James Jean Shattered Analog, Tristan Eaton 3D Art Book
The Supper Club and Spread ArtCulture hosted an intimate dinner this week at Lair NYC to launch Tristan Eaton’s “3D Art Book”, featuring art by luminaries such as Shepard Fairey, Mark Ryden, Stephen Bliss, Ron English and Dalek, amongst many others.
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By Kiša Lala
©Chris Marker, Untitled # 200, 2008-2010 Color photograph mounted on white Sintra 22 3/4 x 31 1/2 in. (57.8 x 80 cm) Printed 2011 Edition of 3 Courtesy of Peter Blum Gallery
French photographer and filmmaker, Chris Marker (b.1921), best known for his conceptual films Sans Soleil and La jetée, has a show of recent photographs at Peter Blum gallery entitled Passengers.
As an avid documentarian Marker had found an ideal recording device which could candidly photograph people in public spaces: a camera embedded in a wristwatch. Armed with this device he could pretend to check the time while discreetly capturing passersby on film. In this new series, taken in the Paris metro, he uses various photo devices to get a similarly candid feel.
By Kiša Lala
John Stezaker, Marriage - 2006 Collage 23.5 x 28.5 cm (Photo courtesy of: saatchi-gallery.co.uk)
The British artist John Stezaker has a retrospective of his photographic collages in London at the Whitechapel Gallery and newly commissioned works on display at the Louis Vuitton Maison. Stezaker appropriates iconic imagery from the past, landscapes, vintage studio headshots of forgotten film stars, those that show up in old shoe boxes in antique shops collecting dust along with nostalgic memorabilia, waiting to be picked through, rediscovered.
What is unusual in Stezaker’s use of these images for his collages, is that his manipulation of them is minimal – often a single incision slices and splices two photographs creating uncanny symphony. Or a composite of just two images, a poster shot of a generic waterfall placed over a face, creates a window of such powerful reflection, that the simplicity in technique seems astonishing in the context of today’s excessive digital doctoring.
By Kiša Lala
Cave, 2010, Mars: Adrift on the Hourglass Sea © Kahn & Selesnick, Courtesy of the Artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery
I found Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick at their New York gallery Yancey Richardson, looking over their human-length book of the Circular River project. The book which Kahn bound is a beautifully aged tome containing the account of a fictional odyssey through Siberia with panoramic shots of a desolate landscape annotated with tales of remote viewing, shamanism and mystical adventures woven into fables with accompanying faux-artifacts.
Richard Selesnick next to his book, Circular River - Photo: Kisa Lala, 2011 - "... The R.E.C. Siberian Expedition of 1945-46' continued the story of the R.E.C to its post-war conclusion. A seven-foot wide leather bound book held the 60 long sepia panoramas and 100 pages of text."
Carsten Höller's Soma exhibit in Berlin
By Kiša Lala
Carsten Höller’s new exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof museum in Berlin, ‘Soma’ examines the mythic traditions of this Vedic elixir. Though the recipe and ingredients for it have been lost, ethnomycologists and artists alike have been interpreting its origin through ancient manuscripts – from such sources as the verses of the Rigveda, an ancient North Indian text from the 2nd millennium BCE: ‘We have drunk of the soma; we have become immortal, we have seen the light; we have found the Gods.’
By Kiša Lala
YUL BRYNNER The King and I, Self-Portrait, 1956 color print, 30 x 40" (paper) - Courtesy of the Artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, NY
Victoria Brynner, daughter of the late Yul Brynner has published a four-volume book of photographs, excerpts from which, Lehmann Maupin gallery is exhibiting, to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the actor’s death.
Brynner who is known for his roles in such films as The King and I, Westworld, and The Ten Commandments, took candid images of friends, family, and many of his Hollywood co-workers, on and off the film sets.
YUL BRYNNER, Salvador Dali painting Amanda Lear, Spain, 1971, Courtesy of the Artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, NY
By Kiša Lala
Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin, 2010. Portrait by Brigitte Cornand
Before her death recently at the age of 98, Louise Bourgeois had just finished work on a series of prints with Tracey Emin, which they had collaborated on during the last two years of the artist’s life. Bourgeois had composed a series of 16 profiled torsos in gouache and Emin had ‘responded’ by adding drawings over them with text and ink.
Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin, "Looking For The Mother"
Their work together began when Ms. Bourgeois had agreed to meet Ms. Emin at her request. Despite Ms. Bourgeois’ reputation of being a formidable woman, according to Emin, they had got along well and had agreed to take part in a drawing project. Ms.Bourgeois had always been surrounded by young people, and in spite of the age difference they found their work had many themes in common.
By Kiša Lala
Barry Friedman Ltd. Work: Gottfried Helnwein, NY, The Armory Show 2010 © Gabriele Heidecker
Art fairs, with their aggregation of art dealers forming a one-stop shopper’s marketplace for art, attract high-spending collectors, generate greater sales, and have to some extent replaced galleries with their increasing drawing power. Before the recent market collapse, the frenzied demand for new art had peaked with the proliferation of smaller, budding art fairs. Some as satellites to the major European events, the biennials, art festivals and fairs such as Basel, Venice, Documenta, catered to lesser known, emerging artists. Even more notable are the fairs that have sprouted in Asian countries and off the map destinations, creating alternate markets for art, challenging the existing western hegemony – such as the Shanghai Contemporary, Art Dubai, Art Summit New Delhi and SP-Arte in Sao Paulo.
Berlin based photographer, Gabriele Heidecker has been documenting this new trend for the last few years, as a follow-up to her already published volume Art Affairs, containing candid behind-the scenes images of such events as Art Basel Miami Beach, London’s Frieze, ARCO Madrid, FIAC Paris, Art Cologne, which serve as watering-holes for artists, dealers and high-rolling investors alike. Heidecker’s photos reveal the subtext of commerce under the carnival-like atmosphere of the fairs, making us wonder if the transformative value of art is subsumed by its monetization.
Lady on the floor, Frieze Art London 2004 © Gabriele Heidecker
I met Gabriele Heidecker aptly enough, on a plane from India to the Emirates as she globe-trotted between art events in Kolkata to Art Dubai and Sharjah, which are emerging capitals in the nexus of new art in the Middle East. I asked Ms. Heidecker about her new book in progress.
The tightly knit world of live music photographers said goodbye to one of their own last week, as word came in of Jim Marshall’s premature death. At John Varvatos’s Spring Street showroom, where Marshall was expected to appear to promote his new book, Match Prints, alongside collaborator Timothy White, the mood was understandably somber. Timothy White called Marshall “royalty in my line of work.” (more…)
By JRS
Gavin Brown's Enterprise transformed
On Saturday night, Gavin Brown’s West Village Enterprise played host to the launch of Rob Pruitt’s first collective monograph, Pop Touched Me. A Barbour-clad Pruitt sat perched behind a table, taking up to five minutes to personalize each patron’s book (while an annoyed Brown shouted at him to “hurry it along”). A pack of gum was an essential prop, as he chewed a new piece for each book, spitting it into the title page and, folding it over so as not to stick, inscribed, “My DNA” above. (more…)
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