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Isaac Julien: Playtime

                        Art and capital, capital and art.  It’s a combination that most artists turn their nose up at, and financial experts are finding intriguing.  What drives a person to buy a work of art, and year’s later turnover for a profit?  It’s a sign of the times changing, and the art world evolving itself into the market we are coming to understand today.  Record breaking auction prices, and fan filled art fairs are taking headline.  They are changing the delicate eco-system of the art world slowly but surely.

            In the hallowed rooms of Victoria Miro gallery the London born and raised artist, Isaac Julien, installed the video to end all video installations.  The seven-screen room showed his newest work called “Playtime”, which challenges the perceptions of capital in several different clips.  The first film that presents itself has a reporter walking the halls of the famous contemporary auction house Phillips.  She sits down in front of the famous Simon de Pury and begins her interview.  They go back and forth between the mundane interviewers questions, to the typical overly thought out answers of Pury.  He begins to answer her questions about collecting and auction lot placement, and all of the psychological aspects that go into organizing an auction.  The scene then breaks away to seeing Pury pace back and forth in a room practicing his auction movement, with then shots of pure red screens (that cant help make you think of Stanley Kubrick and the shining).  The best scenes are the behind the scene moments, where Pury decides he might want to say things a little differently than he just did.  A break away from the hyper realistic moments shot with the interviewer. 

            In the next clip we are confronted with a man playing a trumpet, in what should be accurately described as a white cube space inside one of the tall office buildings of London.  In between his playing the viewers come to find out he is a hedge fund manager, hungry for the elusive thing people call ‘capital’.  Best line of the whole clip, “ an apple falls from the tree it must be gravity, the economy goes down it must be capital”.   Favorite scene in the clip, when the man opens a door to an office and everyone in the room in a synchronized moment turns their head to stare at him, as if he has violated their personal space. He quickly talks back and forth with a colleague about the success of a company and greatness of money, it’s a real Wall Street type of sequence. 

            We then travel to Dubai, where a Philippine woman has left her home in order to make money to send back to her family.  She is found telling her story in an apartment that might as well be a gallery space.  Filled from wall to wall with contemporary pieces of art.  She moves around the space, detached and lonely, finding solace only in the fact that she is working to generate capital.  While she tells her story scenes of two Arab dressed men walking in front of elaborate shops and designer items are being shown to the viewer.

            The clincher for the video work, which is just over an hour long, is the monologue delivered by none other than James Franco.  He slowly walks up the stairs to a gallery space where he proceeds to tell the viewer of the collector.  The ‘treasure hunter’ of the art world, as it was so eloquently put.  They are in search for not just the most culturally significant work, but for the work with the best financial possibilities.  He spits out words with slight hostility, naming off the successful lots of artists and the top selling pieces.  He ends with a slight tongue and cheek moment, saying that perhaps one day we will find a video artist with the same amount of financial success that has been seen by other artists at auction.

            Capital and art, art and capital.  It’s a thing that artists turn their nose up at, and financial people find intriguing.  Isaac Julien managed to turn both parties into art subjects in this work. 

  More info on the show head over here :

http://www.victoria-miro.com/exhibitions/now_showing/            

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Igor Vieru: People and His Paintings

Moldova is a small-populated country. What was once a well-kept city is now an odd mix of run-downed buildings, over-powering Soviet structures, and neon lights of businesses such as McDonalds breaking into the scene. The country itself didn’t gain independence until 1989 and is still very much under the Russian Federation’s control. Moldova doesn’t have any real industry and solely exists for ethic reasons. The country has put itself in a difficult situation of gaining control from the Communist Party. Moldova is trying to become a member of the EU. However, Russia doesn’t want this so every once and a while they will pull the hair of the Moldovans into submission as a gentle reminder as to who rules.

While traveling through its capital Chișinău, I took the opportunity to visit the country’s National Art Museum. It was a sad and slightly decrepit museum (not their fault, just lack of much needed government funding.) However, staying a while you learn this region of Europe possesses a long and undervalued legacy of visual art and culture.

The main exhibition at the National Art Museum was the painter Igor Vieru. He was born 1923 in the village of Cernoleuca, Moldova. He attended the School of Arts in I Repin from 1946-9 (Present day Arts College Al. Plamadeala). Throughout Vieru’s career he collaborated with many national writers including Vasile Alecsandri, Ion Luca Caragiale, Grigore Vieru, and M. Eminescu.

Igor Vieru became a prominent personality within the artistic society of Moldovan painters. He established himself as a champion of the Moldovan village, as a refined and intelligent interpreter of the land’s spiritual values. His art renders with sincerity and clarity the complex lives of simple people.  

It becomes interesting to witness of trends across continents. In Vieru's large scale paintings of villagers we see similar imagery techniques as those employed by artists such as Diego Rivera in depicting the Mexican denizens of this time. It also indicates the undervalued relevancy of the Proletariat Movement occurring throughout history. Artists such as Igor Vieru serve as a subtle reminder of memories lost and found. 

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Liu Wei at White Cube

Can does conceptual art need meaning anymore? During the opening night of Liu Wei’s at White Cube Gallery, the artist cornered himself on this issue. Entering the lower level of the gallery, one becomes instantly engaged with the monumental objects center around the room. An up close inspection reveals the sculptures are made of compacted pages from books molded into unique and familiar shapes. In the artist statement provided by White Cube did not provide any insightful information in understanding the artist’s work. So, I proceeded to interview him to understand the meaning of his work. Essentially, the Wei’s answers are ambiguous.

  A: How many exhibitions have you had?

LW: This is my fifth in London so far.

A: Why did you choose pages from books to make the sculptures?

LW: No reason, just something available.

A: Is there meaning to the work in general?

LW: No, I am trying to be anti-image, nothing really concrete.

A: Is there a narrative to the curating?

LW: Sort of. The spiritual energy from the work here can be fully realized with the sculptures on the top floor.

Proceeding to the top floor, we find mounted on the wall a collection of chilly, heavy metallic sculptural pieces. While these large industrial objects implement the traditional aesthetics of minimalism, they generate a dystopian sensation. Perhaps, my western mind-set is interfering with understanding Eastern mindset. However, if something resembles structures of prison complexes I beseech an explanation for how to achieve a spiritual explanation that is not self-evident to the artist. In the artist statement published by White Cube only a descriptive explanation to the character of the artist's work was provided, very little was discussed about the art currently featured. 

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Carol Fletcher gallery UBERMORGEN

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Net.Art... Our Art Historical Footprint

In the age of technology, where everyone has a smart phone, has instant access to information, and most people spend their lives documenting their lives online, it was inevitable that art would in some form or another start to represent this new way of life.  When you think about it, art is what helps represent history, and so far our history is weighed down with technology.  The idea of being without my smart phone can turn into a state of panic (I’m sorry to admit).  But, knowing this, artists have been dabbling in a new form of expression with Net.Art and digital art. These ideas have been blossoming since the early 90’s when hackers were dabbling with a new form of code writing, and creating things on a computer that had no more memory space than what we would find on a calculator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HSHmfBmINk

Today, there is the merging of the two worlds.  This means, now these underground alternative hackers are being depicted in some of the top galleries around the world. 

Recently the Carol Fletcher gallery was having an exhibition by artist collective UBERMORGEN titled “userunfriendly”.  UBERMORGEN, which is made up of two artists lizvlx and Hans Bernhard, put together a show that was comprised of their investigation into the censorship that takes place over us constantly.  They started out the exhibit with routers that were placed up on the wall, curated by Aram Bartholl.  The “Net.Art” was a series of routers that you had to connect to with either your smart-phone, tablet, or laptop.  Since I never leave anywhere without my smart phone, I eagerly took out my phone to see what was going to happen.  Once I connected to the wireless router, each one was attached to a single image.  It was interesting on the level of getting to have my own personal experience with the art.  Yet, this form begs the question of its marketability, and should it be marketed in the first place?  Being that Carol Fletcher is a commercial gallery, I would assume that they are prepared to sell the work.  Taking the business model from photography, I could see them selling editions, but this work was being sold as a single installation.  Which is where pieces like this can find success, rather than in a personal collection where not too many are able to access and interact with the work.

Moving through the room I couldn’t help but notice the watchful eye that was following me from room to room, and no it was not the gallery assistant.  Part of the installation was titled “CCTV – A Parallel Universe” and it was a commentary on the CCTV that follows us all around here in the UK.  The idea was how much authority should the government really have when it comes to surveillance.  If anything, this work gave a dialogue between my friend and I, who were experiencing this work.  Which is a big part of arts responsibility, to create a dialogue between art and viewer. 

After I left the gallery feeling completely fascinated with the idea of “Net.Art”, and understanding that the legacy we leave behind will never be like what was left before, I wondered how our art would translate 50 years from now.  We are in an age of technology, and being able to depict that through art is apart of who we are as human beings.  Whether this art will translate or not, only time will tell.

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Sotheby’s: The Coming Together of Two Worlds

As we know, commercial art galleries are professionally run businesses that derive their profit from sales of artwork and therefore take great care in selecting art and artists that they believe will sell and will enhance their gallery's reputation. The auction house is simply a business that conducts auctions. Within the art world both entities share a symbiotic relationship. Often times galleries will consign works of artists in their stock over to auctions houses such as Sotheby’s to bolster sales and prestige.

 Lately, the art market has witness a noteworthy rise and spread of the mega-galleries. These growing entities have quickly begun to take control over the contemporary art market as the main competitors and taste-makers against established oligarchy of the auction houses. As a means to retain its relevancy in the contemporary art market, Sotheby’s has taken greater initiatives to diversify its services and expand it’s global branding in order to remain competitive.

 In 2006, Sotheby’s began its private exhibition sale of contemporary sculpture, Beyond Limits, at Chatsworth, Derbyshire. Historically, Chatsworth has a 500-year legacy of being a facilitator of contemporary art of its day. Beyond Limits is an extension of that legacy. Unlike the standard model Sotheby’s has used traditionally to sell art, this exhibition is through private sales only. In a similar mode as commercial galleries are for being the go-to place to obtain certain artists, Sotheby’s Beyond Limits operates on the same model. Through the years the most featured artists at Beyond Limits have included Zadok Ben-David, Richard Hudson, Marc Quinn, Jaume Plensa, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Fernando Botero, Francois-Xavier Lalanne, Subodh Gupta, Ju Ming, Jed Novatt, and Manolo Valdes. The first sale of Beyond Limits in 2006 didn’t incur a high profit for Sotheby’s, but as the years progressed Sotheby’s has been receiving higher returns for this private sales; establishing itself as a key exhibition event worldwide.  

 In 2011, Sotheby’s New York opened its first gallery space, SI2, which is also designed to host private exhibitions sales, featuring artists such as Basquiat, Warhol, Calder, Yayoi Kusama, and Sam Francis. This venture was met with astounding success. The momentous enthusiasm gained from New York provided enough encouragement for Sotheby’s to open another SI2 in London, with its first exhibition featuring early works by Joseph Beuys. With the expansion of moving from the auction hall into the gallery space Sotheby’s is moving forward in contending with Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, David Zwirner, and Pace in order to maintain a stronger foothold in the market.   

Truthfully, its only natural for Sotheby’s to continue down this path. With an international reputation and capacity for all types of auction events, the company must continue to deliver solutions that are designed to yield high exposure and sales returns. Beyond Limits and SI2 are the first of many to spearhead the competition. The emergence of this new hybrid of auction and commercial gallery may soon become new platform as to how art is bought and sold.