The Latest NY Art Trip: Chelsea Galleries

This feels so long ago that I can barely remember - but it was only a bit over a week ago. In between have been long sessions of oil painting, work, writing and lots of heat - you know,  the usual. My intention for this post was to finish up Friday since I only posted the morning session the other day. However, I have just finished looking through, adjusting and resizing the photos I took - and now I have carpel tunnel in my right hand because there were so many just from the galleries. So I'm going to include what I can in this post and save some for next time. Here goes...

Mark Wagner at Pavel Zouboc Gallery

Pavel Zouboc on W. 23rd Street was the first stop on the tour after lunch. This gallery specializes in collage and is currently showing "Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death" by Mark Wagner (through August 12th). This show was nothing short of totally AMAZING (even though I hate that overused word). Mark Wagner must have no life because it is all spent making this work. I took a lot of closeups, but the work has so many tiny details that I don't know if you can see them. (Be sure to click on these images because they will enlarge.)

Greg beside the huge, 14-panel  "Liberty" with a part of the
viewing platform in the right foreground

Wagner calls this work "currency collage" because it is all made from actual one dollar bills. The biggest piece in the show, "Liberty," is 16 feet x 4 feet and is composed of 14 panels that I figure must about 38" x 16". Within each panel, the detail is incredible and the overall composition is ingenious - very humorous and inventive. He cuts the tiniest little slivers of the bills - really incredible.

Liberty torch - note George Washington and the cartoon character at the apex

The press release from an earlier exhibition at Pavel Zouboc Gallery states that Mark Wagner, "creates collages that speak to the cultural, social, political and symbolic roles that money plays in our society....[He] transforms this icon of American capitalism into representational images whose symbolic force asks us to question our understanding of money, its cultural significance and relationship to art." See the gallery's website for many more photos of the work.

Worker Bees, 2011, currency collage, 16 x 37 inches

Closeup of Worker Bees

Trafficking, 2011, 37 x 16 inches

Closeup of the green light in Trafficking

In case you forgot, here's a dollar bill with the green seal to the right of George.
How many of these were used in the green light above?

I really loved these pieces - so clever, so obsessive - all made with currency

Closeup of Pretty Please, 12x16 inches

*&?@#!, 12 x 16 inches

This trunk contained a stop-time video of Wagner and an assistant
at work making the collages plus snippets of currency and
assorted objects. It was fascinating to watch the video. 

Of course I also liked this unique piece (image from the gallery's website) called
Plumbing the Depths, with collage by Mark Wagner and paint by Joey Parlett, 2011,
24 x 24 inches. Great surface.

Cheim & Read on W. 25th Street was the next stop. They are showing "The Women In Our Life: A Fifteen Year Anniversary Exhibition," up through September 17th. This was a more pared-down show with single examples from ten women artists who have worked with the gallery. The exhibition announcement notes about the artists, "their selection, impressive in its scope, evolved in response to the artists' individual work." I take that to mean that they weren't chosen just because they were women. (Remember to click to see bigger images of the works.)

Joan Mitchell, Minnesota, 1980, oil on canvas in four parts,
102 1/2 x 243 inches

Closeup of Minnesota

Lynda Benglis, untitled, 1972, "beeswax, damar resin and pigment" on wood,
36 x 5 7/8 x 3 1/4 inches

Greg showing the scale of the Benglish piece

Louise Bourgeois, Nature Study No. 5, 1995, pink marble and steel,
20 x 36 1/2 x 23 inches

Also included in the show was work by Ghada Amer, Diane Arbus, Louise Fishman, Jenny Holzer, Chantal Joffe, Alice Neel and Pat Steir - all first rank artists. Check out the gallery website for a checklist of the works in the show.


Next was Stephen Haller Gallery on W. 26th Street. There was a group show of gallery artists, including my favorite Lloyd Martin, and an exhibition of "Collage Paintings from the 1960s" by Larry Zox. These pieces were quite interesting because they were just assembled roughly with staples and looked very contemporary.

Banner, 1962, collage, oil, staples on board, 72 x 72 inches

Another piece by Zox, this one much smaller and mounted in a sort of shadow box

Another Zox piece, about the same size as the one above. This one was my favorite.

The group show and the Zox show are up until August 5th.

Well, I think three shows are about it for this post. Still to come: Ruth Hiller's show at Winston Wachter, Li SongSong at Pace and Tamar Zinn at The Painting Center - plus the fabulous High Line.

P.S. Many thanks to Greg Wright for serving as the human scale for some of this work.

The Questionnaire: Miles Conrad

The Questionnaire is meant to be a lighter version of a bio, a little more revealing in some respects and personal without all the facts bogging it down. I supply the questions and the respondents supply the answers. Either one or both of us supply the images.

               M i l e s  C o n r a d              

What is your favorite color?

Almost any shade of green

What is your favorite word?

"Dad da" as pronounced by my daughter

Miles with daughter Alea, age 1 year

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

The natural world

What turns you off?

Aggression

What profession other than artist would you most like to be?

Scientist

What is your favorite book or movie?

Love in the Time of Cholera

Who is your favorite musician, musical group or style of music?

Folk/Acoustic

What do you most value in your friends?

Intelligence, Humor, Honesty, Loyalty, Compassion

Name three artists whose work has influenced your own or whose work you most relate to.

Eva Hesse, Kiki Smith, Robert Gober, Louise Bourgeois

Eva Hesse, untitled (rope piece)

Kiki Smith

Robert Gober

Robert Gober

Installation by Louise Bourgeois

Name an artist whose work you admire but which may be unlike yours.

Lee Bontecou

Lee Bontecou

What is your idea of earthly happiness?

Cessation of fear and desire, family and friends, sunshine, the ocean and ice cream (in that order).

  Works by Miles Conrad  

Recurrent Infraction (Installation View) - Cast Soap, Fragrance, Light, Sound, 2009

Recurrent Infraction (Detail) - Cast Soap, Fragrance, Light, Sound, 2009

Recurrent Infraction (Detail) - Cast Soap, Fragrance, Light, Sound, 2009

Self-Help Series - Anxiety Disorders of Childhood - Wax, Hair, Found Book, 2008

The Psychiatrist as Ethnographer - Modified File Folder, Paper, Wax, Pigment, 2008

See more at: milesconrad.com

and

conradwildegallery.com

Tribute to Louise Bourgeois by Tracy Emin

Tracey Emin on Bourgeois' legacy (from BBC News)

Bourgeois was still working at the age of 98

Tracey Emin spoke to Radio 4's PM about artist Louise Bourgeois, who has died at the age of 98.

Emin, who had recently collaborated with Bourgeois, explained what it was like to work with her, why the art world was in mourning, and her lasting legacy for female artists.

Quoting Emin:
I first became aware of her work in the mid-1990s. Stuart Morgan had curated an exhibition at Tate Britain and Louise Bourgeois was in this exhibition. I was under the impression that she was this young American wild girl, so I was delighted to find out that she was in her 80s and had been in it for 45-50 years.

It was an inspiration that a woman could have that longevity and still be making really exciting and appealing work which still looked really young, and youthful. It didn't look like something from the past. It looked like something from here and now.

The thing I really loved about Louise Bourgeois was that she wasn't afraid of her emotions; she wasn't afraid of being totally female and releasing those kind of emotions into the world through her art as a lot of men have done through history - whether it's Van Gogh, whether it's Edvard Munch with his jealousy, whether it is Picasso about love. Woman are actually much better at this kind of thing than men, and Bourgeois wasn't the Queen of this, she was the King.

'Deeply privileged'

I had been working with Louise on a collaboration for the last two years. It was a symbiotic thing. Because we both work with our hearts and what actually drives us emotionally, we connected very, very well and I have felt deeply privileged to have been able to work with her. So she's not really an influence, more of a kindred spirit.

Louise made a series of watercolours, which she then made into prints, which she sent to me and I had to work on top of them. It took me months and months and months and months to do it, and Louise kept saying to me "don't worry - there is lots of time". I eventually finished them a few months ago. When you see them as a series you can't tell they have been made by two different artists, they look like they have been made by one artist.

Emin described Bourgeois as a 'kindred spirit'

I carried those images around the world with me and every place I went I thought 'now I'm going to do it, now I'm going to work on them' and I'd lay them out on the floor and I'd be too scared to touch them. When I did, I was delighted and happy with the results and Louise was as well. It's really sad to me because we were supposed to show them. We will show them but she won't be here to enjoy them. Maybe she will from somewhere else, I don't know.

Louise was formidable. The first time I met her, she shouted at me. She asked me how many times I had been to New York and, when I told her, she said in French 'why haven't you ever come to see me before?' which I took to mean she didn't like me, but actually she was giving me a major compliment.

Role model

The last time I saw her, I gave her a flower and she just spoke French to me the whole time and she was very sweet and incredibly interesting. The last hour we spent together we looked through a book of Jung's art and images and talked about birth and life.

Right until the very end, she was completely together and amazing and still working, which was fantastic - 98 and still making art. If that isn't a really good role model for female artists then I don't know what is.

She never lost sight of what she was, which was an artist and a really fantastic artist. She was so amazing and so important - and this is why the world had paid heed to her death.

When Picasso died everyone fainted, now Louise Bourgeois has died and everyone is crying. It is a really sad moment for art, but a really fantastic moment for female artists because at last we have someone who is up there with the greats.