Photography in the 2013 Armory Show, Part 2 of 2

Part 1 of this two part post can be found here. Start there for background and a general explanation of the format of the summary. This portion of my notes covers the shorter area on the left of Pier 94 and all of Pier 92.

Lisson Gallery (here): Gerard Byrne (1), Cory Arcangel (2)

Max Wigram Gallery (here): Jose Dávila (1 set of 53, 1), Slater Bradley (1). Dávila is another artist playing with the properties of the cut photograph. In this work, he has taken pictures of famous sculpture from around the world and then excised the artworks, leaving white outlines and blobs which are surprisingly recognizable (entire set $65000).

The surrounding area in the Bradley nude below is entirely covered in black marker, making a slightly striated and entirely opaque background ($40000).

i8 (here): Roni Horn (1 set 5), Orri Jonsson (3)

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

Loock Galerie (here): Holly Zausner (3 multi-image arrays)

Marlborough Chelsea (here): Rashaad Newsome (4 collages)

Yancey Richardson Gallery (here): Alex Prager (2), Zanele Muholi (5), Victoria Sambunaris (1), Sharon Core (1), Andrew Moore (1), Olivio Barbieri (2), Rachel Perry Welty (1)

Galleri Brandstrup (here): Ola Kolehmainen (2)

Paradise Row (here): Adam Bloomberg and Oliver Chanarin (1), Douglas White (1), Jane and Louise Wilson (1)

Rotwand Gallery (here): Klaus Lutz (5)

CLEARING (here): Ryan Foerster (9)

Rokeby Gallery (here): Matthew Sawyer (8)

Winkleman Gallery (here): Shane Hope (2). While most of the works in this booth were made using 3D printing, there were two quasi-photographic works on view: the one below (a digital print, $18000) and another, which was a holographic/lenticular print. The density of collaged digital imagery in this work is truly astounding, with layer upon layer of structural elements, exploded genomes, and other scientific models.

Victoria Miro (here): Isaac Julien (1), Idris Khan (1)

Sean Kelly Gallery (here): Frank Thiel (1), Alec Soth (2), Idris Khan (1), James Casebere (1). This is a new work by Casebere, with a falling table top house and a wildfire ($50000).

Galerie Rodolphe Janssen (here): Adam McEwen (2), Justin Liberman (1)

Galerie Nathalie Obadia (here): Andres Serrano (2), Youssef Nabil (2), Lorna Simpson (9)

Michael Kohn Gallery (here): Simmons & Burke (1)

Henrique Faria Fine Art (here): Alexandra Apostol (1)

Rena Bransten Gallery (here): Vik Muniz (2)

Other Criteria (here): Mat Collinshaw (3), Damien Hirst (1)

Parkett (here): Liu Xiaodong (1), Zoe Leonard (1), Yto Barrada (2), Tracey Emin (1)

Mike Karstens (here): Thomas Wrede (1), Gerhard Richter (2)

Mixografia (here): John Baldessari (1 set of 6)

Crown Point Press (here): Darren Almond (6)

Durham Press (here): Mickalene Thomas (1)

Bitforms Gallery (here): Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (2). These works were massive arrays of high definition scans of fingertips (taken from financial services employees), each rectangle its own individual set of whorls and lines ($37000).

Derek Eller Gallery (here): Thomas Barrow (1)

Galerie Forsblom (here): Ola Kolehmainen (1)

Galerie Daniel Templon (here): David LaChapelle (1), James Casebere (1)

Blain Southern (here): Wim Wenders (1)

Galerie Eva Presenhuber (here): Martin Boyece (1), Matias Faldbacken (2)

HackelBury Fine Art (here): William Klein (6), Mike & Doug Starn (3), Pascal Kern (4), Garry Fabian Miller (4), Bill Armstrong (3)

Wetterling Gallery (here): Mike & Doug Starn, Nathalia Edenmont (3), Pinar Yolaçan (2). I thought these works by Yolaçan were very smart. She's taken fleshy nudes and covered the skin with some kind of textured lotion. With the heads cropped out and the bodies posed against colored backgrounds, they turn into stone fertility idols ($7500).

Galerie Michael Schultz (here): Andres Serrano (3), Vik Muniz (1)

Mireille Mosler Ltd. (here): Fischli/Weiss (1), Richard Prince (1). Pretty hard to beat this fabulous Fischli/Weiss shoe sculpture ($75000).

David Klein Gallery (here): Trisha Holt (2)

Alan Koppel Gallery (here): Garry Winogrand (2), Hiroshi Sugimoto (3), Patrick Faigenbaum (1)

Forum Gallery (here): Davis Cone (1)

Robert Klein Gallery (here): Irving Penn (10), Bill Jacobsen (2), Francesca Woodman (4), Richard Avedon (1), Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou (3), Imogen Cunningham (1), Edward Weston (1), Alfred Stieglitz (1). Lots of vintage treasures in this booth, including a wall of bold Irving Penn fashion portraits. While there were other more famous Penn images on view, I enjoyed this one the most, with its tower of hair and its flared collar ($45000).

Fleisher/Ollman Gallery (here): Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (5)

Senior & Shopmaker Gallery (here): Robert Rauschenberg (1 collage of 4)

Marc Selwyn Fine Art (here): Rodney Graham (1), Irving Penn (1), Richard Misrach (1)

Chowaiki and Co. (here): Vik Muniz (2), Man Ray (1)

Galleria Repetto (here): Hiroshi Sugimoto (2)

Galerie Thomas (here): Marc Quinn (4)

Vivian Horan Fine Art (here): Almagul Menilbayeva (2)

Greater New York 2010 @MoMA PS1

JTF (just the facts): A large group show of recent contemporary work made by New York-based artists, displayed across all four floors of the PS1 building. A total of 68 artists have been included in the exhibit, 19 of which (roughly 28%) can be called photographers (using a broad definition of that term). The show was curated by Klaus Biesenbach, Connie Butler, and Neville Wakefield. Unfortunately, PS1 has both prohibited photography in the galleries and failed to provide images of the included works on its public website, so annoyingly, this review has neither installation shots or image highlights.

The following photographers are included in the exhibit, with the number of images on view in parentheses:

Michele Abeles (7)
Deville Cohen (3, 1 video)
LaToya Ruby Frazier (12, 1 video)
Zipora Fried (3)
Daniel Gordon (5)
K8 Hardy (18)
Alisha Kerlin (8)
Deana Lawson (6, 1 large installation)
Leigh Ledare (22, 1 stack of images, 3 videos)
Alice O'Malley (12)
Lucy Raven (1 photo animation, 1 video, 1 case of ephemera)
Mariah Robertson (8)
David Benjamin Sherry (19)
Erin Shirref (28)
Xaviera Simmons (1 grid of 42, 2 others)
A.L. Steiner (1 three wall installation)
Elisabeth Subrin (4)
Hank Willis Thomas (1 set of 82)
Pinar Yolacan (8)

Comments/Context: Given our passionate interest in photography, sprawling group shows like Greater New York always feel like a bit like a treasure hunt; we wander through the galleries in search of the photography, never knowing what might be beyond the next white wall. With this show's thematic focus on brand new work from emerging contemporary artists from the New York area, we expected to be surprised and challenged by some work and to be bored by much of the rest, and hoped to be introduced to some new names worth keeping an eye on. I think our expectations were realistically low, and I think the show delivers the ungainly mixed bag that we expected.

Trying to discern themes or patterns in such a diverse body of photography is a tricky prospect, but given the high highs and the low lows we have experienced in the past five tumultuous years, the fact that so much of the photographic work on display is inward looking and self reflective, with a heavy dose of performance, was a surprise. Perhaps this is a result of early career artists still looking to refine their voices and seeking that clarity by peering inward, but I came away a bit troubled by the tin ear the New York artists seem to be showing toward the important issues of the day. I'm a sucker for big meaty new ideas that make my eyes bug out, but most of the photography I found here was both preoccupied with personal nuances and lacking in radical innovation.

That isn't to say that there wasn't plenty of work to enjoy on display. I've detailed a handful of favorites and special attractions below:

• I stood in front of Xaviera Simmons' large array of appropriated images of boat people and refugees hung in the entry of the show for quite a long time, feeling the combination of isolation, desperation and wild hope of being packed in like sardines on a makeshift raft or rusting barge, heading for the unknown. This was one of the only pieces in the exhibit that I thought tried to get at the uncertain spirit of the times, that sense of unease and lack of control that has been so common of late.
• Deville Cohen's sparse constructed scenes, made up of ladders, step stools and shredded paper, and pictures of ladders and step stools, have intriguing layers in their simple conceptual inversions. The video of the fake car wash (once again made from these primary materials) mixes humor and creative inventiveness to successfully evoke an everyday object. These works seem like a promising set of ideas worth further exploration.
• Pinar Yolacan's Mother Goddess series also uses a relatively simple construct to generate something more powerful. In these works, Yolacan completely covers her models from head to toe, wrapping them like mummies in skin tight cocoons of denim, black latex, or patterned fabric. They are then posed against monochrome colored backgrounds, lounging like odalisques. The resulting images are weirdly mute, like ancient fertility figurines or fetish objects.
• LaToya Ruby Frazier is clearly another emerging photographer with some momentum behind her. Her formally crisp and sinuously elegant black and white studies of falling down houses, piles of trees, bedside tables and a burger on a countertop are entirely evocative of a certain set of personal life circumstances. In this case, a look inward has produced something that isn't overly self-conscious, but is rather abstracted just enough to be universal, both unflinching and quietly beautiful at the same time.
• The work of Mariah Robertson, Hank Willis Thomas, and Daniel Gordon on view is generally a repeat or a refinement of work we have seen recently at other NY venues. Robertson's 88 is different than her single, ragged edged works in that it is a long ribbon of overlapping imagery, billowing across the ceiling and piling up on the floor, mixing checkerboards, piles of books, petrified wood, and chemical drips in her signature darkroom style; her aesthetic is growing on me over time. It was also terrific to see Thomas' full Unbranded series (82 images), where appropriated advertisements have been stripped of their logos, leaving behind a distorted history of black culture since 1968; while the pictures stand on their own as individual artworks, seeing the series together adds a layer of elapsed time and a view into the evolution of cultural stereotypes.
• K8 Hardy's self portraits have a playfulness that is infectious. Across the wall, she shape shifts, alternately posing with purple hair, puckered lips, orange sunglasses, wearing a wrestling belt, or standing with lawn mowers, often adding in a seemingly random photogram for effect. It sounds overly staged I know, but somehow it all works, successfully mixing eccentric personal style and play acting.
• I can't really say that I liked Leigh Ledare's erotic images of his mother's sex life, but they certainly push on cultural taboos and get your attention. They combine a sense of tragedy with creepy repulsiveness; they're explicit, confrontational, disturbing, and sad all at the same time. My guess is most people will truly hate these pictures, but like them or not, they're challenging and weirdly memorable.

Overall, I think there are a few nuggets of photographic promise to be found amidst the slurry here if you are willing to invest the time in exploring the endless jumble of rooms filled with art. While I was pleased to see how much photography has become intertwined with the general practice of contemporary art making, particularly in the NY scene, I have to say I was a bit disappointed that so few in this emerging bunch seem to have found a singular voice of durable originality.

Collector's POV: Since most of these artists are early in their careers and the work is generally fresh out of the studio, none of it has yet migrated to the secondary markets. So the only real option for interested collectors is to follow up with gallery representatives or directly with the artists themselves. Below is a first pass list of easily identifiable gallery relationships and artist websites; if I've missed (or misidentified) important relationships or sites, please add them in the comments for the benefit of all:
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Michele Abeles: artist site (here)
Deville Cohen: Nowhere Gallery (here)
LaToya Ruby Frazier: Higher Pictures (here), artist site (here)
Zipora Fried: On Stellar Rays (here)
Daniel Gordon: Zach Feuer Gallery (here), artist site (here)
K8 Hardy: Reena Spaulings Fine Art (here)
Alisha Kerlin: artist site (here)
Deana Lawson: artist site (here)
Leigh Ledare: was Rivington Arms (here); not sure now
Alice O'Malley: Isis Gallery (here), artist site (here)
Lucy Raven: artist site (here)
Mariah Robertson: Marvelli Gallery (here), artist site (here)
David Benjamin Sherry: artist site (here)
Erin Shirref: Lisa Cooley Fine Art (here), artist site (here)
Xaviera Simmons: unknown
A.L. Steiner: unknown
Elisabeth Subrin: Sue Scott Gallery (here)
Hank Willis Thomas: Charles Guice Contemporary (here), artist site (here)
Pinar Yolacan: was Rivington Arms (here), not sure now; artist site (here)

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

Transit Hub:

• Reviews: NY Times (here), Village Voice (here), WNYC Gallerina (here), L Magazine (here), Huffington Post (here)

Greater New York 2010
Through October 18th

MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Avenue
Long Island City, NY 11101

2010 AIPAD Review, Part 3 of 4

Parts 1 and 2 of this multi-part AIPAD post can be found here and here.
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Laurence Miller Gallery (here): Helen Levitt (22), Stephane Couturier (2), Barbara Blondeau (3), Ray Metzker (11), Jan Dziackowski (3), Bruce Wrighton (3), Denis Darzacq (1), Burk Uzzle (3), Fred Herzog (2), plus 2 bins. I never tire of Metzker composites, and this one of nude silhouettes was spectacular; his recent abstracted reflections in car windows and hoods aptly named "Autowackies" were also worth a closer look. (Ray Metzker, Nude Composite, 1966/1982, at $125000.)

Robert Klein Gallery (here): Paulette Tavormina (3), Henri Cartier-Bresson (5 plus a glass case of books), Helen Levitt (2), Mario Giacomelli (3), Mark Cohen (8), Diane Arbus (1), Harry Callahan (2), Francesca Woodman (2), Ilse Bing (1), Edward Weston (3), Robert Steinberg (3), Victor Schrager (1), Arno Minkkinen (1), Jeff Brouws (9), Sebastiao Salgado (2), Lewis Hine (4). This booth was a broad mix of vintage and contemporary material. The Levitt phone booth below, with the child wearing striped sport socks squished against the expanse of patterned dress, is likely my favorite of her color images. (Helen Levitt, Untitled, New York, 1988, at $15000.)

Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery (here): Susanna Majuri (2), Bruce Davidson (3), Pertti Kekarainen (3), Hannu Karjalainen (6), Kalle Kataila (2), Ola Kolehmainen (1), Jim Campbell (1 lightbox), Shirley Shor (1 lightbox), Niko Luoma (2). This booth had echoes of the gallery's Armory show booth and its current Helsinki school exhibit, but I was most intrigued by the works by Jim Campbell and Shirley Shor - two more examples of the bleeding edge of contemporary photography. Campbell's crosswalk image looks static, but soon shadows of cars and pedestrians stream across and disappear, adding an elements of time and movement to a single frame. Shor's work shows the continuous assembly and disassembly of a portrait, with millions of pixels changing frenetically.

Monroe Gallery (here): Eddie Adams (1 triptych, 5 others), Bill Eppridge (3), Steve Schapiro (4), Irving Haberman (3), Mark Shaw (2), John Filo (1), Charles Moore (1), Jurgen Schadeberg (1), Stanley Forman (1), Carl Iwasaki (1), Bob Gomel (1), Vivian Cherry (1), Ida Wyman (1), Stephen Wilkes (5), plus 2 bins. This booth was filled with top quality photojournalism, and the image below from the aftermath of the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy shows how a photograph can be tranformed into an amazing artifact - the only remaining original master print of this poignant moment has been ravaged by fire. (Bill Eppridge, Burned Master Shot of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Ambassador Hotel Kitchen, Los Angeles, CA, June 5, 1968, for museum consideration.)

Rick Wester Fine Art (here): Sharon Harper (1), Irving Penn (4), Josef Sudek (1), Emmet Gowin (2), Jehsong Baak (3), Pinar Yolaçan (3), Harry Callahan (1), Frank Gohlke (1), Jeff Mermelstein (8), Meghan Boody (2), Louis Faurer (portfolio), Garry Winogrand (portfolio), Aaron Siskind (portfolio). I first saw Pinar Yolaçan's powerful portraits at the ICP Dress Codes show, and I continue to think they are among the most startling and memorable contemporary images I have seen recently. (Pinar Yolaçan, Untitled, 2007, at $5000.)

Deborah Bell Photographs (here): William Eggleston (1), Marcia Resnick (8), Geroge Gardiner (4), Vito Acconci (2), Robert Frank (1), Esther Bubley (1), August Sander (3), Susan Paulsen (4), Sid Kaplan (2), Louis Faurer (3), Harry Callahan (1), Tod Papageorge (1), Garry Winogrand (1), Gerard Petrus Fieret (4), Man Ray (1), André Kertész (1), Brassaï (1).

Stephen Daiter Gallery (here): Paul D'Amato (5), Helen Levitt (1), Joe Schwartz (1), Barbara Morgan (1), Marvin Newman (3), Lewis Hine (1), Sid Grossman (2), Andre Kertesz (5), Aaron Siskind (2), Art Sinsabaugh (1), Gyorgy Kepes (1), Harry Callahan (1), Frederick Sommer (1), Kenneth Jospehson (3), Walter Peterhans (1), Wayne Miller (1), Irving Penn (1), Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1), Heinrich Kuhn (1), Brassai (1), Barbara Crane (4), Lynne Cohen (1), Barbara Kasten (1). I think Art Sinsabaugh's thin panoramic landscapes and cityscapes have aged very well and are generally underappreciated; I liked the radiating lines of the tilled furrows in this particular work. (Art Sinsabaugh, Midwestern Landscape #34, 1962, at $25000.)

Stephen Bulger Gallery (here): Richard Harrington (1), Jean Louis Blondeau (1), Dave Heath (2), André Kertész (3, 1 group of 5, and 9 Polaroids), Helen Levitt (1), Lutz Dille (1), Sarah Anne Johnson (1 triptych and 1), Gilbert Garcin (2), Les Krims (1), George Zimbel (1), Henri Cartier-Bresson (1), Bertrand Carriere (1), Eliane Excoffier (3), Alison Rossiter (3), Fausta Facciponte (1), Harry Waddle (1), Erin O'Neill Haydn (1), Robert Bourdeau (2), Volker Seding (1), Scott Conarroe (1), Sanaz Mazinani (1), Jeff Thomas (1), John Vanderpant (1), Mark Ruwudel (1). This was a packed, "one of each" booth; I liked the concentric circles and shadows of the Vanderpant pipes best. (John Vanderpant, Untitled (Drainpipes), c1930, at $10000.)

Bruce Silverstein Gallery (here): Randy West (2), John Wood (3), Frederick Sommer (12), Nathan Lyons (5), Leonard Freed (6), Rosalind Solomon (6), Dorothea Lange (3), Barbara Morgan (3), Michael Wolf (1), Todd Hido (2), Edward Weston (3), Aaron Siskind (3), Brett Weston (1). The three variants of Sommer's portrait of Livia were the standouts in this booth.

Danziger Projects (here): Robert Mapplethorpe (1), Annie Liebovitz (2), George Tice (1), Viviane Sassen (3), Paul Fusco (1), Mario Sorrenti (1), Jim Krantz (1), Christopher Bucklow (1), Julia Margaret Cameron (1), Cosmo Innes (1), Edward Weston (2), Seydou Keita (2), Ezra Stoller, (2), Adam Fuss (1), plus 2 bins. With its elegant simplicity, this has always been one of my favorite Mapplethorpe nudes. (Robert Mapplethorpe, Lydia Cheng, 1987/1990, at $55000.)

Galerie Baudoin Lebon (here): Nadar (1), Adolphe Braun (1), Edouard Baldus (1), Louis-Alphonse Dauanne (1), Francois Merille (1), Eugène Atget (2), Autochromes (2), Paolo Gasparini (6), Leo Matiz (1), Alberto Korda (1), Sameer Makarius (1), Barbara Brandli (6), JB Greene (2), Jacques-Henri Lartigue (1), Constantin Brancusi (2). There was a terrific wall of black and white images from 1970s Caracas in this booth. There was also a nice Atget shopfront with ghostly figures bustling past on the sidewalk. (Paolo Gasparini, Car + Soto, Caracas, 1968, at $5000.)

Picture Photo Space (here): Kunihiko Katsumata (8), Issei Suda (4), Hiroshi Osaka (5), Nobuyoshi Araki (4), Diane Arbus (1), Eikoh Hosoe (1), Helmut Newton (1), Garry Winogrand (1), Sally Mann (2), and a few others that weren't marked.

Barry Singer Gallery (here): Brigitte Carnochan (1), Irene Fay (1), Berenice Abbott (1), Jack Welpott (2), Dave Heath (2), Eugene Smith (3), Lou Stoumen (2), Edward Weston (1), Weegee (1), Carlotta Corpon (1), Laura Gilpin (1), Marc Riboud (1), Minor White (1), Brett Weston (2), Clarence John Laughlin (1), Lloyd Ullberg (1), André Kertész (1), Wynn Bullock (1), Ansel Adams (1), Irving Penn (1), Anne Brigman (1), Jan Saudek (1), Don Jim (4), Michael Garlington (2), Gyorgy Kepes (1), Edmund Teske (1), Kenneth Josephson (1). This was another excellent Minor White that I hadn't seen before or had forgotten; the range of tonalities was masterful. (Minor White, Parking Lot, San Francisco, from Sequence 9, 1952, at $15000.)

Continue to Part 4 here.