Image copyright: The Armory Show 

The Armory Show sent out their fair report late afternoon yesterday, providing a little bit less information than they did last year.  For example, they don’t provide an estimate of total sales, so I guess we’ll never know if they beat 2007’s 85 million.  That said, I always thought these kinds of estimated numbers had the potential to be off by a significant amount, seeing as how the number is simply extracted from forms the fairs give out to exhibitors after the event.  From what I’m told, getting these surveys back is not easy.
Other mildly interesting information drawn from the press release includes a visitor report of 52,000, which is the same as last year.  This is the fair capacity, so I guess, there’s no real news here unless that number declines.  As a point of comparison, Pulse reported 12,000 visitors at their March fair, an increase of 2,500.   VOLTA’s attendance numbers were missing from their report.

Mayumi Terada’s work usually doesn’t do much for me, but I did like the sink that doubles as a kleenex box (above). Mayumi Terada, Kitchen Sink, 2004, gelatin silver print 29 x 39 3/4 inches, Robert Miller Gallery

Let’s face it, row upon row of flat, representational images becomes really tedious quickly. Which is to say, you have to be a huge photo nerd to enjoy the AiPAD fair (The Association of International Photography Art Dealers), now open at the Park Armory through Sunday. I spent most of my time at yesterday’s press preview circling the space, hoping this AiPAD’s “story” would reveal itself at some point. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure it ever did, but I did come up with a few observations so I’ll run through them below.

Massimo Vitali, Benicassim Beach, Spain, 2007, at Bonni Benrubi Gallery, photograph AFC

I’d gladly see a Polaroid or two over art fair staple, Massimo Vitali. There’s a limit to the number of aerial shots of beaches we need to see, and this artist exceeded them a while ago. Notably, I saw no Polaroids at AiPAD (though apparently there were tons), which saddened me, since they would have at the very least, provided a break from the monotony of framed objects.

Detail from Gary Edwards Gallery’s collection of approximately 70 American salt print portraits titled “The Face of America”, 1850. 1840-1860

Gary Edwards Gallery offers a diverse range of poorly composed and cheesy vintage photographs, the piece above, uncharacteristically sophisticated relative to the rest of the booth. Part of a larger series of mostly forgettable works, this piece charmingly places the cut out heads of people on top tiny doll clothes. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before of course — I just like knowing that this practice began as early as 1840.

Alec Soth, Weinstein Gallery

Clearly the best booth at the fair, Weinstein Gallery presents a cohesive show of Soth’s latest work. Unlike many other booths, it wasn’t grossly over hung, nor was I busy asking myself questions about how his subjects might have been directed. They aren’t. (Related)

Laura Letinsky at Yancey Richardson.

I can’t say I haven’t seen better from Laura Letinsky. I guess this is why people say good collectors have patience; they wait until the better work becomes available.

The best art fair floor plan yet. Image copyright Disarmory

Running the risk of redundancy, I’ve made a 2008 New York art fair rating list. Half hearted apologies go to Art Now for missing their fair; Miami kept me away. Pool, your website scared me off, and Disarmory, I missed you simply because I ran out of time. Sorry.

1. Pulse. Great supplemental programming, exhibition design and most importantly art. Bravo!

2. Armory. Well, it was big. And Matt Dillon was there?

3. Dark Fair. May not have exhibited the best art, but it was clearly the coolest fair of the lot.

4. Scope + Volta. Scope might come out on top of this “tie”, but I suspect it has more to do with my distaste for Volta’s branding than it does the actual fair. “Volta NY was launched with a spectacular start”, reads the Volta website, an assessment I noticed 2 days prior to its closing. I suppose it’s asking a little much from the PR to report anything contrary, but such proclamations the day after the event opens seem a little premature. That said, technically the quantity of booths at Volta were higher than that of Scope.

5. LA Art. Keep in mind that I saw this fair in its last hour, but I still think it was the biggest disappointment this year. LA Art really suffered when they lost the extra space, and their PR was virtually non-existent.

6. Bridge. It’s really a shame to see so much Asian art all of it bad.

7. Red Dot. Stellar supplemental programming aside, the fair’s basically a wash but for Adam Baumgold Gallery. If ever there was proof that artists working with comics don’t get the credibility they deserve, the fact that this gallery landed at Red Dot must surely be it. Amongst a sea of crap, Baumgold was exhibiting some of the best art I saw at all the fairs, including works by Tony Fitzpatrick, Chris Ware, William Cordova, and Mark Bell.

Scope Entrance, Photo AFC

I haven’t been filled with warm feelings for Scope lately. I know they try, but too many galleries have scary off the record stories about their experiences, I receive more than my fair share of abusive emails from that organization, and frankly, I found their Miami fair depressing. Add to this, tips from artists whose work had been forced out of the show by Scope DURING THE INSTALLATION PROCESS (all the fairs do some management of galleries they feel are under performing, but this usually takes the form of wait listing or not inviting back galleries), and reports of thin attendance, and you’ve got a blogger filled with some fairly serious reservations.

Having said that, much to my surprise, the fair was one of the strongest they’d held in years. Don’t get me wrong, they don’t approach Pulse or the Armory as far as quality goes, but Scope certainly gave Volta a run for their money, and at least when I was there, there were no shortage of attendees. I’m happy to report, Scope quite ably distinguishes themselves from both Bridge and Red Dot.

Seon Ghi Bahk, Krampf Gallery, Photo AFC

Which is to say, for the first time in Scope’s history, there was no art in that show I found so awful I was embarrassed to be near it. A lot of it was mediocre mind you, Jack The Pelican presented Wes Heiss’s Golden Ratio, a mildly clumsy take on Koons‘ Two Ball 50/50 Tank (Spalding Dr. J Silver Series, Spalding Dr. J 241 Series), Seon Ghi Bahk’s hanging stone columns may give Soto a run for his money in regards to installation difficulty, but for average payoffs, and Ted Tucker’s installation at Christopher Cutts was hip enough to verge on uninteresting. However, unlike previous years, I could at least identify distinguish the god, the bad, everything in between, because there was enough space to view it. The cafeteria was moved from the middle of the fair to the back, and this time around Scope provided all kinds of places to sit. Also, some what appropriately, the video art was projected amongst the couches for fair attendees to rest on.

Fawad Khan, Photo AFC

If there’s a reason to attend this fair, in a word, it’s 33 Bond. Fawad Khan’s drawing Go Postal (We Deliver For You) and large scale installation featuring a painted US postal service truck with adapted branding exploding along the walls are commanding as objects, and effective as political commentary. Drawing from media culture, the current war, and his own background as a Pakistani-American born on a Libyan military base and raised in Karachi before moving to the US at the age of 8, Khan depicts the destruction of an essential US government service. The vehicle of choice is no accident I’m sure given the slanted state of media communications in this country, and the continuing sale and outsourcing of government services to an increasingly unregulated private sector. While sadly, the opportunity to view this work and others at Scope has past, 33 Bond hosts a solo show of the artists’ work until the 24th of April. Surely, at least some small part of evaluating the effectiveness of Scope’s New York fair will be found in the willness and excitement of collectors and viewers to the galleries they’ve seen at the fairs in the months to come.

Photo: AFC

The above documentation represents the last picture I was able to take before the batteries in my camera died. Sadly it was a perfect metaphor for the fair. After all, over the last two months I received nothing from LA Art’s pr firm, the fair itself was downsized considerably when they were unable to secure the adjacent space in their building, and by the time I arrived at the fair most galleries were already packing up their belongings (not good, while arriving 45 minutes before the show closed isn’t the best way to see art, it’s also a little early to be preparing your shipping). Needless to say, it didn’t come as too much of a surprise that most gallerists I spoke to wished they had seen a few more people, even if they were able to sell a few pieces.

Image copyright Susan Anderson and Paul Kopeikin Gallery

To be honest, the concept of this fair alludes me a bit, since not all of the galleries showcase the work of LA artists. Paul Kopeikin Gallery for example had a great booth of photographers, Brooklyn Queens based Amy Stein amongst them, but only Susan Anderson lives in LA. Others met the show’s nitch a little better, Gallery Luisotti, one of the stronger booths displaying the photographs of California born Lewis Baltz, and Mark Rewedel, a Canadian born artist living on the west coast. Shoshana Wayne Gallery’s abstract painter Phil Argent, who like Mark Rewedel teaches at California State University, stood out from the crowd, as did Alexander Gorlizki, an English artist working in New York, mentioned purely because his patterned drawings are so remarkable.

As readers may have already observed due to the content of this post, the fair was exceptionally strong on photography. I’d make a greater effort to balance out the coverage, but due to the fact that I have one shot of the entire fair, our coverage will simply have limitations. It is with sentiment in mind, that I’ll leave you with the very pertinent information, that Matt Dillon did not attend LA Art. Apparently he’s a regular client of at least a few of these galleries though, so his absence wasn’t much of a surprise.

Red Dot Fair, photo copyright Red Dot

If locating even a mediocre work of art finds its equivalent in needle in a hay sack similes you can count me out of reporting on that fair. As such Red Dot, a fair characterized by way too much bad art in cramped hotel rooms, won’t receive much in the way of substantive art coverage from me. They did however inspire the following label essay.

The Labels and Art in hotels

Marie Lannoo at NewZones Gallery, Photo AFC

Virtually any clear sticky label becomes a source of ridicule when affixed to anything other than a wall. Observe the above wall label stuck to the corner of a bed sheet. I know. hilarious.

Alberto Toscano’s 16 peeling labels identify the same numbered polymer clay pieces above at Raw. I didn’t photograph the slightly wonky hanging pictures above, which was perhaps a mistake, but I’m guessing you can live with it.

Note the Bermuda triangle of labeling created between the Kohler logo at the back of the toilet, and the captioning information for Peter Scarbo Fawley’s work. Perfectly laid out on the tank above, the gallery labels present an odd sense of doom. Or something.

Mumford Fine Art puts together a fine spread in the tube, presumably with the intention that viewers would take home the print outs. It didn’t work.

Daring! Andrea Schwartz displays with no labels! I asked the gallery director the rational for this, and he told me that it “opens up a dialog.” I’m sure all kinds of fruitful conversation has come from Tina Vietmier’s paintings unlabeled art works, but I’m using it to close off the post anyway because its silence tell us something. We’re still working on what that is.

P.S.  Wilde Gallery displays very stinky flowers. I thought I was smelling really bad perfume or incense before realizing I just don’t like the smell of lilies.

Chez Bushwick at Pulse Friday night

I don’t watch a lot of dance performances but conviction in my own opinions will inspire even the most uninformed post on this site. Also, I really enjoyed Chez Bushwick’s The Invention of Minus One, so I figure it at least warrants mention, even if its abstraction makes it a little difficult for those not in the field to describe. Imagine a Christian Marclay sound track built upon scratches, escalating humming sounds, repeating thuds, electronic blips and bleeps, the high pitch click of the camera shutter, add three dancers (Jonah Bokaer, Jean Freebury, and  Banu Ogan), Isaac Mizrahi’s 18th century inspired jackets with silver tights, and a video design by Michael Cole and you’re looking at the performance I saw Friday night.

If there’s a specific meaning to be gleaned from this piece though you’ll likely have some trouble figuring it out, even with a fair bit of experience in the arts.  The press release speaks of the “erasure of the moving body, and the trace of its presence” through state of the art digital choreographic software, an objective I can’t help but think they missed due to the fact that the motion capture appearing on the umbrella backdrop screen was washed out to the point of being unclear.   I didn’t notice too much in the way of physical absence either, but there were a number of death like poses taken, and dancers did move off the stage from time to time.

Rather than trying to figure out the ways The Invention of Minus One, may or may not have achieved its desired goals though, I’d rather spend the time reflecting on all the aspects of the performance I did like.   As it turns out, I respond quite positively to triangles.  The shape appeared in form of tripods, the shifting arrangement of the three video cameras, and even a game of penny triangle, each time creating the perimeters within which movement would occur.   It is also a shape that immediately collapses when one point is removed, which may explain the focus on the form.

As for the precision of movement, and which performers this work builds upon, you’ll need to seek out an actual dance expert for that.  For what it’s worth however, projection not withstanding, the other elements in the show seemed largely in place; the body movements unexpected and the use props fantastic.  After all, while three umbrellas were used on stage, the show never deteriorated into an umbrella twirling fest.  If the collaborative achieved nothing else, it should certainly serve as an example to the would be umbrella prop community that there are more ways to use the thing than Busby Berkeley envisioned for us.

Dark Fair, Photo AFC 

From the makers of Milwaukee’s art fair in a bowling alley comes The  Swiss Institute’s Dark fair, undoubtedly the hippest event of the weekend.  Promising the display of art without the use of electricity, and scads of annoying hipsters, surprisingly, this fair didn’t make me want to pull all of my hair out.   After all, it does look strikingly like a divey pizza joint/bar with a dance floor; places where artists are almost genetically predisposed to have fun.  Rows of booths were lit by candles, flashlights, and glow in the dark toys, an ideal setting for paintings with giant penises attached to them.

Sue de Beer at Marianne Boesky, Image copyright NYtimes.

Of course probably the best aspect of this fair lies in the fact that viewers are given the opportunity to think about art using different criteria than we normally would.  Personally, I rather liked touring the fair, while thinking to myself “The ceramic pizza is a great touch — needs some beer,” or “this booth could use a few more black lights”, and earnestly thinking it would improve the space.  “Cheater!” was perhaps the first word that came to mind when viewing Sue de Beer’s lamps at Marianne Boesky, one of a number of booths that used electricity despite the fairs stated objective to display art without it.

Spencer Sweeney at Gavin Brown Enterprise Photo: AFC

My favorite works at Dark Fair tended to be more performative in nature; Benjamin Cho’s fashion show by tea lights, Brian Belott and Larissa Velez’s wordless choir, the self portrait ghost painting, and the artist Spencer Sweeney in full ghoul garb at Gavin Brown Enterprises.   Like the crowd the fair drew, these people focused more on having fun, than they worrying about selling objects — a refreshingly old school take on art.

Pulse installation view, photo via AFC

Never under estimate the power of exhibition design. The minute I arrived at Pulse I felt enthusiastic about the fairs again. No over cramped booths, very wide aisles, a large open public exhibition space; I may not have liked everything I saw, but at least I could look at it. Speaking to this, the floor plan created several large open walls with long vantage points, none of which were diminished by the amateurish hanging I witnessed at so many of the other fairs. Rather than filling a large space with countless tiny drawings, work appropriately sized hung on these walls.

Mark Shetabi in the Pulse entrance. Also at Jeff Bailey. Photo AFC

As a fair attendee enters Pulse, Mark Shetabi iterative models and paintings of a nondescript GTA inspired parking garage fills the front room. I’m not convinced its the best work of art I’ve ever seen — even though it intends to leave a viewer cold, viral banality as a concept plays out fairly quickly — but as objects they do manage to maintain some authority. The sculpture sets the stage for the next ten or so booths; not too much in the form of “good” or “engaging” art shows up, mediocre art finally receiving its moment in the spotlight (as if the rest of the fairs weren’t enough.) Timothy Greenfield Sanders’ flat portraits of amputee soldiers exemplify this, succeeding in little more than documenting its subject.

Kim Rugg at P.P.O.W., photo AFC

P.P.O.W., marks the changing of the tides in this fair, the majority of its booth filled with engaging work. A suite of four gritty Kaleidoscope-esque prints by Carolee Schneeman documenting her nude performance on a train track struck a chord with me — their denial of beauty seeming more calculated and rationalized than much of the fashionably ugly work I’ve seen at the Whitney or the New Museum. Kim Rugg’s envelopes also interested me, even if there was more to the process of determining their success than the work itself. Remaking stamp compositions by slicing them up and rearranging the bits is a bit of a one trick pony, but I suppose the real art happens when she mails the suckers. The UK postal system reads pigment, as opposed to using image recognition software, so the idea that color engages distribution may not be so bad, but I’m still not convinced mailing the letter leaves us with anything more than a fun factoid.

Leo Villareal at Conner Contemporary, Photo AFC

On the subject of art with what seems to be limited meaning, perhaps someone can explain to me the appeal of Leo Villareal, because as far I can tell, his blinky light pieces, represent a refined version of a Times Square billboard.

Pieter Hugo, Mallam Galadima Ahmadu with Jamis, Nigeria, C-Print, Photo AFC

To my mind, Yossi Milo had the strongest booth of the fair, which isn’t too much of a surprise given his strong stable of artists. A beautiful suite of horizons by Sze Tsung Leong hang on one wall tempering what might otherwise become a heavy opposing wall, with a 68 x 68 inch photograph of a Nigerian man and his giant musseled dog by Pieter Hugo, and two creepy Loretta Lux portraits of children.

Chez Bushwick, photo AFC

Finally, at the far end of the Pier rests a large cafeteria with plenty of seats, Wifi access and a large performance space. At 7:00 pm yesterday I watched Chez Bushwick’s The Invention of Minus One, 2008, a star studded collaborative dance project including music by Christian Marclay, Costumes by Isaac Mizrahi, and the dancers Jonah Bokaer, Jean Freebury, and Banu Ogan. More on that and Dark Fair to come.

Something about Volta’s all black advertising irritates me, and its position on the 11th floor of a corporate building certainly isn’t helping. If the Armory favors commerce at the expense of supplemental arts programming, its sister fair Volta does nothing but heighten that focus. While Volta’s special projects appear on their website, (what makes them so special is anybodies guess since they are all commercial endeavors), I couldn’t find anything about lectures or panels. I called the press office to find out about this side of the programming, but their representative could only tell me that Paige West had given a talk yesterday about collecting and some vague details on a panel put together by a consulting firm. Clearly the support non commercial projects isn’t a priority, a position I’ve always felt to be rather short sighted, given its ability to not only enrich the fine art community but to create a healthier market.

William Pope L at Kenny Schachter / ROVE Projects LLP

As for the quality of the show itself, despite VOLTA’s success in recruiting a number of reputable galleries in a short amount of time, the results were underwhelming. The fair was difficult to navigate, it lacked character, and I found a lot of the art average at best. As a result, I wrote almost nothing about any of the galleries, but for the small cluster in the South East corner of building worthy of note; Roebling Hall exhibited the photographs and pop bottle sculptures of David Ellis, Travesía Cuatro displayed the abstracted architectural constructions of Jose Dávila, and Kenny Schachter / ROVE Projects LLP were promoting the conceptual artist William Pope. L, and photographer Muir Vidler. William Pope. L’s pop tart drawings and peanut butter collages, undoubtedly spoke with the greatest clarity, the material a staple of those who live off food stamps, and a marker of empty consumer culture. Of course, such art making materials were also chosen for their inherent instability as a means of resisting the market. It seems in keeping with the fair, that these desires would ultimately be consumed by the saleability of the object, the pop tarts and collages now hermetically sealed and tastefully on display.

Itamar Jobani at Noga Gallery

While the sale of such work may create a number of conceptual problems they didn’t have when they were made, this is pretty low on the list of VOLTA’s concerns. If I were them, I’d spend a lot more time considering how they ended up with a show including Noga Gallery’s Itamar Jobani. But, you know, that’s just me.

Joseph La Piana, Image copyright Robert Miller.

Anyone else see the mob scene in Chelsea last night out front Robert Miller? I took a detour into the gallery on my way to Bridge, though based on what I saw, I can’t say I’m further ahead on figuring out what all the fuss was about. It would appear Joseph La Piana’s Kenetic State inspired all the hoo-haa — an artist who uses his breath to create the tube colored paint splats you see above. Frankly it’s hard to imagine a more limited interpretation of life, particularly because the representation of exhaling explores form at the expense of volume and texture. Jim Campbell’s Photo of My Mother, Portrait of My Father or Sabrina Raaf’s The Grower, for example, investigate similar terrain, but bring a level nuance, poetics, and beauty, La Piana never approaches.

Bridge Fair, Installation view

Meanwhile, Bridge fair was comparatively quite; understandably so, since they don’t have the blue chip draw of Robert Miller, but most of the work was just as bad if not worse. I suppose the experience you get from this kind of fair is similar to hunting through a dollar store; You never find what you’re looking for, but you’ll always get something else. In other words, reliably, there’s usually some piece of crap you never expected to like, and yet against all good judgment you do, and one or two reasonable galleries. In this case, Glow Lab and Hogar Collection stuck out as the clear winners, because there was enough good art in both booths to outweigh the inevitable weaker works. In particular I responded to Glow Lab, an appropriately hung salon style booth, the arrangement of the work itself mimicking the cities that inspire the galleries artists. Swoon, Tom Brauer, Mark Price and Heather Johnson all displayed strong print, collage, and mixed media works, though that list is only a small sampling of the artists they have on display.

Glow Lab at Bridge

Despite all the bad work at Bridge, unlike Miami, my viewing experiences have not yet led to the kind of vitriol that left me silently murmuring hateful words about art. At least not yet. I haven’t seen a fraction of the fairs yet, so perhaps I’ll have to wait until Sunday before that happens. Speaking of Sunday, should any readers care to pay money to hear what you get for free on this site, I’ll be talking with a bunch of bloggers at Red Dot Sunday morning. Details below:

Bloggers Edward Winkleman, Paddy Johnson, Carol Diehl and Sharon Butler discuss blogging. Joanne Mattera will moderate.

Sunday, March 30th, 2008
11:00 a.m.
Red Dot Fair NYC
Park South Hotel
122 E. 28th St., btw. Park & Lex.
NYC.

General admission to the fair is $12.

By guest blogger Steven Stern

While I defer to Paddy in all matters of critical judgment, I should point out that the “unidentified painting” she singled out for abuse below was in fact NOT presented by the Hiromi Yoshii Gallery but by Massimo de Carlo, and it was done by veteran Swiss man-of-all-media John Armleder. The work in question, a big, drippy, stainy, glittery
canvas–your basic Morris Louis meets My Little Pony kind of deal–didn’t ring too many of my bells either, but I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Armleder, who has had a tricky, elusive career, doing everything from Fluxus performance to Neo-Geo-esque furniture
sculptures.

Of course, that kind of context is exactly what you don’t get in the Wal-Mart style environment of the fair, where what you see is what you see. Though actually, that comes as something of a relief after reading too many tugid Whitney Biennial wall labels. But it does tend to reduce one’s critical vocabulary to “meh and “hmm.”

My own moment of misidentification happened when I walked by attendee Matt Dillon–who, it must be said, is holding up remarkably well. Somehow, however, I spent the rest of the night thinking to myself that I had seen Matthew Broderick, even though I certainly know the difference between the two.

I heard the former teen icon say “Yeah man, looking good” to a friend, but it was unclear whether he was referring to a person or an artwork. My sighting happened in the vicinity of the Taka Ishii Gallery’s sexed-up booth–one of Nobuyoshi Araki’s dirty geishas across from soft-focus, 70s-softcore-style photo by Slater Bradley–so really, it could have been either. In any case, Dillon immediately vanished into the crowd. Perhaps he found the emergency vodka bar that promised an exit from all the madness.

It’s a shitty picture, but someone had to post it. Photo AFC

Good news for collectors: There’s still plenty of art left at the Armory. Several sources tell me work isn’t flying off the walls the way it did last year, which apparently shouldn’t be too much cause for concern, since we were seeing similar sales volume only a few years ago. Of course, at that time most people weren’t aware of the inevitable recession the country was heading towards, and Bear Stearns Cos Inc hadn’t just been snapped up by JP Morgan at $2.00 per share. Hello “correction”.

Photo: AFC

I assume it’s a city contract keeping the above catering services at the armory, because I can’t imagine that spread is going to appeal to the people dropping several thousand dollars on art this weekend. I mean really, do these services not know Hell’s Kitchen is only a few blocks away?

The Armory, Installation View, Photograph AFC

With even more boring art than usual hanging on fair walls, even those who typically enjoy The Armory Show are likely to find it stale this year. Flowing money may inspire ill considered risk taking, but at least there’s some energy to it. Catering to this year’s more considered collector, galleries bring their safest fan fare; lifeless corporate art variations now stretch across the pier as far the eye can see. Sikkema Jenkins, Lehmann Maupin, and Sean Kelly, was a particularly bad area of real estate, each featuring more than their fare share of mediocre art in expensive frames.

A partial shot of the John Armleder painting hanging on the outside wall at Massimo de Carlo, and it was done by veteran Swiss man-of-all-media John Armleder, Hiromiyoshii vrs, Greenberg Van Doren’s placement of Andrew Guenther’s We Don’t Believe in Gravity last year.

Entering the fair, an odd coincidence in hanging placed an unidentified John Armleder painting at Massimo de Carlo, in nearly the same spot as last year’s We Don’t Believe in Gravity, a similar though significantly better/less sparkle ridden work by Andrew Guenther. I won’t attribute any significant meaning to the observation since I doubt there is one, though I will say it wasn’t the best note to begin the fair on. Immediately adjacent to this, Heather Rowe’s wooden mirrored sculpture, Screen for the rooms behind, shows the artist’s better work to be at the Armory, not the Biennial. This work also appears on the Biennial website - perhaps misleadingly, since it was only previously exhibited at The Whitney Altria.

Gedi Sibony “Not Yet Titled”, at Greene Naftali, detail right

Notably, while overall I felt the show lacked energy, a large number of individual works stood out from the mediocre. For example, Gedi Sibony does a great job of combining seemingly banal textures in a piece that brings to mind net artist Guthrie Lonergan’s Carpet in Carpet. Both pieces use the aesthetics of the medium (ie the physical variation of texture found within the carpet, versus the different rates of gif movement) as a method of communicating meaning. Mitchell Innis and Nash also have sculpture of note; a great pair of Jessica Stockholder colorful wall mounted works on display. I’d actually forgotten how much I liked the artist until I saw these pieces.

Interestingly, this year’s non-profit aisle included the New Museum, the most high profile institution I’ve seen participate in the fair. The booth gives them an opportunity to talk to people about their latest shows, drum up new memberships, and promote the new space — mostly dull stuff I’m afraid for fair attendees. The publication booths have similarly held the little of my interest through out the years, but it seem an effective form of advertising for them, so there they are. Ultimately, it’s hard to begrudge free art magazines, even if their price comes in the form of having to carry them around all day.

Even these positive elements to the show however, don’t remove the shadow cast by the enormous amount of banal art currently for sale. I like to think that this presents an opportunity for one of the smaller fairs to gain some ground on the Armory, though the truth of the matter is that we all play it safe when we can’t afford to loose. I guess we’ll just have to see how these chips fall through out the course of the week.

John Waters 

Knowing the exhibition limitations of art fairs hasn’t curbed our coverage any, and this year will be no different.  The blog will be quite for the rest of the day as we make our way out to the Armory.  Unlike previous years I have professional responsibilities for the next two days that will curb the kind of frantic posting regular readers have come to expect from us during this time.  As a result, Steven Stern, an art critic who’s writing has been featured in Frieze, The New York Times Magazine, Time Out NY, and more will be joining us briefly this week to help fill in a few gaps.  Let the art fair coverage begin!

Those looking for my Whitney Biennial review should click here.

Regina Rocke 

I suppose in choosing the needlessly provocative title above I’ve created a rather misleading headline, though clearly our hands were tied upon reading the title of her piece I Do Love Myself.  Contrary to the suggestion of this post,  Rocke’s performance promises little in the way of lewd public acts, but does claim “to expose the status quo” through dance and text.   Who knows what this means really, since the current state of affairs tends to be self evident, but I having enjoyed Ms. Rocke’s combination of pop culture, theory, and performance in the past, I am just going assume she knows what she’s doing and catch her sometime between 3 and 9 today at Scope.  Fingers crossed for that fair by the way.  MonkeyTown is participating this year, which seems like a good sign, but fewer participating galleries, and Lilah Freedland and Sara Mednick’s The imagiNAPtion project are cause for worry. I’ll let you all nap and draw your own opinions about that piece.

Artlog’s handy fair map
It’s been a while since we discussed the locations of the various New York fairs, so I thought it might not be a bad idea, particularly in light of a few recent moves.

• Pulse moves to the Piers. I liked their old location at Lexington Avenue and 26th Street too — an armory location as opposed to a hotel is always preferable — but Pier 40 near Houston St puts them a little closer to The Armory Show, which is a step up. Such locations tend to be pricey so I imagine it’s also a sign of success.
• Scope will spend their second year at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park, a prestigious location, but one that also proved to be smaller than they needed last year. Nobody likes narrow aisles and a lack of seating; it’s impossible to see or enjoy the art. Their exhibitors list looks a little scant this year though, so it’s possible this problem has been exchanged for a new one.
• Bridge Art Fair moves from a hotel on the East side of the city to lands at The Waterfront on the West side [correction: Bridge was not in New York last year]. Close to Pulse, and not in a hotel, this represents a move up for the fair from its Miami location…even if the art tends not to be any good.
• ArtNow, Volta, and Red Dot represent the hotel fair district this year, though technically Volta isn’t in a hotel, but rather a Merchandise Mart property billed as a temporary exhibition space. Merchandise Mart owns The Armory and Volta.
• Diva exhibits in containers placed around Chelsea. The fair continues to struggle. In other news, they redesigned their website, and it’s a huge improvement on the last incarnation.
• The Armory exhibits at Pier 94 for the second year running. I asked the fair’s executive director Katelijne De Backer why they weren’t interested in the Javits center on artreview.com a while back, and she cited lack of character. I suspect the decision was a little more complicated than that, but this is the extent of what’s been released to the press.

Image copyright Volta

ArtReview.com has a handy list of all the New York fairs this year, their preview times next week, and hours. A few observations on the list:

• Fountain still doesn’t have a venue, which suggests a struggling art fair. Mind you, they also bill themselves as a Guerrilla style fair, so maybe they are simply living up to this description.  Update: Bloggy directs us in the comments to the Fountain Fair’s updated  website.  They will not be running a fair this year.

• Last year’s LA Art isn’t on the list, which is a bit of a shame since it was one of the better fairs.

• DiVA discontinues the hotel portion of their fair, filling only their containers in West Chelsea. I’m not sure why a fair located in the art hot spot we all vacate during this time should be appealing to gallerists, but DiVA continues to solicit people willing to pay for that real estate, so I guess at least a few people think it’s valuable.

• Volta and Art Now Fair are the new fairs in town, situated only four blocks away from each other. Of course, the two ventures couldn’t be more different, Volta, an invitational fair that like the Armory is owned by Merchandise Mart Properties, and Art Now Fair which encourages the participation of younger galleries by offering “accessibility” to the fair. Having seen the results of the latter at Miami Basel, I can’t say I’m looking forward the its New York incarnation, though Volta has a few hurdles to clear as well. After all, Volta only announced its curatorial team and efforts January 17th of this year, so finding good galleries who hadn’t already signed up for the fairs would have been difficult. Their exhibitor list isn’t all bad mind you, SEVENTEEN, SUNDAY LES, and Thierry Goldberg Projects amongst them, but the fact that there are also so many galleries I’ve never heard of doesn’t seem like a great sign either.

Richard Tuttle at Pace, Photo AFC

Modern Art Obsession broke most of our observations about the ADAA art fair earlier last week, but I’ll be damned if that stops me from repeating at least some of them. As I mentioned this morning, and MAO Thursday, the fair was far less of a mad house this year - a funny observation given the fact that it seemed like a cake walk relative to taking a stroll through the Armory in 2007. Still, I enjoy the fact that unlike most fairs I end up attending, the art can be viewed without having to ask multiple parents to move their bugaboo baby strollers.

Richard Avedon, Suzy Parker, Evening Dress by Dior Paris Studio, August, 1956, Photo AFC

Also mentioned at MAO, the single artist booths this year really stood out. Richard Avedon at Fraenkel Gallery was a particularly strong show, undoubtedly my pick for the best booth at the show. In the end I decided to post the picture above featuring both Suzy Parker, and my, um, awesome shadow, because his Marilyn Monroe shot also on display is so well known, practically everyone and their dog has seen it. That said, it is great.

Olafur Eliasson, at Tanya Bonakdar, Photo AFC

Even though I’ve been known to respond to Olafur Eliasson, I don’t know that I cared all that much for his sculptural pieces at Tanya Bonakdar — the works failed to activate the space in any kind of engaging way due to their sparse arrangement — but they as the only mirrors in the building they certainly satisfied the narcissist in me. My unruly hair was about as in place as it could be thanks to this work.

Franciois-Xavier Lalanne, Mouflon de Pauline (grand) (bar), 1993, at Paul Kasmin, Photo AFC

Anyone else who visited Miami this year recognize this piece? I asked a dealer at Kasmin if this was the same piece they exhibited at Basel in December and was informed the sculpture was editioned, and this was a different number within the edition. Looks like Mr. Kasmin is doing fairly well with this artist.

Julian Opie, Jack Walking, at Barbara Krakow, Photo AFC

I don’t think I know anyone who thinks Julian Opie makes good work, and yet, I consistently see his videos in art fairs. Perhaps when the market for this guy’s work falls, I can bring out the little used, “I told you so” post label we have around here, but then, I’m not sure who I’d be talking to. Certainly you all know these walking men are a bore too.

Lisi Raskin, Command and control: Mobile Observation Station, Photo AFC

Probably my favorite installation in the show was curated by Maria Lind at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College as part of the ADAA’s new supplemental contemporary programming. Raskin is Bard’s first artist in residence, and has been making naive reconstructions of bunkers, nuclear power stations, and more. The work has a rather unique charm to it, the artist’s personalized interpretations of “spaces of fear”, one the one hand overly obsessive, while on the other, a rather natural reaction to the unstable political climate around the world. As someone who spent a fair amount of time complaining about the fact that political work tends to find itself neutered by context, or simply edited out from the fairs, this work is a real beacon of light to last year’s art fair gloss.