Showing posts with label Denis Darzacq. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Denis Darzacq. Show all posts

Monday, March 21, 2011

2011 AIPAD Review, Part 2 of 2

The 2nd and final portion of our 2011 AIPAD Review is below. Part 1 of the summary (which includes an explanation of the format) can be found here.

Galerie Priska Pasquer (here): Lieko Shiga (3), August Sander (4), Shomei Tomatsu (4), Shin Yanagisawa (2), Daido Moriyama (1), Issei Suda (2), Rinko Kawauchi (5), Nobuyoshi Araki (2), Yutaka Takanashi (6). The Pasquer booth was one of the best edited displays at AIPAD, with a strong mix of vintage and contemporary Japanese photography (with a few vintage Sanders on an inside wall). Takanashi (one of the founders of Provoke) was a discovery for me; the modern prints below were priced at $4900 each. There were also some excellent early prints by Kawauchi and a superb Araki portrait.



M+B (here): Matthew Porter (4), Anthony Lepore (4), Hugh Holland (3), Mike Brodie (6), Alex Prager (1).

L. Parker Stephenson Photographs (here): Jan Yoors (3), Louis Faurer (1), Harold Roth (2), Lisette Model (1), Edward Steichen (1), Irving Penn (1), Erwin Blumenfeld (1), Umbo (2), Charlotte Rudolph (1), Zdenek Tmej (1), Raphael Dallaporta (6). I was intrigued by the scale and ornate detail of these Dallaporta pipe organ images. The large print was reminiscent of Candida Höfer for me, although the level of detail up close was even more meticulously precise; the smaller images were almost like post cards, yet with an astounding level of visual depth and granular accuracy. Prices were $15000 for the large print, $3500 for the smaller ones.


Stephen Daiter Gallery (here): Joseph Sterling (6), Aaron Siskind (5), Ken Josephson (2), Andre Kertesz (3), Berenice Abbott (1), Walter Peterhans (1), Herbert Bayer (1), Stanley Kubrick (1), Eliott Erwitt (3), Weegee (4), John Gossage (3), Lynne Cohen (4), Danny Lyon (2), Ruth Orkin (1), Dawoud Bey (1), Yasuhiro Ishimoto (1), Robert Frank (3), Alex Webb (2).

Michael Shapiro Photographs (here): Irving Penn (1), Helen Levitt (1), Robert Frank (3), Harry Callahan (1), Manuel Alvarez Bravo (8), Eugen Wiskovsky (1), Jaromir Funke (1), Josef Sudek (6), Pierre Dubreuil (1), Charles Sheeler (1), Man Ray (1), Robert Imandt (1), Fletcher Gould (1), Elmer Blew (1), R. Owen Shrader (1), Pirkle Jones (1), Lewis Baltz (6), Ansel Adams, (1), Brett Weston (1), Imogen Cunningham (1), Anonymous (8), Jefferson Hayman (group on outside wall). Shapiro's booth had two of my favorite vintage prints at the fair, hanging right next to each other. The Dubreuil study of spectacles and shadows was simply masterful, full stop. And I don't think I've seen more than a handful of River Rouge Sheelers out in the market since we started collecting, so it was terrific to look at this one up close. The amounts weren't labeled and the booth was crowded, so I didn't get prices for these two gems.




Yossi Milo Gallery (here): Pieter Hugo (2), Alison Rossiter (12), Sze Tsung Leong (2), Ezra Stoller (2), Simen Johan (1), Loretta Lux (2), Yuki Onodera (14).

Higher Pictures (here): Yvon (6), Sam Falls (1), Claire Pentecost (4), Jill Freedman (64), LaToya Ruby Frazier (1). Fall's image disregards all the distinctions that we normally make about the where the edges of the photographic process lie. He starts with photographic imagery, adds a layer of painterly Photoshop effects, and then overlays the resulting print with even more layers of acrylic and pastel. The mixed media result is an abstract hybrid, jolted by splashes of color; it's priced at $4500.


Eric Franck Fine Art (here): Robert Bergman (5), Richard Avedon (1), Antanas Sutkus (2), Rimaldis Vikstraitis (2), Marketa Luskacova (2), Martine Franck (2), Charlotte Bracegirdle (4), Josef Koudelka (1), Geraldo de Barros (4), Erwin Blumenfeld (2), Henri Cartier-Bresson (1), Graham Smith (4), Chris Killip (4), Layla Love (2), Karen Knorr (2), Katarzyna Mirczak (16), Norman Parkinson (6), Lottie Davies (2). Mirczak's grid of Polish prisoner tattoos on preserved skin fragments is an unsettling mix of the memorably grisy and the surprisingly symbolic. The set is priced at $15000.


Bonni Benrubi Gallery (here): Massimo Vitali (1), Georges Dambier (4), Abelardo Morell (7), Matthew Pillsbury (3), Andreas Feininger (12), Paolo Pellegrin (3).

Bruce Silverstein Gallery (here): Shinichi Maruyama (2), Michael Wolf (3), Andre Kertesz (12), Man Ray (2), Irving Penn (1), Marie Cosindas (1), Trine Sondergaard (4), Frederick Sommer (4, collage, drawing, painting), Aaron Siskind (3), John Wood (1), Arthur Siegel (1), Henry Moore (1), Nathan Lyons (5 diptychs), Todd Hido (1), Edward Weston (2). I though this early Siegel light drawing was fantastic, with its abstract waves of rhythmic saturated color; this is the kind of image that should have been in the photography room of MoMA's AbEx show, but wasn't. It was priced at $25000.



Scheinbaum & Russek (here): Luis Gonzalez-Palma (2), Eliot Porter (4), Harry Callahan (2), Edward Weston (4), Ruth Bernhard (2), Andre Kertesz (1), Walter Chappell (1), Manuel Alvarez Bravo (3), Edward Curtis (2), Ansel Adams (4), Paul Caponigro (3), Aaron Siskind (1), Minor White (1), William Garnett (1), Lee Friedlander (2), Diane Arbus (1), Henri Cartier-Bresson (1), plus two bins.

Laurence Miller Gallery (here): Simone Rosenbauer (2), Daido Moriyama (1), Toshio Shibata (1), Fan Ho (1), Fred Herzog (1), Ray Metzker (4), Denis Darzacq (2), Lee Friedlander (2), Stephane Couturier (1), Bruce Wrighton (15), Michael Spano (3), Jessica Backhaus (10). This is a 2010 image from Darzacq's Hyper series; this time his young subject is floating through what appears to be a carpet store; it was priced at $7500.


Robert Morat Galerie (here): Christian Patterson (5), Richard Renaldi (2), Richard Rothman (5).

William L. Schaeffer Photographs (no website): Edouard Loydreau (1), Carleton Watkins (1), Eugene Cuvelier (2), Minor White (1), Harry Callahan (1), Clarence White (1), Heinrich Kuhn (1), Walker Evans (1), Margaret Bourke-White (2), Robert Frank (1), NW Gibbons (2), plus three bins and one case of daguerrotypes. This is the kind of 19th century print that makes you rethink everything you think you know about 19th century photography; the massive Watkins tree is seen in crisp dark detail, almost with a modernist sensibility; it was priced at $75000, with a lifetime's worth of enjoyment thrown in for good measure.


Howard Greenberg Gallery (here): Ilse Bing (1), Martin Munkacsi (3), Edward Steichen (1), Charles Sheeler (1), Albert Renger-Patzsch (1), Arnold Newman (1), Minor White (2), Ansel Adams (1), Bruce Davidson (4), Saul Leiter (2), Peter Sekaer (5), David Goldblatt (5), William Klein (1).

James Hyman Photography (here): William Henry Fox Talbot (1), Horatio Ross (3), Roger Fenton (2), Hill & Adamson (3), Julia Margaret Cameron (1), Paul Reas (4), Ken Grant (2), Jem Southam (2), Anna Fox (4), Karen Knorr (4), Thomas Annan (2), Bert Hardy (1), Caroline Coon (2), Cecil Beaton (2), Roger Mayne (2), Lucien Clergue (1), JH Lartigue (1), Eugene Atget (1), Brassai (1), Andre Kertesz (1), Bill Brandt (1), Edward Weston (1), plus four bins. As flower collectors, this rich, dark Fox Talbot study is near the apex of the genre for us; no wonder it was $450000 (the shadow is from the velvet cover being pulled back).



Robert Mann Gallery (here): Kevin Kay (9), Jeff Brouws (33), Holly Andres (1), Julie Blackmon (2), John Mack (2), O. Winston Link (1), Fred Stein (2), Ansel Adams (1), David Vestal (2), Aaron Siskind (2), Joe Deal (2), Chip Hooper (2), Michael Kenna (4), Mario Giacomelli (3).
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ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE: For the rest of this week, we'll be on spring break. We'll be back next Monday with a backlog of gallery show reviews and auction previews for the upcoming New York photographs season.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Denis Darzacq, HYPER @Laurence Miller

JTF (just the facts): A total of 15 color images, framed in white with no mat, and hung in the entry/reception and main gallery spaces. All of the c-prints are 38x52 or reverse, made in editions of 8, and taken in 2007/2008. A monograph of this work has been published by Filigranes Editions (here). A supporting exhibition entitled "Body Language" hangs salon style on one wall in the entry. It contains a grouping of 16 vintage works depicting bodies in motion taken by a wide variety of photographers. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: A trip down the aisles of a large supermarket or big box store can often feel like an assault on the senses: walls of bright colors and eye catching graphics jostle for attention, offering a dizzying array of life changing features and suspect benefits. The choices attack from all sides, pummeling consumers with a nearly infinite number of ways to buy.
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French photographer Denis Darzacq has extended this simple metaphor to its logical conclusion by making startling images of young people drifting through the air amidst the consumer excess of French hypermarkets. Dancers dressed in everyday clothes alternately hang listless in the refrigerated section, dive face first near the shampoo, and lunge near the toilet paper. Every picture features a different flavor of mid-air balletic grace: falling, flying, floating, twirling and soaring, with some of the moves looking more like the unexpected reaction to an explosion or a fight, with bodies blown back, hanging face down like corpses or twisted like rag dolls. Since these works are not digital Photoshop constructions but actual stop-motion photographs, some of these moments of quiet, angelic hovering likely ended in punishing falls. The message is elegantly and exuberantly clear: there's an invisible battle going on in aisle three, and relentless consumerism is delivering a potent barrage of body blows. While we've seen this theme explored in plenty of contemporary photography, these works have a freshness and vitality that separates them from the depressing and hectoring hordes.
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Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced in an escalating edition, starting at $7500, moving to $11500, and finishing at $15000, depending on the location in the edition. Darzacq's work has very little secondary market history, so gallery retail is likely the best option for interested collectors at this point. The various vintage prints hung in support of the main exhibit are priced between $2000 and $38000.

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

Transit Hub:
  • Artist site (here)
  • Agence VU page (here)
  • Features/Reviews: Lens culture (here), The Daily Beast (here), Photograph (here), The Independent (here)
Through March 27th
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