Sam Samore, 1973 @Team

JTF (just the facts): A total of 24 black and white photographs, framed in black and matted, and hung in the main gallery space and the smaller back room. All of the works are gelatin silver prints, taken in 1973 and printed recently. The images come from two series (The Suicidist and The Murdered Brother), each of which is made up of a total of 17 images (not all are on display in this show). Each print is sized 14x22, and comes in an edition of 1+1AP. (Installation shots at right.)

 

Comments/Context: Visiting Sam Samore's new show is like setting your time machine for 1973 and stepping out in the heydey of bushy facial hair and quirky photoconceptualism. The exhibit pairs an old favorite (The Suicidist) with a previously unknown body of work (The Murdered Brother), both from the same year. The two projects revel in dark, black comedy, taking death (and its stand ins) to new heights of absurdity.

 

The Suicidist is likely familiar to many readers here, as its catalog of death fantasies have become a classic of the era. The series features Samore himself posed in a variety of cinematic crime scenes, a scruffy protagonist in an endless stream of increasingly ridiculous events. The deaths begin with the commonplace: a fall down the stairs, a knife, an overdose of pills, run over by a car, a plummet to the street from an apartment window, but quickly turn to the weird and wonderful: vacuum in the mouth, arrow in the chest, strangled by the phone cord, impaled on a music stand, crumpled at the base of a child's slide, head in the toilet, buried in a sandbox. The images mix a goofy desperation with a calculated smartness, the taxonomy of corpses both clever and haltingly funny.

 

The Murdered Brother riffs on many of the same themes, albeit in a more abstracted and indirect way. The dead body in these images has been replaced by a curious white rubber glove, partially inflated and poking out from any number of puzzling and inopportune locations. It's stuck in the oven door, creeping out of the dryer pipe, wedged under the toilet seat, trapped in the piano, stuffed in a boot, and trying to escape from the vacuum. The stories in this series are much more obtuse and unknowable, more open for interpretation, but still playfully melodramatic and inventive.

 

I'll admit to being a sucker for the precocious wit of 1960s and 1970s photoconceptualism. I never seem to tire of the visual jokes and brainy games of Baldessari, Wegman, Cumming, Nauman, Ruscha et al., and these projects by Samore fit right into that same intellectual mind set. This show was a good reminder for me that deadpan need not mean boring or dull, and that there ought to be a larger place in contemporary photography for the crackling and the cunning.

 

Collector's POV: Each of the prints in this show is priced at $20000. Samore's photographs have become more available in the secondary markets in recent years, with prices ranging between roughly $4000 and $16000.

 

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

 

Transit Hub:

• Review: TimeOut New York (here)
• Exhibit: MoMA PS1, 2006 (here)

Sam Samore, 1973

Through October 27th

 

Team Gallery

83 Grand Street

New York, NY 10013

Ryan McGinley, Animals @Team

JTF (just the facts): A total of 23 large scale color photographs, framed in white and unmatted, and hung in the main gallery space and the smaller back room. All of the works are c-prints, available in editions of 3, and made in 2012. Physical dimensions range from 14x9 to 72x108, with most 30x45 (or reverse). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Wild animals and nude bodies are an unlikely visual combination, and Ryan McGinley's unusual pairings of man and beast provide for some startling juxtapositions. Using exotic zoo animals and posing them with young men and women against candy-colored studio backgrounds, McGinley has made pictures that are alternately elegant and comic, but always bold and eye-catching. Bites, scrapes and even trickles of blood are evidence of the the untamed nature of this project, with feral chance clearly playing a role in the photographic outcomes.

The best of these photographs are the ones where the lyricism of the forms is dominant. Green and white parakeets fly through enveloping pastel blue, partially obscuring a model with her arms outstretched like wings. The long white feathers of an albino peacock cover a model like windswept wisps of clouds against the rose red backdrop. And the curve of a guineafowl fits perfectly into the hollow of a woman's side, its densely patterned plumage a stark contrast to her pale skin. In each, the body, the animal, and the background color come together gracefully.

Many of the rest of the images on view are more like jokes or one-liners, with varying degrees of harsh silliness. A bushy baby porcupine lies between a woman's legs, an albino skunk sniffs a bare bottom, a monkey's arms surround a man's torso, and countless animals nestle in crotches of men and women alike. There's even an homage to Avedon's Natassja Kinski and the Serpent, this time with an iguana doing the licking. But even in the funniest of these pairings, there is something frantic about the look in the eyes of some of these animals, a natural savageness that was held in check for just a moment. Put together with the vulnerability of the human nudes, every picture has an element of lively tension, just at the breaking point.

All in, the contrast of human and animal bodies and the inherent anxiety in the poses gives these pictures some odd, agitated freshness. I think the more ornamental matches will ultimately be more durable than the salty wisecracks and the sexy horsing around, so look out for the handful of images that have a more refined sense of unexpected opulence.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced by size, as follows:

• 14x9: $5500
• 13x20: $7000
• 24x16: $8000
• 30x45: $14000
• 57x38: $21000
• 48x72: $25000
• 72x108: sold out

McGinley's photographs have become more available in the secondary markets in the past few years, with prices ranging between $2000 and $33000.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Features/Reviews: NY Times T magazine (here), Wall Street Journal (here), Huffington Post (here), Hint (here)

Ryan McGinley, Animals

Through June 2nd

Team Gallery

83 Grand Street

New York, NY 10013

Ryan McGinley, Grids @Team

JTF (just the facts): A total of 3 large scale grids of color photographs, individually framed in white and unmatted, and hung in the main gallery space. Each of the grids is made up of an array of c-prints. The largest grid includes 55 prints, each 20x20. The smaller grids include 12 prints (each 30x38) or 10 prints (each 40x40). All three grids come in an edition of 1+1AP and are dated 2012. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Ryan McGinley's rock concert photographs aren't interested in the big productions or the wild performers. Instead of pointing his camera at the action on stage or taking wide shots of the seemingly endless sea of music fans, he gets right down in the throng, singling out individual up-close faces and capturing the variety in their fresh expressions. Blown up to larger than life size and arranged in neat grids, his kids shout and swagger with fierce energy.

With sweaty shaking hair, countless tattoos and piercings, and plenty of skin, McGinley's pictures document the wide range of reactions of these fans: ecstasy, shock, wild screams, blissful fatigue, amazement, disbelief, stoned incomprehension, unadulterated joy, stupefied wonder, and maybe even momentary fear. Bathed in a rainbow of lights coming from the stage, the faces are tinted in hues from acidic yellow and throbbing red to pale blue and pastel green. When seen as grids up on the wall, they become bright kaleidoscopes of earnest, juiced-up emotion. While McGinley's subjects will likely always be knocked for being too universally pretty, these works are certainly credible as a taxonomy of unguarded expressions; they feel real and authentic, supported by the unfailing optimism of youth. There are few jaded fans here, no snarky cynics, no cold water throwers. These kids are reveling in the moment, being exposed to events that are, in one way or another, blowing their minds; boundaries are being stretched and indelible memories are being made.

Purely photographically, these grids are in many ways unremarkable; it's not even clear from the press release that McGinley made all the pictures himself. What is of more interest though is the cropping, editing, and packaging of these images that transforms the concert snaps into the refined and potent elixir of youth. In these works, McGinley has tapped into the genuine rush of excitement that comes from the collective experience of live music, and reminded us what it was like to be young and crazy and free, screaming at the top of our lungs.

Collector's POV: The three grids in this show are priced at $80000, $85000, and $95000 each, and two of the three were already sold when I visited the show. McGinley's single image photographs have become more available in the secondary markets in the past few years, with prices ranging between $2000 and $33000.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)

Ryan McGinley, Grids
Through June 2nd

Team Gallery
47 Wooster Street
New York, NY 10013

Ryan McGinley, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere @Team

JTF (just the facts): A total of 74 black and white photographs, framed in black and matted, and hung in the main gallery and smaller back room spaces. All of these prints are gelatin silver prints, taken in 2010, roughly 18x12 or reverse, and printed in editions of 3. There are also 4 large scale c-prints on display, framed in white with no mat. These works are roughly 110x72 or reverse, also in editions of 3. An exhibition catalogue of the black and white portraits has been published by Dashwood Books (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Ryan McGinley's new black and white portraits feel like an overt challenge to those who have dismissed his work as an overrated, overhyped group of flash-in-the-pan snapshot pictures of naked young people. He has taken a calculated and some might say dangerous risk here, and attempted to match the masters of the medium with his own take on the pared down studio nude. Many have tried and failed to find a personal and original view point in this subject, and I have to admit that I like the confidence it shows that he was willing to step into the breach and really test himself, rather than just churn out more work that has already proven attractive to many.
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So what does a Ryan McGinley studio nude look like? For one thing, the frenetic energy and motion of his larger work is generally absent, as his models pose with shy, androgynous awkwardness against the uniform grey background - there are more quiet personal moments here, rather than zany antics and exuberant laughter. Second, his nudes are not particularly explicit or erotic; they trend more toward classic forms and fragmented body parts, with a large helping of faces to keep the pictures grounded in the specifics of single individuals. While a few too many of these images wander a bit too far into the well worn paths of the beautiful people who inhabit Abercrombie and Fitch ads (a little too perfect and retouched), in general, I came away impressed with McGinely's ability to find tenderness and intimacy, to capture a genuine kaleidoscope of youthful emotions and moods.
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Those who visit this exhibit with a pre-disposition to take McGinley down a few notches will likely have a "been there, done that" reaction to these portraits. Fair enough. But I would submit that while these pictures do not have the same throw down as similar works by Mapplethorpe or Opie, they do attempt to get inside a particular subgroup of culture (the 18-28 year old) and see some of its unexpected and fragile beauty. Thin bodies, tattoos, messy hair, gap teeth, they all come together in joy and uncertainty, but with a vitality that is palpable. Edit out the bottom third of these works and the phrase "classic McGinley nude" might start to mean something quite distinctive.

Collector's POV: The black and white portraits in this show are priced at $5000 each; the larger c-prints are $25000 each. A few examples of McGinley's work have recently started to become available in the secondary markets; prices have ranged between $2000 and $23000.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Interviews: Dossier (here), NY Times T Magazine (here)
• Features: ArtInfo (here)

Ryan McGinley, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Through April 17th

Team Gallery
83 Grand Street
New York, NY 10013