Photography in the 2013 Armory Show, Part 1 of 2

In what might sound like a contradiction, this year's Armory Show has both more and less photography than in previous years. "More", in that by my count, there were 97 booths showing something that might be called photography (out of a possible 214 not including the publishers). That's over 45% of the galleries, which must be some kind of record and is certainly an increase from what was on offer last year. But a glass half empty kind of person might characterize this show as quite a bit "less", in that eclectic mid-tier randomness seems to have replaced the parade of boldfaced names and highly saleable, contemporary material that we've come to expect at this kind of gathering. If you are looking for Sherman, Gursky, Prince, Gilbert & George, Ruff, Struth, Tillmans, and the like, you will wear out your shoe leather and generally come up empty handed.

This portion of my notes covers the Focus area and the long extending arm of Pier 94; the second part will cover the remainder of Pier 94 and all of Pier 92. The booths/galleries are arranged by my path through the fair, roughly up and back along the aisles. For each booth, a list of photographers has been provided, with the number of works on display in parentheses. Additional commentary, prices, and pictures of the installation are also included as appropriate.

Galleria Continua (here): Carlos Garaicoa (2)

Higher Pictures (here): This booth contained three new works by Artie Vierkant. They're physically thinner than his last works (now on Dibond instead of thick Sintra) and more compositionally complex and multilayered ($17000 each). I think they're getting better.

Aisho Miura Arts (here): Shuhei Yamada (9)

Various Small Fires (here): Liz Magic Laser (2)

moniquemeloche (here): Joel Ross and Jason Kreps (4)

CONNERSMITH (here): Lincoln Schatz (1 set of 30, 1)

Anthony Meier Fine Arts (here): Roy McMakin (1 set of 6, 1 set of 4)

Francis M. Nauman Fine Art (here): Sherrie Levine (1 set of 18 postcards)

Pilar Corrias Gallery (here): Leigh Ledare (1)

Pekin Fine Arts (here): Kata Legrady (1), John Clang (2), Martin Parr (1), WassinkLundgren (4 diptychs). The photography duo of WassinkLundgren have taken to the streets of Tokyo, simultaneously taking two images of the same scenes from slightly different vantage points. The effect is Paul Graham's The Present meets Barbara Probst, highlighting the particular unmistakable flow of Tokyo ($2000 for each diptych). While discussing the fine Martin Parr auto show image on the outside wall, I heard that Parr is at work on a book of Chinese photobooks.

Kalfayan Galleries (here): Hrair Sarkissian (12)

Spaces Corners (here): Ed Panar (2), Andrea Galvani (1), Tim Hyde (5). These four photo collages by Tim Hyde were shown at the Philadelphia Museum of Art a few years ago. I like the way they break up the parking lot view into Cubist shards that are reassembled into abstract interruptions ($5000 each).

Andy Warhol Museum (here): Andy Warhol (5 modern enlargements)

Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (here): Cui Xiuwen (1)

Aperture (here): James Welling (1), Andrea Galvani (1), Enrique Metinides (1), Bill Armstrong (1), Doug Rickard (1), Michel Campeau (1), Sarah Moon (1), Richard Mosse (1), Silvio Wolf (1), Lars Tunbjork (1), Hank Willis Thomas (1), David Levinthal (1), Abelardo Morell (1), Rinko Kawauchi (1), Bruce Davidson (1), Michal Chelbin (1), Denis Darzacq

Whitechapel Gallery (here): John Baldessari (1), Roy Voss (1), Thomas Ruff (1), Zarina Bhimji (1), Rodney Graham (1), Peter Abrahams (1), Gerard Byrne (1)

Upstream Gallery (here): Frank Ammerlaan (1)

Baró Galleria (here): Ricardo Alcaide (2)

Bruce Silverstein Gallery (here): André Kertész (3 Polaroids), Max Neumann (6), Man Ray (1), Silvio Wolf (1 set of 30, 1), Trine Søndergaard (4), Bill Brandt (1), Shinichi Maruyama (3), Keith Smith (2), Constantin Brancusi (2), Michael Wolf (1), Todd Hido (2), Mark Cohen (1), Nicolai Howalt and Trine Søndergaard (1), Walker Evans (1), Aaron Siskind (1), Nicolai Howalt (1), Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1). This booth was a solid mix of both contemporary work and vintage gems. This 1930s Brandt nude was a particular surprise, as I hadn't previously seen one from earlier than the mid 1940s ($35000).

espaivisor - Galeria Visor (here): Nil Yalter (1 set of 10, 1 triptych, 1 set of 16), Sanja Ivekovic (1 set of 100)

ONE AND J. Gallery (here): Jung Lee (5). I suppose it was inevitable that the "pithy phrase in neon" so prevalent in contemporary art would finally make the jump to staged photography ($15000 each).

Galeria SENDA (here): Oleg Dov (2), Anna Malagrida (2)

Galerie Crone (here): Daniel Megerle (10), Adrien Missika (4)

Galerie Ron Mandos (here): Hans Op De Beeck (1)

Rhona Hoffman Gallery (here): Luis Gispert (1), Xaviera Simmons (1), Karthik Pandian (2), Vito Acconci (1), Robert Heinecken (3)

Ingleby Gallery (here): Garry Fabian Miller (1 set of 4)

Sies + Höke (here): Joao Maria Gusmao and Pedro Paiva (1), Daniel Gustav Cramer (1 set of 7)

Sprüth Magers (here): John Baldessari (1), David Lamelas (8), Cindy Sherman (5), Louise Lawler (1)

Goodman Gallery (here): Mikhael Subotzky (2), Alfredo Jaar (1), Hank Willis Thomas (1 set of 6), David Goldblatt (3)

Luciana Brito Galeria (here): Caio Reisewitz (1). Marina Abramović (2), Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich (1), Regina Silveira (1 installation). This is a new work by Marina Abramović; I liked the tiny cracks climbing up the expanse of green and the unsettling blackened finger ($90000).

Cardi Black Box (here): Shirana Shahbazi (4). These are new works by Shahbazi, more active and overlapped than other abstractions I have seen by her.

Corkin Gallery (here): arbara Astman (5), Thaddeus Holownia (1 set of 100), André Kertész (3), Constantin Brancusi (1), Marion Post Wolcott (1), Frank Mädler (1)

Tang Contemporary Art (here): Wang Gongxin (2 videos), Ji Zhou (1), Yang Yong (1 diptych)

Galerie EIGEN + ART (here): Ricarda Roggan (3)

PPOW (here): Adam Putman (10)

Howard Greenberg Gallery (here): Joel Meyerowitz (2), Gordon Parks (1), Edward Burtynsky (1 diptych, 2), Imogen Cunningham (1), William Klein (4), Bruce Davidson (2), Robert Frank (2), Vivian Maier (4), Saul Leiter (4), Ted Croner (1), Caleb Cain Marcus (2). This lively diamond mural abstraction isn't what you might expect from William Klein ($19000).

Angles Gallery (here): Ori Gersht (5, 1 lightbox, 1 diptych) Soo Kim (5). This handcut inkjet print by Soo Kim is elegantly interwoven and delicate ($10000). Another example of a contemporary photographer playing with the surface/physicality of the print.

Haines Gallery (here): David Maisel (1)

Galerie van Gelder (here): Steven Parrino (1)

Leila Heller Gallery (here): Reza Aramesh (1 triptych)

Hales Gallery (here): Sebastiaan Bremer (1)

Vistamare (here): Mimmo Jodice (1)

Pierogi (here): Nadia Bournonville (1), Kevin Cooley (2)

Susan Inglett Gallery (here): Sarah Charlesworth (2)

Yossi Milo Gallery (here): Alison Rossiter (3), Simen Johan (1), Myoung Ho Lee (3), Mark Ruwedel (1 set of 15), Matthew Brandt (3), Doug Rickard (1), JD Okhai Ojeikere (2), Julie Cockburn (3). This new Matthew Brandt is more swirly and abstract than other works from this same series ($19000); the underlying lake drenched image is hardly recognizable.

Ignacio Liprandi Arte Contemporaneo (here): Jorge Pedro Nuñez (4). Square format Artforum ads projected into Albers-like layers of color ($4000 each).

Loevenbruck (here): Morgane Tschiember (1 set of 6)

Jack Shainman Gallery (here): Richard Mosse (1), Hank Willis Thomas (1), Barkley Hendricks (1). I was blown away by the electric contrast between the blue and the red/pink in this new Richard Mosse ($24000).

Corvi-Mora (here): Anne Collier (2)

Kukje Gallery (here)/Tina Kim Gallery (here): Kimsooja (1), Haegue Yang (2 sets of 4, 1 set of 3, 1 set of 2), Candida Höfer (1), Jenny Holtzer (1)

Part 2 of this post can be found here.

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

Image Object @Foxy Production

JTF (just the facts): A group show containing a total of 13 works by 4 artists/photographers, variously framed, and hung in the main gallery space and the smaller back room. (Installation shots at right.)

The following artists/photographers are included in the show, with the number of works on display and image details listed after the names. No edition information was available on the checklist.

• Andrea Longacre-White: 3 archival inkjet prints, framed in white and unmatted, each 36x26, from 2012
• Travess Smalley: 3 digital c-prints, framed in white and unmatted, each 40x30
• Kate Steciw: 3 c-prints with mixed media and plexiglas, framed in oak and unmatted, each 40x30, from 2012; 1 sculpture (customized metal), 2012
• Artie Vierkant: 1 six-pass UV print on Sintra, unframed, 54x16, from 2012; 1 sculpture (IKEA Vilgot, IKEA Dignitet, screws), from 2012; 1 sculpture (IKEA Grundtal, North Face Etip gloves), from 2012

Comments/Context: We tend to hear the phrase "on trend" when it's used to judge the ins and outs of the seasonal variations in the fashion industry, but the truth is, we could just as easily apply it to the patterns and groupings found at the emerging edge of the art world. In our contemporary photography subculture, we might say that digital aesthetics are on trend this year, or process centrism, or the exploration of photography as archive. One cluster of activity that is undeniably on trend for 2012 is the continued objectification of photography. This well-edited show contains plenty of fresh examples of work from this burgeoning genre, where artists are leveraging layers of construction steps into finished works that play with three dimensionality.

Andrea Longacre-White's images are complex and interlocked, using meticulous stratified rephotography to build up textural monochrome abstractions (installation shot at right, top). Her works contain areas that alternate between the crisply sharp and the softly blurred or pixelated, paper layers ripped and cut into angular lines and geometric forms again and again, covering the narrow spectrum from black to white. I was impressed by both the conceptual sharpness and the elegant balance of these works, and I liked the small digital cursors that popped up in expected locations, confusing my ability to unpack the overall temporal order.

At first glance, Travis Smalley's all-over abstract works look like colorful swirled finger paints, but as you move in closer, they begin to have an unexpectedly undulating texture. This is when you realize that things are not as they seem. The works were made by putting modeling clay on the glass bed of a scanner, and the resulting flat images document the squishiness of the clay and the artist's left over smears and fingerprints (installation shot at right, second from top). It's a new twist on intermediated process, offering unexpected avenues for exploring fluid abstraction.

Kate Steciw's works are unabashedly digitally manipulated, taking garish stock photos in blazing lurid colors and bending and chopping them into busy angles and smooth curves, almost like marbled Italian papers, albeit with a harsh dizzying brightness (installation shot at right, second from bottom). Her images are then adorned with lines of colored tape, pink sponges, carpet remnants, silvery stickers, and chrome car parts stuck right on prints and frames, bringing them into the realm of collage or combine and adding texture and depth to her brash, knife-edged palette.

Finally, Artie Vierkant's pastel gradient object has perhaps traveled the farthest from photography, forgoing any camera based imagery at all for a dive into software (installation shot at right, bottom). This work is clean and machined to perfection, almost like a blurred Bauhaus photogram, reinterpreted in a 21st century aesthetic.

Overall, this show is an insightful sampler of some of the recent approaches being used to reconsider contemporary photography in object form. All the works play with conversion and transformation, starting with one visual idea and rendering it in an altered form, where the reconstruction process modifies the original in innovative ways. While we're clearly still in the first phase of this trend, the overall concept has certainly opened up some new, uncharted white space for photographers to investigate.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced as follows:

• Andrea Longacre-White: $2500 each
• Travess Smalley: $1700 each
• Kate Steciw: $3000 each for the prints, $1800 for the sculpture
• Artie Vierkant: $4500 for the print, $2400 and $1600 for the sculptures

None of these artists/photographers has much if any secondary market history, so at this point, gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors looking to follow up.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:

• Andrea Longacre-White artist site (here)
• Travess Smalley artist site (here)
• Kate Steciw artist site (here)
• Artie Vierkant artist site (here)

Image Object

Through July 13th
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Foxy Production

623 West 27th Street

New York, NY 10001