Friday, June 28, 2013

Unique @Von Lintel

JTF (just the facts): A group show containing 14 photographic works by 9 different artists/photographers, variously framed and matted, and hung against white walls in the single room gallery space. All of the works are unique. (Installation shots at right.)

The following artists/photographers have been included in the show, with the number of works on display and print details as background:
  • Matthew Brandt: 1 chromogenic print soaked in Silver Lake water, 30x40, 2010
  • John Chiara: 1 Ilfachrome print, 34x28, 2012
  • Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk: 2 chemigrams on paper, 20x20, 2011
  • Agnes Eperjesi: 3 color photograms, 10x20, 2011
  • Curtis Mann: 1 bleached chromogenic print, 30x40, 2011
  • Klea McKenna: 2 photograms on gelatin silver fiber paper, 24x20, 2013
  • Amanda Means: 2 developer on Ilford matte gelatin silver fiber paper prints, 24x20, 2005
  • Floris Neusüss: 2 gelatin silver prints, 88x42 and 25x21, 1987, 1991

Comments/Context: The oxymoron of photographic uniqueness has always offered a set of specific challenges for photographers, forcing them to examine the very nature of the image making process itself. While inherent reproducibility may be the hallmark of most forms of the medium, artists have continually wanted to introduce hand crafted gestures, elements of chance, and original marks to photographs, undermining the usual multiplication and creating one of a kind artworks. This group show provides a recent sampler of this impulse, matching contemporary lines of thinking with a few representatives from the prior generation.
 
John Chiara, Curtis Mann, and Matthew Brandt all start with photographs that are recognizably representational (blue skies, trees, lakes, and other landscape elements are readily identifiable), but each quickly moves off from standard documentation into areas of improvisation. Chiara uses a custom made camera obscura, multiple exposures, and uneven cut paper to pile image atop image. Mann adds tiny dots of bleach in a large round circle, creating a transparent scrim like a light flare. And Brandt dips his image in the lake water it depicts, allowing the color chemistry to break down into unexpected abstract swirls.
 
Other artists forego the use of a camera, either heading into the darkroom to make photograms or playing with light sensitive paper in more uncontrolled environments. Floris Neusüss provides the baseline for traditional photogram work, mixing positive and negative silhouettes of bodies and greenery (often with added solarization) into complicated, overlapped abstractions. Agnes Eperjesi offers a contemporary foil to these works, with her photograms of newspapers, hands, flowers, and other random objects, all bathed in washes of drifting color. Klea McKenna's photograms of raindrops are a process mystery; how she captured the literally thousands of individual drops with such amazing clarity (some like circles, others like bursts of flame) is a fascinating puzzle.
 
The remaining artists in the show take these ideas to their ultimate photographic limit, effectively drawing with developer on light sensitive paper. The chemigrams of Pierre Cordier and Gundi Falk are astonishingly intricate, with grids of squares and rectangles covered in concentric light brown polygons; there is a connection here to Chuck Close's approach to painting his individual grid elements, but Cordier and Falk's process is even more strict and controlled, except when the lines melt into tiny blobs and pools. Amanda Means takes a more fluid approach, allowing the developer to wash across her cut grid, creating fingers of color like the gullies of a dry river bed.
 
All in, this is a well-edited gathering of unique works, mixing both known and unknown names. It successfully defines the essential challenge of uniqueness and points to the diversity of innovative approaches being used to upend the idea of the repeatable photograph.
 
Collector's POV: The prices for the works in this show are as follows:
  • Matthew Brandt: $5000
  • John Chiara: $6400
  • Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk: $21000 each
  • Agnes Eperjesi: $3150 each
  • Curtis Mann: $6700
  • Klea McKenna: $2400 each
  • Amanda Means: $4900 each
  • Floris Neusüss: $23000 and $42000
Aside from Neusüss and Cordier, most of the photographers in this show have little or no secondary market history, although Brandt and Mann are recent regulars on the art fair circuit. As such, gallery retail is still the best option for those collectors interested in following up.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
 
Transit Hub:
  • Feature/Review: New Yorker (here)
  • Matthew Brandt artist site (here)
  • John Chiara artist site (here)
  • Pierre Cordier artist site (here)
  • Agnes Eperjesi artist site (here)
  • Gundi Falk artist site (here)
  • Curtis Mann artist site (here)
  • Klea McKenna artist site (here)
  • Amanda Means artist site (here)

Unique
Through July 12th
 
520 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011

Thursday, June 27, 2013

The Checklist: 6/27/13

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

Uptown

TWO STARS: William Eggleston: Met: July 28: review

Midtown

THREE STARS: Bill Brandt: MoMA: August 12: review

Chelsea

ONE STAR: Ori Gersht: CRG: June 28: review
ONE STAR: Richard Misrach: Pace: June 29: review
ONE STAR: Terry Evans: Yancey Richardson: July 3: review
ONE STAR: Heide Hatry: Stefan Stux: July 3: review
TWO STARS: Martin Parr: Aperture: July 3: review
ONE STAR: Tom Wood: Thomas Erben: July 12: review
ONE STAR: Laurel Nakadate: Leslie Tonkonow: July 26: review
TWO STARS: Takuma Nakahira: Yossi Milo: July 26: review

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown

TWO STARS: Martin Parr: Janet Borden: June 28: review
TWO STARS: Letha Wilson: Art in General: June 29: review
ONE STAR: Katherine Wolkoff: Sasha Wolf: June 30: review

Elsewhere Nearby

TWO STARS: Polaroid Years: Loeb/Vassar: June 30: review

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

June 27: Contemporary Art Day: Sotheby's (London): catalog
June 27: Contemporary Art Evening: Phillips (London): catalog
June 28: Contemporary Art Day: Phillips (London): catalog

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Auctions: Contemporary Art Evening and Day Sales, June 27 and 28, 2013 @Phillips London

Phillips completes the early summer Contemporary Art season in London tomorrow with a predictable selection of recent photography. Sherman, Sugimoto, Gilbert & George, and Ruff make up the top lots. Overall, there are a total of 32 lots of photography available across the two sales, with a Total High Estimate for photography of £1528000.

Here's the statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including £5000): 0
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): NA

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between £5000 and £25000): 16
Total Mid Estimate: £258000

Total High Lots (high estimate above £25000): 16
Total High Estimate: £1270000

The top lot by High estimate is lot 6, Cindy Sherman, Untitled #426, 2004, at £200000-300000. (Image at right, top, via Phillips.)

Here is the short list of the photographers who are represented by more than one lot in the two sales (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Cindy Sherman (3)
David LaChapelle (2)
Richard Prince (2)
Thomas Ruff (2)

Other lots of interest include lot 167, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1999, at £120000-180000 (image at right, middle), and lot 189, Richard Prince, All the Best, 2000, at £35000-45000 (image at right, bottom, both via Phillips).

The complete lot by lot catalogs can be found here (Evening) and here (Day).

Contemporary Art Evening Sale
June 27th

Contemporary Art Day Sale
June 28th

Phillips
Howick Place
London SW1P 1BB

Takuma Nakahira, Circulation: Date, Place, Events @Milo

JTF (just the facts): A total of 87 black and white photographs, framed in white and matted, and hung against white walls in the East and West gallery spaces. All of the works are modern gelatin silver prints, made from negatives taken in 1971. The prints are sized 20x24 (or reverse) and are available in editions of 15+2AP. A monograph of this body of work was recently published by Osiris (here) and is available from the gallery for $95. This is the artist's first solo show in the United States. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: There is something altogether astonishing about an important early 1970s project by a major Japanese photographer making its US debut in 2013. Beyond these sense that collectively we have been asleep at the historical wheel to some extent, it certainly reminds us that the history of photography is more serendipitous and incomplete that we might assume, especially for artists working outside our normal purview.

Takuma Nakahira is a clearly photographer that we should be more familiar with here in the US. He was a founding member of the late 1960s Provoke magazine, whose rough, grainy, blurred style marked a radical shift in both aesthetics and conceptual underpinnings from what had come before, and whose influence remains durably important some four decades later. This show recreates a project Nakahira did for the Seventh Paris Biennale in 1971, where he took pictures on the streets of Paris during the day, developed them at night, and displayed them all in an ever changing wall and floor exhibit that ran for several days. Stylistically, think of it as the dark, brash, moodiness of Provoke as applied to classic Parisian subject matter: Metro stations, street corner cafes, parked cars, vernacular signage, and pedestrian life. His images are full of shadows and eerie, feral glows, marked by haunting advertising fragments, the glare of fluorescent lights, and the dirty elegance of smashed taillights in watery gutters.

In addition to the many single images on view, the show also contains a handful of multi-image sequences that stop time down to fractions of a second. A man walks behind the trunk of a parked car, a woman looks at her wallet on a bright street corner, a dog sniffs the subway grates, and pedestrians gingerly step through the dark fingers of spilled water on the sidewalk. In each mini vignette, there is a cinematic sense of something happening, but a breakdown in the ability of the pictures to convey the entire narrative; the ordinariness of the everyday action is left to speak for itself. The parallels to Paul Graham's recent fragment of time street scenes are unmistakable, so much so that I wonder about whether Graham was aware of Nakahira or not.

The other fascinating thing about this particular project is how it prefigures many of the conceptual threads that would infiltrate photography in the coming years. Nakahira's effort is a mix of three distinctly separate parts: street photography with an eye for direct observation and reuse of media images, process-centrism in terms of his hand crafted approach to making and displaying the images, and an almost performance-like quality to the whole endeavor, as though the physical photographs were just part of the larger visual interaction he was having with the city around him. With the benefit of hindsight, the project looks remarkably innovative, its power and originality for the most part undiluted by the passing of time.

When an important talent like Nakahira is rediscovered (or reintroduced to a previously oblivious audience), I can't help but think of it as a jamming of a new puzzle piece into a previously completed scene, an action that forces all the other pieces to readjust and reconsider their own relationships and interconnections. Whether causality and influence can be traced through such a network is ultimately unknowable, but it certainly sets my mind on flights of fancy, weaving an artist like Nakahira back into brocades that hadn't previously included him.

Collector's POV: All of the prints in this show are priced at $3500. Aside from a few photobooks, Nakahira's photographs have been largely absent from the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the best/only option for those collectors interested in following up.

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:
  • Features/Reviews: American Photo (here), American Suburb X (here), Wall Street Journal (here)

Through July 26th

Yossi Milo Gallery
245 Tenth Avenue
New York, NY 10001

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Auctions: Contemporary Art Evening and Day Auctions, June 26 and 27, 2013 @Sotheby's London

Five stock exchange images by Andreas Gursky headline Sotheby's Contemporary Art Evening and Day sales in London this week; Hong Kong, Tokyo, Kuwait, and a pair from Chicago are a run of five consecutive lots in the evening auction. With the help of their big ticket estimates, there's quite a bit of photo value on the line. Overall, there are a total of 43 photography lots available across the two sales, with a Total High Estimate of £5503000.

Here's the statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including £5000): 0
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): NA

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between £5000 and £25000): 22
Total Mid Estimate: £343000

Total High Lots (high estimate above £25000): 21
Total High Estimate: £5160000

The top lot by High estimate is lot 28, Andreas Gursky, Chicago Board of Trade, 1997, at £700000-900000. (Image at right, top, via Sotheby's.)

Here is a list of the photographers who are represented by more than one lot in the two sales (with the number of lots in parentheses):
Andreas Gursky (7)
Richard Prince (4)
Candida Höfer (3)
Thomas Struth (3)
Gabriel Orozco (2)
Wolfgang Tillmans (2)

Other lots of interest include lot 413, Martin Kippenberger, We don't have problems...30, 1989, at £20000-30000 (at right, middle) and lot 446, Piotr Uklański, Untitled (Foliage), 2003, at £12000-18000 (at right, bottom, both images via Sotheby's).

The complete lot by lot catalogs can be found here (Evening) and here (Day).

Contemporary Art Evening
June 26th

Contemporary Art Day
June 27th

Sotheby's
34-35 New Bond Street
London W1A 2AA

Terry Evans: Inhabited Prairie @Richardson

JTF (just the facts): A total of 19 black and white photographs, framed in black and matted, and hung against white walls in the main gallery space. 18 of the works are vintage gelatin silver prints and the remaining work is a modern archival pigment print; all of the images were taken between 1990 and 1994. The gelatin silver prints are sized 15x15, while the pigment print is 30x30; no edition information was available for the vintage prints, while the pigment print is available in an edition of 10. A monograph of this body of work was published by the University Press of Kansas in 1998 (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: By its very nature, aerial photography is about finding new perspectives, about putting some distance between the photographer and the subject. When seen from above, the land becomes a patchwork of patterns and abstractions, lines and forms that were unseen at ground level. American photography has a rich tradition in aerial picture making, from early surveys and elegant land forms (think William Garnett), to more recent documents of suburban sprawl, industrial waste lands, oil spills, and other environmental blights. Looking down from the sky allows us to see the broad expanse of the land, and to measure our visible impact upon it.

While the mood of much of contemporary aerial photography swings between despair and disgust, Terry Evans' pictures of the Kansas prairie are more neutral. They don't shout at us about the sweeping horrors of our industrial follies or ecological disasters, but instead take a more dispassionate look at a specific local setting, where the regional geography is seen with intimacy and insight. Made while striking out on flights in a 25 mile radius from her home, the photographs are filled with the rich tonalities of rolling hills, undulating swales and valleys, and the natural rhythms of floods and prairie fires. A small pond, the edge of a cultivated field, or the sweep of a tree line is often the basis of a tactile, middle grey composition.

But Evans' prairie is an inhabited one (hence the title of the show and accompanying book), and the hand of man interrupts the grand open spaces time and again. The interventions start small, with an abandoned farm house or a small cemetery amid the wavy furrows of the dusty fields, the ghostly remains of a Native American settlement mixed in with the striations of the plowed land, or the swirling worn paths of tiny cows in a cattle yard. A more organized presence is found in the march of electric towers or the arc of train tracks across the land, but Evans' view is restrained and matter of fact rather than outraged; the sweeping energetic curve of a white striped roadway is more a contrast of hard edged and natural forms than a nasty slash across the pristine prairie. Even the ugliest of man made alterations (a grubby asphalt mine, a weapons testing range) are made gracefully textural by her muted aesthetic approach; the violence of the targeting circle is heightened by the empty dark blackness of the grass, but somehow softened by the miniature white tires which mark the ring.

What I like best about these photographs is that Evans has found a way to make her aerial photographs sensitive and personal without being bombastic. They are neither overly scientific or overtly slanted in any particular direction; instead, they find a quietly understated balance that reflects genuine respect for and interest in the land and her local community. They ask questions about the changing relationship between man and nature on the American prairie, and let us draw our own conclusions about what is to be learned from these complex realities.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced as follows. The vintage gelatin silver prints range from $5000 to $6500, while the larger modern pigment print is $5600. Evans' work has very little secondary market history, so gallery retail remains the best option for those collectors interested in following up.

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

Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Exhibit: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2012 (here)
  • Features/Reviews: Wall Street Journal (here), Architizer (here)

Terry Evans: Inhabited Prairie
Through July 3rd

Yancey Richardson Gallery
535 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

Monday, June 24, 2013

Auctions: Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening and Day Auctions, June 25 and 26, 2013 @Christie's London

As the heat descends on New York, the auction action moves to London, where Christie's starts off a pre-summer Contemporary Art run with its Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening and Day sales later this week. Photography-wise, it's a pretty thin offering, with not much to distract collectors from the warm weather. Overall, there are 22 photography lots available across the two sales, with a Total High Estimate for photography of £1068000.

Here's the statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including £5000): 1
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): £5000

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between £5000 and £25000): 14
Total Mid Estimate: £218000

Total High Lots (high estimate above £25000): 7
Total High Estimate: £845000

The top lot by High estimate is lot 21, Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Our prices are insane!), 1997, at £200000-300000. (Image at right, top, via Christie's.)

Here is the very short list of photographers who are represented by two or more lots in the two sales (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Barbara Kruger (3)
Hiroshi Sugimoto (2)

Other lots of interest include lot 247, Matthew Day Jackson, Me, Dead at 35, 2009, at £18000-22000 (image at right, middle) and lot 348, Edward Burtynsky, Oil Spill No. 4, Oil Skimming Boat, Near Ground Zero, Gulf of Mexico, 2010, at £12000-18000 (image at right, bottom, both via Christie's.)

The complete lot by lot catalogs can be found here (Evening) and here (Day).

Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction
June 25th

Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Auction
June 26th

Christie's
8 King Street, St. James's
London SW1Y 6QT

The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation @Lehman Loeb Art Center/Vassar

JTF (just the facts): A group show of 41 artists/photographers, variously framed and matted, and hung against white walls in a series of four dimly lit rooms on the first floor of the museum and in one small gallery on the second floor. The works use a variety of Polaroid processes and were made between 1969 and 2013; nearly all of the works on view are unique. Physical sizes range from roughly 4x3 to 77x62 (multiple images). A catalog of the exhibit was recently published by Delmonico Books/Prestel (here) and is available in the bookshop for $50. (Installation shots at right.)

The following artists/photographers have been included in the show, with numbers of works on view, print details and dates as reference:
  • Ansel Adams: 4 SX-70 prints, 1972
  • Jack Butler: 5 SX-70 prints, 1978
  • Ellen Carey: 1 set of 6 Polacolor Type 108 prints with nail polish, 1977, 1 large format Polaroid ER print, 1994, 1 large format Polaroid print, 2003
  • Carter: 8 Polaroid prints (4 diptychs), 1970-2007, 2 Polaroid prints, 2005 (in glass case)
  • Bruce Charlesworth: 6 SX-70 prints with acrylic paint (1 triptych, 1 diptych, 1 single image), 1977-1980
  • Chuck Close: 1 set of large format Polacolor prints, 1979, 1 set of 9 dye diffusion transfer prints, 1979, 1 large format Polacolor print, 1980
  • Anne Collier: 5 Polaroid prints, 2004
  • Laura Cooper/Nick Taggart: 1 set of 120 Polaroid Type 667 prints, 1993-2013
  • John Coplans: 1 three paneled frieze of 9 Type 55 prints, 1997, 1 set of 5 dye diffusion transfer prints, 1986
  • Marie Cosindas: 2 dye diffusion transfer prints, 1966
  • Philip-Lorca diCorcia: 9 Polaroids, n.d.
  • Charles and Ray Eames: 1 color film, 1972
  • Walker Evans: 8 SX-70 prints, 1973/1974 (in glass case), 1 SX-70 camera (in glass case)
  • Bryan Graf: 9 Polaroid Type 600 prints, 2008-2013, 1 Polaroid print and 1 black and white Fiber print, 2010
  • Richard Hamilton: 4 artist's books with Polaroid plates, 1968-2001 (in glass case)
  • Robert Heinecken: 8 SX-70 prints with offset lithography, 1979 (in glass case), 5 large format Polacolor prints, 1983
  • David Hockney: 2 composites of SX-70 prints, 1982
  • Barabara Kasten: 1 large format Polacolor print, 1982
  • Andre Kertesz: 4 SX-70 prints, 1979/1984
  • Les Krims: 3 archival pigment prints from SX-70 prints, 1974/later
  • David Levinthal: 1 large format Polacolor ER Land print, 1990, 4 SX-70 prints, 1983-1985
  • Miranda Lichtenstein: 5 Polaroid prints, 2002-2005
  • John Maggiotto: 8 SX-70 prints, 1983
  • Andreas Mahl: 1 SX-70 emulsion transfers with hand coloring, 1981/1984
  • Robert Mapplethorpe: 4 Polaroid prints (1 diptych, 2 single images), 1972-1974
  • Joyce Niemanas: 4 SX-70 prints with paint, 1979-1980, 1 montage of SX-70 prints, 1981
  • Catherine Opie: 14 Type 600 prints (1 set of 9, 1 set of 4, 1 single image), 2004
  • Lisa Oppenheim: 5 c-prints, 2008
  • Beatrice Pediconi: 6 Polaroid prints, 2009-2011
  • Victor Raphael: 1 Polaroid 600 print with acrylic, 1985, 3 Polaroid Spectra prints with metal leaf, 1990-1997
  • John Reuter: 4 SX-70 prints with acrylic paint, 1978
  • Lucas Samaras: 7 SX-70 prints, 1973/1974, 3 dye diffusion transfer prints with applied color, 1970/1971, 1 collage of Polaroid type 808 prints, 1984
  • Dash Snow: 2 Polaroid prints with masking tape and paint, n.d., 11 SX-70 Prints, n.d. (in glass case)
  • Paul Thek: 3 Polacolor prints, 1969 (in glass case)
  • Mungo Thomson: 10 Polaroid Type 600 prints, and 1 cartridge card, 2009
  • Andy Warhol: 3 Polacolor Type 108 prints, 1977, 3 Polacolor 2 prints, 1981, 2 Polacolor prints, 1981-1982/1986
  • William Wegman: 2 large format Polacolor prints, 2005
  • James Welling: 4 chromogenic prints from original Polaroids, 1975/1976
  • Grant Worth: 4 Polaroid Type 600 prints, 2006
  • Grant Worth/Micki Pellerano: 2 Impossible Project Fade to Black prints, 2010
  • Grant Worth/Mark Spalding: 4 Type 600 Wild Sides prints, 2005 (in glass case)

Comments/Context: The long sweep of photographic history can in many ways be boiled down to a never ending series of experiments with processes and materials for image making; technology has never been very far from the center of the medium. From the daguerreotype to the digital file, artists have continually embraced new technical innovations, only to immediately try to break them, defining their strengths and weaknesses and testing their limits. In each case, the question of "what is it good for" has been explored with relentless imagination. This show follows the winding path of Polaroid, from its hand held SX-70 instant camera to its massive large format cameras and films, tracing singular experiments by a variety of artists across nearly four decades. The exhibit doesn't try to be a comprehensive history of the company, its inventions, or the best artworks made by its many users, but instead offers a tight sampler of how artists' have pushed and pulled at the constraints of the Polaroid technologies and exploited the specific properties of its many photographic processes.
 
Starting in the early 1970s, he develop before your eyes process of the SX-70 was a major source of creative destruction for a wide range of artists. After the prints were ejected from the camera, they were subjected to a dizzying array of manipulations, breaking down the chemistries in unintended ways to create expressionistic gestures and chance-driven alterations. Lucas Samaras transformed nude self-portraits into swirling, melting body parts, while John Reuter cooked his prints and then split them apart to add paint inside the sandwich. Les Krims poked and prodded, while Bruce Charlesworth erased and over painted; Victor Raphael added metal leaf, while Dash Snow experimented with burning - the SX-70 encouraged a flourishing of active modification, both in the past and more recently. 
 
The immediacy of the small square format image of SX-70 was also a compositional challenge for many photographers. Recognized masters like Ansel Adams, Walker Evans, and Andre Kertesz, embraced the SX-70 and found ways to make pictures in their own styles within its limitations. Others (like Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Andy Warhol) used the camera for test shots and intermediate images that later became the raw material for finished artworks. David Hockney and Joyce Neimanas took hundreds of prints and collaged them into jittering, multi-perspective mosaics. And both Robert Heinecken and Catherine Opie pointed the camera at the television, fitting fragments of the screen into the tiny frame.
 
At the other end of the size spectrum, Polaroid's large format cameras opened up new avenues for experimentation with photographic scale. Chuck Close's massive self portraits are perhaps the most well known example of this explosion in size (and there are several big faces on view here), but many other artists also embraced the precision of the 24x20 camera. Solid examples from David Levinthal, William Wegman, and Barbara Kasten point to a diversity of styles and approaches, and Ellen Carey took the issue to its extreme with her Pull series, where monumental 40x80 emulsions are stretched and elongated into surfboard like abstract forms.
 
Interspersed among these larger themes are surprising one-offs and unexpected twists: frozen prints, photographs of photographs, sexy bodies and porn, overpainted nail polish, silky emulsion transfers, experiment after experiment. While not every work in this show is entirely memorable, there is something invigorating about such a blossoming of trial and error. Artists of all shapes and sizes took the Polaroid processes through their paces and did things the inventors would never have dreamed were possible. The show is an insightful reminder that deliberately exceeding the posted limits and purposely getting it exactly wrong can often be the road to something new and original.
 
Collector's POV: Given this is both a diverse group show with many artists' work on view and an exhibit taking place in a museum venue (thereby no posted prices), a discussion of specific prices and secondary market history will be omitted for this review.
 
Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
 
Transit Hub:
  • Features/Reviews: New York Times (here), Wall Street Journal (here), Economist (here), PetaPixel (here)

Through June 30th
 
Vassar College
124 Raymond Avenue
Poughkeepsie, NY 12604

Friday, June 21, 2013

Martin Parr: Life's a Beach @Aperture

JTF (just the facts): A total of 53 large scale color photographs, unframed and pinned directly to the wall, and hung against white walls in the entry area and the large single room gallery space. All of the works are pigment prints, made from negatives taken between 1985 and 2012. The prints are shown in two sizes: a smaller size (either 20x24 or 20x30 or reverse, in editions of 10) and a larger size (40x50 or 40x60 or reverse, in editions of 5). A monograph of this body was recently published by Aperture (here and here) and is available in the bookshop for $25/$300. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: While there might be an expanse of sand, a clump of palm trees, or some lapping waves in a Martin Parr beach photograph, the beach itself isn't really the subject. For Parr, the beach isn't inherently interesting for its natural beauty or its majestic grandeur; on the contrary, it's a nearly universal setting for studying human behavior. From his native Britain to far flung locales all over the globe, he has quietly documented what people do at the beach: how we dress ourselves, how families and lovers interact, what we read and eat, and how we relax. With his sharp eye for subtle absurdity, his pictures capture a broad spectrum of diverse cultures and quirky activities, all laid bare to catch the warmth of the sun.

Many of Parr's beach pictures get right up close and blast your senses with eye popping color, turning a striped beach hat, a pink bathing suit, or a sandy foot into a striking, off-kilter still life. In these images, the color takes over, exaggerating the visual volume of blue eye protectors and a matching blue towel or a bold American flag bathing suit. Parr's framing forces us look closely, often pointing out the brightly ridiculous.

These one liners are balanced by more complex compositions that use multiple planes of distance (front/back or front/middle/back) to create unlikely beach crowd juxtapositions. A couple in Goa is joined by a sacred white cow, while the paper trunks of fake palm trees at an indoor beach in Japan frame a father and child. Patterns knit stories together, from clashing floral beach umbrellas that surround a woman in a purple bathing suit to striped folding chairs that provide a jumbled set of angles and lines for a sleeping family. Whether it's eating crab legs and lounging in rubber tire tubes in China, headscarved picture taking in Thailand, musclebound posing in Rio, or tabloid reading in the UK, Parr tracks down geographical peculiarities and builds them into larger scenes using nearby props and contrasts. A flimsy blue plastic raincoat, an oversized ice cream cone, a perfect book title ("Summer Surrender"), a dolphin boogie board, a muddy backhoe, the head of a white swan, a yellow and black soccer ball, they all become focal points for overlooked regional oddity, collapsed into single frame stories.

This show is brimming with casual summer fun and Parr's discerning comic timing is in fine form. Every seemingly random snapshot reveals itself to be something more, a deceivingly complex compendium of bodies, cultures, and seaside pastimes.

Collector's POV: While prints on view at Aperture are not always overtly for sale, there was an actual price list for this show. The smaller prints range from $4500 to $6000, while the larger prints are $11000. Parr's prints are intermittently available in the secondary markets, with recent prices ranging between roughly $1000 and $12000.
 
Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
 
Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Magnum Photos page (here)
  • Features/Reviews: Feature Shoot (here), GUP (here), Huffington Post (here)
  • DLK COLLECTION review of Martin Parr: USA Color at Janet Borden (here)

Martin Parr: Life's a Beach
Through July 3rd

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Auction Results: Photographie, June 14, 2013 @Van Ham

The outcomes at the photography sale at Van Ham in Cologne last week were generally uneventful. While there were a number of positive surprises, an overall Buy-In rate near 50% and the failure of the two top lots to find buyers dampened the aggregate results. Overall, the Total Sale Proceeds fell meaningfully below the pre-sale estimate. (Van Ham does not provide an estimate range in many cases, just a single estimate number, so this figure is used as the High estimate in our calculations).

The summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Total Lots: 216
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: €566800
Total Lots Sold: 114
Total Lots Bought In: 102
Buy In %: 47.22%
Total Sale Proceeds: €322460

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 201
Low Sold: 95
Low Bought In: 106
Buy In %: 52.74%
Total Low Estimate: €306800
Total Low Sold: €218080

Mid Total Lots: 13
Mid Sold: 7
Mid Bought In: 6
Buy In %: 46.15%
Total Mid Estimate: €140000
Total Mid Sold: €104380

High Total Lots: 2
High Sold: 0
High Bought In: 2
Buy In %: 100.00%
Total High Estimate: €120000
Total High Sold: €0

The top lot by High estimate was tied between two lots: lot 1111, Christian Boltanski, Jewish School, Große Hamburger Straße, Berlin, 1939, 1993, and lot 1221, Candida Höfer, Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires, 2006, both estimated at €50000-60000; neither lot sold. The top outcome of the sale was lot 1108, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Industriebauten, estimated at €15000-18000, sold at €43750

88.60% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate. There were a total of 15 surprises in the sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 1103, David Hockney, Sur le Motif, 1974, estimated at €1000, sold at 2€000 (image at right, middle, via Van Ham)
Lot 1104, Luigi Ghirri, Atelier Giorgio Morandi, 1989/1990, estimated at €3000, sold at €10000 (image at right, top, via Van Ham)
Lot 1108, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Industriebauten, estimated at €15000-18000, sold at €43750
Lot 1122, August Sander, Antlitz der Zeit, 1929, estimated at €1500-2000, sold at €8130
Lot 1137, Lee Friedlander, Baltimore Maryland, 1962, estimated at €2000-3000, sold at €6250
Lot 1140, Jeanloup Sieff, Portrait avec Violette, estimated at €1200, sold at €3000
Lot 1175, Luigi Ghirri, Ferrara, 1979, estimated at €2000, sold at €6250
Lot 1185, Thomas Struth, Paradies, 2004, estimated at €1200, sold at €4380
Lot 1197, Ludwig Windstosser, Schallplatten, 1955, estimated at €1800, sold at €4130
Lot 1271, Claus Goedicke, III-17, 1995, estimated at €300, sold at €750 (image at right, bottom, via Van Ham)
Lot 1286, Felix Bonfils, Album mit Aufnahmen aus Indien, Japan, Vietnam, Israel, Syrien, Libanon, 1880-1900, estimated at €800, sold at €1750
Lot 1295, Siegfried Lauterwasser, Wasser, 1948, estimated at €600, sold at €5380
Lot 1306, Albert Renger-Patzsch, 8 Anischtskarten, 1929, estimated at €800, sold at €2000
Lot 1310, August Sander, Madchenportrait, 1925, estimated at €800-1000, sold at €5000
Lot 1320, Karl Hugo Schmolz, Ohne Titel, 1950s, estimated at €800, sold at €2500

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Van Ham Kunstauktionen
Schönhauser Straße 10 - 16
D - 50968 Köln

The Checklist: 6/20/13

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

Uptown

ONE STAR: Dennis Hopper: Gagosian: June 22: review
TWO STARS: William Eggleston: Met: July 28: review

Midtown

TWO STARS: Richard Learoyd: McKee: June 21: review
ONE STAR: Lalla Essaydi: Edwynn Houk: June 22: review
THREE STARS: Bill Brandt: MoMA: August 12: review

Chelsea

ONE STAR: Heide Hatry: Stefan Stux: June 22: review
TWO STARS: Wolfgang Tillmans: Andrea Rosen: June 22: review
ONE STAR: Ori Gersht: CRG: June 28: review
ONE STAR: Richard Misrach: Pace: June 29: review
ONE STAR: Laurel Nakadate: Leslie Tonkonow: June 29: review
ONE STAR: Tom Wood: Thomas Erben: July 12: review

SoHo/Lower East Side/Downtown

ONE STAR: Carey Denniston: KANSAS: June 22: review
TWO STARS: Martin Parr: Janet Borden: June 28: review
TWO STARS: Letha Wilson: Art in General: June 29: review
ONE STAR: Katherine Wolkoff: Sasha Wolf: June 30: review

Elsewhere Nearby

No reviews at this time.

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

June 20: Photographies: Millon (Paris): catalog
June 25: Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening: Christie's (London): catalog
June 26: Post-War and Contemporary Art Day: Christie's (London): catalog
June 26: Contemporary Art Evening: Sotheby's (London): catalog
June 27: Contemporary Art Day: Sotheby's (London): catalog
June 27: Contemporary Art Evening: Phillips (London): catalog
June 28: Contemporary Art Day: Phillips (London): catalog

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Katherine Wolkoff: Deer Beds @Wolf

JTF (just the facts): A total of 6 large scale color photographs, framed in white and unmatted, and hung against white walls in the long single room gallery space. All of the works are chromogenic prints, made in 2007. The prints are sized either 20x24 or 40x50, both in editions of 7. (Installation shots at right.)
 
Comments/Context: While the grassy meadows and scraggly weeds in Katherine Wolkoff's new photographs could conceivably have come from any number of places in America, somehow they have a uniquely Northeastern feel to them. Around here, the kinds of open areas she has documented on Block Island in Rhode Island typically border on wetlands or new growth forests, acting as sunny transitional zones from one micro-ecosystem to another. These in-between areas have become part of the fabric of this crowded land, so much so that we humans have gotten used to local animals moving back and forth between the areas of wildness and civilization. In our neighborhood, the deer that inhabit these meadows come right up to the houses in the twilight, stopping by to nibble on the tulips and the rhododendrons before bolting back into the undergrowth.

At night, these same deer make temporary beds in the tall grass, nestling down out of the wind. When they rise in the morning and move off, they leave behind faint swirled depressions and hollows, and it is these ghostly tramplings that Wolkoff has documented in her recent landscapes. In many ways, the works are like figure/ground exercises, the pushed down silhouettes becoming ephemeral evidence of recent presence. The grasses and weeds are matted and flattened in barely recognizable bowls and nests, the frame cropping out everything but the quietly noticeable absence of the deer. Given the natural course of wind, rain, and sun, these beds will soon return to their normal form, so there is something especially fleeting about what Wolkoff has captured. The resulting images are calm and gentle, pictures of both nothing and something, both representational and gesturally abstract.

I think these photographs rightfully belong in the Northeastern landscape photography tradition that includes everything from Ray Mortenson's weeds to Joel Sternfeld's Oxbow Archive. What all of these bodies of work share is sense of the understated, of the beauty to be found in the overlooked corners of our land. Wolkoff's deer beds require some patience to get into, but they reward the attentive viewer with a sense of closeness to the rhythms of nature and a feeling of unpretentious Yankee simplicity.

Collector's POV: The works on view are priced based on size, with the 20x24 prints at $2600 and the 40x50 prints at $6000. Wolkoff's work has very little secondary market history, so gallery retail is likely the best/only option for those collectors interested in following up.
 
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
 
Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Features/Reviews: Artforum (here)
 
Through June 30th
 
70 Orchard Street
New York, NY 10002

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Richard Misrach, On the Beach 2.0 @Pace

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 large scale color photographs, framed in either off white, blond or black wood and unmatted, and hung in the single large gallery space, which is divided into three separate viewing areas. All of the works are pigment prints mounted to either aluminum or Dibond, and made in 2011 or 2012. Physical sizes range from 63x83 to 88x146; the largest of the prints are available in editions of 3+1AP, while the rest are available in editions of 5+1AP. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: It's been nearly a decade since Richard Misrach surprised us all with his On the Beach series. Made in reaction to the September 11th attacks, his aerial images of Hawaiian beaches astounded us with their enveloping, monumental scale and subtly reminded us of our vulnerability out there alone in the water. While many of the images were bright and sunny, with clusters of colorful beachgoers arrayed at the water's edge, there was a sense of something vaguely unsettling lurking underneath, adding a layer of tension to the idyllic vacation paradise. Misrach recently went back to his Honolulu hotel room perch and made a new series of bird's eye view pictures of the sea and sand. While the subject matter is arguably the same and the massive scale has been repeated, the mood of these pictures is subtly different, slightly more relaxed and meditative.

There are really two sets of photographs in this show, one with figures and one without. The images without tiny isolated people expand into all over abstractions, where dappled light bounces off the wave tops creating endless patterns of ripples. Misrach's palette is quietly muted, running from soft blues, greens, greys and tans, to darker bronzes and blacks. Given their size, standing in front of one of these ocean images is like getting lost in painterly texture, the entire surface an amorphous, undulating series of blobs and squiggles. While their detail is staggeringly precise up close, the sense of scale is lost without any identifiers; the water fans out like a series of dunes, stretching on for what might be feet or miles.

When even a single small figure is introduced to the sea or sand, the abstraction collapses and our eye is drawn to the central character. Now we're drawn back into the realm of narrative, where a guy with a book over his face, a determined swimmer, or a body wrapped in a pink towel becomes the tentative basis for a story. The best image in this group captures a solitary woman on a surfboard, looking away to the expanse of ocean in the darkening afternoon; her wistful presence turns the scene into something out of a 19th century Romantic painting, with the tiny figure in the foreground to remind us of the awe inspiring majesty of the vista. While Misrach has retained the sense of separation and distance in these pictures, the foreboding feeling of the previous works has been replaced with a more easy going mood - instead of struggling against the endless water, his figures execute perfect handstands and playfully perch on each other's shoulders.

In revisiting this series, Misrach seems to have been less concerned with recapturing a certain temperament and more seduced by the nuances of detailed texture. The subtle undercurrent of menace that permeated the first project is generally gone, replaced by a deeper interest in the changing surface of the water and the shifting footprints in the sand. With the setting afternoon sun comes a sense of contemplation, a slow mulling over of the endless cycles of ebb and flow.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced as follows. The smallest 63x83 (plus or minus an inch or two in either direction) are priced at $55000 each. Intermediate sized works are either $65000 or $850000, and the largest works (88x146) are $90000 each. While this show is taking place at the Pace Gallery space on 25th Street, it is being jointly organized by Pace and Pace/MacGill Gallery (here). Richard Misrach is also represented on the West coast by Fraenkel Gallery (here).

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

Transit Hub:
  • Features/Reviews: Daily Serving (here)
 
Through June 29th

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

Monday, June 17, 2013

Tom Wood, Men and Women @Erben

JTF (just the facts): A total of 36 color photographs, framed in white and unmatted, and hung against white walls in the single room gallery space. The works on view are a mix of gelatin silver and c-prints, taken between 1975 and 2012. All of the prints come in three sizes: 12x16, 16x24, and 24x35 (there is one outlier print sized 15x15), in aggregate editions of 7+2AP (a few prints are available in editions of 12+1AP or 15+1AP). Apparently, a monograph of Men and Women will be released by Steidl later this year (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: The British photographer Tom Wood is having a bit of a revival of late. With a recent series of gallery shows and museum retrospectives in the UK and Europe and a new book coming from Steidl, Wood is being more clearly recognized as one the early pioneers of British color (along with Paul Graham and Martin Parr). This broad show brings together work from the better part of thirty years, providing ample evidence for Wood's eye for color as well as his consistent interest in the everyday lives of the inhabitants of New Brighton, just across the river Mersey from Liverpool.

It's clear from the works on view here that not only was Wood making color pictures as early as the mid 1970s, there are plenty of examples where color was the driving force behind his compositional decisions: an older woman peers out from behind a lace curtain door window, framed by the bright blue bars of stained glass, the "mother of the cleverest boy in England" wears a bright orange blazer that is exactly matched by the poster board behind her, and two sassy young women with feathered hair perch provocatively on the hood of a shiny red car, with the back end of a lemon yellow trunk intruding from the side. Wall colors, subway tiles, matching shirts, an orange coat here, some red pants there, color was clearly a integral part of how Wood was seeing and framing his surroundings.

Wood also had a street photographer's eye for the serendipitous moment. He captures a whisper between girlfriends, an illicit handoff between street corner hustlers, and a man pointing to his chin in the pub, presumably remembering where he was punched in the face. Fleeting tender gestures abound: a boy touches his father's hair, a mother shelters her child underneath her white sweater, and a woman takes a summertime rest in the heather. Wood alternates between an energetic snapshot aesthetic and something slower and more formal, nimbly matching his methods to the circumstances on the ground.

Part of what makes these photographs so successful is their relaxed ease; Wood was clearly a known quantity in his community and his subjects were comfortable with his camera. That he could move easily from shirtless lads in the streets to old women with their shopping bags and capture the swagger of one and the weary shuffle of the other shows his breadth as careful observer. This show makes a quietly compelling case for Wood's rediscovery, reestablishing his position in the larger sweep of recent British photography.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced based on size. The 12x16 prints are $2400 each, the 16x24 prints are $3000 each, and the 24x35 prints are $4200 each.  Wood's prints have been inconsistently available in the secondary markets in recent years. Prices for those lots that have come up for sale have ranged from roughly $1000 to $4000.

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

Transit Hub:
  • Features/Reviews: New Yorker (here)
  • The Photographers' Gallery, 2012 (here)

Tom Wood, Men and Women
Through July 12th

Thomas Erben Gallery
526 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001

Friday, June 14, 2013

Letha Wilson: Landmarks and Monuments @Art in General

JTF (just the facts): A total of 10 photo-based sculptures, framed in white and unmatted or mounted without framing, and hung against white walls in the spacious single room gallery space. All of the works are digital c-prints prints from 2013, with additions of concrete, white portland cement, wooden 2x4s, aluminum, adhesive vinyl, UV laminate, and/or cor-ten steel. No physical dimensions were available on the checklist, and all the works are unique, many of them site specific. The show also includes a 48-page saddle stitched artist's book and a supporting column stripped of its paint. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Following on the heels of her terrific first solo show at Higher Pictures earlier this year (review here), Letha Wilson has brought location specificity to her tactile photo-based sculptures. While this selection of objects reprises some of the aesthetic themes from her previous show (rock wall photographs dipped in Portland cement, trees and canyons merged with undulating, fan-like concrete tondos), Wilson branches out to consider the architectural and artistic challenges posed by this particular roomy, wood floored gallery. In many ways, these new works function like installation pieces, or more indirectly, like the interventions of Land Art, only brought indoors.

In general, Wilson's work turns on the intersection of the natural and the man made, where classic landscape photographs are married with brash interventions of construction materials, creating objects that bring physicality to the landscape form. What is different here is that Wilson has incorporated the limits of the display space into her compositions, opening up a dialogue with her surroundings. The center of the gallery is dominated by a huge wave form moonscape, cut through by the bold whiteness of one of the room's supporting columns. The graceful undulation of the image matches its quiet blue moodiness, only to be skewered by the jolting white dowel. In another work, a commonplace skyward view of tree branches and leaves merges with the plane of the wall behind it, the corners of the photograph tucking directly into the sheetrock. A long two-by-four slashes across the image, embedded in the drywall, like a man made branch added to the composition. Perhaps the most unexpected intervention in the show comes from a desert canyon image with bright spots covering its surface. From afar, they look like Robert Smithson's Yucatan mirror displacements, but up close they reveal themselves to be holes to the outside world; the work has been mounted over a small unseen window, letting the view to the city peek through the circular openings. It's a clever combination of desert and city, West and East (American that is), natural and highly constructed.

Two other works in the show force the viewer to consider the floor. At first glance, one looks like a toppled over slab of Richard Serra steel or a Carl Andre floor piece. But one corner slyly curls up, revealing just a hint of a sunset hiding underneath, making us wonder what else might be on the other side. A second concrete based work hulks near the back of the gallery, tipped up against the wall. It's a swirling, slashing mass of images of desert canyons and evergreen needles, mashed together and mixed up with grey concrete. It's massive weight makes it easy to see that it had to be made right in the gallery, flat on the floor like a Pollock drip painting. It's by far the most energetic work in the show, exuding a kind of manic, twisting physical immediacy.

Given the momentum of the original ideas embedded in this show, I'm becoming more and more convinced of Letha Wilson's talents. Rarely has photography had such a natural physical presence; her works have a thickness and tactile quality that challenges the typical boundaries of the medium and plays with the dualities of the paper image and its real life subject matter. While plenty of other artists have explored the sculptural qualities of photographs and cobbled them together in piles, gatherings and collages, Wilson's works somehow seem more effortlessly integrated. Her images don't fight the breaking of the two dimensional plane, they move past that constraint without even noticing, smartly transforming photographs into objects of rough elegance, each one an innovative hybrid of opposing forces.
 
Collector's POV: Since this is a non-profit exhibition space, the works in this show aren't overtly for sale. Wilson is represented in New York by Higher Pictures (here). Her work has not yet reached the secondary markets, so gallery retail is the only option for those collectors interested in following up.
 
Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
 
Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Features/Reviews: Artlyst (here), Arrested Motion (here)
 
Through June 29th
 
79 Walker Street
New York, NY 10013