Unlike James and Barry, I was only able to get to three of the six art fairs this weekend. (I am so impressed with their stamina!) I have already posted on the Armory. Here are my thoughts on Pulse and LA Art. (I am sorry that I didn't make it to ~scope as I have heard both good and bad and would liked to have seen for myself.)
I thoroughly enjoyed myself at PULSE. The number of galleries was perfect - not too many (Armory) and not too few (LA Art). I found it refreshing to see many galleries and artists that were new to me. There were three "fair picks" for me (all new-to-me artists from new-to-me galleries):
Ronald Moran at Mackey Gallery, Houston
I didn't know this artist nor this gallery but I was glad to discover both. The boots and entire booth - potenitally dangerous objects rendered innocuous - were inviting and intruiging. (The young fans in the photo were taking cell phone pics of the boots to send to friends.)
John Gerrard at Hilger Contemporary, Vienna
Detail of Smoke Tree I
I am not a techie and not usually drawn to works of art that involve a hard drive and monitor, but I found this piece visually, conceptually, and logistically stunning. The tree breathes on the screen (looks like smoke popping and oozing from the tree branches) in real time (which means that the program is set to a time - Austrian, to be exact - and the background changes subtly from day to night as it does and when it does in Austria) and in a 360-degree setting (which means that the monitor turns in a complete circle and what you see behind the tree changes as you turn the monitor). OK, so I said I wasn't a techie. Please forgive the lousy description. It really was amazing to see in person. Maybe this piece won't be as awe inspiring in 10 or 50 years when this technology is available to everyone, but it will still be beautiful. The one other cool thing about this piece is it is programmed to run for 300 years and at the end of the 300 years the tree dissolves on screen. It is in an edition of seven and all seven had sold at the fair (for $15,000) by the time I saw it on Saturday at 1:00.
Dionisio González at Fiedler Contemporary, Köln
Constant crowd around González's photo
This was one popular photograph at the fair. There always seemed to be a crowd surrounding it (I walked by a few times) and if you listened in on that crowd there were a lot of oo's and wow's and people saying things like "That's amazing" and "Can I live there?" and "How'd he do that?". I am a sucker for crowd pleasing work. It goes with my friendly-to-a-fault nature. I, too, thought this photo was beautiful and extremely well executed. These photos don't do the image justice. It was large and glossy and seemless and stunning. I promise.
Outside of my "picks", I have a few more favorites to share from PULSE:
Flavia da Rin at Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt
These photos were creepy, but I liked them. Maybe they'll appear too cute for me the next few times I see them, but they gave me a punch at the fair. I noticed them easily and liked that I couldnt think of any other photographs that seemed similar.
Erwin Olaf at Galerie Magda Danysz, Paris
Speaking of creepy, with not an ounce of cute... These photos are all set up in a studio - the artist hires the actors and builds the sets. Their weird "lost in time" quality appealled to me and the fact that I couldn't figure them out immediately prompted me to ask to see more. Magda, the gallery owner, was very nice. I like nice gallery owners, too.
I failed to take photos of some other work that I liked but felt I should list and link on the off chance that someone has read this far into this post and perhaps is looking for more great stuff:
Andrew Sutherland at sixspace (If the whole "tree limb" in the booth had been available I would have bought it, and I really enjoyed finally getting to meet abLA's Caryn Coleman in the flesh - speaking of really nice gallery owners.)
Zoe Crosher's photos of pools at DCKT (Because summer is almost here and they were $900.)
Leonardo Drew's rusted wall piece at Finesilver Gallery (Because it was a blast from the past - I bought a work of his in 1996 - and I appreciated seeing such a large work of art at a "smaller than the Armory" art fair. And I like Eleanor Williams.)
One last tid-bit on LA Art (The quiet art fair. But quiet or not, everything in which we inquired had sold, so they weren't doing too bad as a last minute fair)...
I loved seeing Richard Heller, as always, and had to end this post with another gush and push for Amy Bennett. (He has a solo show with her slated for January, 2007.) Gorgeous...
