boeri, editor of Domus.

The general discussion evolved around the types of (and problematics of) the museum space. Kutlug Ataman spoke about the language of the space,the language of each artwork (its own internal language/contstructs) and the relationship between the two. He gave an example of having had his work Kuba shown at the Carnegie International and then also in a post office in London, a project sponsored by Artangel. I think he felt that perhaps the London showing was more successful, because of the meaning inherent in the history of the space.

Although it wasn’t picked up on in the talk, it is my feeling that Artangel offers one workable alternative to the museum space, by working closely with artists and also with the architecture of the city. It wasn’t brought up, and in retrospect I should have asked the question myself. I wonder how artists feel about the experience and how/if it affects the success of their work?

How dependent is the artwork on its environment? Should/ can an artwork exist autonomously? How are museums changing? Doug Aitken mentioned that museum spaces and the trajectory of modern art must develop simultaneously. It was also noted that the museum operates as a link between the museum spectator and the artwork.

The experience of art as related to its environment is crucial to think about. Ataman mentioned an example of having seen an Ernesto Neto sculptural installation of sexual forms weaving in and out from one another, in the top space of an old, musty museum building in Vienna. Being Freud’s city, the idea of having a sexual, dream-like installation on the top floor (the brain) of an old building seemed to him, quite perfect.

I also thought about video: it can be shown easily enough in the rarified environment of the museum, but also at an art fair or for instance, in the Art Basel video lounge, where there were some works on view but also over 50 works available to be viewed on separate monitors. How is video affected by context?

Stefano Boeri of Domus spoke about the rigidity of the museum interior, versus the flexibile interior of an art fair. Museums have become landmarks that offer one perspective of an artwork while more flexible spaces offer a different (I would say perhaps more valuable) experience. But it was agreed that it depends on the artwork.

DESIGN 05: Multi-colours in Design I went to another lecture, Multi-colours in Design, moderated by Barbara Bloeminck, curatorial director of the Cooper-Hewitt in New York. It was on colour and design with National Design Award winner Yves Behar, head designer for Mini Gert Hildebrand, Mary Murphy, VP Design for Maharam, and Colour Designer Beatrice Santiccioli.

How much does colour affect design and choices in design? There was talk of the changing nature of design, towards design as fashion, with the example of Swatch watches that had to be re-thought seasonally. I would suggest that now design has become a fashion, that we are only as good as our latest, hippest purchase. Who wants last season’s Prada - who wants last season’s Moooi? Actually fashion has already eclipsed that issue; following fashion has become unfashionable - will design follow suit?

Different countries have different attitudes to colour; designers are often asked to mute colours for an American market, or brighten colours for a European market.

After much discussion regarding client and consumer, about what unusual combinations can work in terms of colour (black yogurt containers in France, red razors) and what doesn’t (powder blue cookware), an audience member asked a question: Would we be having the same discussion in India, a place with an entirely different relationship to colour?

How much is colour reflective of social/cultural constructs?

ART BASEL: VIDEO LOUNGE A really entertaining video by Vera Chytilova entitled Daisies from 1966 that had the spirit of a Gunilla Josephson (a forerunner, perhaps?) or Pipilotti Rist.

Text on Vera Chytilova’s films

2. LOVED
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1. ANDY FABO AT MOCCA (Toronto) This is a brilliant show! Mocca is just getting better and better in its programming - an Andy Fabo restrospective was long overdue, and it has arrived in all its wry, gay, painterly splendor.

2. THE BLUR BUILDING - It’s not new, but it is stunning. Karen Love mentioned this in her curator’s talk at Oakville Galleries. If you haven’t seen it, check out this link. Diller + Scofidio’s amazing use of materials make Ghery and Libeskind look tame.

Blur Building

3. DESIGN 05 - This small show comprising four floors of the Moore building in the Design District was super. It was the right size (small!) with a select group of dealers, including the always brilliant David Gill and Barry Friedman Ltd. I could live in that shop! Work ranged from contemporary US designers to early 20th century Europeans.

My favorite, at Friedman, was a stunning mint condition Kuramata stool, with three feathers trapped in its Perspex base. Made in an edition of 40, it was selling for around $40,000 U.S.

There was an amazing lamp by artist Franz West, made of (I think) bronzed industrial chain link, so that it stood about 5 feet high, a single chain rising like a cobra, with a bare lightbulb at the top.

And also a lovely Ettore Sottsass commode and bookshelf.

Over at the Moss exhibit, there were some enormous, stunning vases by my design hero, Gaetano Pesce. Unfortunately I missed his talk.

4. FREE STUFF! - The Art Basel Champagne brunch! VIP passes and free tickets floating around! With so many parties, a few discreet inquiries meant my biggest expense was taxi fare.

Barry Friedman Ltd.

3. LOATHED
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1. ZAHA HADID INTERVIEW AT DESIGN 05 There were lineups down the block, the room was packed. Hadid took her seat opposite Craig Robins for a much- anticipated interview.

Robins is an art collector, developer, Miami man-about-town and friend of Hadid. He is also not an interviewer. He made the interview mostly about himself and his escapades with Hadid over the years, complete with inside jokes - seemingly oblivious that the ENTIRE audience was there to hear Hadid’s opinions, thoughts, insights.

Sample question: “How does it feel to design a factory?” (I’m not kidding)

2. TORONTO: CANDICE BREITZ LECTURE AT MERCER UNION I went to this lecture because Breitz’s “Mother Father” video piece was one of the few things I found intriguing at the Arsenale at the Venice Biennale this past summer. I arrived late, at a point where she was showing a work that she had made wherein she extracted only the moments of Sharon Stone’s dialogue in the film Basic Instinct. It was seven or so minutes, she said, excitedly. Can you imagine? How much she gets paid? And how much Sharon Stone we get? And on and on the lecture went..needless to say, I wasn’t terribly impressed. Somehow, Mother Father had managed, through slick presentation and well-chosen characterization, to far exceed the artist’s other work. And even the success of that piece depended on the juxtaposition/ contrast between the two. And even then, it was fairly lighthearted.

3. PAUL WONG PRESENTS at Vtape Saturday Nov 26th. This curated screening was perplexing. The theme seemed to encapsulate a sense of loss, or despair. But the works were all over the map in terms of quality. Some were downright dodgy. The best was Ross Turnbull’s film noir, Letters From R., about correspondence from a psychiatric patient to his (former) lover. It was beautifully written and stunningly constructed. I thought it was almost perfect. Cooper Battersby also had a good little film, which was, I believe the second part in a trilogy. I guess they can be shown separately, too. It was about Time, with Cooper giving a monologue about an outsider’s perspective of time. It vaguely reminded me of one of my favorite films, Herzog’s The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, in that it’s often enlightening to question that which we take absolutely for granted. Those that do are often labeled “crazy”, but who’s to say who is crazy?

4. Aesthetic overload. How long can these art fair extravaganzas keep going? One requires a distinct m.o., but it’s a challenge, with so much vying for the viewer’s attention.

5. Scope art fair. Actually, I loathe the idea of Scope; an art fair in small hotel rooms down cramped hallways was never a great idea - and the installations only work if the gallerist treats the whole room as a real place for art, rather than a substitute gallery space.

4. NOTICED…
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-NADA: Loads of detailed pencil drawings, but a lot of the painting looked kind of tired to me..

-Sculpture: Some sculpture was looking really strong, I thought at both NADA and ART BASEL MIAMI.

-Young Toronto artist Jessica Thompson’s Soundbike was a hit. I ran into them by the beach just as Martin Margulies was finishing his ride.

Jessica Thompson at PM Gallery

-New York dealer Sean Kelly on the outrageously priced straight-from-art-school artists: “Smart people have stopped buying fashion and started buying substance”

-The very cool and much talked-about Jeppe Hein installation at the Moore Space (Miami) - where everyone entering the space set off a ball rolling down a track that wove in and out, from room to room.

-The fact that Simon Starling won the Turner Prize!!

Starling article in the Guardian

Are you in London?

THIS SATURDAY 10 DECEMBER 2005 19:45 - 24:45

10th Tense Collaboration of Film and Music

Admission £3 door (£2 advanced booking) RSVP: 10thgroup@gmail.com

Non-stop films, music and performances by: No.W.Here Lab, Simon Bookish, David Cunningham, Trio Electroniche, Raresonik, Garioke, DJ Rockwolf, DJ Mighty Mitre, DJ Ninon Von Dachau

10th Tense

5. ARTISTS TO GOOGLE:
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Hugo Boss 2006 shortlist:

-Tacita Dean (My fave)

-John Bock

-Tino Sehgal

-Damian Ortega

-Aida Ruilova

-Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla

6. MARTHA ROSLER - excerpt from my review in the current issue of C magazine
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Art continues to imitate life, as artists pose questions about our everyday existence, or more specifically, about our relationship to our immediate surroundings. Witness the public interventions and replicated environments of Kelly Mark, Jeff Wall, Thomas Demand and Gregor Schneider, not to mention the recent exhibit at Toronto’s Power Plant by Geoffrey Farmer and Joelle Tuerlinckx. Context has seemingly overtaken content. But how will this work read in thirty years’ time? Will it remain current or be valued as a relic, a mere precursor to the art of the future?

In 1975, Martha Rosler created a work entitled Garage Sale, the newest version of which was on view June 4 - July 17, 2005 at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts. Items of every description were piled on tables throughout the main gallery of the ICA, some old, others new. The smell of vintage clothing permeated the space, lending the the installation the authentic feel of a church basement jumble sale. The striking thing - and the thing that made the work classic Rosler - was the prevailing domesticity throughout, from book titles to handmade crochet doilies. 1970s girlie mags sat alongside kitchenware, clothing and a pair of fetching purple sequined pasties. This was less a garage-sale-style artwork than an actual garage sale inside an art gallery. Everything was priced for sale, and visitors were encouraged to haggle with the gallery attendants. A black and white video of past installations was playing in the corner, voiced over by Rosler asking: ‘Who wants these things?’ ‘What is the value of a thing?’ ‘What makes you want it?’

I had been vintage shopping the previous day, and while perusing the exhibition it struck me that I hadn’t been altogether aware of what I had been doing. In other words, art can give insight into the everyday. Most viewers are doubtless aware that an object changes its status when placed inside a gallery (thanks to Marcel Duchamp), a fact that today says more about the status of art and the gallery environment than it does about the object. Indeed, the point of Rosler’s piece is neither the objects for sale, nor the installation itself, but the way in which the meaning of our actions are automatically re-contextualized within the art gallery space. Garage Sale is about rendering tangible the invisible structures that define contemporary art (the very structures that compel so many to dismiss it.)

Read the rest of the article in C magazine

7. GEOFFREY FARMER & JOELLE TUERLINCKX - excerpt from the current Art Papers
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Considering the universality of Proustian memory, the sense of smell is surprisingly under-used in contemporary art. Artists Wolfgang Laib, Sonja Alhauser, and a few others have harnessed the power of smell in their artwork. So, now, has Vancouver conceptualist Geoffrey Farmer. His installation, A Pale Fire, is paired with No ‘W’ (no Rest. no Room. no Things. no Title) by Belgian Joëlle Tuerlinckx in a show at the Power Plant [September 24—November 20, 2005].

The smell of a wood-burning fire entices the viewer into the main gallery, which is almost entirely filled with second-hand furniture bleakly awaiting destruction in a temporary glass- fronted “factory” installed against one wall. Abandoned during gallery hours as a kind of stage set, this is where dismantling, stripping, and sandblasting take place, reducing the wood down to firelog size. At the centre of the cavernous gallery, an austere fireplace designed in 1968 by Frenchman Dominique Imbert hovers dramatically above the floor, its burning mouth agape. The factory’s final room is set up for making ink. The soot from the fireplace is collected, mixed with a variety of other ingredients, and used to print exhibition posters. Their text is copied from a card that Farmer found taped to one of the desks. It suggests a fraternal society, perhaps the brainchild of a slightly demonic office worker. “The Rules of the Order” comprises eight rules, including “Disorder is TREACHERY,” “The road to HELL is paved with badly laid stones,” and ”A TIDY worker is a HAPPY worker.”

Traditionally a communal site rich in memory, the fireplace suggests control of nature while its pure, modernist design makes it costly and desirable. By contrast, cheap, unwanted furniture holds little value; significantly, most of this furniture appears to come from schools or offices. The disparity between the two, and the social dimensions therein, suggest commodity fetishism by engaging objects of great and little worth in a replication of the industrial process. Overriding this play on value is the notion of conceptual art as the ultimate objectification of labor.

Read the rest of the article in Art Papers

8. ON THE HORIZON
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A review of Weathervane (a group show curated by Karen Love) at Oakville Galleries for Art Papers..

A review of Javier Tellez at the Power Plant in the next (or so) issue of Canadian Art Magazine

N.B: For events in Toronto, check out my listings page on martiniboys.com. It’s a selection of events, including those that I think are of particular note.