Scott Campbell, Noblesse Oblige, 2011, Cut uncut US currency sheets, copper box, 21 x 25 x 18.75 inches

Tattoo artist Scott Campbell has migrated his etchings from skin to galleries – OHWOW inaugurated their new space yesterday in Los Angeles with a show of Campbell’s new work inked on the insides of ostrich eggs and stacks of paper money, using styles of vanitas imagery traditionally associated with the arena of tattooing.

Campbell, who is probably making a mint through his recent collaboration with Louis Vuitton, had enough currency on hand to carve a skull from $11,000 of uncut sheets of US dollar bills. The show, titled Nobelesse Oblige, signifies the artist’s pride in his blue-collar heritage, and plays with the idea of what is precious by removing value from social currency or placing value on the artefacts of common trade (by gold plating copper plates made with his tattoo gun).

© Scott Campbell, Courtesy of OHWOW Gallery

This Spring Campbell lent street cred to the more up-market LV luggage with delicate Asian style renderings of figurative dragons on bespoke leather bags. His collaboration though with LV began long before on the supine back of its Creative Director, Marc Jacobs on whose skin he’s etched such endearing icons as bull terriers and the face of Elizabeth Taylor.

Louis Vuitton and Scott Campbell inspirations for 2011 Spring Collection

The LV brand motif on a pig hide - © Wim Delvoye - Art Farm, Yang Zhen, 2005, 140x100-cm, tattoo on pigskin-tanned

This will be the third space opened by OHWOW founders Al Moran and Aaron Bondaroff’s following Miami and New York, where they had also opened a soho bookshop.

Scott Campbell speaks on his LV collaboration (below):

Scott Campbell, Noblesse Oblige, March 19, 2011 – April 22, 2011, OHWOW, 937 North La Cienega, Los Angeles, CA 90069

Simon de Pury, turning law and reason on its head, in front of Maurizio Cattelan's Frank and Jaime, 2002. Edition of 3. Estimated at $1-1.5 million. Photo credit:Kisa Lala

Let the drum-rolls begin – Simon dePury, the market-savvy chairman of Phillips de Pury & Company, was at hand to christen the new Park Avenue location for the inaugural preview of the Part 1- Contemporary Art Evening Sale. The collection, entitled ‘Carte Blanche,’ curated by Phillipe Segalot, former international head of Christie’s Contemporary Art, is scheduled for auction November 8, 2010, with a low-estimate of $80,000,000.

Richard Prince, Untitled (Cowboy) 1998-99.Ektacolor photograph. Edition of 2 plus artist proof. Estimated at $1-1.5 million

Phillips’ move uptown to the new 25,559 square feet space at 450 Park Ave will extend their buyers’ circle beyond the Meatpacking District, and bring them closer to their bidding rivals Sotheby’s and Christie’s. “The sale will be a game-changer in the way auctions are being prepared,” said Simon de Pury.

Simon de Pury looking pleased in front of the inverted cops' of Maurizio Cattelan's Frank and Jaime. Photo credit: Kisa Lala

Paul McCarthy, Mechanical Pig, 2005. Edition of 3 +1 AP. Estimate $2.5-3.5 million

Takashi Murakami, the poster child for the show, is his own best salesman. Riding high on his Versailles exhibition, he currently commands high prices (listed estimate of $4-6million for Miss KO²), but his work, though astonishing at first, can quickly turn dreary on the twentieth reiteration. It’s unfortunate for Warhol that his career ended before the Age of Reproduction fully took hold, because with the multiplicity of editions that abound, even Walter Benjamin would be baffled by the soaring and undiminished value of an ‘original’.

But sometimes, a reproduction, as in the case of Cattelan’s Stephanie, maybe a better bargain than its original.

Maurizio Cattelan, Stephanie, 2003. Edition of 3 + 1 AP Estimate: $1-1.5 million

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #153, 1985. Edition of 6. Estimate: $2-$3 million

View of Phillips de Pury's space at 450 Park Avenue with upper tier skyboxes for premium clients. Photo: Kisa Lala

In 1985, when billionaire Greek industrialist Dakis Joannou bought the first piece of his now world-renowned contemporary art collection—a basketball signed by Dr. Jay submerged in a tank of water and simply titled “Equilibrium”—it started two chain reactions. One, Mr. Koons would never have to worry about people buying his work again, as Jonnau has been very successful in buying up most of it for his monolithic museum in Athens. Secondly, Joannou would be very adept in helping to solidify emerging artists and future greats (Terrence Koh, Cindy Sherman, Takashi Murakami), as well as helping to shape the very nature of collecting.

And thus, in the middle of last week, the world got the first look at Jeff Koons’ curatorial debut: “Skin Fruit: Selections for the Dakis Joannou Collection.” On how he chose the pieces for the exhibition, Koons told SPREAD ArtCulture: “I did everything very intuitively. I’ve known Dakis since 1985, and from meeting with him and following the collection from that time, I just wanted to try and capture what I felt represented his interests and his ambition and broadness in collecting contemporary art…but very intuitively.”

SPREAD ArtCulture: Is this your first of many curating efforts?

Jeff Koons: I think artists always curate their own work, but I have an Ed Paschke show that will open in about two weeks that I will curate that I brought together. But it’s like anything: When you’re creating an artwork, you’re just following your interests, and in curating, it’s the same thing. But it’s intuitive, there’s a lot of great work. Some of the best art pieces, some of the best works in the collection, aren’t here. Maybe they’re on loan or it’s an artist’s work that didn’t it within this context of looking at the body.

SAC: How did you choose the pieces in this show and under what context?

JK: It’s just my intuition. I would go through the collection and choose works that I felt represented Dakis’s desire with the collection, and I would go back through and go over them again, and I would find that I was always coming up with the same things. And I made models of the museum; I would lay things out and they developed their own relationships, and it’s just the same when you’re following your own ideas and creating your own works that this happens. It got to a point where if I would try and move something on one of the floors, and take it from one location to another, for me, it just wouldn’t work.

Some of the artists we were able to speak to at the opening, such as Terence Koh, were far less articulate about their involvement in the show:

A sculpture by Terence Koh

SPREAD ArtCulture: Tell me about your involvement in Skin Fruit.

Terence Koh: I was just chosen.

SAC: What are you working on now?

TK: Drinking water.

Koh was the only artist to have sculptures, as well as paintings, in the show.

Some patrons, such as the Chelsea behemoth Tony Shafrazi, were able to weigh in with the learned authority of and award-winning curator (Shafrazi was the recipient of Rob Pruitt’s “Best Group Show” in 2009 at the first ever Art Awards):

"Noodles" by Urs Fischer

SPREAD ArtCulture: What do you think of the show?

Tony Shafrazi: I love the show! I think it’s an eclectic wonderful representation of what’s going on. Dakis is a great collector, and has been for many years, and you see such a great mixture of young, new work, such as been selected from a great many things. I love this Fischer piece right here (Urs Fischer’s “Noodles”), don’t you just love it? It’s one of my favorite pieces in the place. Every piece in here is interesting.

Charles Ray's "Aluminum Girl"

"Fall '91" by Charles Ray (foreground); Terence Koh's "Chocolate Mountains" (background)

Charles Ray's "Revolution Counter-Revolution"

A piece by Downtown favorite and partner of the late Dash Snow, Dan Colen

Dan Altmejd's calamitous "Giant"

Maurizio Cattelan's very bland and largely pedantic "All," an eight-piece installation featuring life-size body bags carved from Carrara marble

"Untitled (Jack)" by Paul McCarthy, which could be a prop straight out of Kubrick

A wonderfully whimsical and weird colloboration by the team of Paul McCarthy and Paula Jones

A wonderfully whimsical and weird colloboration by the team of Paul McCarthy and Paula Jones

There seemed to be a very even split among opening-night patrons as to whether or not the show was a success. Check it out for yourself until June 6th and let us know what you think.

Wong Lip Chin: Baby I Nicht You (Oil and acrylic on jute)

Traveling to Singapore in search of the next big artist was not exactly on the top of my mind as I visited this tiny country in Asia last month. But the local art instigators at CulturePush, Ci’en Xu and Michele Adriaens, convinced me otherwise. High hopes were established by these two. To them, twenty-two year old Wong Lip Chin (or Lip, as he is called) “will make it” in the sparse art world of Singapore, where the art climate is generally discouraging for creatives, and in the dense art world of beyond. Lip, in the duo’s preamble to me, is an artist that Singapore has never seen before. His art and the artist’s own personality, in the country’s terms, are uncannily unique, outstanding, and assertive. With some exaggeration, he could just be the Jesus that the country’s art world has been waiting for.

We traveled far from the glitz of Orchard Road to Paya Lebar, an industrial part of Singapore once home to its international airport, to visit Lip’s studio—his father’s car audio installation garage. Its muraled doors stood out among the street of identically painted red garage doors. It was an appropriate introduction to the young artist as I began to understand what Ci’en and Michele see in him. Like most of his peers, he is serving a mandatory term in the army. His dreads are now replaced with a conforming buzz cut. Yes, he sports the distinct Singaporean accent, an aural challenge to foreigners’ ears. But that’s about as Singaporean as Lip gets.

Lip's Studio

Sitting on the carpeted floors of his studio, I quickly learned that understanding Lip was not a pedestrian task. I had to excuse my New York City brain and think of him in the social context of conservative Singapore;  stereotypes of the country as a reserved, regimental, and subdued city sounded somewhat true. And Lip, with his rebellious, pompous, out-there, go-getting energy is, naturally, not to everyone’s liking. He was the trouble maker in his years studying printmaking at Lasalle College of the Arts. His “fuck you, fuck all” insubordination left him out of the teacher’s pet roster and, more seriously, jeopardized early opportunities for a National Art Council of Singapore grant. Of course, there are brave supporters who think that his mindset will take him far and away from the currently uninspiring and unsupportive arts world of Singapore. His works have been displayed in various fine art platforms in Asia, including the Taipei Biennial and a solo show at Marina Mandarin as part of their artist-in-residence program.  Commercially, Adidas, Esprit, and Dodge Caliber have commissioned his talents, seeking his artistry in creating murals and pop art.

Lip’s energy pulsated off his tall, lanky body as he tried hard to both contain and express his emotions and ideas. Perhaps, it was the nerves of being interviewed.  But he later explained, “I find it hard to express myself in words. Sorry if don’t have good grammar. I have limited vocabulary. Art, I think, is my form of communication.”

Scanning Lip’s studio, there are moments when I felt discordance in his series of paintings; each series is somewhat (and sometimes completely) different from the last. But then again, he is still young; his growth can only be measured after his stint in the army and, arguably, when he leaves the constricted art space of Singapore. In his solo exhibition “Now You See,” we met an artist heavily drawn to street art. Hints of Murakami’s superflat style are intertwined with what Lip calls “introspective glimpses of reality.” It was also in “Now You See” that we met Lilou, the cute and tiny representation of the artist that is a cross between Super Mario and Pringles. With Lip, it’s always a case of now you see it, now you don’t. It was easy to pigeon-hole Lip as another pop-art-influenced street artist, but Lilou, Lip’s paints and conversations have quickly moved on.

His preoccupations—to be seen and to be heard—have remained a constant theme in his work. Each canvas hosts a page in his diary and each brushstroke contains an invitation to converse. What Lip lacks in verbal eloquence he overcompensates with the fervor of his paintings. I can imagine the plight of the Singapore artist. Someone as young and bold like Lip, who embraces street and subjects of lust, can easily find Singapore’s square conservatism challenging. It is no wonder that most artists prematurely end their creative careers or face conformity by servicing the specifications of arts councils. I doubt that Lip is the only great artist in Singapore. But there is a reason why my friends at CulturePush think of him as the art community’s sparkle of hope. Perhaps, it’s his drive, his unapologetic dreams of stardom, and his belief that art is his life (a brave proclamation in his world where art is only seen as a hobby) that sets him apart. While other artists are discouraged by the path of the art world (especially in Singapore), the road is endless for Lip.

In less than two year’s time, Lip will be free. He will be free to pursue his dreams of being an art superstar and he will be free from his home country. It is likely that those in the western world would embrace (and normalize) his rebellion. He will finally be able to surround himself with peers and mentors who will feed and support his artistry. He will finally be thrown into the sea of artists who are as hungry as him. Outside of Singapore, he may be finally understood but he may also lose what has set him apart. And, when that happens, what does Lip do?

Lip in his studio

Lip’s recent works can be viewed in his website and at Asian Art Options
Special thanks to Ci’en and Michele of CulturePush

Last month in Paris, during event to promote the launch of a show of work on September 13th by French pop artist Xavier Veilhan at Château de Versailles, the Versailles museum director Jean-Jacques Aillagon announced to the Associated Free Press that Japanese artist Takashi Murakami had been chosen to appear at the venerable institution in 2010.  Murakami is often described as the “Japanese Warhol,” due perhaps to his Pop art style and extremely prolific production of work.  Of course another artist often described in this way is Jeff Koons, who in the winter of last year displayed many of his significant sculpture pieces at Versailles, which though iconic as contemporary art, were perhaps incongruous to that particular location.

Though the Jeff Koons in Versailles show last year was generally concluded to be both a successful and well attended exhibition, with almost 1 million visitors attending, it did garner significant controversy.  Prince Charles-Emmanuel de Bourbon-Parme, a French aristocrat in the line of succession to the French throne and a descendant of the palace’s original creator, Louis XIV, mounted a hight-profile legal challenge to the installation, which ultimately failed. Prince Charles-Emmanuel cited the Koons exhibition as “pornographic.”  As Takashi Murakami is also known to produce relatively illicit subject matter in his art, this exhibit may as well stir up some ire with French traditionalists.

Jeff Koons at Versailles

Takashi Murakami currently has simultaneous solo exhibitions this month in both Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea, New York and at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris.

New Murakami