Brett Weston @Kasher

JTF (just the facts): A total of 73 black and white photographs, framed in black and matted, and hung against white walls in the divided North and South gallery spaces. All of the works are gelatin silver prints, made between 1920 and 1985. Most of the prints are vintage, and range in size from roughly 7x9 to 11x14 (or reverse). No edition information was available on the checklist. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: According to the press release, it's been more than a decade since the last time Brett Weston had a show in New York. The various galleries that have represented the estate have been skimming the cream off the archives for years now, so perhaps it was once again time for a set of fresh eyes to scour the flat files and storage boxes in search of some overlooked or under appreciated treasures. The exhibit that has emerged from this process has the thematic scope of a retrospective but with the feel of something slightly more jumbled and eccentric, with both known and unknown examples from sixty years of picture making densely mixed together on the walls.

Given his famous father, and even though Brett was appropriately labeled a child prodigy (and if you don't believe the label, search out the gnarled cypress trees made when he was 9 or the lily stalk from when he was 14, both on view here), I feel like Brett often gets taken for granted. Fairly or unfairly, his father's shadow is extremely long, and especially when they shot the same subject matter, it's nearly impossible to see Brett's work without making mind's eye comparisons to his father's. Brett was more routinely fond of high contrast, deeper blacks, and all-over abstraction (using natural forms), but crisp formalism and superlative, sometimes astonishing craftsmanship are never far from view, regardless of the subject matter and even when he drifts a little too far toward derivative cliche. This show includes a little of everything: dunes, cacti, and California desert landscapes, New York bridges, buildings, storefronts and city streets from the 1940s, vegetal forms and specimen trees from various locales, and visual abstractions made from ice, mud, rock formations, water drops, and smeared paint. In Brett's hands, climbing vines, air vents, hub caps, scrubby yucca, vertical poplars, and a black window, they all become bold sculptural motifs, and he had strong eye for compositions that were simultaneously pared down and complex.

Regular readers here will know I'm a lover of strict chronology, since I think it helps clarify how an artist has changed over time, so few will be surprised that I found the subject matter groupings here less effective in terms of showing Brett's overall aesthetic evolution. Many of his images also have the emotional volume turned up a notch or two via extended contrast, so they feel a bit cramped and manic when hung so close together as they are here. I'm guessing that this a result of wanting to unearth as many gems as possible, at the expense of giving the photographs more competition from their neighbors and a little less room to breathe.

In general, while this show doesn't teach us anything particularly new about the career of Brett Weston, I certainly enjoyed seeing such a robust sampler of his vintage work. Fans of 20th century Modernism and black and white excellence will find much to admire.

Collector's POV: The prints in the show are priced between $4000 and $20000, with most under $10000. Brett Weston's prints are routinely available in the secondary markets. Recent prices have ranged between $1000 and $66000, with the vast majority finding buyers under $10000.

Rating: * (one stars) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Brett Weston archive (here)

Brett Weston
Through November 3rd

Steven Kasher Gallery
521 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011

Robert Adams, On Any Given Day in Spring and Light Balances @Marks

JTF (just the facts): A total of 75 black and white photographs, framed in white and matted, and hung against white walls in the main gallery space and a smaller second room in the back. All of the works are made up of gelatin silver prints, made between 2002 and 2012. There are single images, diptychs, triptychs, and groups of 4 prints. There are a total of 19 works (made up of 50 individual prints) in the main room from the series Light Balances, and a total of 13 works (made up of 25 individual prints) in the back room from the series On Any Given Day in Spring. Individual prints range in size from roughly 5x8 to 8x12 (or reverse). All of the works are unique. (Installation shots at right.)

 

Comments/Context: Robert Adams' newest photographs are works of slow motion patience. Drained of the simmering frustration that inhabits much of his earlier work, these recent pictures are among his most meditative and subdued. They settle in for a long attentive look, letting the distractions of the day melt away and a heightened sense of respectful engagement with nature come forward.

 

Adams wanders through the Oregon forest in the images from Light Balances. Grouped into small bunches, they have the pace and rhythm of an ambling hike, with new views of the woods around each turn of the trail. The dense leaves and evergreens provide a backdrop for a study in the endless variation of sunlight and shadow. Adams peers through the canopy at silhouettes, examines the mottled surface of the forest floor, follows dark pinpricks of light through the undergrowth, and watches as the light turns trunks into imposing vertical forms. The pictures move in and out, catching a burst of light in an otherwise shaded glen, or waiting in the cool cover while the sun illuminates a nearby grove. The photographs play with collapsed distance and layered, overlapping branching, often looking gently up into a mixture of dappled, crisscrossing blackness.

 

The On Any Given Day in Spring series finds Adams on the Washington coast, watching the shorebirds peck at the sand as the waves move in and out. Between the sea, the sky, and the ever changing clusters of birds, these pictures are full of cycles and repetitions, following the peaceful cadences of nature. The flocks fly through the air in dark masses, wheel and spread, and settle into black bands on the beach. They gather in clusters, thin into dots, and soar into slashes against the muted grey of the seashore, leaving tiny footprints and tracks in the sand.

 

While I can certainly appreciate the richness and craftsmanship of these photographs, I think their hushed deliberateness makes them somewhat forgettable as individual artworks. Together, they are extremely successful at setting a mood and conveying a reflective mindset, but that intense absorption led me to daydreaming rather than specific engagement. In the end, in my mind, they all washed together into a wistful memory. Perhaps the answer is that these photographs will function better in book form, where their intimacy and delicacy can be savored more introspectively.

 

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced as follows. The single image works range from $14000 to $17500, the diptychs from $25000 to $35000, the triptychs from $35000 to $40000, and the groups of 4 prints are $50000 each. Adams' photographs have become increasingly available in the secondary markets in the past decade, with prices ranging between $5000 and $87000.

 

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

 

Transit Hub:

• Features/Reviews: NY Times (here), New Yorker (here), ARTINFO (here)
• Exhibit: The Place We Live, Yale University Art Gallery, 2012 (DLK COLLECTION review here)

Robert Adams, On Any Given Day in Spring and Light Balances

Through November 3rd

 

Matthew Marks Gallery

523 West 24th Street

New York, NY 10011

The Checklist: 10/25/12

Current New York Photography Shows
New reviews added this week in red.
(Rating: Artist/Title: Venue: Closing Date: link to review)

Uptown

ONE STAR: Artie Vierkant: Higher Pictures: October 27: review

Midtown

ONE STAR: Andres Serrano: Edward Tyler Nahem: October 26: review
ONE STAR: Judy Fiskin: Greenberg Van Doren: October 27: review
ONE STAR: Gordon Parks (Centennial): Howard Greenberg: October 27: review
TWO STARS: Gordon Parks (Ligon): Howard Greenberg: October 27: review
ONE STAR: Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Parker Stephenson: November 3: review
ONE STAR: Sally Mann: Edwynn Houk: November 3: review
TWO STARS: The Shaping of New Visions: MoMA: April 29: review

Chelsea

TWO STARS: Bernd and Hilla Becher: Sonnabend: October 27: review
ONE STAR: Robert Frank: Danziger: October 27: review
ONE STAR: Barney Kulok: Nicole Klagsbrun: October 27: review
ONE STAR: Richard Misrach: Robert Mann: October 27: review
ONE STAR: Lucas Samaras: Pace: October 27: review
ONE STAR: Shen Wei: Daniel Cooney: October 27: review
ONE STAR: James Welling: David Zwirner: October 27: review

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown

ONE STAR: Bruce Haley: Anastasia: October 26: review
ONE STAR: Sam Samore (1973): Team: October 27: review
ONE STAR: Daniel Joseph Martinez: Simon Preston: October 28: review
ONE STAR: Kate Steciw: Toomer Labzda: October 28: review

Elsewhere Nearby

THREE STARS: Robert Adams: Yale: October 28: review

Forward Auction Calendar
New auctions added this week in red.
(Sale Date: Sale Title: Auction House: link to catalog)

October 30: Photographs (New York): Bonhams: catalog
October 30: Photographs - Man Ray (Barcelona): Soler y Llach: catalog
October 31: Photographs (London): Christie's: catalog
November 5: Photographs (New York): Doyle: catalog
November 8: Photographs (London): Phillips de Pury: catalog
November 12: Andy Warhol (New York): Christie's: catalog
November 13: Photographies Collections et Propositions (Paris): Millon: catalog
November 16: Photographies (Paris): Sotheby's: catalog
November 16/17: Photographies (Paris): Christie's: catalog

Robert Frank, From the Penwick Foundation Collection @Danziger

JTF (just the facts): A total of 42 black and white photographs, framed in dark brown and matted, and hung against white walls in the two room gallery space. All of the works are gelatin silver prints (some vintage, some later), taken between 1949 and 1962. No physical dimensions or edition sizes were available on the checklist, but many of the prints looked to be roughly 9x13 (or reverse). All of the prints come from the Penwick Foundation Collection, which acquired them in 1978. (Installation shots at right.)

 

Comments/Context: This show brings together prints from three of Robert Frank's classic geographies (Paris, London/Wales, and America), mixing the known with the unknown in equal measure. Drawn from a single collection amassed in the late 1970s, the prints provide a concise, lively summary of Frank's photographic approach.

 

The handful of Paris pictures capture some of the city's romance (a box of tulips, a baguette-holding child, a couple taking a posed photo with the camera perched on a metal chair) without becoming overly saccharine. A burly weight lifter balancing a pole on his chin and a tiger at the zoo provide some unexpected grittiness. The London and Wales images are a parade of chauffeurs and fancy cars, flanked by serious men in long black coats and top hats. A perplexing flying dog, somehow hurled through a back alley courtyard, upends the upper class sense of decorum.

 

The back room contains images from Frank's travels through America, some of which found their way into The Americans, while others are more surprising and obscure. A sea of audience faces peer forward (with one hiding behind a program), a man holds an armful of quirky plastic dolls on a sidewalk, Park Avenue awnings cover a building with geometric precision, and the fins of a Cadillac poke out from the back of a Chicago parking garage. Better known images like the juxtaposition of Jesus and a beer drinking woman, the endless line of mailboxes, and the cigar smoking rodeo cowboy provide familiar anchor points for Frank's overall mood.

 

As a single owner collection, this group of Frank prints is certainly an impressive gathering; as a show, I'm not sure it really teaches us anything we didn't already know about the artist. That said, there's never anything wrong with seeing a well-edited selection of Frank's superlative photographs, and the few lesser known gems found here offer some unusual revelations.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced between $25000 and $195000, with the majority under $40000. Frank's work is routinely available in the secondary markets, where recent prices have ranged between $5000 and $600000.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Features/Reviews: New Yorker (here), Le Journal de la Photographie (here)

Robert Frank, From the Penwick Foundation Collection
Through October 27th

Danziger Gallery
527 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011

Richard Misrach, The Desert Cantos @Mann

JTF (just the facts): A total of 20 large scale black and white and color photographs, framed in white and variously matted/unmatted, and hung unframed against white walls in the main gallery space. 16 of the works are chromogenic dye coupler prints (1 has a laminate surface), made between 1984 and 1999. The other 4 works are vintage split-tone prints, made between 1975 and 1977. Physical dimensions generally range from 14x14 to 48x60; no edition information was available. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Spanning more than 15 years, made up of literally hundreds of photographs, and divided into 20 separate and distinct thematic subsections, Richard Misrach's Desert Cantos were a huge artistic undertaking. Such a broad body of work can't possibly be jammed into a single gallery show without trade-offs, omissions, and sacrifices, and so what we have here is really more of a jumbled appetizer plate of Desert Cantos ideas rather than anything comprehensive or in-depth. These core images have been bracketed by a few early and a few more recent photographs, spreading the focus of the exhibit even wider. For those unfamiliar with Misrach, the show provides a succinct overview-style introduction to his output over three decades.

A preliminary scan of the gallery provides a striking sense of tone and color; Misrach's palette is full of expansive pastels and soft yellow sands. The intensity of a fire, the stillness of a flood, the wispy gradient of a massive sky or a clearing storm, all of these natural events are exercises in luscious color. But a closer inspection of the pictures opens up multiple lines of thinking beyond pure aesthetics: an abandoned atomic bomb pit, a burned out bus, a dead animal, a buried rocket, a deflated oversized globe (a Burning Man leftover), a Playboy magazine shot full of holes, these are the evidence of an active, not necessarily benign human presence in the desert. Misrach's famous image of the orange dining sets in the middle of the blistering white salt flats caps this sense of puzzling intervention in the unforgiving landscape.

The show also includes several early flash lit night images (palms, monumental rocks), a vast, tumultuous Golden Gate Bridge vista, and even one of the Louisiana pipeline photographs from the recent Aperture show, albeit on a much smaller scale (review here). These pictures provide a skeleton framework for Misrach's artistic evolution, perhaps overly simplified but at least offering a few reference points to help generate a continuum.

Overall, this little of this, little of that gathering is a solid reminder of the enduring strength of the Desert Cantos project. These pictures are now forever part of the history of the American landscape, still fresh and relevant even decades later.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows. The chromogenic dye coupler prints range in price from $12000 to $50000 (some are already sold), while the split-tone prints are either $22000 or $35000. Misrach's work is routinely available in the secondary markets, with prices ranging from roughly $2000 to $80000, with his newer, much larger prints at the top end of that scale. Misrach is represented in New York by Pace/MacGill Gallery (here) and in San Francisco by Fraenkel Gallery (here).

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Features/Reviews: Wall Street Journal (here), PDN Photo of the Day (here)

Richard Misrach, The Desert Cantos

Through October 27th

Robert Mann Gallery
525 West 26th Street (new location)
New York, NY 10001

Lucas Samaras: XYZ @Pace

JTF (just the facts): A total of 17 large scale color photographs, mounted and unframed, and hung against white walls in the main gallery space and the smaller front room. All of the works are pure pigment on paper mounted on Dibond, made in 2012. Each print is sized 35x62 and is unique. The works come from four separate series: Flea (6 works), Pixel Cock & Bull (3 works), Chinoiserie (2 works), and Razor Cut (6 works). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Given Lucas Samaras' history as a consistently innovative photographic manipulator and his repeated use of chaotic distortions and bright psychedelic colors, it seems only natural that he would eventually fully embrace the power offered by the digital realm. His newest works show his gradual conversion to the religion of Photoshop, starting with relatively tame and simple effects and quickly progressing to wilder and more outlandish all-digital flights of fancy. Like Gerhard Richter (here) and Alfred Leslie (here), Samaras is yet another well established artist extending his aesthetic into computer-based imagery.

The works in the front gallery still have some ties to a real world camera. Starting with photographs taken at flea markets, Samaras has used mirroring and partial pixelization to deform the existing images. Army coats, colorful fabrics and leather boots are broken up into small tiles, almost like irregular painted mosaics or armadillo skin. Sophisticated Photoshop jockeys will likely be underwhelmed by these transformations.

Samaras has completely abandoned his camera in the works in the main gallery, diving into the uncharted depths of in situ digital creation. In the Pixel Cock & Bull series, a radiant rainbow of colored squares is twisted and squished into a dense kaleidoscope of graphics. The same pattern is wrapped around an orb, wallpapered down a perspective driven hall, and mirrored into slashing Xes. In the Chinoiserie series, multiple layers of undulating lines are woven into monochome grids and plaids, which are then punctuated by beaming blobs of psychedelic brightness. Samaras takes these ideas even further in the Razor Cut works, where vaguely human forms have been built out of abstract graphics and gradients. Is that a pirate with dreadlocks standing on a flat line beach? Or a feathered Native American dancing like a digital Kachina doll? Are those other "bodies" insectile aliens with long fingers? The graphics explode with unreal neon craziness, the hint of a face traced onto a spinning cluster of flashy lines. He takes the most risks with these images, and the best ones get beyond winking, paint program trickiness to something more fast and furious.

One of the challenges I think a lot of artists are facing when using Photoshop and other digital manipulation tools is that the resulting pictures become tool-driven rather than artist-driven. What I mean is that the artist is so excited and energized by what the software engineers have developed that they fail to really make the tools their own. The danger is work that ends up looking like a great example of how the tool can be used rather than something personal and durably original. With the benefit of hindsight in a few years, I think we will see these particular works by Samaras as a transition point, caught between the old and the new and not yet fully realized in terms of a true and radical Samaras vision of digital composition. But as signposts pointing to the future, I think we can now expect something appropriately remarkable yet to come.

Collector's POV: Each of the works in this show is priced at $38000. Samaras' work has only been sporadically available in the secondary markets in recent years. Aside from the Polaroid sale a few years ago, where a new record was set for his work ($194500) and many of his other vintage images sold for five figure prices, Samaras' work has been relatively affordable, with most lots selling at auction for under $10000.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Reviews/Features: W (here), Garage (here)

Lucas Samaras: XYZ
Through October 27th

Pace Gallery
508 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001

Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Gifts to a Friend @Stephenson

JTF (just the facts): A total of 22 black and white and color photographs, framed in black and matted, and hung against white walls in the main gallery space and the smaller viewing room. The images in the show were taken between 1948 and and 1996 and are a mix of vintage and later prints. There are 19 gelatin silver prints and 3 Type C prints on view. Sizes range from 8x10 to 11x14 (or reverse); no edition information was available. 15 of the prints come from a single collection and were gifts directly from Ishimoto. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Yasuhiro Ishimoto is probably best known to American audiences for his 1940s/1950s Chicago street photography. Ishimoto studied at the Institute of Design under Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind, and returned to the city on an artistic fellowship a decade later. This small show brings together a few prints from this early period and a tight cross section of work he made in subsequent years while living in Japan. It's a terrific one-stop introduction to a photographer who smartly harmonized his Japanese and American aesthetic influences.

Ishimoto's street shots cover familiar territory, but with an eye for layered compositions of people at different depths. Kids wear Halloween masks and pose on sidewalks or front stoops, while other images flatten adjacent strangers into intricate, interlocking spatial relationships. The later works on display here cover a broad swath of photographic genres: cut paper and light-on-water abstractions, elegant up-close still life florals, ephemeral melting footprints in snow and flimsy grass silhouettes, and even a single nude/rock study with echoing rounded forms. These pictures feel rooted in both his American artistic education and the intrinsic natural beauty of unbalanced Japanese forms. The exhibit also includes a few experimental multiple exposure color works that merge dark trees and cloudy skies with bright washes of overlaid expressionistic color, showing that Ishimoto continued to innovate even when he was exploring relatively traditional subject matter.

It's great to see an Ishimoto sampler on view here in New York, since his work has generally been more accessible in Chicago (where he has long been represented by Stephen Daiter (here)). He is a bridge figure, one who fills in gaps in the ID history, as well as connecting to Japanese photographic ideas. Overall, this small overview covers a lot of ground, but is full of intimate, well crafted 20th century photographs.

Collector's POV: The prints in the show are priced as follows. The black and white prints range in price from $2500 to $6000; the color prints are $800 each. The entire set of 15 gift images (sold as a single collection) is priced at $22000. Ishimoto's work has only been intermittently available in the secondary markets over the years; his well regarded book Chicago, Chicago is more often found in photobook sales. Prices have generally ranged between $500 and $3000, but this may not be entirely representative of his best or most notable work.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Obituary: Le Journal de la Photographie, 2012 (here)

Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Gifts to a Friend
Through November 3rd

L. Parker Stephenson Photographs
764 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10065

The Checklist: 10/18/12

Current New York Photography Shows
New reviews added this week in red.
(Rating: Artist/Title: Venue: Closing Date: link to review)

Uptown

ONE STAR: Artie Vierkant: Higher Pictures: October 27: review

Midtown

ONE STAR: Fazal Sheikh: Pace/MacGill: October 20: review
ONE STAR: Andres Serrano: Edward Tyler Nahem: October 26: review
ONE STAR: Judy Fiskin: Greenberg Van Doren: October 27: review
ONE STAR: Gordon Parks (Centennial): Howard Greenberg: October 27: review
TWO STARS: Gordon Parks (Ligon): Howard Greenberg: October 27: review
ONE STAR: Sally Mann: Edwynn Houk: November 3: review
TWO STARS: The Shaping of New Visions: MoMA: April 29: review

Chelsea

ONE STAR: Rosemary Laing: Galerie Lelong: October 20: review
ONE STAR: Laura Letinsky: Yancey Richardson: October 20: review
ONE STAR: Ruud van Empel: Stux: October 20: review
TWO STARS: Bernd and Hilla Becher: Sonnabend: October 27: review
ONE STAR: Barney Kulok: Nicole Klagsbrun: October 27: review
ONE STAR: Shen Wei: Daniel Cooney: October 27: review
ONE STAR: James Welling: David Zwirner: October 27: review

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown

ONE STAR: Erica Baum: Bureau: October 21: review
ONE STAR: Bruce Haley: Anastasia: October 26: review
ONE STAR: Sam Samore (1973): Team: October 27: review
ONE STAR: Daniel Joseph Martinez: Simon Preston: October 28: review
ONE STAR: Kate Steciw: Toomer Labzda: October 28: review

Elsewhere Nearby

THREE STARS: Robert Adams: Yale: October 28: review

Forward Auction Calendar
New auctions added this week in red.
(Sale Date: Sale Title: Auction House: link to catalog)

October 30: Photographs (New York): Bonhams: catalog
October 30: Photographs - Man Ray (Barcelona): Soler y Llach: catalog
October 31: Photographs (London): Christie's: catalog
November 8: Photographs (London): Phillips de Pury: catalog

Daniel Joseph Martinez, I Want to Go to Detroit; Cheerleaders CHEER @Preston

JTF (just the facts): A total of 28 black and white photographs, framed in bond wood and unmatted or framed in white and mounted, and hung against white walls in the divided gallery space. The images in the show were taken in 1978 and 1979. The 13 prints in the front gallery area are modern light jet prints, each sized 40x29, in editions of 3+1AP. The 15 prints in the back gallery area are vintage gelatin silver prints, each sized 16x19; these prints are unique. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Looking at Daniel Joseph Martinez' photographs in this show is a little like traveling back in time to the Southern California of the late 1970s. But while these images are rich in details and atmosphere from that period, this smart pairing of two complementary projects (male body builders and female beauty pageant contestants) opens up a complex conversation about the extremes of human body image that continues today.

 

Martinez' body builders have been captured just off stage before a competition. They stand flash lit against a simple white backdrop (almost Avedon style), strutting and posing, but doing so with a bit more relaxed naturalness than they might exhibit in the heat of battle. Exaggerated muscular bodies ripple in the bright light, their curves accented by a sheen of oil. Obvious pride mixes with oversized freakishness in an over-the-top display of survival of the fittest strength taken to the limits of plausibility. There is something both impressive and sadly desperate about the life these pictures depict.

 

Martinez' backstage photographs of California beauty pageants are more candid and less centered. Young women with sashes (Apple Valley, Barstow, Santa Barbara, South Coast) wear sparkly evening gowns, swimsuits, and tiaras, complemented by wavy blond Farrah Fawcett hair, feathers, and chunky heels; mothers hover on the fringes. Many of the moments have a deer in the headlights feel, the flash pulling a contestant's vulnerable frown or unguarded glower into high contrast relief, with creepy grinning men never far from view. The sense that it is all a stage managed production comes through clearly; this is a show and not everyone is entirely keen to play along with the constant illusion of perfection.

 

Both bodies of work push hard on the underlying societal why of such behavior, both on the level of the individual and in the broader cultural context. They combine a documentary process with a conceptual overlay, capturing the genuine effort and the subtle comedy of these unnatural bodies and situations. While the scenes may seem plucked from times long gone, the underlying ideas are remarkably fresh and vibrant. Decades later, we're still modifying our bodies, in ever more extreme ways, and Martinez' 1970s critique still hits home.

 

Collector's POV: The works in the show are priced as follows. The 40x29 body builder prints are $7000 each. The 16x19 beauty pageant images are being sold as a single set of 15, priced at $120000. Martinez' work has very little secondary market history, so gallery retail likely remains the best option for those collectors interested in following up.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

 

Transit Hub:

• Features/Reviews: Art in America (here), Huffington Post (here)

Daniel Joseph Martinez, I Want to Go to Detroit; Cheerleaders CHEER

Through October 28th

 

Simon Preston Gallery

301 Broome Street

New York, NY 10002

Gordon Parks: Centennial @Greenberg

JTF (just the facts): A total of 51 black and white and color photographs and 1 video, variously framed and matted, and hung against light brown walls in the main gallery space, the book alcove, the small back gallery, and one of side viewing rooms. The works in the show were made between 1941 and 1970. The black and white images are a mix of vintage and modern gelatin silver prints, sized between 9x12 and 30x20 (or reverse); no edition information was available for these prints. The color images are later pigment or Ektacolor prints; the pigment prints are sized 24x24 or 20x16 (in editions of 10 and 25 respectively), while the Ektacolor prints are sized 14x19 (with no edition information). The book alcove also includes a display case with 3 LIFE magazines. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: This centennial exhibit, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Gordon Parks, successfully gives the viewer an idea of the photographer's tremendous range and talent. The show includes photo essays and street photography made on assignment for LIFE, incisive portraits of artists and celebrities, and even a few fashion shots. Never seen color rarities from the 1950s round out the four decade selection, a treat for those already familiar with Parks and his work. And a mini-retrospective like this one would be incomplete without Parks' now iconic American Gothic, but not to worry, it hides on a side wall, tucked into one of the viewing rooms.

Parks' documentary work and photo essays are full of simmering tension and emotion. The Fontenelle family stands together at the poverty board desk, clinging to each other, exhausted and grimly resigned to the ruling of the bureaucracy. Gang members openly fight in Harlem streets, followed either by a tender embrace or attendance at a wake. Dirty children in Rio de Janeiro favelas play with spiders and carry water in makeshift parades. And his recently rediscovered color works capture the realities of small town segregation, picking out separate "colored" entrances at the theater, the ice cream shack, and storefront drinking fountains.

Parks' portraiture is equally accomplished. The show includes powerful images of black leaders and celebrities, from Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael in the passion of speech making, to a sweaty, meditative Muhammad Ali and a somber Eldridge Cleaver. Duke Ellington is artfully reflected in his piano, a shadowy Langston Hughes stands with an empty picture frame, and Sugar Ray Robinson plays golf with muscular style. These portraits are consistently atmospheric, personal, and full of life.

All in, this is a solid gathering of work from Parks' many projects and interests, and it provides an impressive and useful introduction to one of the most influential African-American photographers of the past century.

Collector's POV: The works in the show are priced as follows. The gelatin silver prints range in price from $8500 to $25000. The pigment prints range from $5000 to $10000, and the Ektacolor prints are $12000 each. Parks' work has only been sporadically available in the secondary markets in recent years, and many of his most famous images have not come up for sale at auction during that time. Recent prices have ranged between $1000 and $9000, but this may not be entirely representative of the market for his most important photographs.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Parks Foundation site (here)
• Features/Reviews: New Yorker (here), Le Journal de la Photographie (here), Elizabeth Avedon (here)
• Companion Exhibit: Contact: Gordon Parks, Ralph Ellison and "Invisible Man" (DLK COLLECTION review here)

Gordon Parks: Centennial

Through October 27th

Howard Greenberg Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

Body and Spirit: Andres Serrano 1987-2012 @Nahem

JTF (just the facts): A total of 19 large scale color photographs, framed in black and unmatted, and hung against white walls in the entry and the divided gallery space. All of the works are Cibachrome prints with silicone and acrylic, made between 1987 and 2002. The prints on view range in size from 40x28 to 60x50 (or reverse) and are available in editions of 3, 4, 7, and 10, depending on the series. The show was curated by Walter Robinson. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: If we were to gather together the names of the most controversial photographers in the history of the medium, Andres Serrano would certainly be on the short list. While his now infamous Piss Christ would have singlehandedly been enough to earn him a coveted spot on the team, his entire artistic career has been full of provocative, often challenging, and sometimes disturbing work. Many viewers have been deeply offended by Serrano's imagery, and he has been roundly and repeatedly condemned over the years. In project after project, he has pushed the boundaries of acceptability and taste, confronting a litany of taboos, religion, race, and death being just a few of the highly charged subjects he has openly tackled. The consistency of his point of view across the decades has in many ways worked against him I think; it has turned many people off before they even bothered to look closely. Prior to this show, I will certainly admit to having offhandedly dismissed him as a shock for shock's sake grandstander, an opinion I unfortunately derived mostly from others rather than from my own experience of the work.

One of the unexpectedly important things to come from writing about photography on a daily basis has been that it has forced me out my own safe, self-fulfilling bubble of seeing things I already know I will like, dragging me to shows I would have never gone to otherwise. While I have of course encountered plenty of individual Serranos at auctions, art fairs, and museums over the years, this was the first time I had actively engaged an entire gallery show full of his work. The exhibit spans the last three decades, bringing together a mini-sampler from some of his best known series.

Every individual body of work on view here finds its own way to upend and unsettle, testing limits and forcing uncomfortable dialogues. A swirling bubbled abstraction from the Bodily Fluids series is made of semen and blood, a smiling African-American man is dressed in a pointed Ku Klux Klan robe, a pair of serene folded hands turn out to belong to an AIDS corpse from The Morgue series, and homeless people are photographed with the rugged glamour of a fashion shoot in three images from Nomads. I now understand both the knee-jerk reaction of finding these images deplorable and a contrasting view which finds them thoughtfully out on the edge. The late 1980s Immersion series, which is represented here by Piss Christ as well as images of the Madonna, Moses, a discus thrower and the baby Jesus, walks this same bright line, at once confrontationally crass and surprisingly vital. And a group of pictures from the more recent America series traverses a variety of societal stereotypes via uniforms and clothing, starting with the All-American fireman and boy scout, continuing with a procurement analyst and investment bank sales assistant in unexpectedly traditional African garb, and closing with a Playboy bunny and a covert to Islam in headscarf and veil. Serrano is reminding us that they are all "America"; sure they're heavy handed and exaggerated, but his point about diversity is succinctly delivered.

I can't say that I came away from this show a Serrano fan; I still find too many moments in his work where the effect seems too self-consciously outrageous. But the best of these works deserve respect for the real thrumming electricity that he has managed to create. We all know that he's actively pushing our buttons and trying to get a rise out of us, but realizing that, if he can still successfully get us to stop and think once in a while, isn't that what art is all about?

Collector's POV: The prints in this show range in price from $22000 to $120000, with most between $30000 and $40000; Piss Christ is on loan and NFS. Serrano's work is consistently available in the secondary markets, with recent prices ranging from roughly $5000 to $160000.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Features/Reviews: New Yorker (here), Huffington Post (here), NY Post (here)

Body and Spirit: Andres Serrano 1987-2012
Through October 26th

Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art
37 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019

Artie Vierkant @Higher Pictures

JTF (just the facts): A total of 6 sculptural photographic objects, mounted unframed and unmatted, and hung against white walls in the single room gallery space. All of the works are UV prints on thick machine cut sintra, made in 2012. Five of the works are roughly rectangular, ranging in size from 14x59 to 19x55; the other work on display is roughly square, at 54x56. All of the works are unique. This is Vierkant's first solo show in New York. (Installation shots at right.)

 

Comments/Context: While my itinerant wanderings through the galleries and museums of New York are mostly about looking at and thinking about the art, I would be a liar if I didn't say that there is a healthy component of socialization and information transfer that goes on as well. From time to time, the endless chatter inside the photography bubble converges around certain ideas or artists that seem to be particularly relevant or of the moment. In my experience, for the past few months, the work of Artie Vierkant has been one of those recurring themes, his images popping up in group shows and his name echoing in idle conversation. Folks are paying attention more than you might expect for a generally unknown artist.

 

In a certain way, I think this is happening more for the elegance and timeliness of his ideas than for the end points of his artworks. For nearly its entire history, photography has been concerned with the final print as the ultimate and definitive expression of the will of the artist. In our post Internet digital age, Vierkant calls this whole mindset into question, cutting the Gordian knot of what digitization means with a single easy stroke. His view is that the art object now floats between multiple instantiations, unlimited by the traditional boundaries of medium. In this world, there is no original or better copy, the digital file (or software code) being just as valid or important as the gallery print. The "data" of the art is simply presented or represeneted in different ways, moving back and forth between the logical and the physical, taking into account the nature of the communities with which it is interacting.

 

The works on the walls at Higher Pictures were constructed in PhotoShop, starting with geometric forms and straightforward gradients. The colorful abstractions were then layered iteratively, using filters, skew angles and color mixing to create stuttering, overlapped shapes built from shared elements. Different "final" compositions have been time stamped, as the process continued and additional incarnations/versions were conceived. There are fades, blurs, wipes, and arcs, both pure in their brightness and perfectly flat, the appearance of space squashed into a single plane. As objects, the prints have an unexpected texture, a matte finish that somehow seems sparkly without being glossy; as digital files on the gallery website, they pop with eye-boggling crispness.

 

As abstractions, I think Vierkant's images feel like first steps; I think he can (and likely will) go much further in terms of complexity and risk taking in the future. What I find exciting is the idea of the mediumless artist who moves effortlessly from one output form to another, equally happy in video, sculpture, photography or the open ended, shared, remixed, reworked data file. Some might argue that we are no longer in the realm of pure photography, but likely that definition doesn't really matter any more. Vierkant seems to be a model for a new kind of artistic thinking, one that embraces and extends the fluidity of the digital world rather than fighting it.

 

Collector's POV: The 5 rectangular pieces on view were priced at $6000 each and the larger square piece was $10000. I use the past tense on purpose here, since all of the works were sold before the show even opened. Vierkant's work has not yet reached the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for those collectors interested in following up.

 

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

 

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)

Artie Vierkant
Through October 27th

Higher Pictures
980 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10075

The Checklist: 10/11/12

Current New York Photography Shows
New reviews added this week in red.
(Rating: Artist/Title: Venue: Closing Date: link to review)

Uptown

No reviews at this time.

Midtown

THREE STARS: Gerhard Richter: Marian Goodman: October 13: review
ONE STAR: Fazal Sheikh: Pace/MacGill: October 20: review
ONE STAR: Judy Fiskin: Greenberg Van Doren: October 27: review
TWO STARS: Gordon Parks (Ligon): Howard Greenberg: October 27: review
ONE STAR: Sally Mann: Edwynn Houk: November 3: review
TWO STARS: The Shaping of New Visions: MoMA: April 29: review

Chelsea

ONE STAR: Lise Sarfati: Yossi Milo: October 13: review
ONE STAR: Rosemary Laing: Galerie Lelong: October 20: review
ONE STAR: Laura Letinsky: Yancey Richardson: October 20: review
ONE STAR: Ruud van Empel: Stux: October 20: review
TWO STARS: Bernd and Hilla Becher: Sonnabend: October 27: review
ONE STAR: Barney Kulok: Nicole Klagsbrun: October 27: review
ONE STAR: Shen Wei: Daniel Cooney: October 27: review
ONE STAR: James Welling: David Zwirner: October 27: review

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown
ONE STAR: Erica Baum: Bureau: October 21: review
ONE STAR: Bruce Haley: Anastasia: October 26: review
ONE STAR: Sam Samore (1973): Team: October 27: review
ONE STAR: Kate Steciw: Toomer Labzda: October 28: review

Elsewhere Nearby

THREE STARS: Robert Adams: Yale: October 28: review

Forward Auction Calendar
New auctions added this week in red.
(Sale Date: Sale Title: Auction House: link to catalog)

October 11: Contemporary Art Day (London): Phillips de Pury: catalog
October 11: Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening (London): Christie's: catalog
October 12: Post-War & Contemporary Art Day (London): Christie's: catalog
October 12: Contemporary Art Evening (London): Sotheby's: catalog
October 13: Contemporary Art Day (London): Sotheby's: catalog
October 30: Photographs (New York): Bonhams: catalog
October 30: Photographs - Man Ray (Barcelona): Soler y Llach: catalog

Bruce Haley @Anastasia

JTF (just the facts): A total of 12 panoramic black and white photographs, mounted unframed and unmatted, and hung against grey walls in the single room gallery space. All of the works are Epson archival pigment prints on Museo silver rag paper, made between 2007 and 2010. Each of the black bordered prints is sized 14x60 and is available in an edition of 5. The show also includes a short video on the artist which is displayed on a small monitor. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Bruce Haley is probably best known as an award-winning conflict photojournalist, taking pictures of wars, famine, and destruction in Burma, Somalia, Afghanistan and the former Soviet states. His newest work brings him back to the United States and to the dusty, desolate wastelands of Nevada, where marginal mining towns sprang up during boom times and now hold on with hardscrabble tenaciousness.

The twelve pictures in this show are arranged in a progression, almost like a time lapse recreation of the history of the region. The first few are geology and geography centric, like survey pictures from the 19th century, capturing the looming black cone of a small mountain and the vast, scrubby flatness of the empty valley below. Soon, the hand of man starts to appear: a lonely cinder block shed, mining walls, open pit holes, and the beginnings of a haphazard settlement of low rise buildings, temporary trailers, and pickups. Haley then moves in closer, making elegant, high contrast images of the geometric out buildings. Edges zig zag in and out, boxes and rectangles pile up on each other, scrap wood and winding towers create dense black angles, and tin siding adds vertical striping. The final photographs in the series move back to an elevated vantage point, taking in the sweep of the sprawling towns, with their dense clusters of houses, telephone poles, and decaying structures. The mining activity may have moved on to the next rich site, but these towns have endured with remarkable frontier stubbornness. So while there is clearly an echo of the ugly suburban menace of the New Topographics in a few of these images, I took away a bit more survivalist desperation, the unlikely scratching out of a life in the harshest of conditions.

I have to admit that I am a bit of skeptic when it comes to the panorama format; I think too many of these wide pictures seem gimmicky. My favorite panoramas are those made by Art Sisabaugh decades ago, where the strengths of the format were smartly matched with the superflat land of the Midwest. So I was somewhat surprised to like Haley's panoramas as much as did. Both the pure landscapes and the city vistas play off the bigness of the sky and the horizontals of the land, and the up-close buildings have been carefully composed to take advantage of an enveloping edge to edge movement. I think part of their success also lies in their narrowness, which keeps the images tightly hemmed in even when they depict something grand and effusive. All in, Haley deftly engages the history of American landscape photography in these images, while still bringing his own voice to the ongoing dialogue.

Collector's POV: All of the 14x60 prints in this show are priced in ratcheting editions, starting at $6500 and rising to $9000. The images are also available in a smaller 9x40 size (not on display, in a larger edition of 10); prices for these prints start at $4000 and rise to $8000. Haley's work has not yet reached the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the best option for those collectors interested in following up.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here) 
• Interviews: Conscientious (here), Lenscratch (here)
• Exhibit: Fresno Art Museum, 2012 (here)

Bruce Haley
Through October 26th

Anastasia Photo
166 Orchard Street
New York, NY 10002

Kate Steciw: Boundless Hyper @Toomer Labzda

JTF (just the facts): A total of 3 large scale photographic works, framed in custom oak and unmatted, and hung in the small single room gallery space. All of the works are c-prints with additional mixed media elements, made in 2012. Each of the prints is sized 60x44 and is unique. The show also includes 2 twisted metal sculptures, shown on white pedestals near the front window. (Installation shots at right.)

 

Comments/Context: Ever since Marcel Duchamp took an ordinary white porcelain urinal, turned it upside down, painted a fictitious name on it, and boldly stated it was art, the readymade object has been part of the artistic conversation. Fast forward a century, overwhelm our society with consumer goods, and flood us with overly perfect digital imagery, and the time has certainly come for an exploration of the "Internet readymade". Kate Steciw's new works dive down this dark rabbit hole, combining manipulated image data and found objects into three dimensional abstractions brimming with vitality.

 

The three works on display in this show all begin with commercial stock photography as source material. These images are flashy and eye catching, full of saturated professional color, soulless and yet somehow with a point of view that says these unblemished manufactured things ought to be of interest to you. Steciw has taken these photographs and thrown them into the digital blender, twisting and stretching, interleaving and swirling, recombining and reassembling with facile skill, ending with fluidly chaotic flat abstractions that nearly defy identification: a bright yellow egg mixes with a fitness machine, orange fire blends with pipe fittings, and watery blue textiles intermingle with bubbled glass. These compositions are then decorated with seemingly random objects, which have been stuck directly onto the print and its frame. I can just image the AI code out in the cloud churning out the recommendations: "if you like these opalescent glass pebbles, you might also like this blue painter's tape!" or "if you like these faux marble tiles, you should try this adhesive gauze bandage!" I'm sure that there is some hidden logic connecting all these sculptural and collage items, and yet the puzzling mystery of the Infidel decal in Arabic, the cartoon horse sticker, and the Mason symbol seems oddly appropriate in our opaquely complex digital age.

I think these works place Steciw in a different category than the countless digital image appropriators and manipulators at work today; I think she is coming from a different conceptual place. She's way out on the edge where the photographs have become cold objects and the digital transformations have become a dance recognizable to the computer savvy. She's playing with both virtual and physical space, with texture and surface, the stock photographs and the other accoutrements abstracted and yet still somewhat representative of their original selves. It's a new aesthetic, with new associations, firmly rooted in our ever evolving Internet reality.

Collector's POV: The 3 mixed media prints in this exhibit are priced at $6500 each. Steciw's work has not yet reached the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the best option for those collectors interested in following up.

 

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

 

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here) and tumblr (here)
• Feature/Review: Hyperallergic (here)

Kate Steciw: Boundless Hyper

Through October 28th

 

Toomer Labzda

100A Forsyth Street

New York, NY 10002