Cynthia Reeves Gallery - JAEHYO LEE

Last night, I was lucky enough to attend the VIP preview of Jaehyo
Lee's beautiful artwork. Although I was not familiar with him as an
artist, I absolutely feel in love with his use of natural materials and
creative design, along with the sheer amount of effort it must
have taken for him to create his artwork. For example, take a look
at this bench:



It is hard to tell from the image, but in person you realize the surface
of the bench is made of nails he has hammered down into unusual
shapes. For one of the larger column structures, he actually shaped 
the nails into all the letters of the alphabet!


An amazing installation:



Each log is individually numbered (on the bottom, out of sight) and 
brought into the gallery separately, the artist then puts them in order 
and decides how much of an arc the sculpture should have along 
the floor. 
Note: This photo is not from the opening last night, but the layout 
was very similar.

Unfortunately I do not have my favorite sculpture/installation which 
was along the back of the gallery wall. The artist took about 200 leaves 
and rolled them up individually, tied them to each other one by one, and 
created an entire leaf wall. At first, it seems as if he may have used paper 
or some kind of fancy art material, but no, it was just dried leaves. 
Honestly, this exhibition is not to be missed, especially since the 
sculptures almost didn't make it to the gallery on the account of the snow 
we had last week. But it all arrived safely, phew!

Mary Boone Opening

So last week I was treated to my very first gallery opening that
had famous artists and passed hors d'oeuvres! I had been waiting
a long time for one of those...
Anyway, our gallery crew attended the opening of Mary Boone's
Ross Bleckner show, which I have to say was interesting but not
for the reasons one would expect. The most interesting paintings were
the ones he did on metal:

Ross Bleckner 
The Substitution of Time for Eternity
72" by 96"
oil/photographic paper, aluminum
2008-2009 


The show was laid out very nicely, but unless you are a die-hard Ross 
Bleckner fan, the material wasn't all that exciting. Don't get me wrong, it is 
beautiful and you can see his skill as an artist, but I feel like he's 
done very similar canvases or at least themes in the past. The exciting part 
was the other artists who were in attendance: Chuck Close, Mary Heilman 
and of course Mr. Bleckner himself. I am still mad that I never went to 
say hi to Chuck Close when he was all by himself (almost) on the 
beach at Art Basel Miami, and it would have been THE PERFECT 
opportunity to say how much I like his work. Oh Well. Passed 
hors d'oeuvres, wine, expensive clothing designers and the art world 
elite rounded out this midtown opening.

Wendt Gallery Opening

Well, despite the limited time we had for installation, the show looks absolutely gorgeous at Wendt Gallery! Here are some gallery installation shots from the opening reception, with more shots (including guests) to come soon...

Wendt Inaugural Opening

Wendt Gallery is opening a new space in Midtown Manhattan, and along with
their space comes a new sales person... me! Please join us for an opening
reception of Modernist art February 5th, 6-8pm. Unfortunately I cannot
get a better image size of the invite for this post, but I can email it if 
anyone would like.

Could it really be January?

All the gallery folk in Chelsea apparently haven't heard the memo that it's January; not because of the freezing temperatures or blustery winds, but because of the herd of people out and about on a Thursday night at openings in Chelsea. Going to openings at 535 West 24th, firemen had to come because too many people were packed in to the elevator to get to the upper floors. Once up to the galleries, the show at Cynthia Reeves space was a lovely mixture of tough aesthetics by johnny Swing and minimal canvases by Anne Lindberg that are supposed to tap into the viewer's "non-verbal place."

As you can see from the image below, the gallery goers at Cheim and Read were in quite the festive mood. The hordes of people inside, so many so you couldn't see the artwork on display (hence my visit only lasted 30 seconds) made it is easy to see there was nowhere else to put their wine cups:

Pretty exciting if you work in the art world, as it hopefully means the renewed interest

in buying artwork is here to stay!

Art Basel Miami: Overview

For the first year since I began my career in the arts, I am lucky enough to be attending the Art Basel Miami festivities in Miami Florida this year. I arrived down here, to beautiful yet muggy weather, and began my foray into the world of art, fashion and celebrities who flock to Miami every December.

The opening night, I attended the "Oceanfront Welcome Party" which was free to the general public after the preview party for Art Basel at the Miami Convention Center. It was held in Collins Park on the beach next to the W Hotel, and included drinks and food. Artist Pae White has created an installation that a visitor could walk through while they are enjoying the myriad of events they are holding there everyday during the fair, including Art Perform, Art Video and a curated music program.

The highlight of my evening was catching a glimpse of Chuck Close, a contemporary artist whose career has spanned more than 30 years. He is most well known for his realist portraits (especially of himself) using a mosaic technique to create the impression of his model's faces.

Here is an example of his work:

Chuck Close

Emma

As you can see from this example, his work is usually done as a mosaic of a
person's face. This is interesting as it is a combination of impression and
classic portraiture. The even more interesting thing is that since 1988 he has
been paralyzed from the neck down due to a rare spinal artery collapse.
That hasn't stopped him from continuing his art career and creating some
of the most recognizable art in the 21st century.

As my trip progressed, I went to 5 different art fairs all together: Art Base
Miami, Art Miami, Pulse, Scope and Art Asia. I was unfortunately unable to
attend every fair, but by the end of the day a fair goer is exhausted and can only
take so much visual stimuli before a nap is in order. Some of the highlights of
the fair include:

Art Basel Miami:


This painting by Sylvester Stallone, although not my favorite,
garnered much attention from fair goers as well as the media.

This adorable tie sculpture, a whimsical addition to all the blue chip art


All the artwork by Ghada Amer, who along with two other artists gave a
wonderful artists talk on sex, politics and the Middle Eastern art scene.


The creative and mind blowing installations by Jacob Hashimoto. I can't believe they
installed this for a 5 day fair. And apparently, they all sold out, fantastic!

Art Miami:

Mondrian, re-imagined as a disco dress!


Karin Davie, one of my favorite printmakers


John Grillo, a living artist whose work can be included among Modern masters

Scope/Art Asia:

And one of my two favorite paintings I saw while in Miami, by artist Ran Hwang

and last but not least:

The meditative and contemplative artwork of artist Lee Sun-Don

There was plenty of other great art, as well as excited dealers who were actually selling things
which is great news for the arts. Let's hope next December is just as great for the fairs!

Joel Shapiro: New Prints at Gemini

As a follower of Contemporary art, Joel Shapiro happens to be one of my favorite sculptors. I am no where near an expert on his work, but I became familiar with his sculptures through a previous job, where an art collector had one of his large sculptures in her yard. Although Shapiro's sculptures in their basic form are pared down rectangular shapes, the balance and contrast of perceived movement in the work is impressive. The way he creates the sculptures, to me, they look like people in different states of motion. There could be a person balancing on a hi-wire, or someone kicking a soccer ball. I imagine this one to be a person taking a happy and triumphant stroll down the street swinging their arms:


It was to my great pleasure to learn of the edition of nine prints he created with Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles. Luckily for us New Yorkers, Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl has these prints on display in a show titled "Boat, Bird, Mother and Child" in their gallery on 980 Madison Avenue. From the website: "Shapiro's prints explore an elegant intersection between reductive geometric formalism and energetic figuration."

MY EXPERIENCE
I attended the opening of the show, and I must say, the screenprints are much different then I would have guessed. Before I viewed the prints, I would have wagered the prints would look similar to his rectangular sculptures, only this time they would be in 2-D. Instead, he still uses geometrical shapes, but as you can guess from the title of the exhibition, the prints look much more like boats, mothers, birds and children then his sculptures do. Similar to laying in the grass and imagining shapes in clouds, his forms can be viewed subjectively; one's imagination can run wild with what it perceives as the subject of each print. I always enjoy this type of art, as it is unique experience for each viewer.

Here is an example of one of the screenprints:

Boat, Bird, Mother and Child (d) , 2009 ( JS09-5322 )
5 color screenprint
28 1/2" x 36"
Edition of 38

Gemini at Joni Moisant Weyl
980 Madison Avenue, 5th Floor
New York, NY. 10075