Brian Ulrich, Is This Place Great or What: Artifacts and Photographs @Saul

JTF (just the facts): A total of 10 color photographs and 17 retail artifacts, framed in white with no mats, and hung in the entry and main gallery space. All of the photographs are pigmented ink prints, taken between 2005 and 2011. Physical dimensions include 24x20 or reverse (in editions of 15), 26x20 (in editions of 6), and 40x50/40x52 (in editions of 7). The artifacts include a large neon sign, a set of 10 door pulls, and a set of 6 pages of price labels (individually framed). A monograph of this body of work was published by Aperture in 2011 (here). (Installation shots at right.)

 

Comments/Context: Brian Ulrich's decade long look at the rise and fall of American consumerism has deservedly received widespread praise and exposure. His photographs of flashy retail outlets, depressing thrift stores and disposal units, and most recently, the empty hulks of abandoned malls have together told a complex and sometimes harrowing story about the "buy now" world we have created for ourselves. Seen together in book form, in well-edited, deep groups of pictures from each sub-series, the overarching project is a powerful, sometimes tough document of an entire, arguably discredited, 21st century lifestyle. 

 

Ulrich's current show isn't really a broad sample of this massive project or a greatest hits parade. Instead, it is more like a complement to what we have seen before, combining a handful of familiar pictures with a few new/unseen ones and a selection of sculptural retail objects salvaged by Ulrich along the way. To my eye, it is a particularly polarized selection, bringing together the opposite extremes of hollow optimism and exhausted pessimism: the huge YES, the exuberant rainbow food court, and the back hallway sign Is This Place Great or What? are matched by the series of failed incarnations of a Circuit City, and images of tired storefronts (one is a camera store). The photograph of a vast expanse of steel mill flanked by a vast expanse of Wal Mart and Home Depot is particularly telling: we've traded one massively scaled failing industry for another.

 

While there are far less photographs on display than I might have hoped, the scaveneged objects do fit quite well into the overall narrative. The huge neon FAST FOOD sign (with its speedy font) reminds us of the days when fast food was cool, when we were proud of being able to crank out a cheap burger and toss it in your car window in seconds flat. The broken, buzzing sign is a fabulous sculptural Pop Art remnant. The door handles from Montogomery Ward are equally emblematic: finely milled steel pulls, with a mirror image M and W logo on each. The production values of the entire shopping experience were clearly very carefully managed, even if the store went out of business.

 

Having spent quite a bit of time with the book, I'm a fan of this multi-layered work, and would like to see it shown in New York in a more comprehensive way. But in such a small one room space, it's hard to do justice to such a far reaching project, and as a result, this show seems more like a coda or a refrain: it gives us a few notes of the melody we've heard before, but adds some new twists to keep us thinking.

  

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows. The smaller 24x20/26x20 prints are $2800 each. the larger 40x50/40x52 prints are $6300 each. The pages of labels are $5000 each, the set of door pulls is $14000, and the neon sign is $25000. Ulrich's work has not yet entered the secondary markets in any meaningful way, so gallery retail remains the best option for interested collectors.

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

 

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Exhibit: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2011 (here)
• Features/Reviews/Interviews: The Great Leap Sideways (here), American Photo (here), Time LightBox (here)

Brian Ulrich, Is This Place Great or What: Artifacts and Photographs

Through May 5th

Julie Saul Gallery

535 West 22nd Street

New York, NY 10011

Sarah Anne Johnson, Arctic Wonderland @Saul

JTF (just the facts): A total of 15 color photographs, generally framed in white with no mat, and hung in the entry and both gallery spaces. All of the works are chromogenic prints, most of which have been variously photospotted, painted with acrylic inks and gouache, scratched, embossed and screen printed. Physical dimensions range from 16x24 to 30x165, with several images printed in the 28x42 size. Edition sizes are either 3 or 7. The works on display were made on an artist residency trip to the Arctic Circle, and completed between 2010 and 2011. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: In the past decade, iceberg photography has almost become its own sub genre of the contemporary photographic landscape. Nearly all of these images have had a similar point of view, mixing the otherworldly beauty of the pure, abstract blue and white forms with the harsh, dirty environmental evidence of global warming actually happening. As such, these pictures have often edged toward earnestness, warning us that these natural treasures were indeed melting fast. Sarah Anne Johnson's recent images of the Arctic are something quite different - they take the same vanishing white landscape and instead infuse it with a jolt of whimsy and irony, bringing imagination and folly to the uninhabited ice.

Johnson's works begin with the kind of nearly monochrome land and waterscapes you might expect; snow and dirt intermingled in frosty rock piles, icy glaciers and islands floating in calm waters, huge grey skies reaching to the horizon, and a few intrepid souls in heavy parkas resisting the obvious cold. The conceptual twist here is that Johnson has taken her documentary images of science-based Arctic truth and overpainted them with dreams, visions, and flights of fancy. Geometric solids (triangles, rectangles, and the like) perch like futuristic buildings in previously empty vistas, massive bubbles enclose entire islands and ripple from the surface of the water, impressionistic confetti covers pipelines and rains down on travelers, and watery fireworks explode in the sky and block out the sun. There is a sense of human ridiculousness to it all, the antics being cooly watched by the expansive and indifferent land.

While I will admit that I have never been much of a fan of overpainting in photography, I think Johnson's subtle inclusions of relative absurdity and simple joy give these pictures a lightness that is new and attractive. She has replaced the artful seriousness of the iconic iceberg shots with a "what if" creativity that delivers much the same message about the effects of human intervention in the Arctic ecosystem.
.

Collector's POV: The prints on display in this show range in price from $4800 to $30000, with many intermediate prices, most under $15000. Johnson's work has not yet entered the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.
.
My favorite image in the show was Black Box, 2010; it's on the right in the bottom installation shot. I liked the way she has transformed an image of small figures trudging across the bleak, featureless tundra into something unexpected by introducing a massive black monolith like the one from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but even bigger in relative scale. It's a science fiction caricature, delivered with just the right mix of apparent truth and clear fakery.

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

.
Transit Hub:

• Guggenheim collection (here)
• Review: NYTimes, 2005 (here)

Sarah Anne Johnson, Arctic Wonderland

Through April 9th

.
Julie Saul Gallery

535 West 22nd Street

New York, NY 10011

Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao, BQMB @Saul

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 large scale color images, generally framed in black with no mat and hung in the entry and main gallery spaces. All of the works are pigment ink prints, most mounted on sintra (two are face mounted to plexi and luster laminate respectively). Physical dimensions range from 20x48 to 60x96, with several images printed in the 30x72 size. Edition sizes vary from 4 to 12. The works on display come from a number of different photographic projects and commissions, and were made between 2005 and 2010. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: If you walk into Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao's show at Julie Saul Gallery and do a five second visual scan of the photographs on the walls, your first reaction might very well be "panoramas of New York, seen this kind of thing before, time to move on". Times Square, the Cyclone at Coney Island, you know the drill. But if you resist the temptation to walk right back out and instead stand up close to these images and look at them for several minutes, the works will reveal a depth of detail that is entirely unexpected and therefore initially quite puzzling.

What you'll then begin to realize is that these images are not standard, boring panoramas but actually meticulous digital composites of dozens of large format images, seamlessly integrated into wide views that capture far more than human vision can normally handle. They reminded me of the work of Clifford Ross, where a viewer can dive deeper and deeper into nearly any section of an image and the details remain crisp and sharp, even though normal photographs often become blurred or distorted on the periphery.

Liao has applied this technique to two basic types of compositions: bird's eye views that capture the broader context of the local urban fabric, and street level views that chronicle the chaotic melting pot of crowded humanity in New York's neighborhoods and public spaces. I particularly enjoyed the elevated views of the city's changing baseball stadiums and the surrounding landscape of Queens and the Bronx. The works capture the expansive density of city planning, of roadways and rail lines slashing through endless low rise developments, warehouses and non-descript blocks, with old and new juxtaposed and continually evolving over time. They successfully document the vibrant scope of the boroughs - the landmarks and gathering places as well as the warren of everyday streets and commercial districts.

I think the challenge for Liao lies in using his obvious technical skills to make durable and memorable images about the changing nature of these New York neighborhoods without falling into the trap of overly-easy eye-catching gimmicks. His technical approach offers the ability to construct complicated, multi-layered stories and to show us the conflicts, contrasts and personalities that we take for granted in this complex city; his tools offer him the potential to expose facets of our lives we haven't seen before. As a result, this show seems most like a promise, a gathering of current evidence (with a few early highlights) that makes me anticipate what will come next as he digs even deeper.

Collector's POV: The prints on display in this show range in price from $5000 to $14500, with many intermediate prices ($5800, $7000, $8500, $10000, and $11000) apparently based on relative size or place in the edition. Liao's work has only recently begun to enter into the secondary markets, so no real pricing pattern can be discerned from the few lots that have come up for sale. As such, gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

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

Transit Hub:

• Reviews: New Yorker (here), DART (here), NYTimes, 2009 (here)
• Urban Panoramas @Getty, 2010 (here)
• Book: Habitat 7 (here)

Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao, BQMB
Through October 28th

Julie Saul Gallery
535 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

Brian Ulrich, Thrift and Dark Stores @Saul

JTF (just the facts): A total of 20 color prints, hung in the entry and main gallery space. 9 of the images are chromogenic prints from the Thrift series, 30x40 or reverse, taken in 2005-2006 and printed in editions of 5, with white frames and no mats. The other 11 works are pigmented ink prints from the Dark Stores series, all taken in 2008; 10 of these have been printed 11x14 in editions of 15 and framed in dark wood frames with no mat, the other single image has been printed larger, 50x40 in an edition of 7. All of the images in this series come in both sizes. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: In contrast to the plethora of safe, self contained and mildly conceptual projects we see throughout contemporary photography today, Brian Ulrich has taken on a monster of a challenge - making sense of the quintessential American reality of all-encompassing consumerism. This vast subject has already taken him in several different directions (the sales floor at big box stores, the back room at big box stores, the people of these environments) and this small show of new work is evidence that the topic has many more intriguing facets to be explored.
.

The images from Thrift are primarily interiors, stuffed full with overstocked, passed down or liquidation items, the end of the line dumping ground for goods with no home. Ulrich has uncovered a subculture of sifting here, of workers and shoppers alike digging through piles and piles of "bargain" merchandise in down at the heels warehouses. These works depict the opposite of the shiny brand new atmosphere of most retail stores, and open up trickier questions about underlying social structures and classes.

.

The works from Dark Stores are primarily nighttime exteriors, gloomy architectural shots of boarded up car dealerships and restaurants, and abandoned big box stores with for rent signs and painted over non-logos. The deserted malls and empty parking lots have an unsettling sameness, quiet surrender in town after town. Given our current economic environment, echoes of these images can be found in every decent sized commercial area in America.

Ulrich's approach seems to borrow in equal parts from Lewis Baltz, Paul Graham, and Martin Parr: some deadpan frontal architectural pictures with an undertone of questionable sustainability, some more social documentary type images that ask deeper questions about the entire system and its effects on the people involved, and some works that use a subtle dose of carefully applied humor and irony to get at many of these same concerns. Any one of these approaches as applied to the subject might end up being too reductive; mixing the three together has brought forth a more complicated and multi-dimensional picture of the reality.

.

It doesn't take a genius to see that "buy more stuff" wasn't a particularly durable solution to all of America's woes, and emptiness that is now being left behind raises even more doubts about consumption as any kind of answer. And while there will clearly be excellent stand alone images that will come out of Ulrich's many intertwined projects, my guess is that these works will ultimately work best in book form, where careful sequencing of many more images will help to tell a much more nuanced and detailed story.

Collector's POV: The prints from the Thrift series are priced at $4000, while the Dark Stores works are priced at either $6500 or $1000 depending on size. Ulrich's work has not yet entered the secondary markets in any meaningful way, so collectors interested in following up will need to contact the retail galleries that represent his work. For our particular collection, the architectural exteriors from Dark Stores would be the best fit, as they would help continue a narrative line that runs through our entire genre of city/industrial images.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• 2009 Guggenheim fellowship (here)
• Interviews: Chicagoist (here), Conscientious (here)
• Video interview (here)

Brian Ulrich, Thrift and Dark Stores
Through July 3rd
.

Julie Saul Gallery
535 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

Luigi Ghirri: It's Beautiful Here, Isn't It... @Aperture and Bloomsbury

JTF (just the facts): 88 color prints (and one wall sized montage) with white frames, arrayed in the main gallery space at Aperture. An additional 16 images shown in the entry and near the reception desk at Bloomsbury. The combined exhibition is a mixture of vintage C-prints and Polaroids and modern pigment prints. All of the images are from the 1970s and 1980s. (Installation shot of Aperture show at right.)

Comments/Context: Even within the short history of photography, there seem to be plenty of high quality photographers who get lost for one reason or another. The Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri was one of these misplaced artists who, having been virtually unknown in the United States his entire career, has recently been "rediscovered". This pair of shows is the first major exhibition of Ghirri's work in America, and coincides with a new monograph being published by Aperture.

.

Ghirri is now being positioned as a trail blazer in color photography, placing him in the same category and time period as 1970s Eggleston, Shore, Christenberry, and Sternfeld. And yet, his aesthetic, as evidenced by the works in these shows, was markedly different from these American photographers, and seems more clearly derived from European threads of photography.

.

The first thing that struck me about these images was Ghirri's palette. All of the images have a washed out, sunny coloring, full of soft pastels and light colors; there are no crisp blacks or high contrasts in any of these pictures. The colors are far less saturated than any of his American contemporaries, softening any harshness and making the images somehow more friendly and welcoming.

.

Beyond the color sensations, the works clearly extend many of the ideas of Surrealism, in a magical, playful, Italo Calvino-esque way. There is an "edge of reality" feeling throughout Ghirri's work, and experiments with collage and montage, as well as eclectic camera angles and conceptual stagings, are explored and delivered as simple and subtle surprises. There doesn't seem to be one dominant set of ideas here, but more a series of related explorations, and the works seem to alternate between a quiet, contemplative mood and one with a little more zest and humor. The fact that he was doing all of this within the new confines of color makes the pictures all the more intriguing.

.

The exhibit itself needs some editing; there are a few too many pictures and the whole show feels a bit flabby as a result. 10-15 less pictures would have made the argument that much tighter and would have minimized the fatigue; by the end, all the faded colors were starting to blend for me. The overflow pictures shown at Bloomsbury didn't add anything to what I had already seen at Aperture, so these are likely a pass, unless you are a die hard Ghirri fan and want to see every last image on view.

Collector's POV: I particularly enjoyed Ghirri's series of images from Morandi's studio, and few of his more painterly topographic-style images of walls and doors. None of the images in either of these exhibitions is directly for sale, but when I inquired, I was eagerly told to make a list of images I was interested in and someone would get back to me, so perhaps some are potentially available (at what price I don't know). The Ghirri estate is represented by Julie Saul Gallery.

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

Luigi Ghirri: It's Beautiful Here, Isn't It...

Through January 29th (at Aperture)

Through January 8th (at Bloomsbury)

Aperture Gallery

547 West 27th Street

New York, NY 10001

Bloomsbury Auctions

6 West 48th Street

New York, NY 10036

When Color Was New @Saul

JTF (just the facts): 38 mostly vintage works, hung in both the small entrance way and the larger, light filled gallery. (Installation shot, at right.) Negative dates range from 1936 (Outerbridge) to 1985 (Eggleston), though most are clustered in the 1970s. Here's a list of the photographers included in the exhibit, with the number of works in parentheses:

Harry Callahan (2)
William Christenberry (2)
William Eggleston (2)
Mitch Epstein (1)
Walker Evans (1)
Luigi Ghirri (3)
Nan Goldin (2)
Dan Graham (1)
Jan Groover (2)
David Hockney (1)
Helen Levitt (2)
Joel Meyerowitz (4)
Paul Outerbridge (1)
Martin Parr (2)
John Pfahl (2)
Stephen Shore (2)
Arthur Siegel (2)
Joel Sternfeld (2)
Boyd Webb (2)
Terry Wild (2)

Comments/Context: After spending some time with this exhibition, my conclusion is that the time "when color was new" was a mixed bag, a chaotic period of experimentation, with an appropriately uneven selection of work produced. It seems as though each artist had his or her own challenges with "digesting" the new ideas color brought to the table. A few were successful in getting over to the other side, many failed, and another group abandoned the old ways and embraced the new. While different photographers experimented with different processes over a decently long period of time (where, by the way, is the representative autochrome?), it is clear that things really changed after Eggleston was canonized; the MoMA exhibit encouraged a whole generation of photographers to continue down a new road. Thirty years later, we now take color for granted.

A recurring thought for me as I looked at these pictures was that while some were clearly better than others, on the whole, this early work as a genre is under appreciated by collectors. I don't think I can name a single collector who has a large, deep collection of this kind of work, although they must be out there somewhere (there isn't a single color picture in our collection at the moment, but I think this will change over time). A few thoughts on a handful of the artists represented:

• Shore: I think Shore will be the first color photographer in our collection. His work from this time was very consistently strong and is getting stronger with age. Looking at the images, you can see that he actually completely rethought how color influenced the process of picture making.
• Evans: His late Polaroids are fun. I'd like to have a group/grid of these matted/hung together.
• Parr: These pictures are deceptively well made, and resonate long after you have stopped smirking at the joke.
• Pfahl: Why is this work forgotten? As an aside, we had a Pfahl that my mother bought hanging in our house when I was growing up. It was the one with strips of lace spread over the scrub brush, echoing the foam from the waves at the seashore (I don't know the exact title off hand.) I always thought it was a puzzling and amazing image. I think the same for his other work; really unlike anyone else.
• Sternfeld: While his work won't fit as neatly into one of our genres, I think his pictures continue to be thought provoking, partly because of their use of color, partly because of their careful setting of scenes.
• Callahan: I think his dye transfers are under appreciated. When I was first exposed to them, I didn't think much of them, but as time has passed, I think they are standing up better than I had originally thought.

Another reaction I had to this show was that I need to force myself to be more attentive to the different color processes (carbo, chromogenic, dye transfer, Cibachrome, Polaroid etc.) and the nuances of their color palettes - they really are aging at different rates. Some seem dated; others seem fresh.

Collector's POV: Prices in this show range from $1500 (Pfahl) to $50000 (Sternfeld), with the ever mysterious NFS (not for sale) obscuring the value of a few of the pictures (the iconic Eggleston in particular). I think Evans ($6000), and Shore ($8000-10000) seem close to reasonable for Chelsea retail. Christenberry ($6000) and Callahan ($8500) are higher than recent auction ranges for equivalent work. Joel Meyerowitz' work seemed astonishingly high to me ($16000-$45000), but I'm not following it closely.

All in all, this a worthwhile exhibit that gets you thinking about some work that may have drifted off your radar.

Rating: ** (2 stars) VERY GOOD (rating system defined here)

When Color Was New
Through September 6th

Julie Saul Gallery
535 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011