"Doors and Floors, War and More: Reflections on The Armory Show 05"
The International Fair of New York
Piers 90 and 92
March 10-14, 2005
By Joan Boykoff Baron and Reuben M. Baron
This year’s Armory Show was a reasonably accurate reflection of today’s international art market with its vast array of sculpture, installations, painting, drawing, photography, and even some furniture. More than 550 galleries competed for 162 booths. By design, roughly half the exhibitors were from outside of New York. So, it was possible to travel to 39 world cities without leaving New York—not a bad deal for a $20.00 one-day ticket for up to eight hours of art-gazing. The show was alternately exhilarating, mundane, and depressing. It lacked the manic verve of Art Basel/Miami but was certainly an efficient way of catching up on current trends and occasionally something more.
What follows is our list of favorite works in the show—those works that stopped us in our tracks and caused us to spend some time looking closely. Our picks include a mix of established, mid-career, and emerging artists from galleries in eight countries and three American cities. In looking for common threads among the works we liked most, we realized that they cut across the familiar art-world categories of High Modernism, Minimalism, and Post-Modernism. But, we discovered that to adequately describe this year’s show, a fourth group was necessary—a hybrid category that we are calling, Post-Modern Minimalism, works that have a minimal sensibility along with social content and/or humor with strong ironic tones. We will present our favorite works by using these four categories and discussing them in reverse order.
Post-Modern Minimalism
Gilles Barbier The Space Conquest 2003
resin; 36 blocks: each block 15 ¾ x 15 ¾ x ½ inches
edition 3
Courrtesy Gallerie Georges-Phillipe & Nathalie Vallois, Paris
Post-Modern Minimalism was discernible in both U.S. and international galleries. This trend, which involves Postmodern transformations of minimal icons, is personified by Gilles Barbier’s “The Space Conquest” (Gallerie Georges-Phillipe & Nathalie Vallois, Paris, France). This floor piece looks like a large slice of swiss cheese with its characteristic holes. Composed of 36 square yellow tiles, it is directly reminiscent of Carl Andre but (pardon the pun) decidedly different in flavor.
Anish Kapoor Untitled 2004
acrylic; 30 x 30 x 30 inches
Courtesy Lisson Gallery, London
Anish Kapoor at Lisson Gallery, London created a large minimal translucent acrylic cube “Untitled” reminiscent of those made in the late sixties by Los Angeles artists like Larry Bell, Peter Alexander and Dewain Valentine. Only, Kapoor intentionally inserts an air bubble into the middle of it, ironically making the large bubble the desired focal point of the work rather than the reason for the artist to destroy it.
Julian Opie Garage? 2004
aluminum and lacquer paint; 17 x 31-1/2 x 29-1/2 inches
series of 8 (each different color)
Courtesy Lisson Gallery, London
One of the stars of the show was Julian Opie whose contributions at the fair included videos, two life-sized painted cars in the entrance to Pier 88, and a miniature entitled, “Garage?” at the Lisson Gallery. Opie’s work has a certain brio and charm while being rigorously done. We particularly liked his scaled-down garage which typifies this Post-Modern Minimalism; each side resembles a minimalist reductive painting, albeit one contaminated by content. The work jabs at a suburban-style garage containing perhaps too many cars.
Katsuhiro Saiki Arrangements #27 2000
C-print on aluminum; 50-3/10 x 3-1/10 x 3-1/10 inches
edition 1/6
Courtesty SCAI Gallery, Tokyo
Three tall narrow aluminum wall sculptures by Katsuhiro Saiki (SCAI Gallery, Tokyo, Japan) were composed of square bands of C-print photographs in two alternating colors. From a distance, these narrow photographs are reminiscent of Donald Judd’s vertical stacks. Like magnets, they draw one close, at which point, new elements appear. In “Arrangements #27” the dark brown sections expose various segments of a brick wall and the white sections reveal a differently placed pale isolated tree.
Luca Pancrazzi Il paesaggio ci osserva 2004 (detail: “-4% TARRAGONA ”)
resin, polyester, cardboard, stucco Slem, Soft Plus, Stabilo Ohpen univeral, brass, computer circuits, wood, glue, Lechleroid enamel, polyurethane sponges, on mdf
each column: 6-7/10 x 7-9/10 x 145-7/10 inches
Courtesy Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy
Luca Pancrazzi’s “Il paesaggio ci osserva” (Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy), consisting of tall white architectural columns extending from floor to ceiling are reminiscent of the clean cool lines of Ann Truitt’s sculptures. But, the first surprise is that at about eye level, each column encases, in a small plexiglass box about an inch high, a scene that generally includes buildings in a natural setting. A closer look reveals that the miniature buildings are made out of computer chips, providing social commentary about the omnipresence of the computer.
Ivan Navarro Holeway 2005
aluminum door, mirrors, lightbulbs; 86 x 39-1/2 x 4-1/4 inches
edition of 3 +1AP
Courtesy Roebling Hall, Brooklyn
Echoes of Dan Flavin’s installations at Marfa, Texas were also present at the fair. Ivan Navarro’s “Holeway”, encased in a wall only 4.25 inches deep, is experienced as a very long surreal hallway of lights. It teases the viewer to enter, but a transparent closed front makes this a physical impossibility. In this work, Navarro uses light bulbs, doors, and mirrors—all low-tech materials and simple technology—to parody aspects of unwise energy consumption.
Spencer Finch Sunset (south Texas 6/20/03) 2003
fluorescent lights, filters; 25 inches x 40 feet - maximal length 16 feet minimum
(originally commissioned by ArtPace, San Antonio, Texas)
edition of 3 (20,30,40 feet versions)
Courtesy Postmaster Callery, New York
Spencer Finch’s “Sunset (South Texas 6/20/03)” (Postmaster Gallery, NYC) was perhaps the single most beautiful work at the show—more than twenty feet of colored fluorescent bulbs. But, unlike Flavin who sought to create a self-referential abstraction, Finch seeks to recreate the light at a particular time of day in a particular place. When there is neither sunlight nor artificial ambient light in a room, the light produced by Finch’s wrapped colored bulbs should be the same as the light at sunset in south Texas on June 20, 2003.
Teresita Fernandez Burnout 2005
glass cubes; 69 x 67-1/2 inches
edition of 3
Courtesy Lehman Maupin Gallery, New York
Teresita Fernández’s “Burnout” (Lehmann Maupin Gallery, NYC) looks and feels like an exploding fire ball. This light and heat are created by informallyrendered concentric circles composed of hundreds of wall-mounted small square glass cubes packed closely at the center and more loosely around the edges. The expanding mass obtains its dynamic quality by the artist’s affixing the cubes individually to the wall in an intuitive and iterative way. The effect is a kind of minimal version of the sublime—the minimal is in the details; the sublime is in the whole, albeit with just a hint of possible kitsch.
Clay Ketter Compromised Wall 2004
acrylic on canvas; 71 inches x 71 inches
Courtesy Brandstrom & Stene Gallery, Stockholm
If the above works play with light, Clay Ketter and Do-Ho Suh examine the effects of incorporating content into serial forms that partition architectural space. Clay Ketter’s beautiful two-dimensional “Compromised Wall” (Brändström & Stene Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden) appears to be an abstract geometric painting with two graceful rows of balanced circles. But, like most of Ketter’s work, it is really an image of a wall with holes, indeed, as the title implies, a compromised wall.
Do-Ho Suh Screen 2005
ABS, stainless steel; 120 x 236-1/2 inches
Courtesy of the Artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York
Do-Ho Suh creates “Screen”, a meticulously crafted 10 x 20 foot wall of pastel colors at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, NYC. The work looks like a serial abstraction of repeating rows of straight lines and diamond forms. Up close, the screen dissolves into more than a thousand tightly packed, perfectly aligned, interdependent small metal figures of alternating Korean men and women, each with hands outstretched holding the shoes of the person above. The content of this aesthetically seductive work subtly challenges the viewer’s sense of space and personal autonomy.
Continued
