11.26.2009

11.24.2009

We're very, very happy to be on our way to Miami this year. The economy is up (believe me, we're the first to know!), and the artwork has never been better. Our 2009 contribution to Miami's art scene, as selected by independent curator Natalia Pudzisz, takes us to SCOPE Miami Art Show with paintings by Franziska Klotz and sculpture by Marvin Lipofsky.

For those of you planning to visit us at SCOPE, here is a short schedule of fair events:

SCOPE Art Show Inaugurates its First Curatorial Committee
David Hunt, Independent Curator and Critic, New York
Franklin Sirmans, Chief Curator of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Naomi Beckwith, Assistant Curator, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York
Kate McNamara, Curatorial Assistant, PS1 / MOMA, New York
Benjamin Godsill, Curatorial Associate, New Museum, New York

SCOPE Curatorial Committee Presents: The SCOPE Film Program
Wednesday, December 2 | 11am-6pm
Patty Chang, Rather To Potentialities, 2009
Thursday, December 3 | 11am-7pm
Edgar Arceneaux, An Arrangement without Tormentors, 2004
Friday, December 4 | 11am-7pm
Robert Boyd, Conspiracy Theory, 2008
Saturday, Decem

ber 5 | 11am-7pm
Jordan Wolfson, Infinite Melancholy, 2003
Sunday, December 6 | 11am-6pmKon Trubkovich, Double Entrance/Double Exit, 2009

SCOPE Presents: The Arctic Circle
Wednesday, December 2- Sunday, December 6

SCOPE Presents: The SCOPE Sculpture Garden
Wednesday, December 2- Sunday, December 6

The Eighth Edition of America's Most Prestigious Art Show, The Highlights

From December 3 through 6, 2009, Miami Beach, Florida, will be home to the 8th edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, the international art show. More than 250 leading galleries from North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa will take part. Chosen by renowned gallerists of the Art Basel Miami Beach Selection Committee, the galleries will show works by more than 2,000 artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Special sectors are devoted to very recent artworks, curated exhibits, performance, and art in public spaces.

This year, the layout of Art Basel Miami Beach will be extensively redesigned, including larger spaces for many galleries, and a new floorplan designed to improve the gallery exhibition and visitor experience inside the convention center. Art Galleries, the main section of the show, will feature more than 180 galleries from all continents.

For Art Basel Miami Beach 2009 the Selection Committee has chosen 28 galleries to present an Art Kabinett - separate areas within the booths of the Art Galleries sector, providing a space to exhibit both single artists' works and thematic group exhibitions spotlighting the curatorial skills of the gallerists. The projects in this sector of the show feature a wide array of artists, ranging from emerging artists such as Jakub Julian Ziotkowski, Haegue Yang and Latifa Echakhch to historical figures like Marcel Duchamp, George Grosz and Jack Tworkov. Further highlights include projects by Olafur Eliasson, Anish Kapoor, Richard Prince and Wim Delvoye. Group shows include exhibitions titled “Ninety Years of Bauhaus” and “Aspects of Pop Art”.

The Art Nova sector serves as a platform for the galleries of Art Basel Miami Beach to present works produced in the last two years, by a maximum of three artists. This year 64 international galleries have been chosen for the sector by the Selection Committee. Works by more than 130 artists from around the globe are on display, including 17 solo shows, featuring artists such as Marc Bijl, Valie Export, Rashid Rana, Dan Attoe, Michael Beutler, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Jose Dávila and Marine Hugonnier.

The Art Positions sector - focuses on special projects by young artists and galleries, and formerly situated at Collins Park - will now be sited in the center of the Miami Beach Convention Center and features works by artists such as Renate Lorenz, Falke Pisano, Ulla von Brandenburg, Agathe Snow, Egill Saebjornsson, Reena Spaulings and Marcel Broodthaers.

Art Projects, curated for the first time this year by independent curator Patrick Charpenel of Guadalajara, Mexico, features 13 projects by internationally renowned artists such as Santiago Sierra, Claire Fontaine, William Pope.L, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Franz West, selected from proposals by the galleries of Art Basel Miami Beach. The projects will be installed in the outdoor public spaces of Miami Beach, within close proximity to the Oceanfront area and the Miami Beach Convention Center.

The totally new Oceanfront environment will be created by Los Angeles artist Pae White, commissioned by Art Basel Miami Beach and Creative Time, the legendary New York-based public art organization, and host a daily program including the Art Basel Conversations, Art Perform, Art Video and Art Film. For the 2009 premiere of the Oceanfront, Pae White will create an immersive and interactive cityscape that will provide a new experience with each visit. By day, large color blocks will dominate the landscape. At night, these colors blocks transform into a shadowy group of buildings that house various merchants and performers.

Now located at the Oceanfront, the Art Basel Conversations will be inaugurated by an Artist Talk premiere, which this year features Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. For the following Art Basel Conversations, topics include “Museum Directors: Change in Generation”, “Art Collections in Latin America” and “The Future of the Museum: The Portable Museum”.

Art Video, curated by Creative Time, will involve screenings of videos by Tom Sachs and The Neistat Brothers, Marc Horowitz, Jill Magid, Kon Trubkovich, followed by discussions with the artists.

Art Perform features an intensified program of longer performances by rising international artists. This program will again be conceived by curator Jens Hoffmann, director of the CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco. It will take place on Thursday and Saturday at 9 pm and feature performances by Kelly Nipper, Kris Martin, Simon Fujiwara, Claire Fontaine, and Mario Garcia Torres / Loris Gréaud.

This year's Art Film event offers an exclusive work-in-progress sneak preview of the feature documentary film “Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child.”, preceded by a panel with a selection of the film's participants, moderated by Bob Colacello. “Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child” is directed by Tamra Davis and features a long and never-before-seen interview with Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) shortly before his death. Art Film is curated by Zurich film connaisseur This Brunner.

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11.15.2009

Phillip Hua installation for San Francisco Art Commission's Art in Storefronts

The third installment of the San Francisco Art Commission's Art in Storefronts program launches on lower 24th Street in the Mission District with a community reception on Friday, November 20 from 7-10 p.m. A new economic development initiative, the program engages San Francisco-based artists with the challenge to reinvigorate four neighborhoods hard-hit by the recent economic downturn. These are neighborhoods that have suffered more than their fair share of economic depression on the San Francisco real estate scale, as a result, the program, initiated by Mayor Gavin Newsom, offers an opportunity to both property owners and artists to foster a renewed community in their neighborhoods with the hope of attracting investment and renewing property values.

Art in Storefronts officially launched on Friday, October 23 in the Central Market and Tenderloin neighborhoods followed by 3rd Street in Bayview on October 30. All installations will remain on view through the end of January 2010.

Image right: Phillip Hua's installation, at 984 Market Street, Consider It. Photo, Eduardo Soler.

11.14.2009

Marvin Lipofsky: Pick of First Thursday!

Thank you, Alan Bamberger, Kathryn Arnold and DeWitt Cheng for a wonderful review of Marvin Lipofsky's work.

Review by Kathryn Arnold: Marvin Lipofsky handles glass and color with the ease a painter might handle paint on a canvas-- an analogy pointing to the supreme technical skill this artist exhibits. His organic shapes at times resemble shell-like formations and point to inside/outside interior/exterior relationships. If glass was not such a fragile material, the sensation of wanting to pick these up hold them squish them would be almost unbearable. Candy-like colors are reminiscent of those seen in the depths of the ocean (National Geographic has educated me in this regard) so perhaps one can touch upon primordial beginnings. Yet they are what they are -- each shape also referencing itself without allusions to the outside world. Luminous objects of 'being' in most cases.

Review by DeWitt Cheng: Berkeley's Marvin Lipofsky is an eminent glass artist, having helped pioneer the medium back in the 1960s. This show assembles work of the past four decades. Organic/complex form, plus ravishing color -- a must-see for those who admired the Chihuly extravaganza at the DeYoung. I take several pix of the artist, whose sense of humor I enjoy, but seem to have lost them somehow.

Comment by AB: Glassmaking at it's finest. Highly recommended. Pick of First Thursday. Artbusiness.com.

Images: (top) The artist, Marvin Lipofsky with Chico Group II 2004-2005 #5; SF • Tacoma Group 2006-2007 #5; ‘Glass Ambitions’ International Glass Symposium V, Series 1994 #2 (photo, Kathryn Arnold); L’viv Group 2001-2002 #2; Frauenau Group 2000-2002 #4; Chico Group II 2004-2005 #5 (back, Soviet Series 1989); Fratelli-Toso Series: Split Piece 1976-1980 (photo, Kathryn Arnold).

11.12.2009

Taliaferro Jones is back from the Cheongju International Craft Biennale!

Back from exhibition at the Cheongju International Craft Biennale, Taliaferro Jones will participate in Ontario Craft ’09 with Luna (2009), a kiln cast crystal sculpture.

The Ontario Craft Council's juried biennial exhibition will open Friday, November 13th, ongoing through December 30th. The opening reception, in Toronto, is this Friday from 5:30-8:30 at the Ontario Craft’s Council, 990 Queen Street West. For more information, please go to: http://www.craft.on.ca/Programs/Exhibitions-upcoming.

Jones, a first-time exhibitor at the Cheongju International Craft Biennale in Seoul (South Korea), presented Embrace (2005). A three-part themed exhibition, Jones contributed to "Unity and Diversity" where curators Kai Chan, Susan Edgerly and Gord Thompson, among others, sought responses from craftspeople to review their work in context with the Canadian craft movement. Presented were questions relative to whether Canadian craft possesses a unified identity, and whether vast physical and cultural geographies complicate and diversify the issue of identity.

Image, above right: Taliaferro Jones. Luna, 2009. Kiln cast crystal. 9.5 x 17 x 6 in., below right: Taliaferro Jones. Embrace, 2005. Kiln cast lead glass, diptych. 26 x 26 x 17 in.

11.11.2009

TOBIAS TOVERA: Artist Talk

TOBIAS TOVERA: Transmutation Unfolding, Paintings. Artist Talk.

Please join Artist Tobias Tovera, who will present a discussion of the concepts behind, and the process of, making the Transmutation Unfolding paintings, on display now on the Plaza Level of 555 California Street, downtown San Francisco.

Introspective, Tovera allows considerable time for contemplation and meditation. During his talk, Tovera will discuss his background, studio practice and process, paths of research and exploration, and engage in a session of questions and answers.

The discussion presents an informal opportunity to offer the public insight into Tovera's large-scale beautifully conceived and well-crafted paintings.

When: Friday, November 13, 2009, 6 pm
Where: 555 California Street, San Francisco (Plaza Level)

To download Tovera's PDF portfolio, please click here. Exhibitions at 555 California Street are curated and organized by San Francisco art advisor Jan Casey of Casey and Associates.

Image, above left: Tobias Tovera. Falling Deeper, 2009. Acrylic pigment on panel. 48 x 48 in.

All images are courtesy of the artist and Micaëla Gallery, and protected by all copyright/trademark laws everywhere. ©1997-2010 micaëla and micaëla gallery, its name, logo and all website content are copyright/trademarks of micaëla gallery llc.

11.10.2009

Douglass Freed

Finding a Market for Large-Scale Art, by Ligaya Figueras


	A series of five 64” x 42” paintings by Brad Benson hang in a public space at Pinnacle Entertainment’s Lumière Place Casino & Hotels in St. Louis. Photo by Kathleen Clark.

The recent downturn has resulted in less private buyers placing gigantic 2D pieces in palatial homes. “The market for large scale is not what it previously was,” states Carolyn Miles, the owner of Atrium Gallery in St. Louis, which specializes in large-scale artwork.

For artists working in bigger formats, the current economic climate means the market for large-scale artwork is limited.

“Few people have the wall-space and eye-space (the ability to move far enough back in the space to see the painting properly) to acquire them,” states Lauren Rabb, owner and director of The Gallery at 6th & 6th in Tucson, Arizona.

To meet these new challenges, artists who work in a larger scale should consider corporate settings as another market for their creations. Larger pieces grace lofty entrance lobbies and other gathering spaces at convention centers, restaurants and casinos. Banks, office buildings, condominium lobbies and upscale hotels are also privately owned properties with massive public spaces in need of adornment.

“They present an opportunity for elegance and scale,” comments Miles.

Acclaimed landscape painter Douglass Freed of Sedalia, Missouri has always produced large-scale works. His paintings are in the collections of numerous corporations, including Sprint, Hewlett Packard, Pella, McGraw-Hill, Maytag, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Missouri and banks throughout the Midwest. In fact, most of his sales these days are corporate commissions.

“Corporations are the patrons of our time,” says Freed, who in 2008 completed a massive 108 x 320 in. river landscape for the Emerson Electric Corporation headquarters in St. Louis, and Epoch, a 96 x 120 in. painting that hangs in the new Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

Make Me a Match


Rise/Set by Doug Freed hangs in the Emerson Electric headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri. The oil on canvas painting is 108 x 320 in.

“Hotels don’t hire artists. Architects and designers do,” states Evelyn Daniel-Putnam, President of Daniel Fine Art Services in Laguna Beach, California. “Design firms create a path for people like me.” Her company is a preeminent art-consulting firm for luxury hotel and casinos, managing projects worldwide for clients such as Hilton, Ritz-Carlton and Hyatt.

“We make decisions about theme, budget, direction. Art consultants are not supposed to be pushing inventory. We are a research team,” explains Daniel-Putnam.

Pinnacle Entertainment, which owns and operates gaming entertainment facilities throughout the U.S, works exclusively with Daniel Fine Art Services to choose artwork for its properties, such as the recently completed $507 million Lumière Place entertainment complex in St. Louis and a $67 million expansion of the L’Auberge du Lac Casino Resort in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

“The art has to capture the style of the property and blend with the design,” states Pam Gates, Pinnacle’s manager of procurement for design and construction. “The L’Auberge du Lac Casino Resort has a Texas Hill Country lodge theme, so we were looking for local Louisiana art.”

According to Freed, private institutions and companies are attracted by the composition of his pieces.
The artist states, “Though I am a landscape painter, I’m truly an abstract artist. My artwork draws you in; it is accessible because the paintings are about time and light. … Meditative paintings work well in big, modern, contemporary concrete spaces, and I have the ability to do large, monumental paintings whereas most landscape painters are easel painters.”

Freed also keeps the titles of his works ambiguous and universal. For example, he titled the Emerson piece Rise/Set to imply an early morning or late evening. “Everyone has had the experience of a lake or ocean in early morning or night,” he says.

Getting a Foot in the Lobby

Art consultants need to find artwork for their clients quickly and efficiently. To reduce the amount of legwork required, they tend to go to trusted sources.

“When I am looking for artwork, I visit galleries and studios, go online, and talk with people in the art community.” states art consultant Mary McElwain, owner of McElwain Fine Arts who also served as the art advisor to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City on the commission awarded to Doug Freed. Art advisors tend to work through galleries, so artists who have gallery representation have an advantage against artists who attempt to work independently with art consultants. Freed’s Federal Reserve Bank project, for instance, was handled through Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art Gallery in Kansas City, one of a dozen galleries across the U.S. that shows his paintings.The Web is another channel that enables artists and art consultants to get connected. “It’s all Internet,” says Daniels-Putnam, whose company finds artists from all over the world via the World Wide Web. “It used to be slide registry. Now it’s ‘look at the artist’s Web site.’”

One major artist list that interior designers and art consultants review is ArtistRegistry.com. The site is administered by Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF), a non-profit regional arts service organization dedicated to the creative advancement and preservation of the arts in western states, although any artist who is a U.S. resident can showcase his or her art on the site.

Besides making it easy for consultants and buyers to discover them on the Web, artists can seek out those who make purchasing decisions for corporate facilities. McElwain suggests that artists find out which architecture and design firms in their area specialize in large spaces and that they send a targeted mailing to the head of the design department at these firms. The American Institute of Architects Web site ( www.AIA.org ) posts a directory of AIA members in every city.

Marketing materials can also be sent to art consultants, some of who, like McElwain, are members of the International Association for Professional Art Advisors. The organization provides guidelines and standards for professional art advisors and serves as a network for communication among art advisors, curators and art service professionals. Members are listed on the IAPAA Web site ( www.IAPAA.org ). Another helpful resource for developing a targeted mailing list is the “Corporate Art Market” section of the Artist Help Network Web site (www.ArtistHelpNetwork.com ).
Contributing writer and communications consultant Ligaya Figueras specializes in business writing, marketing and media relations for visual and performance artists, writers, nonprofit organizations and specialty service providers. She can be reached at figuerasl@sbcglobal.net .

Copyright 2009 Ligaya Figueras. First published by Art Calendar magazine (www.artcalendar.com), the business magazine for visual artists. Used with permission.

11.09.2009

Peter Bremers is at SOFA Chicago

Sponsored by the Tel Aviv Litvak Gallery, Peter Bremers has once again shared his sculpture at SOFA Chicago.

Netherlands artist Peter Bremers was born in 1957 in Maastricht. He studied sculpture at the University of Fine Arts from 1976 to 1980, then three-dimensional design at the Jan van Eyck Academie from 1986 to 1988. Searching for suitable ways to realize his artistic ideas, he began to work with a wide range of materials, including glass, plastic, steel and stone. In 1989, he attended a course given by Lino Tagliapietra at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, but the strongest impetus to turn to glass as his ideal material had come three years earlier, during a workshop held at the Jan van Eyck Academie by the senior Dutch glass artist A.D. Copier (1901-1991).

Bremers works with a team of assistants who carry out his ideas at the furnace that the artist acquired on extensive travels in Asia, New Zealand, Africa and the Antarctic. Perhaps Bremers's most compelling works are the recentIcebergs & Paraphernalia. Inspired by the majesty and fragility of the changing Antarctic landscape, created the Icebergs & Paraphernalia series in kiln cast glass as an homage to the earth, to express respect and give thanks that such wonders still exist, despite human intervention. [image right: Icebergs & Paraphernalia 2007-119, 2007. 90 x 56 x 17 cm]

In a DVD documentation of this series he describes his journey to the Antarctic in a deep-sea sailing ship, recording his impressions of the glaciers and of the waves glistening in the dawn sunlight. He also tells of disastrous attempts to realise the resulting ideas at the furnace, and how he travelled to the Czech village of Pelechov, near Zelezny Brod, to have them cast instead. In Icebergs & Paraphernalia Bremers uses undulating wave-like shapes, along with angular holes and arches to evoke a combination of ice and fire, light and colour. He recreates in glass, openings and fissures in the glaciers, and succeeds at capturing an idea of the unfathomable depths of the ice.

Bremers's work is featured in the public collections of Boymans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, The Netherlands and National Glassmuseum in Leerdam, The Netherlands.

11.08.2009

Scott Kildall is at Eyebeam

On October 13, Scott Kildall began his two-week residency as Eyebeam's guest reblogger. Among other things, he will conduct a brief study of common points along a number of disciplines, including art interventions, astrophysics and virtual worlds. He will examine concepts of 'space' and its understanding (and change) over the last 10 years. Wow. The complete compilation of one of his works, 'Video Portraits,' is on exhibition as part of our Winter Salon 2009 through January 2, 2010.

11.07.2009

SF Art News features Carol Lawton!

Michael Yochum from SF Art News dropped in Thursday night. It was a surprise to pick him out of the crush (literally many bodies on a sweltering Indian Summer San Francisco evening), and it's always good to see Michael - especially so when he picks out one of our fave pieces and tweets it!

The sculpture that caught Michael's eye is Carol Lawton's "Fault Line Houses" in cast lead glass (12 x 33 x 2.5 in.). There's some agreement that it's a worthy piece to view, apparently, since Henry Hillman (sculptor and bona fide billionaire?!) had a look at it yesterday too. Thank you, Michael, it's good to be on your radar!

11.04.2009

Thomas Scoon's Chicago exhibition with Ken Saunders closes

Thomas Scoon's latest solo exhibition has just come down from Chicago's Ken Saunders Gallery. Scoon’s new work explores his figurative yet abstracted sculptures comprised of cast glass and granite. The granite and glass elements are stacked to create figurative compositions so that when the pieces are grouped together in installations, they immediately develop a sense of camaraderie and dialogue. Purposefully intended by the artist, he accordingly entitles these sculptures, Companions. Selecting from blue-green, amber, or clear glass, the figures have an ethereal quality while conjuring sensibilities likened to figural sculptures of Easter Island. There is an unquestionable element of an earlier, primeval time, with his work. Scoon's granite elements are found in New Hampshire, where the artist resides. New Hampshire, of course, is The Granite State, and the stones have spectacular traces of quartz, mica, and iron running throughout. Juxtaposed against the translucent glass, the granite quartz and mica acquire fantastic sheen and shimmer. Scoon's work is always inspired by nature and its elements—the organic qualities of the quartz combined with the cool colors of the glass creates harmonious and exciting combinations.

11.03.2009

Quebec blog features Marie-Lou Desmeules!

Yesterday morning, a blog item from Pat White, a writer from Quebec, popped up in our emails! It's fabuloso to see press about our artists - and it takes things to a different level to see our new exhibition, Winter Salon 2009, written up in French! L'artiste québécoise Marilou Desmeules expose à San Francisco au Winter Salon 2009 | PatWhite.com. You don't read French? Many of us don't, but Marie-Lou's native language is French, so I'll post this for her as I found it. Briefly, Mr. White states, "Marie-Lou Desmeules, originally from Quebec, currently residing in Berlin, is an artist delighted with the extraordinary."

The attached image, featured in the Winter Salon 2009: "In Gold We Trust," is from her latest series, "Too Much is Not Enough." Performance, painting, photograph C-Print on Fuji paper, 119 x 84 cm.

Marie-Lou recently participated in an exhibition in Milan. More on that at another time.

11.02.2009

Artdaily.org notes Tobias Tovera's "Stunning Repertoire of Work"

Artdaily.org notes Tobias Tovera's exhibition at the Plaza Level of 555 California Street, San Francisco.

Artdaily.org - The First Art Newspaper on the Net