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Yigal Ozeri
Mike Weiss Gallery
By Nicollette Ramirez Yigal Ozeri's third solo show at the Mike Weiss Gallery builds on an urban, female mythology that he began developing in the first two shows. The subject in Ozeri's paintings is a young woman with an unforgettable face and abundant hair, who embodies the Earth Goddess of fecundity and new life. She is painted against an urban landscape that is at once crowded and spacious, gray and full of color and mystery. The technique of “foreshortening,” pioneered by masters in ceiling painting, is applied here in a contemporary context to marvelous effect. Sacha From The Empire State Building, presents a dizzying view New York’s skyscrapers, seen from above. Building in the West Village feels disorientating, and evokes a sense of déjà vu as what seems familiar, a cold and windy city street in New York, is made strange by the angle of observation.
Many of the paintings in this show have a celestial light that penetrates the landscape and illuminates the scene, not unlike the chiaro oscuro made famous by de La Tour and Caravaggio. One such work is As Early as New York, the show’s namesake. The soft white light that emerges from the background illuminates the cold, brown vegetation, dividing the canvas and setting up a contrast between the old men walking and the young woman, caught in freeze-frame, who looks directly at the viewer.
This celestial light casts a surreal glow over the human and animal subjects in Central Park Zoo and The Greenhouse, again with the result that what at first seemed familiar becomes hyper-real and dreamlike too. This idea of the real and the dream is something the artist addresses in his exploration of the juncture between painting and photography. I'm Not Spying, I'm Just Looking sets up the scene in such a way that the viewer becomes part of the action, like a voyeur. There is movement and color, especially in the clothing and in the ethnic mix of the painting’s subjects. Ozeri uses color to bring drama to the scene, drawing the eye to the middle of the picture where the model is clothed in red. The red color of her dress echoes the red case of sodas carried by a man in the crowd, and is balanced by the blue of the woman's hat in the foreground and the yellow of the cab on the right. Ozeri has made his muse into a mythic figure and perhaps also an alter ego since he, with his abundant mane, forms the male counterpart to her feminine allure.
5/6 through 6/3.
E-Mail This Article Louisa Caldwell
Glorence Lynch Gallery
By E.K. Clark When is “a rose is a rose” not a rose? When the flower is constructed from fruit stickers. In this engaging show, dubbed Floralistic, Louisa Caldwell presents an urban Eden composed of small flower paintings on wood panels, made entirely from fruit labels and acrylic paint. The ordering and meaning of each painting is different; for example, Indigoll, a single stalk, with six blue chrysanthemums, stands alone on a lime green background. It looks like an old fashioned early American embroidered sampler, but upon closer inspection, we see that each flower is made up of hundreds of closely hued blue labels, giving the whole a formal, martial air. Dayscape depicts a formal, horizontal row of colorful flowers swaying gently in the breeze with two butterflies hovering above. Look closely and you see repetitions of numbers, “880,4381” and certain words too. Is the artist suggesting that our sense of culture has become so branded that even the romance of flowers is overtaken by regimentation?
The painting, WildNightFlowers, scrolls rhythmically from edge to edge; it looks like an elegant Moroccan tile design on a wall in a mosque until you see the labels hawking wares; “Southern Corporation,” “Packers,” “Butternut Squash Plus 4799.” Midnightflowers, a lively painting on a bright red background is also replete with brands, repetitions and allusions. A giant chrysanthemum made up of closely hued blue Chiquita labels sports a yellow center emblazoned with “Red Papaya 3113.” Below, flowers with black petals each marked “880” stand in a line of military formation. Besides the aesthetic merits of this peculiar painting process, the artist seems to be saying something about branding and conformity in contemporary society.
Then again, even though Caldwell utilizes collage, her work relates to the Italian proto-surrealist Mannerist, Archimbolodo, who fragmented reality in order to create something new and rather strange. It is nevertheless quite remarkable that such unassuming subject matter, as flower painting, could resonate so broadly.
Through 5/27.
E-Mail This Article If You Feel Something Say Something
CVB Space
By Natane Takeda Playing on the ubiquitous public service campaign in New York City’s transit system, “If You See Something Say Something,” curator Stefania Carrozzini’s group show, If You Feel Something Say Something, gathers four Italian and one Dutch artists who work in various media to produce a tongue-and-cheek answer to the security mindset of today’s public. The directive of the title, “to feel” and “to say,” creates a subtle, yet uncanny aesthetic air that leads the viewer to contemplate a psychological, introspective world.
For example, Jackie Sleper’s Shadow of Life depicts a little black girl hiding among flowers, her hands in her pockets, with a garland of tropical fruits on her head. The contrast of her white eyes, red lips, and dark skin dramatizes her apparent fear, set against the backdrop of colorful flowers. Sleper’s two other works in the show are juxtaposed to suggest an alter-like space, in an assemblage of photographs and paintings of travel scenes from China. In Jiang Jun China, 2005, we see an elderly Chinese man, his startled face set against a cacophony of pink, green and yellow colors that produces a jack-in-the-box surprise effect.
From a more subtle perspective, three photographs by Silvia Couporesi evoke an opera-like symphony. Like many artists today, she photographs herself in her work; these are poetic, mythical situations. In The Sky Walker, Couporesi is seen in a crucifixion-like pose with a white, angelic mantle and a white wig as she appears to wander across an icy sky. The diagonal line of the body suggests movement and there is an ephemeral touch in these images, interwoven in realism, that taps into a universal sorrow and longing for salvation.
In a similar vein, the photographs by Stefano Reja also suggest narratives that portray women in fictional settings. However, Reja’s photographs are more representational, he depicts women in social roles. Eliminating decorative elements, often the works are composed of the figure of a woman who is shown with a symbolic object, such as a baby doll or a bible. Indeed, his desire to be a woman is implied in all his untitled works.
Moreno Panozza constructs colored clays on metals and irons. Like a sand castle, his work, 3e Teracce, traces geometrical forms on the yellow clays of a slightly rough surface, suggesting a feeling of hesitation in creating forms. In fact, through this rough touch, the viewer can experience the moment of his actions on the work. Giuliana Verzeroli also succeeds in conveying the feeling, if you will, of a woman, through texture. In her piece, Woman, she forms an object that is like a woman’s body, with a thin metal net. Depending the on angle of perspective, the profile of a woman or her torso emerges. The texture of the metal net already suggests the softness, fragility and sensitivity that we associate with a woman.
To be sure, the premise of this show, If You Feel Something Say Something, suggests a lighthearted vehicle for bringing together a range of works that could also stand on their own. The salon-like setting of the gallery space, and the informal presentation, lend an element of cohesiveness, nevertheless, that draws the viewer in for a closer look.
5/4 through 5/25.
E-Mail This Article Kit Keith
The Phatory, llc
By Ola Manana A nurse looks out at the viewer with an eerily sympathetic gaze. Her face, painted simply in acrylic, rests disembodied upon a piece of linoleum. Psychiatric Nurse No. 1, is one of thirty-seven works in an exhibition that includes paintings, drawings, installations and books. Keith’s work is preoccupied with women of her mother’s generation, psychiatric nurses, and the women that littered the back page advertisements of the 1940’s and 1950’s magazines. Her installations comprise a selection of photographs and Americana, together with drawings, that comment on the domestic life of her subjects — at once identifying with them, and wrangling with their dreams and the everyday objects in their world.
Frankly exploring her personal struggle with manic depression, Keith iconifies the nurses that cared for her during six separate hospitalizations in her early twenties and thirties. Keith’s work is encoded with symbols of mental escape, such as telephones, area maps and images from fashion magazines. Her Women of the World shows women who are, ironically, stuck in one place, tenderly cherishing dreams of a glamorous escape while remaining there for us. They are our grandmothers, mothers, sisters and nurses.
In the center of Keith’s Untitled Installation a pink telephone stands as a symbolic link to the outside world. A miniature church and a few tiny buildings are arranged around it. Above this, a framed black and white illustration shows a young boy kneeling before a glowing Jesus figure. Juxtaposed above is an old photograph of a busty 1950s pin-up model. This installation is a homage to the small town and the seedy subtext that often interfaces the reality of living there.
The youngest daughter of a sign painter, Keith assisted her father in his business from the age of fourteen. She learned the now obsolete art from him; her loose, washy style is a testament to this early training. In her early teens she also began practicing the art of trapeze and performing in the circus. This experience seems to have conferred a floating quality to her portraits, which is especially effective.
In The Eyes of Lorna Dune a woman looks out at us, with a touch of worry raising her eyebrow very slightly. A half-smile crosses her lips. Painted in a style which recalls old Soviet Era propaganda posters, the slightly off-kilter portrait emotes a serene mixture of hope and resignation. Abstract doodles decorate the surface; a circle painted deftly in a favored institutional green threatens to float out of the painting. Perhaps it will.
5/4 through 6/11.
E-Mail This Article Miro Svolik, Paul Ickovic, Helmut Grill
Remy Toledo
By Joel Simpson Three iconoclastic photographers: Slovak-born Czech photographer Miro Svolik, American Paul Ickovic, and Viennese photographer Helmut Grill comprise this highly original group show. Actually, the presentation is more like three one-person shows, because the exhibition space is subdivided as such.
Svolik combines the naive with the clever. He finds simple and often crude forms on the street, either by wetting areas on the sidewalk to create stains, or by marking them with chalk. Then he arranges people to represent critical elements in the composition, producing an often hilarious incongruity of the image and its constituent parts. For example, in one photograph we imagine to see the body of a nude woman, from the stomach to the knees, in which her pubic hair is represented by four figures dressed in black, lying on the pavement, spreading out from their feet to form the familiar delta. Here, Svolik seems to draw on a particularly whimsical tradition in Czech photography that includes other stretchers of the medium, such as Michal Macku, Pavel Jasansky, Clifford Seidling and Ladislav Postupa.
English-born Czech photographer Paul (formerly Pavel) Ickovic is a sensitive documentarian of the human comedy, in the tradition of Robert Doisneau, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Brassai. The small selection of his work offered here gives just a taste of his range, leaving out many of his best-known and most striking images. But we are nevertheless treated to some gems: the little boy in the back seat of a car in Paris trying on Groucho glasses and nose; the artist’s friend, Robert Delpire, sitting in an easy-chair in Ickovic’s living room, wearing a rabbit mask (complete with ears) as a perplexed cat looks on in bemusement.
Helmut Grill’s large transparencies assail the viewer from light boxes, like miniature movie screens or large TV screens, while the largely political meaning takes a moment to decipher. Curiously, it’s only after we have seen a number of his images that the point begins to sink in. We see a young woman in braids and military dress, taking off her panties, superimposed on an image of two young boys playing on a large piece of field artillery in a war torn street. The women in his photographs have a generic beauty, we accept them as symbols. Perhaps this is Grill’s point. By making his images supply their own light, through the backlighting, he evokes the depersonalization of television. It’s a subtle point that requires a double-take on these images. He takes this process one big step further, however, in the closeup portraits of young women. In their exotic good looks, these women radiate an idealized beauty that seems unreal, because it is; the images are, in fact, computer generated composites based on research of how people imagine the face of a beautiful young woman. Grill’s point? They’re just photographs, after all.
Through 6/17.
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Alexis Hubsman
A Conversation with the Founder of Scope Art, Inc.
By M. Brendon MacInnis
Alexis Hubsman, whose Scope-Art, Inc. made the leap from an alternative hotel art fair to a major booth fair this year, drawing some 14,000 visitors to its Scope New York edition, stopped by the M round table for a chat. We talked about the history of Scope, how the company is run and plans for the future. This is that conversation.
Do you have a system in place to guarantee a turnover of new galleries each year? You mean like the Liste fair in Basel, where they limit participation to three years?
Yes, something like that. No, because that doesn’t work. Even the Liste is now having to pitch a tent to accommodate more galleries. We have a kind of hierarchy, which we built around price points that can be negotiated to bring everyone in. For example, we have the Breeder section, where we take a hard look at investing in young galleries, to bring them up through the ranks. For example, our normal price quote is from $6,000 to $12,000 for a booth, and it goes upwards. We have some that go up to $18,000 for a booth. They’re starting to get more expensive this year, as they get bigger.
The booths are getting bigger? Yes. It’s a scale of square feet for dollars. For the Breeders, we offer a 150 square-foot booth, and the charge is $4000 and $5,000 depending on the situation. And there are occasions where grants are given that let some people in pretty cheap. It depends on if they are really interesting for us. It’s more often people you may not know, like for example a gallery called White Trash from Hamburg. I don’t know if you know them.
I haven’t been to Hamburg in a long time, but I remember there were these interesting pockets in the city where you had this radical edge. Absolutely. A lot of interesting stuff going on, Germany sets precedents. But aside from all that, White Trash is an example where we gave them a space for $2,500 because they’re new, they’re young, they’re special.
What’s your relationship with museums? We have great relationships with museums. In New York, we work with Guggenheim, The New Museum…
You mean in a fund raising role? It’s all varied. In the Hamptons, we’re in a fund raising posture, whether it’s Guild Hall; Parrish; Watermill. We don’t just drop down our circus tent, and then do nothing for the community. We had to work on a permit application, and send them a list of the organizations that we have benefited in the past, and it’s like two pages. We benefit a lot of nonprofits, we’re really proud of that.
In the beginning, when you were starting Scope-Art, what was your model? Did you look at, for example, Peter Blau’s “Young Art Fair” in Basel? No. It was The Armory Show, the Armory gets full hand credit. But they all do; I mean the idea that there can be an alternative fair. I can have a congenial relationship. A lot of people thought this would be a parasitic fair. I can appreciate that. I mean, there is an element of that being financially, realistically true. There’s no way we could’ve done this with nothing else going on.
How is your relationship with The Armory Show now? It’s great. In fact, we’re the first fair they called out to when they switched their dates, to see if we would switch with them. They’re like our big brother, especially when Tim Smith was there. There was a particularly tight relationship between all of us. Then it changed a little bit, the dynamic hasn’t, but that closeness — because I’m quite good friends with Tim, and he’s no longer, of course, there.
So with Tim gone, who is your contact now at The Armory Show? Katelijne De Backer, or perhaps, Paul Morris? Not so much Paul, but mostly Katelijne.
I see. So it’s been comfortable for us. It’s been, you know, it legitimizes them too. They have to deal with Art Basel coming down to Miami, and then you have Frieze in London…
How are things with Frieze? Frieze has not been friendly. We kept trying to be near them, but then we saw no benefit to it. This time we’re taking a 30,000 square foot space in London’s East End, right near White Cube. So we’ll be right near Hutchins Square, near all of the galleries. It’s sort of like how it is in Wynwood in a way. In Miami, we’ll be in Wynwood…
In Wynwood? So you won’t be at the Townhouse Hotel in South Beach? No, we’ve outgrown the hotel fairs. We’ll keep the Townhouse as a networking center, but the fair will be in Wynwood. What we’re doing is we’re inviting the heads of museums, curators, artists, as well as probably about thirty or forty of our exhibitors to stay there. There will be a place where you go with VIP cards, or press cards; not too exclusive. Just somewhere you can come in, you know, go to your room or for a free drink, while waiting for the shuttle to different things.
Is it a done deal now, with your new space in Wynwood? I’m flying down there tomorrow, we have several options; it’s pretty exciting. I mean we’ve been in Miami five years, let’s see, four, this will be our fifth year, and I’ve generated a lot of relationships down there.
Are you purchasing property there? I don’t want to divulge that now, what we’re doing exactly. I will say that, regardless of what we do there, we’re looking at that time frame as kind of like the World’s Fair of art. I’m looking at it like the Olympics of the art world. So, instead of just pitching a tent or getting a hotel, I’m building a villa. We’re working with an architect to do a really significant space. Our intention is to really take advantage of this time frame, and also respect it for what it is. We don’t want to be just another, you know, art fair that’s trying to latch on. So we’re building quite a big building, a prefab space, like one of those pavilions, as it were, at the Worlds Fair.
How big is the space? The plot of land? It’s about 50,000 square feet. So it’s pretty significant.
Can you divulge the address? It will be two or three blocks from the Rubells.
Looking ahead to December, what are you doing in Wynwood? Right now, I’m playing with the pavilion idea. Our intention is not just to find the space, put up a tent, and do our thing. It’s really to put our roots down. We haven’t even solicited galleries, and we already have 200 applications for Scope-Miami, which is pretty phenomenal.
It looks like you’ll be in the same neighborhood where Helen Allen lauched her tent fair, Pulse. Are you working with them? We’re just working, not necessarily with them.
How about Art Basel? I’ve heard they aren’t so open to other art fairs doing business in Miami. Yeah, I mean, I can be specifically honest about that. You know, there’s one thing that’s said to you and there’s another thing that’s done behind your back. To be frank, you know Sam Keller had been very friendly early on. In fact, he was one of the reasons I got, with Rare, into the first Miami Basel fair. There was a friendship there, or at least a reasonable respect. And, but ultimately, I think, yeah, it steals a bit of thunder. You know, and at a certain point, if your collectors are not at your place, spending money, and they’re elsewhere, it can only be…
The pie is only so big. It’s only so big. Although what’s interesting is that this year, people thought there would be so many fairs, that there would be dropouts for a lot of them. But we did bigger sales than we’ve ever done. Pulse did very well, Aqua did very well. I mean everybody did very well. So it’s clear that there’s room for it. And I think, frankly, when you look at the thing — like Pulse, Scope and NADA being in Wynwood now — you start to get galleries of the same scale as Art Basel’s. Ultimately you get the emerging market.
Was there a turning point in your relationship with Sam? Not really. I mean, frankly, the more you try to do things, the more you find he has a moratorium on things.
Oh really? You mean… Yes, he’s got a lot of control down there. I mean frankly, Lorenzo Rudolf is the guy that brain-stormed this whole thing, (Art Basel Miami Beach) and Sam has been lucky to be on the receiving end. He carried the ball down court.
Yeah, I know the history. I mean, to be fair, Sam’s amazing for what he’s done; he’s added a jewel-like quality to the art fair mentality. It’s no longer just a few fairs, it’s really opened the door.
What’s an example of a moratorium? Advertising. Where you can put up billboards. Where you can do another fair. In South Beach, for example, there’s a whole area, of plots of land, that are marked off as sort of no-fly zones for art fairs as well as advertising.
So, who would Sam talk with down there to get that done? Well, I mean, I know the names, but it’s probably not appropriate for me to throw them out. I can tell you off the record, if you like.
So that’s that. What’s next for Scope? How many Scopes are there now? Right now we have four; I mean of the ones that are generating revenue, that are working. We have London, New York, Miami and the Hamptons.
Aren’t you doing something in Palm Beach? We’re playing with the idea; there’s a few secondary markets we’re looking at. Palm Beach. L A. I don’t know if I should really call it secondary, but that’s what it is for us now. Then there’s Basel, St. Moritz and Monaco; these are part of the European push — Scope-Europe.
Monaco sounds interesting. Yeah, well, you know, we learned a lesson from the Hamptons; people said we were crazy; why are you going there? They said nobody wants to look at art in the summer, that it’s all about antiques. We did a very modest first show last year, and it was very successful.
Ed Note: The second edition of Scope-Hamptons takes place this summer, July 14-16 at East Hamptons Studios. For more information, see news, page 8, or visit: www.scope-art.com
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