Art Basel MB week: Day Three (1300 report)

I walked Scope today at noon and chatted with Civilian Art Projects's folks, dropped them two cold Bustelo's cafe con leche cans and took a walk through the fair. Civilian is showing DMV artist Trevor Young and has so far sold three of Young's gorgeous paintings.

Having walked both Art Miami yesterday and now Scope, I can offer the opinion that at least this year, Art Miami blows Scope away as far as the quality and depth of the art being exhibited. Both are also far better than Red Dot.

There is a lot of video in Art Miami, and a lot of video artists are now doing what DMV artist Tim Tate started doing years ago: taking the video out of the DVD player and incorporating it into sculptural elements. It's a lot easier to justify buying a video when you actually have it as a "showable" work - I think.

But anyway, Scope is somewhat suffering from the "so yesterday" look to a lot of the dated artwork being exhibited. To start, there's a disproportionate number of Chinese and other Asian artists in the fair, all showing the kind of work that was the rage of the art fairs three, four years ago, but that is now so diluted and overexposed that all that it gets is a glance. Then you realize (after talking to someone who knows this) that Art Asia and Scope are together under the same tent and sharing the same floor!

So all the Asian art is actually the Art Asia Art Fair and not the Scope Art Show, but nearly everyone that I talked to was as confused as I was: I thought it was all Scope!

In the real Scope there's also an abundance of artwork that appropriates Marylin Monroe's iconic images and puts them into glittery, shiny surfaces, odd surfaces, fill-in-the-blank surfaces, etc.

It is mostly crap, with the exceptional work of Romero Fudyma at Gallery Biba. Fudyma's sculptural approach to Monroe takes the icon to a stereographic three dimensions that has a hypnotizing effect.

There is also a lot of "angry artist" writing on the wall "art" -- sort of "so last century" work by a couple of European galleries. Speaking of writing, a Costa Rican gallery has a series of blackboards with chalk writing on them with repeated sentences as one would find in the old days when teachers would actually punish a Bart Simpson type kid with writing "I will not be late for school" 100 times on the board.

Yawn...

Other blase and thankfully out of vogue artwork still showing up for some reason at Scope are the big-eyed 1960 Sears type painting of kids that were all the rage a few years ago and that immediately upon falling out of rage a few hours later disappeared from the art scene, but it is clear that at least one gallery didn't get that fax.

One of the best set of works at Scope are the superb paintings by Rafel Bestard at Barcelona's Galeria Contrast. These gorgeous, sexy paintings are worth the trip to Scope alone!

There's a moist sensuality to Bestard's treatment of the subject matter, coupled with a photographic artifice that fools the eye, and which upon closer inspection reveals unexpected textural qualities that almost denies the first photorealism impression.

The sense of sensuality of the works on exhibit also have a strong dose of danger attached to them. Are these wet dreams or are they nightmares? Is the dreamer a frustrated sexpot or a dangerous psychopath?

My suggestion to the 2011 Scope gallery selection committee is simple: Shoot for a 50% refresh rate of new galleries; you need some new blood and need to adjust your rudder to 2011.

Art Basel MB week: Day Two

The fairs are all in full swing now, and Wynwood is traffic-jammed with people as I get dropped off at Red Dot for another day of art fairing.

In the early afternoon, a couple who had been there on opening night returns and acquires another one of my drawings. The piece will have to make a return trip to the DMV in order to be shipped to them. Soon after that a gorgeous Rosemary Feit Covey wood engraving finds a home in a California collection.

The well-known Texas video collector returns and kidnaps me to Art Miami across the street to show me her latest acquisition, and I swing by Chicago's Catherine Edelman Gallery, which is showcasing Tim Tate's self-contained video installations. There's already one red dot when I get there. The owner approaches me and asks if I'm familiar with Tate's work. I smile and respond yes. She says something along the lines of how everybody seems to know Tate.

I return across the street and my daughters have arrived, and almost immediately they depart and start touring the fairs. Meanwhile, Andrew Wodzianski, who is walking Art Basel in Miami Beach, texts me that he just ran into Steve Martin.

Over at Red Dot, Miami's Oxenberg Fine Art, which is also showcasing Tim Tate's videos, has also sold one of the self-contained video sculptures. Tate is having a good day at ABMB.

AT 6PM the booze starts pouring and this time is free margaritas for the crowds. The alcohol does little to loosen purses, although I do help to sell a couple more of my drawings.

A TV crew from Art Miami TV shows up and they are taken by Sheila Giolitti's luminous resin paintings and want to do a piece on them. Giolitti is a little nervous about being interviewed on TV and so she downs a beer to calm her nerves. The crew shoots a long clip on her and her work.

By 8PM my feet are killing me and my daughters and I head back to Hollywood for a Thai dinner on the beach.

Wanna go to a DC opening tomorrow?

Art Basel MB week: Day One

I arrive at 11 am and we take down the Rosemary Feit Covey triptych that we had laboriously set up the day before and replace them with some of Covey's strong signature pieces; it's just a gut feeling.

The day passes through slowly, and we are across from the Bustelo coffee stand, which has free chilled coffee drinks and free Cuban coffee all day long. Gallerists and dealers from Scope next door keep sneaking in through the tent's side door to grab free coffee.

Somewhere in the early afternoon MFA sells another Michael Fitts painting and I get into an almost fist-fight over the Che Guevara video piece. Later that day a well-known video collector from Texas drops by and MFA owner Sheila Giolitti sells her a video, sight unseen, by Norfolk video artist John Miles Runner.

DC artist Trevor Young, who is with Civilian Projects over at Scope, drops by and we chat about the NPG David Wojnarowicz controversy back in DC, about William Sickert, and about the arbitrary choosing of 22 seconds as the max time sample for audio. Young has sold three paintings so far at Scope and is having a well-deserved super fair.

At 6PM free tequila drinks begin to be served and now the invasion from Scope is in full mass as Scope artists and dealers use Red Dot's side door to sneak in and grab a free drink.

Later that night, the crowd thickens and Lynnvale's Lou Gagnon's elegant landscapes start to get a lot of attention from the Wednesday night crowd. At some point after that, Andrew Wodzianski cracks the ice and one of his "Android Series" (Bad Hair Day II (Sue Richards)) pieces finds a home with a Miami collector.

As the night moves, another Michael Fitts painting is sold and almost immediately I sell my Frida Kahlo homage drawing (done at the last possible minute), to one of the DMV's best known art collecting couples.

At seven the fair closes and I drive to Hialeah to pick up my daughter Vanessa at the airport and drive her to cousin Jorge's fortress house in Little Havana. When she arrives, she's hungry and Jorge feeds her sopa de chicharos.

Art Basel MB week: Day Oneish (Preview Day)

The day starts with last minute adjustments to the booth and artists' names and work title tags go up. By 3:30 the staff is kicking everyone out for a couple of hours in order for the cleaning crew to vacuum Red Dot's new black carpet before the grand opening preview at 6PM.

By 4:00PM I'm in my hotel in Hollywood showering and putting on the uniform for tonight's festivities. Little Junes is sitting on a makeshift high chair in the hotel eating Cheerios and wondering why dad is running around the room all in a hurry.

By 5:00PM we're out the door and driving the 15 miles to Wynwood. Miami traffic gets in the way and the drive turns into an hour and so I barely make it to the fair in time for the opening.

The cleaning crew is still working and by the time the order is given to stop vacuuming, as the doors will open to the invited VIPs and press, our booth is the only one that hasn't been cleaned and the brand new black carpet is littered with tons of white debris.

The floor looks so speckled with withe dots and paint and tape chunks that it almost looks like an installation worth of a booth at Scope (the story of what happened at Scope on check-in that will come later... it's a good one).

MFA owner and director Sheila Giolitti is justifiably upset and is searching for a broom to sweep the floor as she's told that no more vacuuming is to be done because of the fire marshall is on the premises.

Ahhh...

The crowd starts pouring in, and before all the good food gets scarfed up, I grab a couple of good plates of decent finger food and a couple of generously poured tequila mixers. There is a lot of free booze being poured away.

As usual, the elegant paintings of Russian painter Alexey Terenin get a lot of attention, as does Joey Manlapaz's hyper-realistic paintings. Also grabbing some good discussion are Judith Peck's series inspired by John Rawls' Veil of Ignorance thought experiments. The press is all over John Roth's sensuous sculptures and a lot of photographs of them are taken.

An interior designer grabs a lot of attention and time from gallery owner Sheila Giolitti. She's grabbing artwork from all over the place and discussing it in terms of this and that... she does this for almost an hour before disappearing on a trek to the bathroom.

My Che Guevara video piece is getting a lot of attention - mostly from people of Cuban ancestry familiar with Che's brutal excesses. An old man with tired blue eyes tells me in Spanish that I must take the drawing down or he will. I spend some time explaining the video piece to him and he apologizes and compliments me on the work. This happens several times during the night as I spend a lot of time explaining the entrapment of a video drawing that requires a lot of intellectual capital to fully understand. This piece has already been successful beyond my wildest estimations; I am almost afraid that someone will punch me out at some point during this art fair, seeing exactly what they want to see, rather what they would see with a little guidance.

Around 8:00PM I sell my largest drawing, the first sale of the night for MFA. It's from the series of pieces on Eve. It goes to a Miami Beach collector. Almost at the same time MFA sells a gorgeous Michael Fitts trompe l'oeil of Twinkies. As usual, the two sales come almost at the same time.

Someone comes in from Scope next door, complaining that they have plywood floors; we have a brand new black carpet, and our booth's carpet looks like a litter field. Interesting what people will complain about. Someone else adds that Scope is empty of people. An hour earlier I had heard that it was packed. You go figure.

One more sale later and the night is over; somehow the interior designer is back and has Giolitti back under her domain, even outside the fair. I'm exhausted and my wife picks me up and drives me back to Hollywood. Preview day is over.

Opportunity for Photographers

Deadline: December 17, 2010

Call for entries for the Fifth Annual Photography Exhibition at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. Entries must be received by December 17, 2010. The Capitol Hill Arts Workshop is seeking submissions of any and all photographic processes, black and white or color, traditional or alternative, material or digital, time-based, performance based, any work exploring the act of photography. The exhibition will open on January 8, 2011 from 5:00-7:00 p.m. and will run through February 4, 2011. Cash awards will be announced at the opening.

The juror for the exhibition is Bruce McKaig, local artist and art educator. Bruce McKaig chairs the Photography Department at CHAW and teaches at Georgetown University and the Smithsonian Associates. He has exhibited nationally and internationally for over thirty years and every once in a while reviews a DMV show in this blog. For more information about his work, please visit his website here.

HOW: Submit the following:
➢ Three to five jpegs on a CD
➢ Image inventory list specifying title, size, medium, date and price (or insurance value)
➢ Contact info including a mailing address, phone number and email
➢ An entry fee of $25.00 for up to five images, payable to CHAW

WHERE: Please hand deliver or mail these materials to:

CHAW
545 7th Street SE
Washington DC 20003

Art Basel MB week: The day before Day One

I arrived here last Saturday, hanging out at Hollywood, less that 20 miles north of the Wynwood Arts district in Miami, where I'm helping Norfolk's Meyer Fine Art and Philly's Projects Gallery hawk some of my artwork at the Red Dot Art fair, which this year shares the block with Scope, Art Asia and the grand daddy of all Miami art fairs, Art Miami.

First night headed to my favorite restaurant on the Hollywood Beach boardwalk, the unexpectedly delicious Sushi-Thai Restaurant, where for $7.95 you can have the mouth-watering Ika Shukgata Yaki (whole grilled squid in ponzu sauce) and a cold one while looking out at the ocean.

Today I drove to Wynwood and from 11am until 7pm it was all about hanging artwork at MFA's booth. MFA is showing work by yours truly, as well as Cuban artist Sandra Ramos, Norfolk's John R. G. Roth, Robert Sites, and Shiela Giolitti, Lynnvale's Lou Gagnon, Charlottesville's Michael Fitts, Prague's Alexey Terenin, and DMV's Joey Manlapaz, Rosemary Feit Covey Andrew Wodzianski and Judith Peck.

I'm stoked about this fair because it will be the first ever showing of my first video drawing.

I had an interesting experience upon checking in, during which somehow I ended up checking in and getting badged (by mistake) into Scope, which is the big tent next to Red Dot, but more on that later.

The grand opening is tomorrow night.