Marilyn Minter, Trickle, 2010 C-Print

Far from the sweaty sidewalks of New York in the cooler climes of Gstaad, better known for its ski resorts, Marilyn Minter is co-curating a show with Fabienne Stephan titled SWEAT. The show at Patricia Low Contemporary includes works by Matthew Barney, Kate Gilmore, Mika Rottenberg, Cindy Sherman and Kiki Smith among others – with depictions of the skin’s secretions ranging from the erotic to the mundane.

Cindy Sherman : Untitled 1985

Sweat is the conditional response of our skins, the body’s largest organ: try as we might to mask the hint of arousal and exertion, the thin wet odorous film is a primitive and instinctual expression of our latent desires, a Pavlovian reflex to fear and sex. While Minter’s work explores the erotic surface tension of dirt and sweat, Kiki Smith’s work is one of abstract crystallized droplets, and Ryan McGinley photographs a runner in the saintly glow of exhaustion.

In an interview with Minter for Spread, she spoke to me of her specific attractions to body fluids, “ I am not interested in shock value; anything forensic, like scars, doesn’t interest me.  It has to be something that could happen. Nothing surreal, just things that exist: snot, drool…licking.”

Mika Rottenberg’s video, Fried Sweat, involves a sweaty bodybuilder that subsequently vanishes, the material body transforming into ether. It plays with the ideas of expenditure of energy as in her earlier video Tropical Breeze, where the product of labour results in sweat-soaked tissues that Ms Rottenberg once tried to sell on Ebay as an art experiment, but in this case, the result of perspiration did not lead to success.

Ryan McGingley, Coley (Injured) 2007 C-Print

Kiki Smith, Five Elements of a Dewbow, 1999 Glass

Rottenberg, who was once Minter’s student at SVA, had also collaborated previously with Minter on an installation for Sweat in Paris in 2008. Rottenberg describes the collaboration, “It was Marilyn’s work, [with a photograph of] sweaty armpits – you had to move the piece and there was a peeking hole, and I had the video (Fried Sweat) behind her photograph.”

Interview with Mika Rottenberg in issue#5 of Spread p20-21 online;
Interview at installation set for Squeeze, 2010)
Patricia Low Contemporary, Sweat August 8-October 10th, 2010, PARKSTRASSE     3780 GSTAAD     SWITZERLAND

Acqua Alta in Venice, An image from “Beautiful Islands,” Horizon Features

A recent surge in apocalyptic films indicates the mood of the zeitgeist. With 2012 fast approaching, our oceans at peril, and the gloom of global warming, the average recession-hit consumer cannot see past their shrinking funds to worry about other mammals going extinct.

The hottest Pakistani summers on record followed by uncharacteristic floods seems to all underscore the creeping panic, while for those on the other side of the debate, the future’s so bright, they’re just happy to wear shades.

Lucy Walker’s film Countdown to Zero, on the likely threat of a nuclear holocaust, is the latest venture by Lawrence Bender of An Inconvenient Truth, in which Walker asserts that, “steps needed to be taken to blow up New York City not only could happen but had already happened.”

Another documentary, Beautiful Islands, by Japanese director Kana Tomoko, examines three sinking islands with widely different cultures, Tuvalu in the South Pacific, Shishmaref in Alaska and Venice, Italy. In her attempt to show the plight of the indigenous people of Tuvalu, the first nation reportedly scheduled to be under water by 2050, her camera becomes infatuated by the sun, sea and the island’s blissful inhabitants – painting such an idyllic picture that one almost feels a pang of schadenfreude at their imminent demise.

An image from “Beautiful Islands" Horizon Features

On the other side of the planet on another tiny island, Alaskan locals have had to relocate, because of thinning ice, a danger to indigenous huntsmen who slaughter seals with their prized polished rifles, and who we sympathize with as much as their gun-toting deer-hunting brethren on the mainland who must cope with supermarket venison off-season. As for the third setting, the film shows Venetians during the Acqua Alta – the annual deluge is a dramatic and expensive nuisance.

Despite the director’s overindulgence of her subjects, the film underscores an urgent call to action, and is one amongst many portending universal peril. Recent box office successes indicate the general public’s fascination with impending doom and post-apocalyptic films: The 11th Hour, Children of Men, 2012, 28 Days Later, and apocalypse movie sites like these sustaining the hysteria.

Here the British artist, Richard Hardy creates a dystopian vision of London, where nature reclaims the urban landscape.

THE ECO-COMMUNE from Richard Hardy on Vimeo.

Polly Morgan, Systemic Inflammation, 2010, Taxidermy finches and canaries, steel, leather © Polly Morgan

UK artist Polly Morgan’s artworks have rarely been exhibited across the pond, and for that matter, they may well be quarantined before we get a closer look. Morgan trained early in her career as a taxidermist, specializing in skinning and mounting animals before recontexutalizing her work in a gallery setting, presenting the stuffed, trussed specimens like bizarre Victorian curios: rats in champagne glasses, dead chicks spilling out of the crevices of old coffins, and exquisite corpses entombed in jewellery cases. But within these fanciful visions lie an implicit meditation on death.

Flight of Fancy (Nuthatch), 2009 Crystal jewellery box, 2009 Crystal jewellery boxtaxidermy Nuthatch, © Polly Morgan

In Psychopomps, her latest solo-show at Haunch of Venison in London, she presents the animals as mythical flying creatures that convey souls into the after-life. The suspended taxidermist sculptures are fabulous allusions to their mythological counterparts, death’s escorts like Hermes and Charon and Anubis the jackal-headed Egyptian God, or the Norse Valkyries, who choose those who die in battle and bring them into Valhalla.

Carrion Call, (Detail) 2009 by Polly Morgan. Wooden coffin, taxidermy quail chicks

Polly Morgan Still Birth (Purple), 2010, Taxidermy pheasant chick,

In one such Psychopomp, a preserved cardinal is suspended inside a bare white ribcage and in another, the birds carry off their cage rather than be imprisoned by it. A composite of crow feathers like a monstrous swarm suggests a metamorphosis, a transitional state for the soul in its flight from life.

Morgan is not unique in her fascination with stuffed dead things, Maurizio Cattelan and the Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping are among those who have brought humor and poignancy to the morbid  world of corpses.  When Deyrolle burned down in Paris, many artists rushed to salvage the crisped mummified bears and tigers from the ashes – but Morgan alone has apprenticed in the art of preserving the moment of death before the onset of decay.

The artist grew up in the Cotswolds with rather an eccentric upbringing, surrounded by goats and llamas and an animal-loving father who insisted on dissecting them to ascertain the cause of their deaths. Morgan has said she would not create taxidermies of an animal she had known when alive, but has become habituated to using the animals as material for her art much like an artist might use paint. Instead of a fear of death, Morgan’s sculptures evoke a magical sense of transformation, a celebration and anticipation of the journey beyond.

Polly Morgan, Psychopomp, Haunch of Venison, 6 Burlington Gardens, till September 25^th 2010

All Photographs Courtesy of Haunch of Venison

One by One Gallery: photo Gloria Suzie Kim

Alphabet City is a part of the East Village that has only been slightly more immune to the charms of gentrification than its more westerly psychogeographical* end; it’s an ethnographic hodge-podge of Dominicans, transplants, hipsters, and assorted New York crazies that roam the streets like ghosts, sometimes wearing their pajamas, sometimes throwing a fit, sometimes both.

Embodying a brilliant synthesis of transplanted culture and crazy street-talk, is an art and design gallery located in a small, non-descript apartment on Avenue D. The gallery is owned by Madrid transplant and one-woman show, Celina Alvarado. The gallery is called One by One and is located in the foyer of Alvarado’s apartment.

One by One Gallery Installation View, photo: Derek Chung

One by One exhibits one installation at a time. Each exhibition is a result of collaboration between multiple artists. The current exhibition is a spatial installation comprised of 6,407 feet of white yarn interconnecting the extruded outlines of both the linguistic and numerical representation of the number 1 stemming from 1,116 holes in the wall. The result is like walking into an intricate web that spans the room like a web woven by a mathematically inclined spider. It was created by a group of artists recently graduated from the New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. Experiencing an installation in the privacy of an apartment gives one glimpses of everyday life lying just beyond the visual field of the gallery walls.

Alvarado moved to the states before  9/11, after working for several years as the only female producer and director for a burgeoning creative community of media peers at Canal+ in her native Madrid.  Alvarado started the gallery in July of 2009.  After  her superintendent painted the foyer white in her new apartment, she felt that the space was “small but perfect, like a perfume,” and realized there ought to be a gallery there.

Perched on her head is a white straw Panama hat, and underneath, her hair is a dark, glossy green that reminds me of a forest. Her small, sharp features have a feline quality that accentuates the playful and intuitive way she communicates ideas.  She claims that she never plans, only decides, and is firmly rooted in the here and now. I ask her what she envisions the gallery to be in one or a hundred years. She thinks it will belong to a hotel or will travel around in a truck.

Photo: Derek Chung

Her iPhone rings (it’s an old fashioned bicycle horn toot). She has a going away party to attend to, so we part outside. She calls out, “Good bye baby!” as I leave.

By Gloria Suzie Kim

* Psychogeography was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.”

One by One Gallery is open every Sunday from 4-6 pm,
Or by appointment: home@onebyonegalleryD0Tcom
twitter.com/onebyonegallery
http://www.onebyonegallery.com

Phillips de Pury's new location at 450 Park Avenue, Manhattan

Phillips de Pury & Company, the world’s third largest auction house, has been expanding their ventures worldwide – and this may not come as a surprise in view of recent auctions such as at Sotheby’s, which announced record sales, an indication that the art market isn’t softening in this recession, and that investors are willing to bypass the stagnant stock market for the safety of old masters and blue-chip moderns.

Apart from their recent Contemporary Art sale with record auctions of $50 million worth of art sold, Phillips de Pury had also begun a series of innovative and profitable “theme” sales titled BRIC, MUSIC and AFRICA. The highly successful BRIC auction in April in London focused on the so-called BRIC nations, Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Repackaging art around themes has had lucrative pay-offs, and now with the economic rise of Asian countries, Phillips de Pury and other auction houses are creating a new buying frenzy among these nations’ patriotic elite.

Phillips’ move uptown to the new 25,559 square feet space, at 450 Park Ave will attract buyers who may find their other Meatpacking District location a bit out of reach – and put them in closer proximity to midtown rivals Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

Phillips de Pury at 450 Park Avenue

The space will premiere in November with their show, “Carte Blanche,” directed by Philippe Segalot, the former international head of Christie’s Contemporary Art department, and be curated by other art world figures. Evening sales along with single-owner and jewelry sales will take place over three floors with skyboxes on offer for premium clients.

The Meatpacking District location will continue to showcase design and photography, and Chairman, Simon de Pury says, “Finally with 450 Park Avenue and 450 West 15th Street, Phillips de Pury will have the ultimate contemporary art spaces both uptown and downtown.” He added in the WSJ, “While downtown is a space where contemporary-art lovers frequent, there are still a lot of clients based uptown, so this will be a small convenience for them to have more access to us.”

Nick Knight, Self Portrait (2006)

By Kiša Lala

For its 30th anniversary this August, the now venerable, i-D magazine, has just released three birthday editions shot by photographer Nick Knight. The collectible issues with staggered release dates are titled Then (Pre-Fall), Now (Fall) and Next (Winter) with Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Lady Gaga as cover stars.

Kate Moss, Lady Gaga and Naomi Campbell on the cover of id magazine, 30th-Anniversary

Photographer Nick Knight has been working with i-D since the early years, and the portrait project is one he initiated for i-D’s 5th birthday. In fact, one might say i-D’s look had once been synonymous with Knight’s evolutionary photography in collaboration with the stylist Simon Foxton. Knight’s need to perfect and surpass his previous accomplishments is in keeping with i-D’s continued youthful innovative explorations for over 300 issues.

Lady Gaga by Nick Knight for iD magazine, 2010

Knight also contributed to the i-Dentity series for i-D’s all grown up, 25th anniversary celebrations. The new series of black and white portraits are part of more than 200 images that were shot over a three week period last December at the ShowStudio exhibition at Somerset House, the location most recently used for British Fashion Week.  Knight also shot September’s cover image of Lady Gaga for Vanity Fair.

One of the more intimate portraits of issue #308 is of Vivienne Westwood with her husband Andreas Kronthaler. In an interview Westwood discusses her working relationship with him, “We can’t start the collection together because what I suggest wouldn’t be right. We start separately and then come together,” she elaborates.

Here’s Nick Knight shooting Vivienne Westwood for the anniversary issue:

A scene from Lucy Walker's Countdown to Zero. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

At Sundance this year, director Lucy Walker was one of few filmmakers present with two feature films being screened. The first was Waste Land, a collaboration with the artist Vik Muniz on a recycling project with the inhabitants of the world’s largest garbage dump ‘Jardim Gramacho’, just outside Rio. The film is an inspiring depiction of trash-pickers who recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage and through the process, begin to re-imagine their lives.

Her second film though, Countdown to Zero, is very different but just as powerful and enlightening, on the subject of a global nuclear arms crisis. The film was produced by Lawrence Bender (An Inconvenient Truth), and Walker was given the go ahead to create a film without any particular mandate.  At the film’s screening in Sundance she said that while researching the project and speaking to experts on the actual realities of nuclear proliferation, she was shaken out of her own complacency and forced to reeducate herself.

Director Lucy Walker, photo by Hugo Tillmans

In an interview in Filmmaker magazine, Walker says, “…You know it’s possible, but you don’t think those possibilities could add up to an actuality, and unfortunately every single person I spoke to said, no, it’s real. I looked for reassurance, I really looked for a solution [to the problem] that a nuclear catastrophe is a matter of when, not if. I didn’t want to have to draw that conclusion. Yet nobody could give me a sensible counterargument. And nobody could tell me that the steps needed to be taken to blow up New York City not only could happen but had already happened. That was really shocking to me. You want to think nuclear weapons secrets aren’t smugglable, you want to think uranium isn’t enrichable very easily. You want to think no stuff actually gets loose. Who would have thought kitty litter was more radioactively detectable than fissile material? Isn’t that insane?”

View Down onto Irma's Portrait on the Floor- Photo Vik Muniz, courstesy of Vik Muniz studio

Both of director Lucy Walker’s films will be showing in New York City in the coming weeks.

For further details:
Countdown to Zero: http://www.takepart.com/zero
Wasteland: Docuweeks Screenings @ IFC Centre NYC. USA. August 13th – August 19th

By Kiša Lala

Pink Cher, Scott KIng, 2008, Screenprint and paint on canvas, 3x2m photo:Kisa Lala

By Kiša Lala

The current summer show at the Saatchi Gallery in London  brings to the fore a whole new generation of young British artists that now form the vanguard of the previously christened YBAs. But this show unlike its notorious predecessor, Sensation (1997), did not inspire scandal, which perhaps is a good indication of the current exhibition’s rather muted showing.

Newspeak, titled after George Orwell’s dystopian classic Nineteen Eighty-Four, refers to a kind of abbreviated language that results from a gradual whittling away of expression and censorship of thought. This exhibition though claims to be about the opposite, showing that the range of “visual languages being exploited and invented by these new artists is, in fact, expanding and multiplying.”

Though the show seemed cursorily curated incorporating many visual styles and strategies, there were still many inspiring artists that stood out. Scott King’s Pink Cher, the sole artwork represented by this artist in the show, is graphically striking for its sheer simplicity and comedic pun. But the painting also is a sardonic reference to Warhol, celebrity obsessions, and the commodification of a revolution and homogenization by the media.

Ged Quinn, True Peace Will Prevail Under The Rule, 2004, Oil on linen, © Saatchi Gallery

Ged Quinn’s many layered landscapes appear at first to be romantic allusions of pastoral bliss but woven in wittily are contemporary mythologies. True Peace Will Prevail is a reworking of Claude Lorrain’s 1666 Old Testament depiction of Jacob, Rachel and Leah at the Well. But the well is replaced by a depiction of the religious community at Waco, Texas, and Jacob here is David Koresh, the leader of the dissident group that was destroyed eventually by the FBI. Other paintings of Quinn’s similarly offer contemporary fusions in beautifully rendered classical landscapes that make us stop at length and ponder at their strangeness.

One of the most brilliant artworks on display is the one on permanent view at the show: Richard Wilson’s 20:50. Upon entering the gallery from a high platform, one’s first impression is that the room is empty. Only on closer inspection does one see that the entire room is flooded with oil.  The particular engine oil used is pitch black, and the mirror like sheen of its surface reflects the galleries architecture and creates an illusion of infinite space which is both disorienting and confounding.  The work is best experienced in person and one of the most compelling reasons to visit the show.

Goshka Macuga, Madame Blavatsky, 2007 Carved wood, fibreglass, clothes, chairs, photo Kisa Lala

Sigrid Holmwood - The Last Peasant-Painters Peeling Potatoes (Old Woman Mill) 2007, Fluorescent orange egg tempera; lead white, Prussian blue, Chrome yellow light, lead antimonate, Bohemian green earth, Spanish glazing ochre; iron oxide in soured milk; birch leaf lake in pine resin on board © Saatchi Gallery

Saatchi Gallery NEWSPEAK: BRITISH ART NOW, Part One on view till 17th Oct 2010, Duke of York’s HQ King’s Road, London, UK.

View of the The Louvre's Ceiling by Cy Twombly Photo: Christophe Ena

Giotto's star-ceiling in the Cappella Scrovegni, Padua.

Cy Twombly’s newly commissioned ceiling at the Louvre in Paris is monumental in scale, and covers more than 350 square meters. It was painted with the assistance of several artists and apprentices in a warehouse outside Paris before being affixed like wallpaper to the ceiling of the Salle des Bronzes. Looking up one sees an immense blue sky, painted with spheres and white insets inscribed with the names of leading Greek sculptors from the 4th century: Cephisodotus, Lysippus, Myron, Phidias, Polyclitus, Praxiteles and Scopas. The round shapes appear like shields, planets, or coins, while the blue background evokes either the sky or the sea.

Cy Twombly is the third contemporary artist invited to install a permanent work at the Louvre. He follows in the footsteps of a long lineage of artists including Le Brun, Delacroix, Ingres that have been honored in this tradition.  In the 20th century, the invitation has been extended to Georges Braque, (who has painted a ceiling with black birds against a starry midnight-blue sky ) and more recently to François Morellet, and in 2007 to Anselm Kiefer.

Though Twombly is American born, he has been living in Italy since 1959, and this work not only evokes the spirit of the Mediterranean, but also the colors of Chinese prints, and the lapis lazuli paint used by Italian Renaissance artist Giotto – who the artist says he has also been inspired by.

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.

Art Dubai '09, Waterhouse & Dodd, works by Ahmed Moustafa, catalogue with Shirin Neshat ©Gabriele Heidecker

What are some of the interesting new emerging art fairs you’ve been documenting for your new book?

All of the art fairs which I have attended since 2008 have unique atmospheres: Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair 2008, Art Dubai, India Art Summit New Delhi, Contemporary Istanbul 2009 and this year I’ve been to The Armory Show, Fresh Paint Tel Aviv, ART HK 10 Hong Kong. For example, Art Dubai is remarkable because of the attire of its visitors: the men wearing white robes and the ladies in black. The India Art Summit for the fresh, unprejudiced approach by its visitors. I’m looking forward to Art Moscow. Hopefully I shall be able to document the art fairs in Johannesburg, Seoul, Mexico City, and eventually Sao Paolo, Tokyo and Singapore, which are on my agenda for 2011.

What have you seen in these emerging fairs that are different to what is going on in the bigger fairs?
To mention a few differences, they are not as perfect as in our expectations of European Art Fairs and, the selection of works that are shown, are a result of different cultural conventions and understanding of what art is. The behaviour of the public is led by fresh curiosity and sometimes there is less of a distance between the viewer and the object of art. This has become particularly obvious at the east Asian Art fairs, for example at ART HK 10. But also they add a breath of fresh air to the usual bazaars of the art world – something very new may emerge from this confrontation between western logistics, style, understandings and – from my point of view, the unfinished, uncontrolled, regional but vivid state of these new art fairs. This may in turn lead to new horizons and greater opportunities for the more established art world and fairs in general, which are usually characterized by their exhaustive professionalism.

Art Dubai 2009 © Gabriele Heidecker

Will you be exhibiting the new images soon?
Yes in 2010/11, I intend to exhibit each of the “photo-portraits” in the respective cities where the photos have been taken – for example in Istanbul, the series on Contemporary Istanbul 09 will most probably be shown at the fair ground; in New Delhi and Hong Kong talks are underway with representatives of the Goethe Institute. Then there is an exhibition planned – including the publication of the next book, in Berlin with selections of all the art fairs including the European ones. My aim with these photo-portraits is to capture the special character of the individual art fairs as determined by the respective country’s culture and perception of art. I’m also interested in the people who set up these fairs as well as in the people who visit them and how they deal with this art-phenomenon.

Do you feel that we are tending towards a universal art, a global language transcending cultural conventions which will become a unifying force?
With art fairs appearing everywhere there seems to be a global aspect to this market – the phenomenon of the art bazaar can be compared to a global language. The art fair as an expression of western culture, as a benchmark for up-to-datedness and civilisation, and at the same time, as a type of implant, has been accepted and implemented worldwide – it is this phenomenon of the art scene which seems to me – to have a dimension of time on its own – and which I try to capture in the expanding moment.

Do you feel this will result in a homogenization of artistic influences – resulting in a singular codification of art history that will dampen future artistic expression?
To what extent and if at all this development will take place I dare not make any projections . . .

See Gabriele Heidecker in action on German TV.

The Armory Show , New York 2010, Leo König inc. New York, works Tony Matelli, Nicole Eisenmann, Ridley Howard © Gabriele Heidecker

India Art Summit 09 Sakshi Gallery: work: Isa Ho © Gabriele Heidecker

Contemporary Istanbul 2009; CDA Projects, works by Balkan Naci Islimyeli © Gabriele Heidecker