Editions/Artists' Book Fair

Attended the opening of the Editions/Artists' Book Fair last night.  The name is somewhat misleading.  Although they do have books (or more often portfolios) of artist's works, the fair is more a showcase for contemporary prints.  In many cases, the print presses themselves are there representing their artists.  Many of these print centers like Tamarind Institute, Dieu Donne, and Cad Tompkins invite artists to come in and do special projects.  

Last night we had the opportunity to meet the artist, Christiane Baumgartner who produces large scale woodcut prints.  Christiane explained to us that she is working with video and transferring the image ultimately to a woodcut -- which she finds interesting because video is one of the most contemporary forms of media, whereas the woodcut is the orginal message of printing.  The sort of blurryness of the image and the reference to video remind us of the Suara Welitoff prints and videos we've posted about previously.

Vrrrooom! IFPDA Print Fair Opens

Stealing a quote from Cliff Ackley, "Vrrroom!". There was no doubt that the IFPDA members were trying to leverage the exhibition Rhythms of Modern Life: British Prints 1914-1939currently at the Met and previously at the MFA Boston. At the IFPDA Print Fair which opened last night at the Park Avenue Armory, we spotted two entire booths dedicated exclusively to these British Modernest style prints, with several other booths also including a few prints by Cyril Power, Paul Nash, David Bombert, C.R.W. Nevinson and Sybil Andrews.

This was our first time at the opening night preview. It is definitely a much less crowded time to visit. There is a sliding scale of ticket prices, with the priciest tickets offering earliest access. But even at 7:30, the latest entry time, there was still plenty of opportunity to talk to dealers. Despite economic fears, we did see several red dots early in the evening.

Stay tuned for more posts as we return to the fair. See you tonight at the opening of the Editions/Artists' Book Fair!

Jonathan Monk

I like Jonathan Monk. Period.

He is a young British artist working in Berlin, who creates conceptual works that play off classic conceptual works. If a concept can be art, what about a concept about a concept? He has turned artists books by Sol Lewitt into movies and made a few artists books poking fun at the books of Ed Ruscha. While it may all seem like a joke, he is in the collection of MOMA and had his own show at the ICA in London. He is represented by Yvon Lambert (http://www.yvon-lambert.com/).

He also does prints. Over the last 10 years has been creating prints that are of the image of the wrapper in which the blank paper was sold (shown here above). He has also done a series of "meetings" that are limited edition text pieces that announce a specific date and time at a specific location, written in the native language of location- sort of like invitations. I have 3 of his meeting editions, including one to meet at sunrise in Luxor, Egypt (in Arabic) and, on the reverse side, to meet at sunset at Luxor in Las Vegas (in English). I have been trying to collect his prints and artist books in depth.

Most recently, he has created a benefit edition for Printed Matter for this year's NY Art Book Fair. The print is white with a Braille transcipt of Monk talking about making the piece. It is only $20 and can be purchased through Printed Matter (http://www.printedmatter.org/).

Edward Burtynsky

(left to right: two Burtynsky's and a McLean)

A recent trip to Toronto allowed for a pleasant morning in the Mira Godard Gallery in the fashionable Yorkville district. The goal of the visit to the gallery was to view and learn more about Edward Burtynsky, a Toronto-born photographer. The Mira Godard Gallery was first to represent him in his early days, in the 1960’s. It was not clear for what reason, but apparently, Burtynsky has left the Godard Gallery, and although they seem to have swallowed that bitter pill, they still have some amazing large scale photographs for sale, for USD $19,000! Apparently, Burtynsky style is to step up to an imaginary line of life and subject matter to capture a moment in time. The photographs we saw represent and focus on the ideas of deconstruction, recycling and living life in the midst of both. For the 3 Gorges Dam piece, snapshop depicts the Chinese workers who were paid very little to disassemble their own homes, to pile the bricks neatly into organized piles, to retrieve and save the rebar metal ropes which held the structures together again for future use while at the same time people are continuing to live in the village, hanging their laundry out in the dirty air and trying to get by in the middle of this controversial and major re-location project of 1,000’s of people. For the Shipbreaking piece, Bangladesh workers were paid about $.10/day to disassemble an aging, out-of-commission ship and to recycle the metal for scrap. You see workers, obviously poor, in bare feet or flimsy sneakers, walking over the dangerous area with metal on the ground – they too, are going to melt and recycle the ship’s metal for more rebar for a future-use project. While the images are so overwhelmingly industrial and dirty they are both ‘green’ recycling projects on an awesome scale. Close inspection of both really puts you at the line of viewing life and being viewed by it.

As we were leaving, we noticed another photographer: Melville McLean, based out of Maine. His work is amazing, even a little overwhelming. Landscapes are not a favorite of ours, but the quality of the photos is extremely eye catching and almost surreal looking, as the technique he uses is the layering of transparencies over each other (each focuses on a particular aspect, element or color) to bring out the most heightened color and vividness possible for the works he makes. Stones have a luminescent tonality, not because of the light of day, but because of the technique. He also focuses on nature/nurture, for example in Rocks, Plants, Sea and Fog 2007, below, the centuries old rock formations are the life line of the very healthy and living seaweed attached and living on it. We are wondering if he will be the next Edward Burtynsky – so someone to keep an eye on, especially with his large scale works priced at a third of Burtynsky’s. A trip to Toronto to the Gallery could be a beneficial and fun excursion.
The Mira Godard Gallery is located at 22 Hazelton Avenue, Toronto. http://www.godardgallery.com/.

Artcetera 2008

For those who won't be at the IFPDA Print Fair in NYC on November 1st, that Saturday AIDS Action in Boston is presenting Artcetera 2008. The live and silent auctions at this event can be a good place to see and buy art made in Boston and beyond- sometimes with really good deals. Michael Mazur and Judith Larsen (both mentioned in this blog) have prints in the auctions. There is also a Laura McPhee benefit print (shown here) for Patrons at the $2,500 level and above. To view the available artwork and purchase tickets, click on the link below.

http://www.aac.org/site/PageServer?pagename=events_artcetera

Interesting statistics on year over year price changes in the contemporary art market just came out (link below). It's only through mid-year so it doesn't include the most recent data. Amazing how many Chinese works are listed.

Artprice and the Fiac publish an exclusive report on the 2007/2008 contemporary art market, in partnership with Axa Art http://web.artprice.com/AMI/AMI.aspx?id=NjQ1NTM3MDAwNTk4Njk=

Michael Mazur claims "I'm definitely not a purist"

Michael Mazur was a guest this evening of the MFA's Print and Drawing Club. Michael took the group of about 25 of us through a variety of print-making processes that he uses. He showed proofs along the way to making several prints. For one of the prints in his Dante's Inferno series, he had one of the original mylars that was used to make the metal plate, the copper plate itself, which had been reworked several times (but before the steel electroplated layer was added). For that work he also share a working proof, the B.A.T. (Bon a Tirer -- meaning "good to pull"), and final edition print.

He also walked us through a series of 5 proofs starting with the first flat produced with a "rainbow roll" (a method where one or more colors are literally rolled on the paper to create a colored stripe), new images were superimposed in additional colors and then finally a wood block was used to print a wood-grained texture onto the final image.

In another interesting example of using different printing techniques, Michael showed us to very different prints of the same image. One was made as an etching and the other produced with an inkjet printer. "No one should be frightened by injet prints" he advocates. After the lecture, I shared my skepticism of injet prints with Michael. Think about the image - don't worry about the process he said.

In Boston, you can find Michaels work at Barbara Krakow Gallery.