Photography in the 2013 Frieze New York Art Fair, Part 4 of 5

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

Sikkema-Jenkins & Co. (here): Vik Muniz, $75000. Muniz' take on Courbet's Stone Breakers, using his recent follow-the-ideas, rebus-like scraps of magazines approach.

Paul Kasmin Gallery (here): David LaChapelle, $65000. A glowing model gas station in a nighttime jungle.

Reena Spaulings Fine Art (here): K8 Hardy, $10000. Two fashion handbags sliced apart and glued back together in a mismatched hybrid. Shown on a lightbox for added brightness.

Galerija Gregor Podnar (here): Attila Csörgö, €8000. An intricate mirrored structure, used to capture the falling trajectory of a lighted die. The result is both a sculpture of movement and an illusionistic multi-angle view.

Wallspace (here): Daniel Gordon, $10000. These Gordon still lifes were among my favorite works at the fair. They erupt in a riot of color and pattern, with layers of photographs collaged into a multi-dimensional installation and then flattened back into a single plane. They take ideas begun in previous smaller still life works and boldly extend them into much more complicated constructions and compositions.

Jack Shainman Gallery (here): Richard Mosse, $20000. These cotton candy Mosse landscapes have become an art fair staple, but there always seems to be a new one to catch my eye.

Almine Rech Gallery (here): Taryn Simon, $35000. Simon's archival investigations have turned to photographs of collections of images around a certain word or theme (in this case "wealth", perfect for an art fair). I was more intrigued by the underlying system of sorting/choosing than the actual end results, and maybe that was the point.

Stephen Friedman Gallery (here): Rivane Neuenschwander, $12000. Talcum power and water constructions that recreate the swirling look of oil spills.

Kadel Willborn (here): Barbara Kasten, $25000. The architectural patterns of World Financial Center, doused in candy colored light and repeated via mirrors, 1980s abstraction gone wild.

Art: Concept (here): Geert Goiris, $32700. The wailing girl in the newspaper clipping is an ominous, almost traumatic partner for this dead bird.

Continue to Part 5 here.

Auction Results: Contemporary Art Evening and Day Auctions, February 12 and 13, 2013 @Sotheby's London

The photography results from Sotheby's Contemporary Art auctions in London last week were generally lackluster, dragged down by a few too many passes on the higher priced photographs. With an overall Buy-In rate for photography across the two sales of nearly 30% and almost no meaningful positive surprises, the Total Sale Proceeds for photography came in under the low end of the range.

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

Total Photography Lots: 34
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: £1293000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: £1901000
Total Lots Sold: 24
Total Lots Bought In: 10
Buy In %: 29.41%
Total Sale Proceeds: £1224600

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

Low Total Lots: 0
Low Sold: NA
Low Bought In: NA
Buy In %: NA
Total Low Estimate: £0
Total Low Sold: NA

Mid Total Lots: 21
Mid Sold: 17
Mid Bought In: 4
Buy In %: 19.05%
Total Mid Estimate: £321000
Total Mid Sold: £283450

High Total Lots: 13
High Sold: 7
High Bought In: 6
Buy In %: 46.15%
Total High Estimate: £1580000
Total High Sold: £941150

The top lot by High estimate was lot 37, Andreas Gursky, Singapore Börse, 1997, at £350000-550000; it was also the top outcome of the two sales £421250.

95.83% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above their estimate. There was only one surprise in these sales (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate), coming on one of the lowest estimated lots:

Lot 361, David LaChapelle, Andy Warhol: Last Sitting, 1986 and Jeff Koons: Sandwich, 2001, together estimated at £5000-7000, selling for £15000 (image at right, top, via Sotheby's)

Complete lot by lot results can be found here (Evening) and here (Day).

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

David LaChapelle: From Darkness to Light @Lever House

JTF (just the facts): A total of 5 photographic works, generally unframed and either affixed directly to the walls and windows or hung from the ceiling in the single room lobby space. One large photographic collage (measuring 14'6" by 10'6") is displayed on an inside dividing wall. A group of approximately 14000 rings connected into long paper chains hangs from the ceiling. The other three works are made of translucent photographic stickers; the two circular works are each 8 feet in diameter. All of the works are from 2011. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: In recent years, David LaChapelle was been diverging a bit from his fashion and celebrity roots and diving deeper into art historical and religious iconography, albeit updated with a flashy modern sensibility. In his last show, Michael Jackson became took the guise of a saint and Naomi Campbell was the star of a Botticelli restaging. In this lobby exhibit, he updates an icon of 19th century realism, Theodore Gericault's The Raft of the Medusa (here).
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If you've ever stood in front of The Raft of the Medusa in the Louvre, you will certainly remember its immense scale and its punishing savagery. Using corpses from the local morgue as subjects, Gericault created haltingly lifelike recreations of twisted naked bodies in agony. While there is some hope in the desperate waving of a cloth by one of the castaways, I've always thought this seemed like the ultimate in futility, as the massive waves crashed over and engulfed the tiny raft. LaChapelle's version of this same story is layered and collaged swirl of photographic imagery, where cardboard cutouts and watercolor washes add three dimensional Cubist depth to the scene. The difference here is in the nudes; you might just as well call it "anguish in high heels". The male and female bodies have a perfection to them straight out of a fashion spread (washboard abs, artfully grizzled beards), where the fear looks more staged and the suffering looks a bit hollow. Perhaps his restaging is more optimistic, but the trials and tribulations of all these good looking people lack the raw pathos and visceral energy of the original.
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The main area of the lobby is covered with dangling paper chains, the kind pre-schoolers make out of construction paper and staples. LaChapelle's chains are double sided standing nudes, where heads, torsos, and legs get twisted and recombined into an endless connection of anonymous body parts, running the spectrum of light to dark pink. It's an easygoing, straightforward riff, mostly decorative I think. On the glass side walls of the lobby, LaChapelle has affixed two circular areas of translucent stickers, one pink circle of male nudes and one purple circle of female nudes. Perhaps a little like a stained glass window, they seemed more like a petri dish to my eye, with tiny blobs of tadpole humanity swimming in tight swirling circles.
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While I didn't particularly resonate with the end results here, I found some of the process ideas worth thinking about further, including the creating of multi-level surface via the collaging of photographic imagery and the use of transparency to open up the "art against a flat wall" effect.
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Collector's POV: David LaChapelle is represented by Fred Torres Collaborations in New York (here). LaChapelle's work is intermittently available in the secondary markets, ranging in price from $10000 to 140000 in recent years.

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

• Artist site (here)
• Feature: NY Observer (here)

David LaChapelle: From Darkness to Light
Through September 2

Lever House Art Collection

390 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10022

Auction: Post-War and Contemporary Art, September 16, 2010 @Christie's South Kensington

The upcoming Post-War and Contemporary Art sale at Christie's South Kensington office in London marks the opening of the second half of the auction year for photography, and can be thought of as a warm-up for the heavier action which will take place later in October and November. Mixed in with works from a variety of other mediums, there are a total of 46 lots of photography on offer in this auction, with a Total High Estimate of £337700.

Here's the statistical breakdown:
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Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including £5000): 27
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): £83700
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Total Mid Lots (high estimate between £5000 and £25000): 16
Total Mid Estimate: £144000
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Total High Lots (high estimate above £25000): 3
Total High Estimate: £110000
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The top lot by High estimate is lot 160, David LaChapelle, Deluge: Museum, 2007, at £35000-45000. (Image at right, top, via Christie's.) The next highest lot by High estimate is lot 14, Thomas Ruff, m. d. p. n. 28, 2003, at £25000-35000. (Image at right, via Christie's.)

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

Nobuyoshi Araki (6)

Garry Fabian Miller (3)
Cindy Sherman (3)

Richard Artschwager (2)
Zarina Bhimji (2)

John Coplans (2)

Elger Esser (2)
Robert Mapplethorpe (2)

Thomas Ruff (2)

Andy Warhol (2)

The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here. The eCatalogue is located here.

Post-War and Contemporary Art
September 16th

Christie's
85 Old Brompton Road
London SW7 3LD

David LaChapelle, American Jesus @Kasmin

JTF (just the facts): A total of 5 large scale color photographs and 5 preliminary studies hung in two adjoining gallery spaces. The 5 photographs are all chromogenic prints, framed in white with no mats, made in editions of 3 from 2009. 3 of the works are 96x72, the other two are 84x72 and 52x120 respectively. The studies are a mixture of watercolor, collage, and graphite drawings on paper, and are framed in white and matted; they show initial ideas/iterations/versions of the image The Rape of Africa.

Comments/Context: Given the intensity of our celebrity-obsessed, pop culture soaked culture, it is not surprising that artists have sprung up who have been drawn to a heavy dose of slick commercialism and aggressive public relations. In recent years, David LaChapelle has made a steady stream of outrageous magazine covers, music videos, and elaborately staged celebrity portraits that walk the knife edge of fabulous and trashy, mixing vibrant garish colors, kitchy scene setting and a myriad of art historical symbols and references. Whether or not they fit our traditional definitions of great art, they hold up a mirror to our society and capture one view of the over-the-top spirit of the times.

In his newest photographs, LaChapelle has posed the ultimate pop icon, Michael Jackson, in a variety of quasi-biblical poses: held Pieta style by a bearded Jesus lookalike in the woods (complete with fallen sequined glove), standing on top of a devil with hands in prayer wearing white angel wings, and hand in hand with a saint on his day of beatification. His carefully constructed images depict Jackson as a prophet or martyr, reenvisioning the suffering and persecution brought on by his unmatched celebrity. The works have surreal, dramatic freakiness that verges on religious folk art, albeit on a massive scale with glossy production values, almost like album covers.
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The other two images in the show take on religious corruption and African exploitation, the latter seen as an updating of Botticelli's Venus and Mars, complete with Naomi Campbell, cherubs holding rocket launchers, goats, golden treasure, and backhoes. While the rework itself is a bit awkward and overly symbolic, I enjoyed seeing LaChapelle's preliminary drawings and collages hung nearby. These show a photographer who is undeniably building up his imagery in a painterly way, constructing and reconstructing ideas and motifs to achieve his desired results.

On one hand, I must admit that these pictures didn't do much for me, and I can see how many will dismiss them as ridiculous, disposable camp (coming soon to a t-shirt near you). But having said that, the outlandish weirdness of the Michael Jackson images is such that I can actually imagine them finding their way into some museums and contemporary collections, where they will successfully hold down large walls and make people gawk, point and fight, some in visceral dislike, others in star-worshipping positive awe. While they are not exactly shocking, given Jackson's astounding fame, it would be hard to walk by one of these photographs without some kind of reaction. And so while I can't exactly recommend these works, they are undeniably polarizing and memorable, and therefore worth seeing, if only to choose for yourself on which side to stand.

Collector's POV: The large photographs in this show are priced between $95000 and $125000. LaChapelle's work has jumped in value in recent years, with prices now routinely running between $10000 and $140000.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Reviews: New Yorker (here), Independent (here), Stylelist (here)
• Interview: Nowness (here)

David LaChapelle, American Jesus

Through September 18th

Paul Kasmin Gallery
293 Tenth Avenue
New York, NY 10001

Auction: Italia, June 30, 2010 @Phillips London

Another installment in Phillips' themed sale series takes place in London later this week with an auction entitled Italia. It's generally a mixed bag of Italian artists, with an additional group of other artists using Italy or Italians as subject matter. Out of a total of 235 lots available in all mediums, 73 are photographs, with a Total High Estimate for photography of £631100. (Catalog cover at right, via Phillips.)

Here's the breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including £5000): 32
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): £110600

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between £5000 and £25000): 37
Total Mid Estimate: £355500

Total High Lots (high estimate above £25000): 4
Total High Estimate: £165000

The top lot by High estimate is lot 120, David LaChapelle, Statue, Los Angeles, 2007, at £50000-70000. (Image at right, via Phillips.)

Here is the list of photographers who are represented by three or more lots in the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Piergiorgio Branzi (5)
Mario Giacomelli (4)
William Klein (3)
Enzo Sellerio (3)

The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here.

Italia
June 30th

Phillips De Pury & Company
Howick Place
London SW1P 1BB