Photography in the 2013 Frieze New York Art Fair, Part 2 of 5

Part 1 of this five-part Frieze report can be found here. Start there for introductory background and explanatory notes.

Miguel Abreu Gallery (here): Eileen Quinlan, $15000. This is a pulsating, attention grabbing color study - the shiny material of the woven rubber yoga mat picks up tiny reflections, dotting the electric yellow green with flecks of textured red.

Andrew Kreps Gallery (here): Roe Ethridge, $16000. There's something unexpectedly off about these red tennis tights (the racquet seems overly big as well). It's an eye-catching example of Ethridge's mix of commercial and fine art aesthetics working together to produce something puzzlingly compelling.

Frith Street Gallery (here): Dayanita Singh, $19400. This work is actually three, housed in a custom wood box with interchangeable slots. The overflowing piles of ledgers are documented in all three images, giving the entire work a richer resonance.

Stuart Shave/Modern Art (here): Linder, £15000. A simple image intervention interrupts this self-portrait, creating a jarring hybrid face..

Maureen Paley (here): Gillian Wearing, £35000. Another in Wearing's ongoing series of self-portraits in the guise of famous photographers, this time peering out from the face of Weegee.

Salon 94 (here): Katy Grannan, $14000. This booth had a powerful wall to wall installation of images from Katy Grannan's new 99 series. Taken along California's Route 99 and set against blistering, eye squinting white backgrounds, the images get close up to a parade of weathered faces and forgotten lives. They recall Dorothea Lange and Richard Avedon's In the American West, mixing unflinching harshness and quiet authenticity.

Cheim & Read (here): Adam Fuss, $60000. While I had seen this same mattress covered with a tangle of writhing black snakes in Fuss' last gallery show, I hadn't seen the snakes replaced by a black female mannequin before; it adds another detail to Fuss' garden/Eve story.

Sean Kelly Gallery (here): James Casebere, $45000. Casebere's picture perfect stage set world given a darker, worn out alter ego, with a moss covered rooftop, a broken fence, and a landscape of barren, lifeless trees.

Galerie Krinzinger (here): Otto Muehl, complete portfolio €150000. This booth was dominated by an edge to edge hanging of images documenting 10 different actions/performances by Muehl - Viennese Actionism captured in raw, transgressive, experimental brashness.

Massimo Minini (here): Luigi Ghirri, $12000. A street scene through an ice cream store window, seen with Ghirri's subtly surreal playfulness.

Continue to Part 3 here.

Katy Grannan: The Happy Ever After: The Believers and Boulevard Series @Salon 94

JTF (just the facts): A two-part show, split between the gallery spaces at 243 Bowery and 1 Freemans Alley. The Freemans show consists of 28 large scale color photographs, framed in white and unmatted, and hung nearly edge to edge in the single room space. The Bowery show consists of 6 photographs upstairs (framed similarly) and 1 three-channel video (9 minutes long) shown in the main downstairs space. All of the photographs are archival pigment prints on cotton rag paper mounted to Plexiglas, made between 2008 and 2010. The photographs are generally sized 39x29 (in editions of 3), except for one image in the Bowery show which is 26x20 (also in editions of 3). The video was made in 2010, in an edition of 5. A monograph of this body of work is available from the gallery for $45. (Installation shots at right.)
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Comments/Context: It's a pretty tough challenge for a young photographer to wedge herself into the already crowded field of contemporary street portraiture and then durably and defensibly develop an original point of view. In fact, this genre is so strewn with entirely forgettable, derivative photographers that it most resembles a medieval battlefield after a particularly bloody exchange; hardly anyone actually emerges intact with a brand new formula. Katy Grannan's images of the invisible and marginal inhabitants of the sun blasted streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles aren't pictures that deviate widely from those of a handful of recognized masters, and yet, she seems to have found a way to tweak the proportions of the visual ingredients just enough to generate an unusual recipe. A touch less intimate and empathetic than Arbus, a pinch more offhand and less formal than Avedon's In the American West, and quite a bit more theatrical and performative than most street photography or Sander clones, Grannan's photographs capture a melting pot of quirks and eccentricities with a surprising level of cool distance and mystery.

All of Grannan's images have a roughly similar composition: 3/4 pose with an indirect glance, against a whitewashed backdrop in pure sunlight. From there, the details of personalities expand in an infinite number of directions. A man in a silky green and blue shirt shimmies against a wall, while another with a top knot and heavy makeup frowns into the distance. Bushy beards, long wavy hair, black eyes, elaborate tattoos, breathing tubes and wigs tell part of the story, while simple poses and gestures become almost dance-like against the uniform flatness. While these pictures have the trappings of picked from the sidewalk documents, there is something altogether collaborative and choreographed about the final results; there are multiple layers of subtle performance going on, with the subjects creating personalities both for themselves for and the passing camera.

While not every one of these portraits is completely compelling and memorable, I found the overall effect of the many photographs seen together to be evidence of something new. Grannan seems to have synthesized the lessons of her many predecessors and successfully incorporated a more conceptual mindset, generating an approach that is at once personal and removed. It's a tricky line to walk, and several of the images fall a little flat. But when she gets the emotional temperature just right, the photographs have that timeless sizzle that makes me think we will be seeing pictures from this series again and again in the years to come.

  

Collector's POV: The photographs in this show are available in two sizes: the 39x29 images are $11000 each, and the 26x20 images are $9500 each. Grannan's work is just beginning to become available in the secondary markets; recent prices have ranged between $3000 and $10000. Given the small amount of her work available at auction, gallery retail is still the best option for interested collectors at this point. This project was also recently shown at Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco (here).

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My favorite image in the show was Anonymous, San Francisco, 2010; it's fourth from the left in the top installation shot. I liked the faded, aspirational glamour of the older woman's swirl of windblown hair, combined with her giraffe print shirt and beaded swan handbag; it's roughly harsh and touching at the same time. I also particularly liked the soft, ironic undertone of Anonymous, Los Angeles, 2009; it's the last image on the right in the third installation shot. In it, a long haired man with a FUCK LAPD tattoo across his chest stands gently holding two small bunnies.
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Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

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Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Reviews: La Lettre de la Photographie (here), Huffington Post (here)
• Interview: Daily Serving (here)

Katy Grannan: The Happy Ever After: The Believers and Boulevard Series
Through April 30th

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Salon 94

Salon 94 Freemans
1 Freemans Alley
New York, NY 10002

Salon 94 Bowery
243 Bowery
New York, NY 10002

Auction Results: Under the Influence, March 8, 2011 @Phillips

The proceeds for the photography in Phillips' Under the Influence sale last week exceeded expectations, covering the high estimate with room to spare. With some help from Barbara Kruger and a low Buy-In rate (under 15%), it was a solid result all around.

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

Total Lots: 55
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $375000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $532500
Total Lots Sold: 47
Total Lots Bought In: 8
Buy In %: 14.55%
Total Sale Proceeds: $654750

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

Low Total Lots: 40
Low Sold: 33
Low Bought In: 7
Buy In %: 17.50%
Total Low Estimate: $215500
Total Low Sold: $238500

Mid Total Lots: 15
Mid Sold: 14
Mid Bought In: 1
Buy In %: 6.67%
Total Mid Estimate: $317000
Total Mid Sold: $416250

High Total Lots: 0
High Sold: NA
High Bought In: NA
Buy In %: NA
Total High Estimate: $0
Total High Sold: NA

The top lot by High estimate was lot 143, Vik Muniz, After Mark Rothko (from Pictures of Colors), 2001, at $30000-40000; it sold for $68500. The top outcome of the sale was lot 89, Barbara Kruger, Ohne Titel - Lust, 2001, at $92500.

82.98% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate range. There were a total of 6 surprises in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate):

Lot 77, Ryan McGinley, Dash Bombing, New York, 2000, at $20000 (image at right, top, via Phillips)

Lot 84, Katy Grannan, Untitled (from Poughukeepsie Journal), 1999, at $10000

Lot 85, Katy Grannan, Untitled (from Poughkeepsie Journal), 1999, at $11250 (image at right, bottom, via Phillips)

Lot 89, Barbara Kruger, Ohne Titel - Lust, 2001, at $92500

Lot 102, Dionisio Gonzalez, Heliopolis IV, 2006, at $8125

Lot 185, Zhang Huan, Meat and Text (from 1/2 Series), 1998, at $20000 (image at right, middle, via Phillips)

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

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Phillips De Pury & Company
450 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10022

and

450 West 15th Street

New York, NY 10011