A Gut Punch of a Buff

It looks like demolition of 5 Pointz really is happening; the graffiti mecca has been whitewashed.

Photo by Ian Kwok, 2007. When I used to look like a spy, apparently.

Sigh. This was one of my favorite spots in New York. Here are some photos I took in 2007. (You can also watch the Flickr slideshow below.)

Notes from [an] underground [art scene advocate / Miami Art Week virgin]

A drop of forty degrees. It hurts, man. It hurts. (In other words, I’m back from Miami, home in Chicago.)

Things I did a lot of this past week:

• Took photos. You can check them all out on Flickr or / and Facebook. (You can also watch the slideshow at the end of the post.)

• Tweeted. Tweets ranged from art-related to things like this.

Now, what was my take on Miami Art Week?

Inside Wynwood Walls.

Being me, the first thing I did in Miami was visit the gritty Wynwood neighborhood, ‘most every surface swathed in street art, dripping with pigment and passion. Away from the beach resorts and omnipresent pools, away from the Hummer limos pulling up to art deco hotels and nightclubs with flashing marquees, Wynwood is a wonderland of aerosol ecstasy, where you could walk down a side street and smell fresh spray paint, breathe it all in, let the dizzying barrage of color saturate your soul. I couldn’t help but think of the squatter communities off Moganshan Road in Shanghai or in Berlin, ostensibly bleak cityscapes where you could lose yourself and find yourself and find God in graffiti. This is how you make my heart go aflutter.

Of course, the main attraction was Art Basel Miami Beach. Sure, you had your Hirsts and your customized BMWs on display in the collectors’ lounge and your fairgoers in Louboutins and on-trend sheer dresses and there were $20-a-glass champagne carts rolling down the aisles. But there was good stuff too.

My favorite booths included Salon 94, featuring Jon Kessler’s kinetic sculptures, one of which controlled an iPad that took photos of the viewer (technology! topicality!); and mother’s tankstation, featuring Atsushi Kaga’s dark-humored cast of characters. The latter booth sold out during the daytime preview, so the artist himself, along with his mother, created more art on the spot. Among these creations were tote bags that were only 50 bucks each—mind-blowing at a fair where works of art can and did sell for millions.

Atsushi Kaga and his mom at mother's tankstation
at Art Basel Miami Beach 2012.

There was so much more to see other than Basel, however, with over a dozen parallel fairs, such as NADA Miami Beach (I’ll just say this: the entire time at Basel, I saw gallerists picking at nothing but salads and fruit platters; at NADA, within my first few minutes in one of the fair’s halls, I made eye contact with a girl devouring a pizza) and UNTITLED. Art Fair, which I thoroughly enjoyed (right on the beach, the fair was perfectly located, the sandy path from Ocean Drive to its entrance, I imagined, almost inherently a stiletto deterrent), but most of all…

PULSE Miami was, hands down, my favorite fair. For me, there are two factors by which to judge an art fair (or anything, really): how fun it is and how good it is. PULSE was great fun and it had high quality art—a combination that is unfortunately rare.

                                                                                     

(Painfully boring events with passable art are to be expected. The opposite is equally common but harder to identify because of certain… distractions: Let’s be real—we’ve all been to at least one event where it’s fun and hip and yeah there’s a gaggle of kids milling about secretly wanting to get snapped by a street style blogger and when that doesn’t happen they all Instagram each other and then exchange Tumblr URLs but when you get around to actually looking at the walls you realize the place is infested with that distinct hipster brand of half-assed juvenile Bad Art and you’re not sure whether it’s ironically bad like that ugly grandpa sweater that ironically mustachioed dude over there is sporting or if it’s just plain bad.)

From Jessica Drenk’s exquisitely crafted sculptures made out of such materials as cut books, carved pencils, and coffee filters at Adah Rose Gallery to Casey Neistat’s Watch Some Movies interactive installation where visitors could lounge on couches in a living room setting and, well, watch some movies, or help themselves to bowls of tampons and condoms, cans of cheap beer in a mock-locked fridge, and a grilled cheese sandwich-making station (operated by the artist himself)… PULSE delivered.

The art met the caliber set by Basel (in many ways I thought it was much better, even), but, more importantly, it was refreshing.

I also noticed (or perhaps just naturally always hone in on) many works that put an emphasis on people, on communities, like:

a participatory public art project that combined urban farming with housing and assistance for the homeless; a multimedia installation representing the residents of a neighborhood affected by gentrification; and Brooklyn-by-way-of-London artist Shantell Martin’s Continuous Line mural, into which she incorporated visitors’ names (you all know I’m all about blurring the line between artist and audience) and onto which she hung two signs of polished stainless steel, one asking “who are you,” which tapped into the viewer’s sense of self and identity, the other asking “you are who,” which, Shantell explained, alluded to art fairs’ preoccupation with being a somebody.

Shantell Martin next to my name in her "Continuous Line" mural
at PULSE Miami 2012.

For those who might feel discouraged by or think that the art world consists only of the superficial and posturing and celebrity-worshipping and big-name-and-big-money-driven commercial greed… don’t.

Even at the top, there is room for alternatives.

There is room to be subversive.

After all, this is art.

Wish fulfillment // Mullets in Miami

December already? I can’t believe how quickly this [incredible] year has gone by. This yellow note, which I wrote at a party the night of Dec. 31, 2011, was my personal wish for 2012:

People's personal wishes for 2012, written at a New Year's Eve party
last year. The yellow note was mine.

And, well.

But enough about that. (For now.)

Let the winter art travels commence! Tomorrow through Monday, I’ll be in Miami for Art Basel Miami Beach [and a million other international contemporary art fairs]. It’ll be my first time at Miami Art Week and I’m super excited. (And, for the record, I do still fantasize about this.) Besides this blog, as always, you can follow my adventures on Twitter and Facebook.

Best believe I’ll be rocking what is quickly shaping up to be my swank affair uniform, the Clothes Mullet.

Trapper Keepers with Curators

We all know how important it is to exercise our right to vote. Which is why I’m calling on you to complete [at least a small fraction of] NewCity’s 20^th Annual Best of Chicago poll, in which you can vote for I CAN DO THAT in the “Best Art Exhibit” category! (Here are photos to refresh your memory.) Just type I CAN DO THAT, in all caps, into the text box. (Note: You need to vote in at least five categories for your ballot to count.) Spread the word!

Weekend pick: I’m so glad I got a chance to catch the opening of Exquisite Corpse artist Robin Rios’ Bustes en Rose: Art + Fashion Against Breast Cancer show at the Zhou B Art Center last night. Here’s her own piece in the exhibition:

No photograph, however, can capture how awesome it is. Chicagoans, I urge you to see it—along with works by over 35 other artists and fashion designers—in person today or tomorrow during the Bridgeport Art Walk, an official Chicago Artists Month event.

And I just have to share this photo of Robin from last night. One of my life mentors, ladies and gentlemen. Like a futhermucking boss. Or pimp*. (Giving some poor soul her epic side-eye.)

*I do recall, years ago as one of her summer interns, her bestowing upon us younglings the following advice regarding behavior at gallery openings: “You gotta work it like two-bit hookers.” …It all makes sense now.

Light reading: My second article about Expo Chicago has been picked up by the international art fair’s official blog, The Seen. If you haven’t read it yet, do it now! (Or whenever. It’s the weekend. Take your time. Make some coffee. Stomp through some crunchy-looking leaves.) It’s a follow-up interview with Tony Karman, Expo’s Founder and Director, as well as a look into the inaugural fair’s aftermath and future.

Art travel news: I’ll be in LA in the beginning of February and have been compiling a long list of art-related things to see and do there (which I’ll of course be documenting). Get excited. But before that: I’ve been invited to the Art Basel Miami Beach VIP Vernissage, which is in the beginning of December. I will be there. Thus enabling my rapidly escalating international art fair addiction. (Hong Kong and Switzerland, what have you done?)

And: Tonight, from 6-9pm, is the continuation of my project’s Chicago launch at Tocco (1266 N. Milwaukee Ave.), part of Art Depth’s Chicago Artists Month exhibition. See you there!

Like a Wong Kar Wai movie // except less color saturated

Greetings from Hong Kong! The beautiful big city where people treat you like you’re family. Probably because they really are your family. (My dad’s side of the clan greeted me at the airport yesterday with fruit, biscuits, umbrellas, and an Octopus Card.) (The MTR is arguably the best subway system ever, but just the fact that its card is called an Octopus already means all’s right with the world.) How do you like the new header?

This is a quick post—before I head to the ART HK Vernissage—to say that I’ll be posting the following soon:

• Photos and words from Shanghai, a.k.a. Graffiti Heaven (well I made that up but really it is) (teaser below); and

 

• A post about art’s intersection with class. (Class as in rich vs. poor. And while I’m on that topic, let it be known that all VIP events and activities, including access to the fair itself, are free. I find that ironic.)

In the meantime…

• Are you following me on Twitter? You should! I’ve been microblogging about this trip.

• In case you missed them, here are my last two trip-related posts: photos and words from Beijing and my musings on identity and culture.

Happy Medium // Yes that’s partially a Wrinkle in Time reference // Blew my 11-year-old mind quite frankly

As I’d alluded to before in previous posts, I will be traveling to Hong Kong in May and Switzerland in June to attend ART HK and Art Basel, respectively. Today I am pleased to announce that I have been invited to participate in, well, invite-only events at both international art fairs as a VIP. Stay tuned throughout this summer for exclusive—like, literally exclusive—looks inside the art world!

Now, to invest in shoes that look neither like these nor these…

Welcome to Miami, bienvenido a Mi—[C CHECK]

“Art can help us to envision the new cultural images we need to grow our souls.”

While many in the art world descend upon Miami for Art Basel this week… I’m reading The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century by Grace Lee Boggs, and, as I am wont to do, have been finding connections to art and the value of art:

In this period, we need artists to create new images that will liberate us […] and open up space in our hearts and minds to imagine and create another America that will be viewed by the world as a beacon rather than as a danger.

Art / culture and progress / [r]evolution are interminably intertwined. To the Occupy movement, she has the following message:

You have the opportunity to create something new. […] You must not be satisfied with rebellion. We need revolution. Revolution means reinventing culture.

Such is the role of art and the artist.

Discussion: Should I shell out a hundred grand in cash to watch a museum guard slowly strip naked?

Today, this blog is one month old! Since its inception four short weeks ago, it has received over 6,800 pageviews from 76 countries across six continents (someone please donate laptops to the penguins in Antarctica), each post with more hits than the last. I see sixes and an eight. This is good. Thank you, lovely people, especially all the returning visitors and those who, astoundingly, spend more than half an hour on this site (hopefully that means you’re actually reading the posts and pages instead of stepping away from the computer to take an extended coffee break while forgetting to close this tab). Again, thank you. Make sure you share the love and point your friends in this direction!

In the last post, we discussed the many reasons for collecting art. In the same vein but less broad, let’s consider collecting art that is more ephemeral and/or conceptual. Newsweek (they of the hilariously misguided top 10 artists list) recently published a piece profiling collectors who purchase conceptual art, asking their readers if these buyers are “crazy or on the cutting edge.” An excerpt:

When you buy a [Lawrence] Weiner you don’t acquire the lettering itself, let alone the 3-D work it implies. You buy Weiner’s immaterial idea, as a certificate that lets you write his phrase in a room, or come up with the sculpture you think it describes. “When you take ownership, you can realize it any way you want,” says Victor Gisler, the Zurich dealer showing Weiner’s balls-y piece, priced at $160,000. In late June, the Museum of Modern Art in New York put a vintage piece of his on display as part of a major acquisition of so-called immaterial art. MoMA curators are eagerly backfilling a collection that has tended toward the material.

“I think good art is when I can hear the ideas bouncing off each other in my brain. This is where aesthetics are for me—not in my retina,” says Aaron, a 76-year-old lawyer who makes his living suing Big Pharma. “Ninety percent of the money [at Art Basel] is spent on painting,” he adds with a hint of contempt. Whereas the Levines want work that makes you wonder if it’s even art—and therefore might be the art that’s breaking new ground.

From the collectors who own the Tino Sehgal piece referenced in this post’s title:

“What’s interesting is people talking about the work,” says Josée. “You may think more about a Weiner [text piece], over time, than about some canvas you’ve bought… An idea may not be material, but it’s powerful.” She refers to her memory as the “medium” such works are realized in—and then you realize that that’s where most art lives, anyway, most of the time.

Her husband chimes in: “When the work is immaterial, we’re just its temporary holders. Accumulating fancy goods is absurd. We buy works to talk about them, and to stretch people’s notions of what art is… But some people want the opposite: a reassuring object with a big name.”

What do you think? Are these collectors ahead of the game, or are they being duped? Would you buy art you can’t simply hang on a wall?

Discussion: So, did Banksy make this, or some art student who actually preferred cash over a résumé line referencing an unpaid internship?

(Disclaimer about the source: WSJ totally sucks sometimes—I’m looking at you, sensationalist and racial stereotype-perpetuating¹ Tiger Mom article—but the article excerpted below is too topical to pass up.)

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article about the rising trend of artists turning to assistants for help creating work:

It's a phenomenon that's rarely discussed in the art world: The new work on a gallery wall wasn't necessarily painted by the artist who signed it. Some well-known artists, such as Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, openly employ small armies of assistants to do their paintings and sculptures. Others hire help more quietly.

Art-market insiders say soaring prices and demand for contemporary art is spurring the use of apprentices by more artists. The art world is divided on the practice: While some collectors and dealers put a premium on paintings and sculptures executed by an artist's own hand, others say that assistants are a necessity in the contemporary market.

"An artist has a choice to make," says Mark Moore, owner of Mark Moore Gallery in Santa Monica, Calif. "They either hire assistants or they risk not being able to meet their obligations to their dealers. Then the art market, which is fickle and sensitive, gets the impression that the artist has disappeared from the art world."

(Along that vein, here’s an interesting Flavorpill feature about copy artists in China.)

The Renaissance masters did it. The Impressionists dropped it. And the art stars of the 20^th Century brought it back.

Collectors and art appreciators, does it matter to you whether the name attached to a piece had a direct hand in its production?

Artists, would you ever hire assistants to produce your work for you? As with Sol LeWitt’s conceptual installations, is the idea behind a piece—rather than its execution—what matters the most? Or does the act of employing others for fabrication undermine the notion of “the artist” as the independent, the dissident, the outsider? Or is that notion purely Romantic?

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¹Racial stereotype buster: My parents let me² be an artist.

²Not only let me, but also fully support and encourage: My dad was the one who mailed my stories and drawings to the Disney film director. And this was before IMDB and Wikipedia and before relying on Internet search engines became habit; he jotted down animators’ names by watching the end credits of my VHS tapes. Yep, we had to actually use a little effort in my day³, whippersnappers.

³Which was not even close to being that long ago, really. So I’m kidding. Or am I.