The 2014 Palm Springs Fine Art Fair

For a few days I escaped from Los Angeles to Palm Springs. I visited several art galleries, saw a very fine Richard Diebenkorn exhibit at the Palm Springs Art Museum, and attended the Palm Springs Fine Art Fair.

Palm Springs is only a couple of hours away from Los Angeles. It’s a well-known winter vacation getaway in the middle of the desert. Famous for its devotion to the aesthetics of the mid-20th Century, it’s also one of the most gay-friendly cities in the US. It’s a relaxed, happy place, and I always love visiting.

The Palm Springs Fine Art Fair is an international art fair similar to, but smaller than, those I’ve blogged about here in Los Angeles. I was surprised to learn that this was only its third year; it looked really well-established. The exhibitors were universally upbeat and enthusiastic (in contrast with some of the grumps I’ve run into in L.A.). A few had traveled quite a long distance, from Europe or Asia, but all were smiling. I guess it is hard to be unhappy in Palm Springs. (The super warm weather didn’t hurt either.)

Friday at midday it was nice and quiet, just the way I like it. Not deserted, just not too busy. (The previous evening’s opening party was mobbed. You could hardly move, never mind see the art.)

The emphasis of this art show is “modern and contemporary” which means 20th and 21st century.

The work seemed mostly well chosen and highly finished. Even the conceptual stuff, which I’m not usually enamored with, was mostly well done. No half-assed art-school projects here! But mostly I prefer aesthetics over politics.

Here are some of my favorites:

Sarah Frost, “Y Pause (QUERTY #13),” 2014, made of discarded computer keys (and a few typewriter and other keys), 48 x 96 inches, $20,000 from William Shearburn Gallery, Saint Louis, Missouri. I really like this, it’s so clever. It’s one of those “why didn’t I think of that?” pieces.

Here’s a detail:

Encountering this next artist at the (overly crowded) opening party led to a fun conversation about technical details that I could relate to as a fellow acrylic painter:

Kristina Quinones, “Incubate,” acrylic on panel, 36 x 36 inches, $6,000 from The McLoughlin Gallery, San Francisco, California. The artist uses highly fluid acrylic paint flowed across the surface in sheer veils. The super-glossy finish is pure acrylic. We both agreed this is superior to the “shiny today but yellow tomorrow” resin finish that’s such a fetish with artists right now. How fun to encounter a kindred soul in that sea of humanity. High fives were exchanged.

Artist Mayme Kratz with her work in the Lisa Sette Gallery booth from Scottsdale, Arizona. Left: “Fragments,” 2013, resin, shells, crabs, starfish, bone, buds on panel, 36 x 36 inches. Right top: “Circle Dream 40,” 2013, resin and Mexican bird of paradise seeds on panel, 24 x 24 inches, $4500. Right bottom: “Circle Dream 50,” 2013, resin and acorn cupules on panel, 24 x 24 inches, $4500.

I felt really fortunate that Kratz was present on Friday. She was very free with details about her fascinating technique. (I do so appreciate artists who aren’t insecure about sharing their “secrets.”) She embeds carefully-placed natural materials within deep, colored resin pours, and then sands down the surface to reveal cross-sections of the seed pods, grasses, and shells. Some of the fair’s promotional material featured her work (and it caught my attention), but it’s even better in person. The tiny crab at the bottom of “Fragments” is just too cute.

Check out the superb photos of Kratz’s work here (gallery’s website).

And, finally, some more conceptual work. Yeah, conceptual isn’t usually my cup of tea, but this piece is pretty powerful:

Angela Ellsworth, “Seer Bonnet XIX (Flora Ann),” 2011, made from 24,182 corsage pins, fabric, steel, and wood, 64 x 25 x 40 inches, $13,900 from Lisa Sette Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona. A lovely pearl-studded bonnet made entirely of sharp pins… pretty on the outside and painful on the inside. Ouch!

detail:

I saw nearly this exact piece at the Palm Springs Art Museum just before going to the fair, so it was a double-whammy for me. It’s a striking piece; you can’t help but stop and look (twice, even). A pointed comment on femininity, you might say.

So, did you notice anything unusual about this lineup of artists I picked out? They’re all women. Yup, the gals are doing some amazing work out there. I didn’t realize all my favs were by women until I started going through my photos, but then it struck me. Maybe someday that won’t be noteworthy.

If you’re in Palm Springs next Presidents Day Weekend, I recommend the Palm Springs Art Fair. It’s well worth seeing.

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The 2014 Los Angeles Art Show

Every January for the past 19 years, art galleries from all over the world have schlepped selected works of art to Los Angeles for the LA Art Show. Other large art fairs here seem to come and go, but the venerable (19 years is venerable in L.A., trust me) LA Art Show keeps going strong.

I think it was even bigger and better this year.

Sadly, we seem to have lost the Affordable Art Fair which ran concurrently with the LA Art Show a couple years ago. It was easy to walk to it from the LA Art Show, but it’s nowhere to be seen again this year. I guess Los Angeles just can’t handle that much art. Still, I’m excited to see the LA Art Show doing so well. We need more people in this city taking an interest in and collecting art. The money is here, it’s just a question of education and taste. (Always a bit questionable in Tinseltown, admittedly.) This is the kind of show to draw them in.

My reviews of previous years: 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008

I finally remembered to take an establishing shot of the exterior this time! It only took me 7 years. This is the LA Convention Center, where the LA Art Show has been held since 2009:

The show ran Thursday through Sunday, January 16-19, 2014. I went on Friday, and like the last couple years I took public transportation to avoid Los Angeles’ infamous traffic. It’s no faster than driving, but it is easier and safer. Plus, this year I discovered there was a whopping 50% discount on show admission if you showed your Metro (“Tap”) card, so I happily claimed my discount. I’d prefer free, but half off ain’t bad.

Weekdays at this show are pretty quiet, which is great for me (I want to see art, not crowds). It’s less good for the exhibitors who sit around twiddling their thumbs for two days. It does seem to pick up in the evenings, but the daylight hours on weekdays are somewhat wasted for the exhibitors. Sorry guys! I like it like this:

I found myself skimming through the traditional section pretty quickly, and didn’t really stop for pictures. One gallery I wanted to take photos in didn’t allow it (I always ask first), and the others didn’t have anything that grabbed me enough to stop. But I did see some good art by dead artists; it’s worth going to this show if you’re into that. There’s always a lot of early-California Impressionism here; I saw several Edgar Payne paintings.

Of the more contemporary work, which made up the bulk of the show, there were some real standouts for me this year.

Facing each other across the open space pictured above were the two galleries I thought had the best booths of the show: Leslie Smith Gallery (Amsterdam) and ACE Gallery (Los Angeles).

My favorite was Leslie Smith Gallery. This was their first year in the LA Art Show, and they really started with a bang. They must have paid dearly for their prime location and extra-large booth space, but it sure looked good. As soon as I entered the hall I was drawn to this huge Australian Aboriginal painting on the outside of their booth:

Tjawina Porter Nampitjinpa (b. 1950), untitled, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 192 inches, price on request from Leslie Smith Gallery. Really, this painting should be in a museum.

detail (click to enlarge):

Inside the booth was more Aboriginal art, which they specialize in (along with other contemporary art). I enjoyed all the work they showed but since Aboriginal art is a passion of mine I just took pictures of that.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910-1996), “Grass Seed Blue” and “Grass Seed Red,” acrylic on canvas, 73 x 35 inches each, $125,000 each at Leslie Smith Gallery.

Lorna Ward Napanangka (b. 1961), “Marrapinti,” acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 inches, $17,500 at Leslie Smith Gallery.

detail:

Sarrita King (b. 1988), “Earth Circles,” acrylic on canvas, 59 x 17 inches, $4500 at Leslie Smith Gallery.

Barbara Weir (b. 1945), “Grass Seeds,” acrylic on canvas, 47 x 35 inches, $12,500 at Leslie Smith Gallery.

Proceeding around the hall (and around the globe) we now stop in Japan where I admired some painterly textile art:

The large central piece is by Chiyu Uemae, untitled stitchwork, 66 x 54 inches, 1989-90, no price indicated, shown by Whitestone Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.

detail:

Some more work I found interesting:

LA Roc (Angel Ortiz), several pieces; the largest: “Yellow Cat,” oil and marker on canvas, 36 x 36 inches, 2013, $14,500 at Lawrence Fine Art, East Hampton, New York. (Puzzlingly, this gallery also had numerous traditional old-school landscape paintings displayed in their booth. They admitted they don’t usually show such disparate work side-by-side in their gallery. I found it quite jarring.) LA Roc apparently worked closely with Keith Haring as a youngster and now his work so closely resembles Haring’s that the gallery feels compelled to introduce him as “not Keith Haring.” (wince)

For more horror vacui, we travel all the way to China:

Li Ying, “Happy,” acrylic on canvas, 79 x 55 inches, 2013, $28,000 shown in the group show “Hues of China.” Can I possibly express how much I love this person’s work? Here, take a closer look (words! heraldry! figures! stuff!):

  

Finally, let’s return to where we started, at that large open space between my two favorite booths in the show. Across from the fantastic display of Aboriginal art at Leslie Smith was the fun and intriguing display by ACE Gallery of Los Angeles. What I loved best about it was the experience of threading my way through the mazelike booth, turning a corner to discover yet another delightful vignette of odd and intriguing works. A couple of standouts for me were these:

Brian Wills, untitled, rayon thread and enamel on wood, 36 x 36 inches, no price indicated, shown by ACE Gallery, Los Angeles. Those colored lines are threads (of the ordinary sewing sort), stretched across the piece and affixed only to the sides of the board. They weave under and over each other near the center to make that translucent effect. Mesmerizing up close, graphic from a distance. My kind of stuff.

   

Two views of the same piece (which exhibited an exciting color shift as you moved around it): Gilsela Colon, “Rectangle Torque Glo-Pod (Iridescent Hot Red/Pink),” blow-molded acrylic, 31h x 65w x 12d inches, 2013, no price indicated, shown by ACE Gallery. It looks a lot deeper than 12 inches, doesn’t it? Strange and mysterious but oddly compelling.

Thank you, LA Art Show. Good show this year!

Scottsdale: When you gamble, sometimes you lose

I was so excited to do the big art show in Scottsdale, Arizona. (The Scottsdale Arts Festival, March 2013)

Some sad, soggy art.

It was a gamble. I knew that. Coming from out of state meant my travel costs were high (there’s no such thing as a cheap hotel in Scottsdale). But it’s such a great show! Everyone says so. I did a lot of research, read lots of reviews, both from artists and from patrons. It sounded perfect. I was ecstatic when I was accepted to participate. It’s not an easy show to get into; the competition is pretty fierce. I was really looking forward to this great show I’d heard so much about.

Note: when a patron says a show is “great” they mean that the art is of consistently high quality and the show is a visual treat. When an artist says a show is “great” they mean that art collectors come to the show and buy lots of art. Usually the two overlap to a high degree.

I had very high hopes for this show.

Unfortunately, my hopes weren’t matched by reality. Frankly, I lost my shirt on this one.

The weather was against us for 2 of the 3 days. Cold winds and rain doused us all day Friday and most of Saturday. That surely dampened spirits. Oh yeah, and it hailed on Friday. Twice.

But actually a lot of people came to the show, in spite of the rain. (They did all leave when the hail started.) And even more people showed up Sunday when the weather was nice. It got quite crowded. So I can’t blame the weather. Plenty of people showed up, more than I expected.

It just wasn’t the right crowd for me. I gave it my best shot and lost. Sometimes that happens.

The good thing is there’s always another show. Up next for me is the Beverly Hills Art Show, May 18-19, 2013. Also a gamble, but at least I get to sleep in my own bed. See you at the show!

2013 Scottsdale Arts Festival March 8-10

I’m going for the best. It’s my very first out-of-state art show, all the way in Scottsdale, Arizona. There are a lot of art shows in Arizona (no, really, a LOT) but by all accounts the Scottsdale Arts Festival is the best. And only the best will do! So I’m off to Arizona!

My art and I will be in booth 32. Come take a look! It’s going to be a beautiful show.

The 2013 Los Angeles Art Show

I scaled back this year. I opted to attend only one big January art fair, the LA Art Show (under new management). I decided to skip Art LA Contemporary, held in Santa Monica the same weekend. The third big contender from last year, the Affordable Art Fair, skipped Los Angeles this year after last year’s splashy debut. Which just shows how fluid the art market really is. I wonder if it will come back, or if they’ve given up on Los Angeles altogether.

So, this year’s LA Art Show, held as usual in the downtown convention center, backed off its grandiose “3-in-1” claims from last year and was truly just one big show. There were internal groupings, much as in previous years, but it all flowed together.

As usual, I started in the traditional-art (i.e., dead artists) side of the hall and worked my way to the contemporary side. I snapped fewer shots this year. I’ll show you just a few select favorites.

On the traditional side, not much really grabbed me this year. It looked a lot like previous years. But I did find a few rare Pointillist paintings, a style close to my heart since I too paint with dots. Two Pointillist pieces I particularly liked were by Jac Martin-Ferrieres, shown by Kendall Fine Art from Atlanta, Georgia. Interesting to note that these pieces date from the 1920s, well after Pointillism’s original heyday in the late nineteenth century.

Jac Martin-Ferrieres, “Paris, la Seine, Notre Dame,” ca 1920, oil on canvas, 18×21.5 inches, price not shown (Kendall Fine Art).

Jac Martin-Ferrieres, “La baie de St Tropez,” 1921, oil on canvas, 14×17 inches, price not shown (Kendall Fine Art). This piece shows an appealing merger of the older Pointillism style with a modern 1920s-era aesthetic. I find it fascinating.

As a transition between traditional and contemporary, this large piece struck me as very Matisse-like, and quite appealing:

Damian Elwes, “Marrakesh,” 2001, acrylic on canvas, 48×72 inches, shown by Denenberg Fine Arts of West Hollywood, California. It can be yours for some $300,000 or $400,000. (Sorry, I don’t recall the exact figure posted.)

This brings us fully into the contemporary section. There was lots of Damien Hirst on this side, but I managed to mostly ignore it.

In a mood for simple shapes and large compositions, I found a few pieces I really enjoyed in the contemporary section. I liked the large-scale paintings exhibited by Winterowd Gallery of Santa Fe, NM. Even though the works are all by different artists, I thought they looked good together:

Below left, two pieces by Cecil Touchon caught my eye, “PDP 588” and “PDP 575,” collage on canvas, 66×44 inches each, $18,500 each, shown by Timothy Yarger Fine Art of Beverly Hills:

In a similar vein, here is Caio Fonseca, “Pietrasanta C11.55,” 2011, mixed media on canvas, 34×34 inches, $42,000, offered by Abby M. Taylor Fine Art of Greenwich, CT and New York:

Going even more monochromatic, this painting all in black uses only texture to masterfully create an image of waves:

Karen Gunderson, “Hudson Moment,” 2008, oil on linen, 40×40 inches, $20,000, offered by Waterhouse & Dodd of New York and London.

At the extreme far end of the show were clustered the galleries from Asia: primarily South Korea and China. The work shown here can be pretty varied, but I found a few pieces to like.

This Chinese artist assembles highly photorealistic images of children out of large patches of flat color in a large-scale pixelation or Pointillist approach. Naturally, it appealed to my Pointillist heart. Here’s a closeup:

Li Yueling, “The Future Ahead of Me,” oil on canvas, 120×150 cm, $15,800, offered by Nancy’s Gallery from Shanghai, China. The artist is a fellow from Beijing, according to the gallery representative I spoke with.

One of the biggest showcases of Chinese art was to be “China Fusion,” a large pavilion meant to show the work of several Chinese artists working in an east-meets-west aesthetic. However, when I was there (the first day of the 4-day show) there was little art to be seen in the pavilion, and most of it was on the floor. Clearly something had gone horribly wrong. Instead of “China Fusion” I called it “China Confusion.”

Late in the day I saw people scurrying back and forth, carrying paintings into the pavilion, and one fellow hurriedly hanging the works:

Someone there told me the shipment had gotten hung up in US Customs. “Maybe ship earlier next time,” I suggested brightly. I’m sure they greatly appreciated my sage advice.

One artist’s work, miraculously already hung and even labeled, caught my eye. Another nod to Pointillism:

Bai Hongwei, “Flower and Bird No. 2,” 2012, oil on canvas, 50×60 cm, $7000, shown in the China Fusion pavilion. I liked the subtle colors and the way the bird was picked out in an orderly grid against the looser background. A nice melding of East and West.

Highlights from Art Platform L.A. 2012

The two-year-old international art fair Art Platform was held September 28-30, 2012 in Santa Monica, California.

That also happened to be the weekend when the biggest freeway of Los Angeles was entirely shut down for 2 days of massive construction work. I avoided the traffic nightmare by visiting on Friday before the shutdown. It surely had some negative impact on attendance Saturday and Sunday, but I don’t know how bad. My heart goes out to the galleries, many from very far away (Tokyo, Hong Kong, Miami and Amsterdam to name a few), who were taken entirely by surprise at this turn of events. I hope they did OK and sold enough art to at least pay their expenses.

It was pretty quiet Friday morning (exactly how I like it):

I didn’t know what to expect from this contemporary art show. I’m not a fan of all contemporary art, indeed I find much of it sophomoric and ugly. Happily I saw a lot to like at this one.

I took too many photos to show you everything I liked. I’ll just show you some highlights to whet your appetite. Consider this the tip of the iceberg.

One of the first booths I visited was Now Contemporary from Miami, where the entire booth was devoted to the work of a single artist: Federico Uribe. I loved his playful animals made from recycled books, bike tires, sneakers and pencils.

A wall of zebras made from recycled bike tires and sneakers. Detail below:

Uribe’s massive giraffe made from colored pencils hung cantilevered over the rest of the booth and was, for me, the star of the show. I’ll admit I did wonder about the structural integrity of the display wall it was hung from.

The giraffe’s brown spots are brown pencils, the white lines are white pencils. Its mane is a bunch of sharpened pencils standing straight up. Clever, eh? Every home should have one.

Speaking of pencils as a sculptural medium, artist Lionel Bawden also uses pencils. He glues colored pencils together into solid blocks and then carves beautifully sinuous shapes from them:

Lionel Bawden, the amorphous ones (the spirit of repetition), 2011, white Staedtler pencils, epoxy and incralac, 25 x 11 x 28 inches. Shown by Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco. The “pedestal” is a simple stack of plain white paper. If you buy the sculpture you get the paper too. (I had to ask.)

Wandering about, I noticed several hallway displays of large hard-edged paintings. They seemed very familiar. I quickly realized these were pieces by Karl Benjamin, who passed away just this year.

Paintings by Karl Benjamin from 1977-1978. I liked these better than from other periods.

Karl Benjamin paintings from ca.1984, shown by Louis Stern Fine Arts.

At first I was moved by the displays honoring the recently deceased artist. But then I wondered: are these galleries just looking to cash in now that the artist is gone? One of those thoughts was unworthy, but I’m not sure which.

There were other convergences to be seen. It’s always fun to pick out the coincidences and muse on whether they represent trends or mere statistical flukes.

One trend I spotted was round works. The “tondo” (a fancy term for a round painting) was much in evidence at this show, in various media. Here are a few examples that I particularly liked:

This intriguing work by Hadieh Shafie was shown by the Leila Heller Gallery from New York. It’s 3 feet across. The colored bits are tight coils of paper, colored on the edge and written lengthwise with arabic script that says, simply, “love.” How delightful! Here’s a detail from the side:

Close to my own heart, artist Michelle Grabner paints small dots in neat rows and tight spirals. A small nonprofit exhibit space from the Netherlands, PS (Amsterdam), had a single painting of hers on display:

The painting was about 2 feet across. Detail below:

The backdrop behind this painting was more dots, in bright pink, plastered over the entire booth. Dots on dots – a dizzying effect!

Another round piece caught my eye because of its bright colors, and held my interest because of the unusual materials. This is by Yael Kanarek, shown by bitforms from New York:

White between “The Green Blouse” and sneakers, No. 1

The luscious material is cast silicone, colored and hand-cast by the artist. The shapes are words. In this piece, the words all say “white” in 9 different languages.

One more circle painting:

This is Lament/A Thousand Tear Drops For You, 36×28 inches, 2009, by Sungyee Kim, shown by the Mindy Solomon Gallery of St. Petersburg, Florida. All it said was “mixed media,” but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some encaustic involved. I love the translucent depth you get with encaustic.

Speaking of depth, I was attracted to a good many pieces with depth or layers. Even just a hint of depth is enough to quicken my pulse. Why is that?

Here are some of my favorites:

Tom Wesselmann, Maquette for Negative Blue (Deep), 1996, liquitex on bristol board, 7 1/8 x 6 1/4 x 1/2 inches. Shown by Forum Gallery, Los Angeles.

Liam Gillick, Weekday in Sochaux, 2005, anodized aluminum in 4 layers/colors. Shown by Galerie Sho Contemporary Art, Tokyo.

Satoshi Uchiyama, Soaked Paintings, acrylic paint on wooden objects, about 4 to 10 inches each. These works reference the 2011 tsunami. Shown by eitoeiko, Tokyo.

Jaq Belcher, Unbounded, 2011, hand-cut paper (17,020 cuts), 48×84 inches. Shown by (and photo courtesy of ) JHB Gallery, New York. Detail below:

That’s enough! If you need to see more, you’ll just have to come to the show next year. See you there!