this week in art

PULSE CONTEMPORARY ART FAIR 2011

David Ellis’s percussive symphony “True Value (pain fukette)” helped him win the Pulse Prize (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Metropolitan Pavilion
125 West 18th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
March 3-6, $20 (children under twelve free)
212-255-2327
www.pulse-art.com

Year in and year out, Pulse Contemporary Art Fair is among the best of the fairs during Armory Arts Week, offering fun and fascinating site-specific installations and special programming. For 2011, Pulse has moved into the Metropolitan Pavilion, where more than fifty international galleries have booths, in addition to another fourteen participating in the upstairs Impulse section. Among the Pulse New York 2011 Projects are a preview of “Assembly,” comprising work by eight emerging Southern California photographers on view March 15 – April 9 at Fred Torres Collaborations on West 29th St.; Craig Damrauer’s vinyl greetings placed throughout the fair; Molly Dilworth’s paint-on-Mylar “Field Test” at the entrance, incorporating X-ray and electron microscopy images; Oskar Schmidt’s HD video “Back Portrait”; and Ben Wolf’s large-scale “Clamber,” centered on an eighteen-foot hull from a salvaged ship abandoned in Newark. Impulse, comprising one-person shows, has some excellent painting, including Jeff Kellar’s “Toler’s Fence,” “Jaded,” and “Barnyard Brawl 1” at Freight + Volume, Sangram Majumdar’s “Behind Things,” “Studio Chair,” and “Nighttree” at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, and Pulse Prize finalist Jinny Yu’s exquisite oil on aluminum works, some flat, others folded and scrunched, such as the triptych “Notes (large),” the embedded “Painting, wiped, on the wall,” and the dreamlike “Black Cloud (small).” The winner of the Pulse Prize for “exceptional artist” in the Impulse section was David Ellis of Joshua Liner, whose installation includes “True Value (pain fukette),” a group of metal and plastic paint cans that come alive and give a percussive concert, in addition to a wall sculpture of resin-encased record covers (no Barry Manilow allowed) and animated videos of splashing paint. Among the downstairs highlights are Dilworth’s “Times Square Test Pour” series at David B Smith, preparatory studies for her massive ground painting in Times Square; new black-and-white paintings by Martin Mull at Samuel Freeman; Pablo Zuleta Zahr’s acrylic C-prints of wandering people at Richard Levy; a preview of Eve Sussman’s nextfilm project at Cristin Tierney; Carlos Garacioca’s photo lightboxes at Habana; Brooklyn-based printmaker and sculptor Beka Goedde’s delightfully soothing mixed media on panel and paper “Moment of Transference” works at Christina Ray; and Margie Livingston’s “Paint Objects” and Heather Gwen Martin’s large-scale “Pigeon Hands” at Luis de Jesus. We always look forward to Jeffrey Blondes’s latest water-related meditative video project at Nicholas Metivier, and this year he has brought the twelve-and-a-half-hour “Bay of Fundy, Long Island West.” Be sure to stop by the Jen Bekman Gallery booth to check out her 20×200 project, which offers limited-edition artwork at ridiculously affordable prices. Pulse Presents will feature performance art and discussions, while Pulse Play highlights such video art as Desi Santiago’s “Work for Love.”

SCOPE NEW YORK 2011

Cinders Gallery’s “The Outer-Boroughs Cyclical Non-Cynical Art School of Thought” will be part of “us vs us” program at Scope

320 West St. at the West Side Highway across from Pier 40
First View: Wednesday, March 2, $100, 3:00 – 9:00 pm
General Admission: March 3-6, $20
www.scope-art.com

This year Scope is expanding into a sixty-thousand-square-foot space along the West Side Highway, where more than fifty international exhibitors will have work on view, including a.m.f. projects, Mindy Solomon, Galeria Christopher Paschall, Galerie Von Braunbehrens, Gallery Dukan & Hourdequin, Sundaram Tagore Gallery, Paci Arte, and Aureus Contemporary. Scope will host numerous special events during the fair, centered around “us vs us,” which takes place in the fenced-in mezzanine and consists of such site-specific performance art pieces as “Come On Guy,” Craig Smith’s “Stacking Boats: A Lesson Plan,” Stephanie Diamond’s “Home Away from Home” corner store, Cinders Gallery’s “The Outer-Boroughs Cyclical Non-Cynical Art School of Thought,” and Grace Space’s “The Way to Love Me,” in which members of the audience are encouraged to lie to one another. Other special projects include the Rebaroque Artist Series Sound Wall, a film program from Robert Boyd, and the West Harlem Art Fund’s “Gumboot Dance.”

POOL ART FAIR 2011

Matt Bahen, “Gatekeeper,” oil on canvas, 2010

Gershwin Hotel
7 East 27th St. at Fifth Ave.
March 4-6, suggested donation $10 (vernissage and party $50), 3:00 – 10:00 pm
www.poolartfair.com
www.gershwinhotel.com

Organized by Frère Independent, the PooL Art Fair features unrepresented artists not seen at other art fairs, offering collectors, gallerists, and art lovers the opportunity to get in on the ground floor with emerging talent. The fair opens on Thursday at 3:00, followed by vernissage at 6:00 and a party at 10:00 with a DJ and open bar ($50). The art is spread out in more than thirty rooms on the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors, in addition to the lobby, with a focus on painting. Among the stronger works are two large-scale, densely textured oils by Matt Bahen depicting mysterious locations with dogs, “Gatekeeper” and “We Carved Our Names”; Bob Clyatt’s “Reframing Figurative Sculpture,” particularly three male figures hanging upside down; Claudie Bastide’s “Freedom and Random,” consisting of French Abstraction Lyrique canvases bathed in reds and yellows and blacks; Dan Pottick’s photographs of naked threesomes playing together, in the same room with several lovely paintings by Lola Morishita; and dirquo nyc/++’s and Tracey Kessler’s graffiti-culture abstract works. As you walk into each hotel room, you’re also entering each artist’s unique vision of the world, with most of them there to share it with you, so be sure to say hello and ask questions.

VOLTA NY 2011

Mark Jenkins’s “Family Room” is one of the early favorites at Volta

7 West 34th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
March 3-6, $10-$15 (combination pass with the Armory Show $40)
www.ny.voltashow.com

VOLTA NY, founded by Amanda Coulson as an invitational show of solo projects, focuses on the artists themselves instead of galleries or artistic themes. Held at 7W across the street from the Empire State Building, VOLTA, which works in partnership with the Armory Show (a free shuttle will run between each, and a $40 discounted ticket gets you into both), will feature installations by more than ninety international artists and collectives, including Judi Werthein, EVOL, [dNASAb], Ryan Schneider, Florian Heinke, Mark Jenkins, Homebase, George Kuchar, BGL, Daniel Rozin, and Artprojx, from twenty-three countries as Russia, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Costa Rica, Mexico, Trinidad, Spain, Argentina, and the U.S. David Tully and Shiri Mordechay have been chosen for the entrance and lobby, while Michael Decker’s “Old Growth” ironing boards lead to the elevators. Culture Shock Marketing and Vimeo have curated cutting-edge projections for the elevator and shuttle bus from such artists as Paddy Jolley, Glenn Marshall, Hugh McGrory, Scott Pagano, and J. G. Zimmerman, and Jennifer and Kevin McKoy have put together actor-led guided tours that begin in the eleventh-floor foyer. Volta will also host Open Forum talks with such artists as Yevgeniy Fiks, Mauricio Miranda, and Deborah Grant and such curators and gallerists as Courtney Martin, Erin Sickler, Kate Kraczon, and Ed Halter.

INDEPENDENT 2011

Laura Aldridge, “Hand Extended,” detail, screen prints on Perspex, plaster, fabric, and paint (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

548 West 22nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
March 3-6, free
www.independentnewyork.com

Winner of the 2010 Rob Pruitt Award for Alternative Project of the Year, the Independent art fair is back in the old Dia space in Chelsea, with more than fifty galleries spread out over the second, third, and fourth floors. Founded by X Initiative’s Elizabeth Dee and Hotel’s Darren Flook, the Independent was a rousing success last year, and not just because it was free. It offered a wide range of multimedia, participatory installations in well-organized spaces, giving visitors the opportunity to play Ping-Pong on Rirkrit Tiravanija’s “The Future Will Be Chrome,” accept a torn page from Michael Dean’s “The Floor Is the Object,” take a seat in Ryan Trecartin’s caged-in “P.opular S.ky (section ish),” and create their own dialogue while investigating the artistic dialogues created by moss and Westreich-Wagner. The 2011 Independent is being developed with White Columns’ Matthew Higgs and codirectors Jayne Drost and Laura Mitterand and includes such artists and galleries as Dexter Sinister, Guyton/Walker, and Trisha Donnelly of Artists Space, Erica Baum of Bureau, Katinka Bock of Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Michel François of Bortolami, Josephine Meckseper of Elizabeth Dee, Walead Beshty of Wallspace, Reena Spaulings of Sutton Lane, Ryan Gander and Roman Ondák of gb agency, Michail Pirgelis of Sprüth Magers, Carol Bove of Hotel, Wolfgang Tillmans and Liam Gillick of Maureen Paley, Simon Fujiwara of Neue Alte Brücke and Gio Marconi, and Jonathan Monk of Meyer Riegger. Unfortunately, much of the work is not clearly labeled, so it is often difficult to know what you’re looking at. The fair is heavy on sculptural installation, with numerous floor pieces, so be careful where you walk, although you are encouraged to step on Eftihis Patsourakis’s “Skin,” composed of actual welcome mats from his native Athens, but stay away from Ryan Gander’s “Matthew Young falls from the 1985 into a white room (Maybe this is not that way it is supposed to happen)” [sic], made of broken stunt-safe sugar glass and wood. We got a kick out of Laura Aldridge’s “Hand Extended” screen prints on Perspex of cats holding on to a human’s arm, mixed in with her plaster, fabric, and paint wall pieces. With all the craziness and chaos going on, you’ll want to take a respite in front of Maureen Gallace’s small oil on panel “August, Beach Cottage (Pink Flowers),” another one of her gentle, memorable paintings. While there’s very little video, one of the better film installations is Rossella Biscotti’s “Yellow,” which uses an old-fashioned projector to relay a WWII-related psychiatric session. While not nearly as dazzling as last year’s inaugural fair, there’s still a lot to like about Independent, but you have to be willing to work for it.

MOVING IMAGE: AN ART FAIR OF CONTEMPORARY VIDEO ART

Janet Biggs’s “Airs Above the Ground” is one of the many highlights of the free inaugural Moving Image art fair (image courtesy Janet Biggs)

Waterfront New York Tunnel
269 11th Ave. between 27th & 28th Sts.
March 3-6, free
212-643-3152
www.moving-image.info

We consider ourselves “vide-hos” — we rarely meet an experimental video that doesn’t intrigue us in one way or another. So we’re excited about the inaugural Moving Image art fair, an invitational show consisting of single-channel videos, video sculptures, and video installations. Held in the Waterfront Tunnel on the far northwest side of Chelsea during Armory Arts Week, the four-day fair is the brainchild of Winkleman Gallery’s Edward Winkleman and Murat Orozobekov and has been organized by P·P·O·W Gallery’s Penny Pilkington and Wendy Olsoff, with an advisory committee made up of Zoe Butt of Ho Chi Minh City’s SanArt, John Connelly of New York’s Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, Elizabeth Dee of Chelsea’s Elizabeth Dee Gallery, Raphael Gygax of Zurich’s Migros Museum, and Kevin McGarry of LA’s Migrating Forms. Video-based works from approximately three dozen international artists are being shown, including Shana Moulton, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Glenn Fogel, Miguel Angel Rios, Amparo Sard, Carolee Schneeman, Martin Solo Climent, and Leslie Thornton, ranging from one minute (Johanna Unzuta’s hypnotic “Natural Movements”) to thirty-three (Simon Gush’s soccer-as-political-metaphor “In the Company Of”). The majority of the works are shown on individual flat-screen monitors suspended from above and lined up along each side of the vertical passageway, some with chairs and headphones. When you first enter the Waterfront New York Tunnel, on your left will be Kasmalieva and Djumaliev’s “Trans Siberian Amazons,” featuring three video sets embedded within plaid Chinese bags filled with clothing. It’s okay to step on Cal Thompson’s floor video, “The Orb,” on your way to such wonderful special installations as Michal Rovner’s brilliant “June,” Jim Campbell’s light sculpture “Exploded View,” and Corban Walker’s “TV Man,” in which the diminutive artist (actual size) looks out calmly while seemingly trapped in a video booth.

Flat-screen video monitors line both sides of the Waterfront New York Tunnel in Chelsea at the Moving Image art fair (twi-ny/mdr)

There are a number of other outstanding works, and not only from such late legends as David Wojnarowicz (“Heroin”) and Hannah Wilke (“Intercourse with . . .”). In “Alive — An Essential Guide to Survival,” Cecilia Stenbom spends nearly fifteen minutes sitting at a table reading a playful modern-day guide on how to defeat such constant threats as germs, terrorist attacks, and eating out in restaurants. Made in 2002 when he was a graduate student in London, Hiraki Sawa’s “Dwelling” turns his dorm room into airspace for plane activity, with flights taking off from tables and carpeting and flying through hallways and bathrooms. Janet Biggs’s “Airs Above the Ground” follows a synchronized swimmer as she first prepares to get in the water, then delves into her aquatic training. In “Danse Serpentine (Doubled and Refracted),” Miranda Lichtenstein transforms the Lumières’ classic 1896 film of Loie Fuller into an intoxicating endless loop. On Saturday at 2:00, a spotlight panel will examine “Current Takes on Video,” with artists Leslie Thornton and Lucy Raven and curators Chrissie Iles, Barbara London, and Glenn Phillips, moderated by McGarry. As an added bonus, admission to the fair and the panel is free. Moving Image has made an impressive debut that we hope keeps it coming back year after year after year.

VERGE: ART BROOKLYN

Multiple locations in Dumbo
March 3-6, free
www.vergeartfair.com

Last year, the Verge Art Fair was held in the Dylan Hotel on East 41st St., where artists and collectives got individual rooms to display their works. It had a mysterious, claustrophobic feel, like you were invading people’s private space. There’s nothing private about the 2011 Verge fair, which moves to galleries throughout Dumbo, including 81 Front St. (gallery exhibitors), 111 Front St. (“Brooklyn Art Now: 2011 Survey Exhibition”), One Main St. (panels and discussions), 55 Washington St. (“Material Issue: Art Brooklyn Artist’s Projects”), and 20 Jay St. (“Tomorrow’s Stars: Artist’s Open Call Exhibition” and “Material Issue”) as well as spilling out into the streets. Everything is free — even the opening night party at Galapagos Art Space, if you get there before 10:00, after which admission is $20; the party features live performances by Sister Anne; Not Blood, Paint; Clifton; the Brooklyn What?; Violens; Nebulla; Enoe; and M Panorama. Among the many international exhibitors are Antidote, Arch 402, Firecat Projects, MoCADA, and G2 Gallery, although the focus is on Brooklyn galleries, along with artist projects by Brooklyn Treasury, Dwight Baird, Kirk Bauer, Patrick W. Duffy, Karina Natis & Chloe Cheau, Midori Okuyama, Richard Silver, and many others. There will also be live, site-specific events, from mural painting to performance art, and the VIP Passport Program gives attendees a first look at the schedule and the opportunity to meet various artists in their studios.