our aluminum tree

is vintage 1967.     the ornaments are flea market finds.   vintage = recycling.   no fresh pine smell, but no fuel used in trucking it.    and no landfill filled.    happy holidays!

aqua forest aquarium

we stumbled onto this amazing store on fillmore street.   this is so not the tropical aquarium my parents got me (and subsequently maintained for the next ten years) for my fifth birthday…    these are elaborately-designed  fresh-water aquariums that are miniature landscapes.   the fish animate them, but are secondary.

they’re all amazing, but the more minimal ones are my preference (surprise).

the store – 1718 fillmore street in sf.

the aquarium in the window that i fell for:

helen may be getting one of these for her next birthday…  and i’ll be maintaining it and doing pay-back…

i lifted all of these images from aqua forest aquarium’s website – aquaforestaquarium.com.

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slumdog millionaire

is the best film of 2008.   jay has been resisting the buzz around it.    the advertised premises of the movie – “a poor kid gets rich” and “it’s about love, not the money” – sound sacherine.

but danny boyle’s movie about 18-year-old jamal, a “chai-wallah” (the guy who delivers tea to office workers in mumbai), is  told mostly through his flashbacks while he’s being tortured by the police.     you see, jamal is a contestant on the popular indian game show “who wants to be a millionaire?” and when he starts winning, the host of the show has him hauled in for cheating.   how could an uneducated kid from the slums know anything?

jay, the game show host and the police are all correct in their skepticism.    this could have been a schlock-fest.   but the gritty realism and danny bolye’s signature frenetic pace make this the most accurate film-portrayal of contemporary mumbai i’ve seen.  you can’t imagine brutal like the life of a kid in the slums of india.   scenes in this film are wrenching.  but boyle has fun with us too, including a redux of the mortifying scene in the pub toilet from “trainspotting” and a toe-tapping bollywood number when the credits roll.

the film keeps telling us that it’s about destiny, but it’s really about something that’s easier to believe in –  hope — something just about everyone is ready to buy into at the moment.

i haven’t seen all of the films that came out in 2008 yet, so it’s possible i’ll like something better.    i can’t imagine i will.    this one is not to be missed and ought to be seen on a large screen.

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maya lin at the de young museum in san francisco

“systematic landscapes” is a show of sculpture and installation by the american architect who in 1981, while a 21-year-old undergraduate at yale, won the competition to design the vietnam vetrans’ memorial in washington d.c.   her design for the memorial was truly inspired and her ability (particularly at her age) to fight the controversial proposal through to completion (un-ruined) is amazing.

the major works in this show are each 3-d interpretations of digital renderings of landscape.         the first piece, “2×4 landscape” is comprised of about 30 tons of  2×4’s (50,000 of them), cut at different lengths and standing on their ends.     it’s a physically impressive and amusing/attractive in its pixelated fuzziness.    but it suffers considerably from its installation in the large ground-story space of the de young.    first mistake, it’s pushed up against the west wall of the room in a way that makes it impossible to circumnavigate – unacceptable for a sculpture designed to be viewed from every angle.    much more horribly, it’s right up against the monumental richter piece that’s permanently installed in the space.   both works are optical and the two pieces seen together vibrate in the most sickening way.    worse than looking awful together, if you don’t come into the show knowing otherwise, you might think the works by two different artists are one piece.   i’m not exaggerating.   i saw the show with a very experienced, high-level curator from a major international museum, who believed the two things somehow were supposed to be one artwork.       it’s an unforgivable installation error.     if the richter couldn’t have been removed for this exhibition, they needed to find a different space for the lin.

and while i liked “2×4″ – it’s fun – i couldn’t help comparing it to gay outlaw’s “black hose mountain” that’s been exhibited at sfmoma, the sculpture center in new york and the berkeley art museum (where it is part of the permanent collection) and thinking it less successful visually, materially and conceptually.

the second interesting piece, “blue lake pass,” is made of sheets of mdf, each cut (i assume) separately, then layered.   the blocks, arranged in a grid, make claustaphobia-inducing passages through which the viewer may enter the piece.    it’s op-y and sensuous.

a group of pieces representing the underwater topographies of inland seas was also successful.     they’re quiet and elegant and very interestingly displayed – extending beyond the edge of relatively small pedestals.   they make a lovely reference to the tradition of chinese scholars’ stones.   i could see living with one of these…

“water line” is a 3-d line drawing of a topographical feature from the north atlantic ridge — rendered with aluminum tubing.   it’s really interesting to experience the way simple lines in space can so effectively define a solid form.   my  5-year-old walked into the space and exclaimed “we’re in a volcano in the place where the lava is!”   again, i found myself thinking about another artist who had explored the same idea – the way a line can create volume.    fred sandback’s brilliant sculptures using a few strands of colored string to make space feel solid are shocking in their effectiveness and their simplicity.   lin’s work does the same thing less effectively with infinely more effort.

there are also topographic works set into the sheet rock of the gallery and a wall drawing made with pushpins.   none of that work is interesting enough to warrant my time typing.

but the show is worth seeing.    not ground-breaking in the way that the vetrans’ memorial was, but focused and thoughtful.

the first image, of “2×4 landscape,” i lifted from the de young’s website.    the rest, i took (before i realized i wasn’t supposed to) with my iphone.

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report on miami

i’m getting lots of phone calls and e-mails asking what happened in miami…     who was there?   what sold?    which fairs looked good?    how badly did the economy affect the fairs?      here’s my read.

the economy is horrible.    most everyone has less disposable income, or at the very least, feels like they need to be more cautious.  last week could have been a blood bath.    but it wasn’t.

first of all, miami was still really fun.    it remains the best opportunity in the u.s. to meet or re-connect with colleagues, collectors, curators and art groupies.   the weather is good (decent by california standards and excellent by those of the rest of the country) and the energy is great.   which in some ways makes up for the ugliness of the city, the low quality of the food and service, the hummers and the un-earthly boob jobs.

absent were art speculators — relying on rumors of what’s hot and who is buying whom and how much you’ll be able to make when you flip it in a year.    they’ve been over-paying for crap in miami (and china and chelsea) for the last five years and they now feel had.   rather than snapping up atrocities at the opening of the NADA fair and otherwise over-consuming, they’ve been trying to dump their art-world equivalents of mortgage-backed securities at the phillips evening sale.  they aren’t people i’ve ever sold to (my program isn’t interesting to them), so i don’t miss them.

there were far fewer curators in miami this year.    two reasons.   one,  budget cuts.    both travel and acquisition budgets have been shaved as institutions go into survival mode.   two, many of the museum donors that curators have been acting as personal shoppers for in the past few years, are no longer shopping.   last year, you’d be talking to someone about a work, and they’d snap a photo on their phone and call their favorite curator for an opinion about  it.    not as bad as being on the other end of the conversation -  talking to a curator and  being constantly interrupted by people calling for approval.   you’d think that curators would be there just to see what’s currently being made.     some were.    but i guess it’s just not as much fun to look as it is to buy…

there were fewer europeans.   no surprise, as the euro has fallen against the dollar, we’ve noticed a significant drop in sales to europe.

who was there?   the quality of traffic at aqua wynwood – the fair we were in – was better this year than last.   there were  well-educated, well-informed people from all over the country -  heavily new yorkers, californians and (at least part-time) residents of miami.  but also people from the midwest, texas and eastern seaboard.     there were a disproportionate number of collectors in their 50’s and 60’s.    people who’ve been looking at art and living with it for a long time.     sophisticated viewers.   they bought in a considered manner, but they bought.   there were some young collectors buying, but fewer.     except for one piece, everything we sold went to people we haven’t worked with before.   what did we sell?    jim campbell, marco maggi, nicole fein, emil lukas, crystal liu, timothy horn and gideon rubin.

the consensus was that the basel fair looked good.   safe.   salable.    there was good energy at pulse and the aqua hotel fair.   aqua wynwood, with 12-foot high (rather than 10), plywood-backed walls and skylights looked the best.    the energy at art miami (plagued by management issues, galleries attempting to pull out at the last minute and threats of law suits) was toxic.   the new asian fair, the photo fair, red dot and bridge got low marks by all accounts, on all counts.

few sales closed at the openings.   people mostly came back on friday and saturday to buy the things they’d seen earlier in the week.   there were  bargain hunters.    lots of rumors of people making low-ball offers for artists who had waiting lists two years ago.   the best “deals” were on things that were over-priced to begin with and that aren’t moving without the fuel of a speculative market.    as  a san francisco collector said to me on the flight home, “you know things have changed when they’re nice to you at sikkema and white cube….    a couple of years ago i couldn’t get them to return my calls.”

at every fair, high-quality work continued to sell.     most gallerists are saying they broke even.   a few are saying they made money.

with the economy in the state it’s in, it’s a wonder any sales happened at all.

i think people have been pulling back for a while – say since april.    new yorkers (who are living too close to the ground zero of the financial services trainwreck to be able to put it out of their minds even momentarily) are currently buying less than people from other parts of the country.   but real collectors, people who look at art and buy it because they love it, have continued and will continue to buy art.    and if they’ve been holding back for a few months, they released some of their pent-up desire at miami.     the collector on the plane on the way home said this year he’d spent 1/2 of what he spent last year.    i postulated that last year he probably spent 1/2 of what he had the year before, and he seemed to agree.     but in the next breath he talked about works by two artists he’s still actively pursuing.    for a segment of the population, art   – viewing, collecting and the culture around those activities -  has become like a religion.    they build museums instead of cathedrals, read art magazines instead of theology and do the rounds of art fairs and international biennials instead of making pilgrimages.    we’re seeing corrections in the excesses of the last few years, but the last few years also bred and nurtured an enormous population of the art obsessed.     while even the obsessed are cautious during difficult times, miami proved they don’t go completely away.

the photo was taken by ( and copyrighted to) a seattle based photographer -  Adam L Weintraub – www.adamw.com

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aqua wynwood fair

here are some shots (i-phone quality) of our booth…

driss ouadahi, timothy horn, henry darger…

rachell sumpter and gideon rubin to the left of hte entry.    marco maggi in the booth (with glimpses of driss ouadahi and jim campbell), horn, darger, khan.

horn, darger, baseera khan and jim campbell’s “home movies” in an annex booth.

emil lukas, nicole fein, roland flexner, jutta haeckel and liliana porter.    this wall is a bit over-hung.    sorry.     there was a lot i wanted to get into the booth…

russell crotty, emil lukas, nicole fein, roland flexner.

a russell crotty globe (in front of a driss ouadahi painting), celene, driss ouadahi, stefan kurten, crystal liu, two flat crotty drawings and another globe.

gideon rubin and driss ouadahi.

installing the aqua wynwood fair in miami

was a twelve hour day yesterday…     a couple more hours today and we’ll be ready…

our booth from the front.     to the right and all the way back (where the red ladder is) is where the large-scale jim campbell piece will hang.

unpacking the art…    our tools (and a couple of pieces of artwork) didn’t show up with the shipments.    they arrived later in the day.

jay at work.