Chelsea Art Walk 2014

Last night OTE’s team took advantage of the late gallery hours in Chelsea. Below are a few shows and works we found most noteworthy.

We all enjoyed seeing Tara Donovan’s enormous installation pieces at Pace Gallery.

In this work, the millions of acrylic pieces create a mesmerizing shimmer. The form recalls a fluffy puppy. A reaction to Jeff Koons, perhaps?

 

 

Dr. Elin Lake-Ewald thought that Pierre Dorion’s trompe-l’œil paintings at Jack Shainman Gallery were riveting – about the best examples she saw on the walk.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ewald found it not altogether surprising that most of the larger galleries closed on the Chelsea Art Walk last night. The art explorers wandering the streets, from 19th  to 26th, didn’t look quite up for a $30 million Christopher Wool or a $50 million Koons production. It was for the most part  the medium sized and smaller galleries who opened their doors (and occasionally their wine bottles), to the Gen X crowds.

The galleries we checked out for the most part had wall works (and sometimes floor works) in the $10,000 – $25,000 range. A well-thought out way to attract potential investors in art.  If a collector has the ability to pay just about anything for what he wants in his home(s) he can visit those spaces any day any time. Or send his art advisors. He doesn’t have to wait until working hours are over. Great strategy. Good show.

 

 

Julia Plotkin was intrigued by Nick Gentry’s paintings on mosaics of old floppy disks at C24 Gallery:

and by John M. Armleder’s mixed media glitter-covered paintings at Galerie Richard:


and also by Jerry Kearns’ wall paintings at Mike Weiss Gallery. Whoever buys one has the artist’s studio team come and repaint it in their space, à la Sol Lewitt.


Most of all, Julia loved the fare at Unix Gallery, which offered a box of chocolates by Peter Anton and a lollipop by Desire Obtain Cherish:





Alanna Butera’s choice for the best curated exhibition goes to Procedural Portraiture at Caroline Nitsch Project Room. She was captivated by the intimate interaction between each artist’s exploration of faces, and the different use of media and line to reveal the inner essence of the subject.

Walking into Franklin Evans’ paintingassupermodel at Ameringer McErny Yohe, she was immersed into the artist’s mind and his artistic practice. The walls and floors were adorned with tape, digital prints and photographs.

 

 

As the sun set, however, the galleries closed their doors and the OTE team headed home.


Art Fairs on Both Coasts

Last weekend Dr. Elin Lake-Ewald visited the Los Angeles Art Show:

The LA Art Show brought in so many unexpected visitors that there weren’t any brochures or catalogs to purchase by 1 on Sunday, January 27th. The place was mobbed, primarily with an under 50 crowd of eager-to-look, not so quick to buy visitors. Or so it seemed. It was disappointing to those who were seeking to see familiar names or big gallery artists. This was a show for emerging artists, or artists who had been around a while but never could make it out of their home territory.

One of my fellow travelers, a young woman who knew little about art (or so I thought) mentioned in a mild tone that the works seemed a lot like those of famous artists, but not quite. She meant derivative, and so right she was. Yet their prices matched those of artists in NY who had had a showing or two: $2,500 - $10,000.

I came away impressed with how many more people have been exposed to art and who wanted to live with art than has probably ever been the case in this country. And it’s wonderful to see how many different nations and states participated in the fair, from Georgia to Germany to Nubia and numerous countries in between.

Funny thing about art shows away from your home base…when you bump into an a professional acquaintance it’s like coming across your best friend unexpectedly in a foreign country. You can’t stop talking. Bump into the same person when you’re both in New York and it’s “hi” and pass by.

Well, I’m delighted I went. I did bump into an old friend and came away with a ticket to the Maastrict Fair in March. So it was worth the traffic on the 101.

Meanwhile in New York, Julia Plotkin made the rounds at the Old Masters auction previews and the annual Winter Antiques Show at the Park Avenue Armory:

At Christie’s, upon entering the exhibition I was offered an iPad loaded with short video clips of Christie’s specialists explaining the art historical significance of many sale highlights. Hearing the dialogue while standing face-to-face with the works tremendously enriched the preview, and I hope both auction houses expand on this practice.

One of the stars of the Old Master sales at Christie’s was a rare, tiny canvas by Chardin, The Embroiderer, measuring only about 7 x 6 inches but worthy of its $3 - $5 million estimate (realized $4 million). Another gem-like painting displayed beside it was Watteau’s La Déclaration, about 8 x 7 inches, estimated between $500,000 and $700,000 (realized $600,000). Both are precious in size but powerful in execution.

At the Winter Antiques Show, at least two strong examples of paintings by George Bellows from private collections were spotted. It looks like collectors and dealers hope the market for Bellows will heat up in tandem with his retrospective currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum. Asking prices reach into the nine digits.

Gallery Night on 57th Street, October 2012

In what has quickly become a New York tradition, yesterday dozens of galleries stayed open late for the biannual Gallery Night on 57th Street walk. Whereas this gallery-goer noticed eerily empty corridors during the last couple of rounds, the fall 2012 event seemed to have all the markers of success: sardine-can packed elevators, side-step-only passing through select exhibitions, and lots of people everywhere carrying little gray maps. Measuring by the yardstick of personal taste, a few artists and shows really stood out:

- D. Wigmore Fine Art, Charming Observations: Modernism of the 1930s and 1940s: including several canvases by the American painter Doris Lee, at once deeply contemplative in their monochromatic abstraction and delightfully charming in their subject matter

- Pace Prints, Santi Moix: silkscreen monotypes with hand-coloring; bursting with spontaneity, a dynamic and visually striking series with infinite layers of line, shape, and color

- Nohra Haime Gallery, Olga de Amaral: Places: large fabric compositions seductively dancing with light from afar and shimmering glamorously up close; metaphorically, like evening jewelry for the wall

- Bonni Benrubi Gallery, Abelardo Morell: Rock Paper Scissors: featuring “tent camera” landscapes photographed simultaneously with the grassy patches of ground beneath the camera itself, seamlessly combining two views into one deliberately confusing but beautiful experiment in texture and context

Exhibition Review: Gustav Klimt: 150th Anniversary Celebration at the Neue Galerie, May 24-August 27, 2012

New York City’s Neue Galerie is the latest venue to jump on the Klimt exhibition bandwagon this year. Nearly every museum in Vienna has pulled up a chair to the artist’s 150th birthday party, and while the Neue might be seated at the far end of the table, its contribution to the potluck is more impressive than many of the others’.

During a recent tour through Vienna, an OTE staff member found Klimt’s famous face and kissing couple on every wall, billboard, and bus. But while the streets are like a museum of Klimt reproductions, finding an actual Klimt inside a museum is trickier.

With the exception of the magnificent Death and Life canvas, The Leopold Museum’s display primarily consists of what seems like every scrap of paper that ever passed the artist’s desk – interesting, but a letdown to a tourist who spent the entire tram ride staring at the exhibition poster. The Secession and the Kunsthistorisches Museum have built temporary ramps to allow visitors a closer view of the artist’s wall murals, and the Albertina is showing a group of lovely drawings and preparatory sketches. Finally, the Belvedere’s glittering Kiss, regal Judith I, seductive Wasserschlangen (Water Snakes), and about ten other masterpieces give the Klimt party crasher a reason to get really excited – over and over again.

Meanwhile at the Neue Galerie, the sumptuous Adele Bloch-Bauer I, arguably the Mona Lisa of North America and made all the more dazzling by her $135 million price tag in 2006, is joined by her contemporaries in The Black Feather Hat, The Dancer, and Pale Face. Displayed with the ladies are three beautifully-patterned landscapes and a comprehensive array of black and white photographs, light sketches and finished charcoals, and lithographic posters. All of the works are from the museum’s holdings, courtesy of (lucky for us) Klimt’s biggest fan Ronald Lauder, and all selections are extraordinary examples of the artist’s talent.

Ultimately, the Neue Galerie show offers a satisfying Viennese dessert table (pun most certainly intended) that proves second only to Vienna’s best.