Miami 2014 - Bringing Up Baby

Coming to Miami for Art Basel Week? 

"Fridge Art Fair, the baby who has refused to obey orders to stand outside the door while the adults confabulate inside. " - http://uk.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/1065071/one-art-fair-was-never-going-to-be-enough-for-miami#sthash.dp6HrH3t.dpuf

Fridge is back in Little Havana, newly branded the upstart fair to watch by ArtInfo, and once again the artists of Q (which is having its first birthday!) will be there with some surprises for you, this time including  2 world premieres!

(c) Giandomenica Becchio

Will this be the newest art in Miami? Italian photographer Giandomenica Becchio visited NYC in November and just captured an intimate group of candid images of life in some of Brooklyn's Hassidic and Orthodox Jewish communities - 3 photo essays will be on view at the Fair.

Poundo

Q is also proud to present "Poundo the Six-Legged Dog" an ongoing collaboration featuring text by Gene Beery and illustrations by Eric Ginsburg. At Fridge Eric's original paintings are on view for the first , and you can get a taste of the book, which will be published in 2015.

Mark Wiener (1951-2012) Madonna Series

What else have we got? Photos and works on paper for sale by Sol Lewitt, Kenny Scharf, Arturo Toulinov, Mark Wiener (his 1981 photos of Madonna!), CJ Nye, Carol Schaefer, Matthew Cervenka, Joanna Stokes and small sculpture by Bonnie Rothchild.

Bonnie Rothchild

Iliyan Ivanov - Race Horse (detail)

Last but not least, have fun bumping into NYC artist Iliyan Ivanov's 3-part Horse and Unicorn Murals as you tour the Fair and meet all Fridge's great exhibitors!

Full Fair info at http://www.fridgeartfair.com

Words For the Day (and then some…)

As a lover of serendipity, finding food for thought on the tag of my morning chai is as tasty a treat as the sweet tea itself.

And this one got me thinking about the artists I know and love. The one thing they all have in common is the genuine feeling and spirit that infuses their work, grabs our attention and keeps us looking. Lacking that, I don’t think they would create, they are givers, sharing their vision of this world and perhaps a possible better one.

The one thing they cannot create is our response, they need us to supply that time and energy. And we all have to see with our hearts as well as our eyes, because that will lead us to the truth, difficult as it may be.

Are there really any wrong ways to see? Perhaps not technically, but in the art world we can be tempted to see things that are not there rather than simply look at what is.

Some see with ego, they will not praise excellence or beauty unless there is something in it for them.

We can all be tempted to see with vanity when everybody else says something is wonderful and we want to be included. Or we pretend to understand the incomprehensible not to seem foolish.

It is also possible to see only through the filters of our values – money, religion, past experience, cultural immersion – all color the way we look at a work of art. This is not always a negative, but it can be enlightening to also drop those pre-conceptions and notice the difference.

Often when encountering exceptional work there is a shift in my senses, sometimes can almost hear it humming or speaking to me, feel warmly or coolly, even have it pull me in or push back. Great art engages you.

And that is what it is made for.

tag by Yogi Tea, background detail of panel by Mark Wiener

When words are worth a thousand pictures...

Thinking back to when I was about 5 years old, sitting with a friend on the front steps on a day much like today. We were cracking what we called Polly seeds – sunflower seeds -- carefully removing each from the tiny shell and savoring the flavor, before starting over again…

What brought me to this picking up a packet of sprouted, shelled and seasoned sunflower seeds, good to share this week, along with my ubiquitous “bars,” when on the run with my visiting vegan friend. And thinking, “How convenient!”

Convenience is an essential asset on a tight itinerary, but it is also becoming a transparent element in our daily lives. I obtained the image for this post on Wikipedia with a few strokes and clicks (something I no longer take for granted after actually having to use the research library in 2011!), I can send it to you or talk to you about it on the bus or in a store, or just skip going out or even using the phone by ordering lunch from the very keyboard I am typing on now.

Again, handy if you need it, but it seems to engender a lack of patience to the point that people can’t even wait to safely cross a street before reading something on a device. There are trends toward the benefits of delayed gratification gaining momentum – tech breaks, slow food, meditation, DIY, urban farming – perhaps this is even what folks are reading about in traffic. With good reason, it feels good to just be in the moment with what is before you, the nuts taste just a bit sweeter when you work a little for them, and the sweetness makes the cracking just a bit more fun.

Sometimes we must go with the flow. We have to work with computers to work with others in a timely fashion, you can’t be the only one without a mobile phone on a collaborative level. Online information and sharing widens our intellectual and emotional world and allows us to understand it via myriad points of view - including a great deal of enlightening writing about art. But in this case, the words ring truer than the pictures. Visually, it is a mirage.

Nowhere is time spent more rewarded than in the appreciation of art. The simple act of looking at art is a human pursuit unchanged at least since the days of cave painting. You look, you see, you look closer, you see more, you step back, put it in context. Try doing that with the zoom feature of your browser, you will realize that as important a tool as digital technology is, you are just looking at pixels, not paint or sculpture in all it’s transparency, solidity, layers, patina, subtle motion in changing light… Even the nuances of a digital photograph, well printed, escape the screen.

Fine art is a nut you have to crack yourself – when you see something intriguing online, go to that museum, studio, gallery, public venue, theatre – and just take in the miracle of creativity and the fact that you are participating in a timeless ritual. You can even have your phone set to vibrate. But don’t be surprised if you forget it is there.

"Sunflower Seeds Kaldari" by Kaldari - Own work. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sunflower_Seeds_Kaldari.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Sunflower_Seeds_Kaldari.jpg

An artist, a curator and a dealer walk into a bar...

Passing by an outdoor performance yesterday and witnessing a comedian totally bombing to the point where the large audience was about to boo him off the stage, I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t published anything about my recent visit to the Whitney.

Aside from well-curated selections from the Museum’s permanent collection now on view, the most impressive art experience of the evening was walking into an unintentional performance – a guided tour of the Koons exhibition in progress before a large, rapt audience  – and feeling as if I had been transported into a remake of “Brave New World.”

My first thoughts about the work on view, gathered in a Facebook comment, were:

“…srsly…my thought for the day on the Koons show is that the visually grotesque* has its place in my aesthetic. The socially and psychologically grotesque not so much. I just don't know when to take it as satire and when to be repelled and very afraid...srsly...”

But I had to ask myself, “Why?” I am simply not one of those people who only considers “serious” art to be art… 

At the opening of Paul McCarthy’s  “WS” at Park Avenue, I jumped for joy like a kid at Disneyland – he had built an enchanted bridge between art and fun for the subversive pleasure of art-jaded grownups. Kara Walker’s visual depth and dexterity allow her to gracefully hopscotch around the lines of “taste”, eliciting a smile or a laugh even as we confront prodigious grief and brutality. Her 2007 show at the Whitney was masterful. My multi-talented dear friend, the late Chris Twomey**, played with sexuality and banal materials, particularly in her “XX” & “Tsunami” bodies of work – I can still see her grin and wink as she watched somewhat shocked viewers take it all in with a gasp and a giggle.

The Joke Rule:

 If it makes you laugh, even in spite of yourself, you can’t complain about it.

And what is more the function of visual art than to evoke a strong, immediate response without requiring analysis?

So, when I cannot, even while trying to understand, get myself to respond with anything other than a kind of numb confusion to Koons’ work, I am released from the rule. I still stand ready to come out and play, but only if it is fun… LD

Chris Twomey, Triumph of the XX (installation) 2008, aluminum foil, prints, DVD projection (c) estate of the artist.
video from the series 

* fine examples of the visually grotesque, well used, can be found in the works of Philip Guston, Francis Bacon, Ahmed Alsoudani and others…

**A retrospective of Twomey’s work is planned at Creon Gallery this coming season. http://www.creongallery.com/

Potential

“Mark would have loved this.”

(That is what I said to myself when I passed this object lying near the curb.)

Flash back a couple of years and I would have picked it up and brought it to the studio, or maybe saved it for an anniversary present for him – June 24 would have begun our 13^th year together…

But it is 2014 and I was on my way to meet a friend, so I captured the image and went on my way. This small by-product of recent street work on the block would have been transformed to something entirely different in the studio – a tool (to create one of his final series, Street Markings, Mark set aside brushes in favor of found objects) to resist and apply paint, likely the inspiration for one or more new works.

Untitled, Wed, Aug 11, 6:00:00 pm, 20" x 21.5", mixed media on paper, 2011

In that moment I felt grief not only for Mark, and the fact that I could not give him this object he would have so enjoyed, but all the paintings he did not create, the objects he did not use. The world is a better place because humans are creative, we take the most humble of resources and use them to share feelings, ideas and inspiration.

Did the worker who left that there know he could have been making art? We all leave traces of ourselves, our work, our belongings behind at times, with no real way of knowing if someone else has observed, recorded, acquired them and what they have done as a result. This forlorn piece of pipe with threads, lying in the gutter, had at least once the potential to become something far more.

In that moment, the object also stood for the fragility of our way of life, and the capriciousness of fate. So much human potential goes untapped for so many reasons, it underlines the importance of all that we do, or can do, to support one another, hopefully so we can all realize something more to add to the universe. Mark and I were very lucky to be surrounded by so many who "got it" ( and they still do). We are on this planet and in this world together. Reach out, be inspired, give your spark in return, it could be our only chance... imagine life if no one had noticed that rounded objects could be rolled, if Shakespeare had never loved, or Turner not looked deeply into a sunset.

By the way the piece of metal was still there on my way home, and I later retrieved it.  It may join others in the studio even though it will not be used as a brush. After all, it became a story.

Getting it...

A work of art is not just an object. It performs. It shapes the time you spend with it , spurs emotions and imaginations, and opens the door to a world with a world.

To perform the art must command attention, having the virtue of being superbly executed, visually compelling, and multi-faceted when viewed at different angles and distances. There must be interest in the subject, the substance and even the substrate. Nothing about a fine work of art is truly “blank” -- every surface is a statement, and invitation, and experience.

Art calls to you and pulls you in. There is a reason museums have “don’t touch” rules enforced by lines on the floor and all of those kind, but firm guards…  if you don’t have a nearly irresistible urge to touch, it probably does not belong in a museum!

Art should pass from hand to hand not simply as a business transaction, but via an understanding between artist and owner that it is a secret shared between them for now that is meant as a gift for all who come with an open heart. When you acquire a piece of art, you have something to give to the world in displaying it, and your own discoveries and insights add to that gift.

When you accept ownership of a piece of fine art, you take on a responsibility to the universe. Working with some truly amazing artists I have the privilege to know, every time I look at their work that is in my custody I am in awe, and moved to do whatever it takes to see that work appreciated and cared for for many years to come. If this sounds a bit romantic, think about how much art, music and writing  you have appreciated over the years -- some of it may even have changed your life. What if it had not been there for you because no one had cared to publish, protect or produce it?

As for the “purpose,” or usefulness of art, that is really for each of us as a creator and/or collector to decide, if and when we are ready. My late partner, Mark Wiener, always knew that he wanted his paintings to bring joy in their viewing. This is not to say the content of his work was inherently happy, it was not always and that was not a goal. But he created paintings of great depth and intricacy, each gesture from the heart, because he did want someone to stand before his work and feel engaged, embraced, even loved.

The art before you depends on you to reach its full potential…

painting and photo by Mark Wiener (c) beauarts, ltd.

At the Fridge Art Fair -- Thinking Outside the Booth

Q Presents Large-Scale Installations by Danny Licul, Sasha Meret and Dean Radinovsky

Update: The Q installation and the Crash Art Ferrari presented by Dorian Grey Gallery, as well as works by Kazuko Myamoto, David Fenn courtesy of Gallery OneTwentyEight, The Secret Sticker Club and Street Art NY presentations, neon by Kenny Greenberg, and a stealth installation will be on view Saturday and Sunday, May 17 & 18 from 12 - 6, alongside "The Crew"  (featuring assistants from Matthew Barney's studio in performance, installation and a group exhibition ), and the Holocenter Pop-Up Exhibit,  at 5-25 46th Avenue as part of the LIC Arts Open. Opening reception Wednesday May 14, 5:30  -- 8 pm and the "Big Whirlygig" on Saturday, May 17 from 6 - Midnight.

As some of you may have heard, Fridge Art Fair was displaced from its original venue when Angel Orensanz Center was shut down by the NYC Department of Buildings on March 31. Not only is this a sad, and I hope temporary, loss to the Lower East Side and the arts community in general, but it sent us scrambling to find a new space and at least 2000 sf to house our fair, and walls, which had been provided by the Center, for our committed exhibitors.

Help came, first in the form of a major sponsorship from Plaxall for use of a 7000 sf space in Long Island City, as well as what could be termed an angelic intervention by fair exhibitors Secret Sticker Club to construct walls. One of the coolest things about the waterfront venue is that it retains an aged industrial patina, and salvaged materials have played a major role in the buildout.

In keeping with the look and scale of the new location, Q is presenting 3 artists who accepted the challenge to install large-scale work that does not need walls yet will actually create one of the boundaries of our event space. They are Danny Licul, Sasha Meret, and Dean Radinovsky. We will all see tomorrow what they have devised.

Additionally, Fridge has invited other artists to install around the space: Kazuko Miyamoto and David Fenn ( both courtesy of Gallery Onetwentyeight) and Kenny Greenberg of Krypton Neon will all be featured at Fridge. Last but not least, exhibitor Dorian Grey Gallery will present a Ferrari (yes, vroom-vroom) painted by Crash!

Fair hours are Friday - Sunday, May 9 - 11 at 5-25 46th Avenue (enter thru the parking lot), opening gala Thursday from 6-9 featuring singer-songwriter Michelle Fury benefits City Critters, Inc.

Tickets at  Eventbrite... here are some installation night photos: