Auction: Contemporary Art, March 7, 2013 @Sotheby's New York

Sotheby's is up first in this week's Armory friendly sales, with its Contemporary Art sale on Thursday. Photography-wise, the sale is light on headliner images, but there are a handful of solid images that could potentially siphon off some fair-directed cash. All in, there are a total of 32 lots of photography on offer, with a total High estimate for photography of $704000.

Here's the statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000): 8
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $59000

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 22
Total Mid Estimate: $505000

Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 2
Total High Estimate: $140000

The top photography lot by High estimate is lot 137, Mike Kelley and Bob Flanagan, More Love Than Can Ever Be Repaid, 1990, estimated at $60000-80000.

Here's the list of photographers represented by two or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Gregory Crewdson (4)
Philip-Lorca DiCorcia (2)
David LaChapelle (2)
Julian Opie (2)
Richard Prince (2)

Other photographs of interest include lot 101, Walead Beshty, Three Sided Picture, 2007, estimated at $25000-35000 (image at right, top), lot 207, Pieter Hugo, Jatto with Mainasara, Ogere-Remo, Nigeria, 2007, estimated at $25000-35000 (image at right, middle), and lot 219, Philip-Lorca DiCorcia, Hong Kong, 1996, estimated at $12000-18000 (image at right, bottom, all via Sotheby's.)

The complete lot by lot catalogs can be found here.

Contemporary Art
March 7th

Sotheby's
1334 York Avenue
New York, NY 10021

Pieter Hugo, Permanent Error @Milo

JTF (just the facts): A total of 17 large scale color photographs, framed in white with no matting, and hung in the single room gallery space and the back viewing alcove. All of the works are digital c-prints, taken in Ghana in 2009 and 2010. The prints come in two sizes: 68x68, in editions of 3+2AP, and 39x39, in editions of 10+2AP; there are 2 large prints and 15 smaller prints in this show. Only the portraits come in the large size; the still lifes and landscapes are only available in the smaller size. A monograph of this body of work was published by Prestel (here) in 2011. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: The South African photographer Pieter Hugo is quietly building a superlative body of unconventional portraiture. From his hyena men and Nollywood actors to his most recent series depicting scavengers of electronic waste, he has routinely documented subjects on the margins and far outside the mainstream, each and every sitter peering straight into the camera with a penetrating, often confrontational gaze. Time and again, regardless of the strangeness of the circumstances (at least to Western eyes), he has captured faces both resolutely human and staggeringly otherworldly.

His newest pictures come from the Agbogbloshie Market near Accra, Ghana, where tons of cast off computers and electronics are unloaded daily, left to be broken down and separated from their valuable precious metals by a band of scraggly foragers. The site itself is a hellish, almost post-apocalyptic scene: burning heaps of discarded plastics, billows of toxic smoke, dark scorched earth, and acres of dusty greyness. Amidst this ugliness, small groups of hunters with long sticks dig through the piles and stand unsmiling and serious, covered in sweat and soot, breathing in the fog of noxious fumes.

The extremity of this place makes it seem almost like a fantasy, which of course, it is not. And while others have made successful pictures of trash heap scavengers (Zwelethu Mthethwa and Vik Muniz come to mind), Hugo's portraits have a stronger sense of powerful intensity, of having crossed into a world more shocking and disturbing than normal. The eye to eye connection between viewer and subject packs a memorable emotional wallop, and hidden traces of personality (an iPod tucked in a hat, a pink ribbon on a lacy white dress) peek from underneath the horror to make the subjects more real. While the commentary on our disposable culture and its impact on the environment is obvious, the strength of the photographs is in their human connection. What endures long after you've left the gallery is the hang wringing sense of both sympathy and outrage, felt for those who doggedly toil in dangerous obscurity.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced based on size. The 68x68 prints are marked N/A, while the 39x39 prints are $12000 each. Hugo's work has begun to enter the secondary markets with more regularity in the past year or two, with prices ranging from $4000 to $27000. That said, very few lots have come up for auction, so gallery retail is likely the best option for interested collectors at this point.
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Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Review: New Yorker (here)
• Book reviews: BJP (here), Photo-eye (here)

Pieter Hugo, Permanent Error
Through October 29th

Yossi Milo Gallery

525 West 25th Street

New York, NY 10001

Photography at the 2011 Armory, Part 2 of 4

Part 2 of our 2011 Armory summary covers the remainder of the main Pier 94, straight ahead from the entrance. Part 1 of the review (which includes an explanation of the format) can be found here.

Catherine Edelman Gallery (here): Julie Blackmon (2), Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison (3), Gregory Scott (3), Nan Goldin (2), Myra Green (group of 23). Green's works depict the close-up features of the artist's face (ears, nose, mouth, lips), in an exploration of black stereotypes. I liked the messiness of the ambrotype process, which adds a blunt roughness to the simple forms. To get a sense of scale for the image below, each work is just a few inches by a few inches, each easily held in one hand. The whole set was available for $44000.

Galeria Oliva Arauna (here): Zwelethu Mthethwa (1), Per Barclay (1), Jorge Molder (3), Juan Carlos Robles (2), Gabriele Basilico (24), Alfredo Jaar (1), Miguel Rio Branco (1)

Galleri Bo Bjerggaard (here): Per Bak Jensen (1)

Jiri Svetska Gallery (here): Miroslav Tichy (3), Petra Feriancova (5), Petra Mala Miller (2), Katarina Poliacikova (1)

Galerie Eigen+Art (here): Rémy Markowitsch (8). A water damaged auction catalogue forms the basis of Markowitsch's images. The reproductions are torn and eroded, allowing multiple layers to show through, creating interlocking patterns and textures in black and white. They were priced at $22000 each.

Galerie Guy Bartschi (here): Marina Abramovic (1), Nan Goldin (2)

Rena Bransten Gallery (here): Vik Muniz (2), Candida Hofer (2)

Bryce Wolkowitz Galley (here): Ola Kolehmainen (2)

Yossi Milo Gallery (here): Yukio Onodera (11), Simen Johan (2), Alison Rossiter (2 diptychs), Sze Tsung Leong (2), Loretta Lux (2), Pieter Hugo (2). Hugo's imposing portrait is from a sprawling computer recycling facility in Ghana, where spare parts and metals are salvaged. It was priced at $23000.


Cardi Black Box (here): Shirana Shahbazi (1)

Voges Gallery (here): Martin Liebscher (1)

Greenberg Van Doren Gallery (here): Tim Davis (6)

Michael Stevenson (here): Viviane Sassen (6). Sassen's work has a quiet dance-like elegance; I particularly liked the one of the far left below, where the anonymous body lounges amid the drapery. These were priced between $2000 and $7500.

Luciana Brito Galeria (here): Caio Reisewitz (1), Allan McCollum (1), Geraldo de Barros (8), Rochelle Costi (5)

Goodman Gallery (here): Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin (1), Mikhael Subotzky (3), Jodi Bieber (1), David Goldblatt (1). Goldblatt's elevated image of an endless shanty town resolves itself into intricate texture and dense pattern. I remember asking the price, but I somehow didn't write it down.

Galerie Laurent Godin (here): Gonzalo Lebrija (3)

Carolina Nitsch (here): EV Day (6), Alyson Shotz (6), Vera Lutter (3). Shadowy new photogravures by Lutter, this time of pyramids. They were $6000 each or $15000 for the set (pre-publication).

Timothy Taylor Gallery (here): Susan Hiller (11)

Produzentengalerie Hamburg (here): Wael Shawky (2)

Galerie Sfeir-Semler (here): Akram Zaatari (3), Yto Barrada (2)

Kukje Gallery (here): Candida Hofer (1)

Galerie Krinzinger (here): Frank Thiel (1), Kader Attia (1), Paul McCarthy (2), Oleg Kulik (2), Rudolf Schwartzkogler (2), Gunter Brus (1), Otto Muehl (10), Valie Export (1), Marina Abramovic (8), Angelika Krinzinger (4 triptychs). Krinzinger's images depict fragmented bodies supported by plastic braces with velcro strips; the effect is sculptural and abstract. The triptychs were priced at $2500 each.

Galerie Thaddeus Ropac (here): Sturtevant (11)

Sies + Höke (here): Etienne Chambaud (2), Joao Maria Gusmao and Perdo Paiva (4)

Part 3 can be found here.

Pieter Hugo, Nollywood @Yossi Milo

JTF (just the facts): A total of 10 large scale color photographs, framed in white with no matting, and hung in the single room gallery space. All of the works are digital c-prints, taken in Nigeria in 2008 and 2009. The prints come in two sizes: 68x68, in editions of 5, and 44x44, in editions of 9; there are 2 large prints and 8 smaller prints in this show. A monograph of this body of work was published by Prestel in 2009. (Installation shots at right.)
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Comments/Context: It seems that almost immediately after Pieter Hugo's Nollywood series was published in book form last year, strong opinions started to form on both sides of the work. After following some of the online debate and controversy last Fall (some of it linked below), I was eager to see the images in person and come to my own conclusions based on first hand experience of the prints themselves.
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The series is drawn from the busy Nigerian film industry, and depicts a variety of actors and actresses in macabre scenes: a nude man poses in a Darth Vader mask, a man in a suit stands over the bloody carcass of a water buffalo, a nude woman has a machete stuck in the middle of her chest, a man in a top hat and tails with white circles around his eyes sits in a junkyard, a man with a white mask and fake ears stands in an overcoat wielding an ax.
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The reactions to these images have been polarized primarily based on questions of documentary truth and intent. For those who see these works as valid depictions of Nigerian culture (or of African culture more generally), charges of exploitation, racism, caricature, and the ignorance of the white man's gaze have all been leveled against Hugo. For those who see the works as merely yet another example of complex staged fictions, many have found these portraits extremely powerful, with a strange and disturbing intensity.
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To my eye, these works most resemble film stills from slasher movies, amplified and composed for maximum effect. They have an otherness that mixes horror with an underlying dose of grotesque comedy; strange (and perhaps unknowable) things are clearly going on, depicted with equal parts fear, black humor, and bloody gore. I am in no position to judge with a sense of anthropological correctness whether these images capture Nigerian myths, symbols, or spiritual stories with any fidelity, but I certainly didn't read this as an even handed documentary study. These portraits are weird, wild, and melodramatic fictions that take us to shocking and surreal fantasy worlds, and I'm not offended if the artist took some liberties in exaggerating their details to generate more emotional impact.
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As I left the gallery, I was thinking about the inversion of this story and how it might play out. What if well-crafted stylized portraits and scenes of Hollywood horror actors were made and shown in African art galleries; how would the audience respond, given a different cultural context? Would they find them strange and powerful, revolting and disgusting, or just plain puzzling? In the end, I think we see fictions like Hugo's through our own particular cultural lens and history. As such, I saw these works as over-the-top and strangely different versions of universal stories and tales, making them jarring and thought-provoking in new and unexpected ways.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced based on size. The 68x68 prints are $14000 each, while the 44x44 prints are $9500 each. Hugo's work has not really reached the secondary markets in any consistent way to date, so gallery retail is likely the only real option for interested collectors at this point.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Politics, Theory & Photography (here), Amy Stein (here), Heading East (here)
• Book review: Foto8 (here)

Pieter Hugo, Nollywood
Through April 10th

Yossi Milo Gallery
525 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001