London Art Fair: Aliki Braine's altered landscapes for big walls.

Big landscapes! That Australian man would be oh so happy! Except that Aliki Braine's landscapes are punched, so I am not sure how they fit into the category of "lovely pictures".

Aliki is interested in how a photograph can be transformed into an object and uses destructive techniques to disrupt her otherwise pastoral landscape images. Often cutting, drawing with ink or punching holes into the negative her violation of the pristine surface of the photograph forces the viewer to look towards the texture of the photographic paper and opens up a new understanding of the photographic process and image making. For Aliki the hole puncher acts in much the same way as a painter's brush, enabling her to make a mark on her photographic canvas. (From Troika Editions website).

PS I have just realized, that I really do like artwork with absence.

London Art Fair: Sankeum Hoh pearls up the language.

Sankeum Koh at Hanmi Gallery. There is something about things that look like language, but we cannot read. A possibility of language. Removed language. Empty shapes. Fired books.

Sankeum KOH’s works involve the meticulous assembly of pearl beads or steels balls to create an illusion of blurred texts, sourcing from newspaper columns, books, and poetry. Koh transforms the literary words into fragmented visions. She draws upon the viewer’s frustration of not being able to read the cryptic codes leaving the viewer to question what it is they are actually ‘reading’. Her works aim to challenge the validity of such texts in newspapers and question the dogmatic approach of its readers.

London Art Fair: such a lovely picture!

I really should not complain about London Art Fair. It did have a mix of artworks with a mix of artists: established and less established; dead and alive; painters and printmakers. (no books, though). It also had the projects space upstairs, which was really interesting, mostly fresh and much less crowded. However - away from the project space - LAF in Islington did not look too different from AAF in Battersea. I really should not moan about it: these fairs are there to sell the work and earn money for themselves, galleries and artists. And selling is what they do.

"Lovely picture. We have just bought a new house in Australia and we need to fill one big wall. Really big wall. "

Lucky is the artist who made that big picture to suit the big wall. He will make a big sale.
While I am coming into terms with the thought that all I do, is make lovely things: ornaments for an Ideal Homes Show.

A positive thought:
"Treating art as commodity, a very expensive commodity, elevates the meaning of art... Because it becomes more important in people's minds, when you spend your money on it." - John Baldessari (from Again the Metaphor Problem).

London Art Fair: Clay Ketter, Klaus Staudt, Valeria Nascimento.

Clay Ketter had a few impressive pieces called Golf Coast Slabs. Very powerful pictures, that look like abstract photographs at first. On a closer inspection it becomes clear, that they are actually traces of homes: the homes swept away by the hurricane Katrina that hit the American Gulf Coast in 2006.

His work on the surface has a beautifully minimalist aesthetic, but the real interest lies beneath the layers in a "truth to materials" approach and the perfection of the process.

Klaus Staudt. Loved it! Reminds me of this fog.


Valeria Nascimento plays with porcelain (like me, then!)

London Art Fair: Diana Taylor and Rowena Huges

Diana Taylor and Rowena Huges must have been my favorite. Diana seems to be working with memories and fragmentation. Unfortunately, I cannot say much about them: the ladies at Room Artspace did not happen to be the talkative ones (hm... except with each other).

London Art Fair: Tony Charles and Deb Covell at Platform-A Gallery

Platform-A must have been the friendliest gallery at the London Art Fair. It is such a pleasure to talk to people who are willing and interested to talk about their work and their gallery.
Uh - not every stand at LAF was like that. What is it with some of the people, that they cannot be asked to respond to human interaction?

Anyway,
First I noticed Deb Covell's work on the wall on the left. Her pieces are small scale and they have an air of insignificance about them. Delicate. They are called "PLY" series. These collages are detritus of larger paintings. As such, they are invested with complex material history. Deb Covell attempts to bridge the gap between the ordinary and familliar with and often idealistic quest for beauty and purity. (the last few sentences are not mine - they are taken from press release)

Tony Charles had his work on the floor. He is interested in the ultimate fragility of something apparently permanent. For this piece, Tony had the floors removed from a house for demolition. He harvested rust and steel powder, which he then stenciled onto the floor. At the end of the day, he said, the pattern will get hoovered up. The ultimate ephemerality!

Frieze Sculpture park : Sanchayan Ghosh

I love the idea of a visitor walking away with a small piece of artwork. Not just a memory of it, but an actual piece. And if it is something as beautiful and delicate as Shola flowers!

Sanchayan Ghosh did put a note encouraging visitors to take A flower. Did he realise some people would be clearing his lawn by a bagfull?



An act of destruction

or an intended result?

He says: the work aims to interrogate ideas surrounding nationalism and identity. I say: it reflects on the ideas of greed and consumerism, unfortunately.

Frieze 2010: Conrad Shawcross and my nerdy intellectual self

Conrad Shawcross totally appeals to my nerdy intellectual self.

Frieze 2010: exquisite Johanna Karlsson

First I thought this was a beautiful pencil drawing on the wall. I would have been happy with that idea.

It turned out it is an exquisite sculpture by Johanna Karlsson. I was impressed.

Frieze 2010: very visual Seb Patane

I had never come across Seb Patane before. Strange, that is. I really like his work. To the extent where I wish his work was mine. Hm.

Why this fixation throughout your work with erasing identities: hiding heads, obliterating faces or eyes, using masks?

I am interested in performance and in performers, but not so concerned with their personalities or in portraying anyone. What is important to my work is the choreography and composition of things. I consider my pieces more abstract than figurative. And when I started working with found images, I guess the natural gesture for me was to obliterate the face, to remove that sense of identity, which makes everything quite confusing for the viewer, who is used to attach a face to a narrative, to a attach to a type of behaviour or personality to a type of face, say physiognomy. So it is like giving something to the viewer and then taking it away, like a game of contradictions. And that just grew and became more complex, more organic. And, finally, I think I am also reacting culturally, and probably unconsciously, against the whole cult of the celebrities, of the ego.

You often rescue images from the past and re-introduce them in the present tense, which often charges them with a nostalgic-symbolic element that they lacked when they were originally produced. Why do you think this time warp, taking them out of their context, produces that shift?

I operate in the present, and so do the viewers of my work who are faced with the images I chose with their baggage according to their age, their knowledge of things and their personal understanding of history and culture, whatever level that may be. But we are all inevitably challenged when faced with past, faded imagery; I think it must be because our mind tries to fill the gap between our present life and the one that is depicted in those pictures; this void, and I hope my visual interventions on those pictures, create a blurred feeling of confusion and wonder that I find interesting.

So this show is about war, or uses images of the war, rather. And the one at Tate took as a premise the whole idea of protest songs. However, even if these themes are heavily political, you have always justified your interest in them as the product of an aesthetic infatuation, rather than a desire to make a political statement.

Exactly, my work it is not that charged with political meaning, and I don’t pretend that it is. The thing is that, eventually, I will research these issues and learn about them, but I rather use their aesthetics. I am very visual person and that is what I am interested in. I am not saying it is devoid of content, I am saying that it comes with it, eventually. It is impossible not to engage with it. But also I am very interested in the way we look at images and we can detach ourselves from their content.

These are sippets of his interview to the Celeste magazine. His work does look like it should be politically charged: war, obliterated faces, etc. There are all sorts of assumptions and presumptions appearing. However, however, however - he is not interested in that. Great! He is interested in aesthetics. He is interested in interpretation. Uh - my new best friend!

So is it aesthetics or content first? Chicken or egg?

Frieze 2010: inappropriate sculpture by Alicja Kwade

Alicja Kwade is represented by Johann König Berlin. They were such a friendly lot!

Alicja's sculpture consisted of glass sheets and three candles: one lit and two unlit. The candles are cleverly placed on both sides of the glass. As the viewer walks around and watches the candles and the reflections, the unlit candles seem to become alight (from certain positions).

One of the candles was slightly further out. The gallery had only a small space. The visitors kept kicking the candle over. The girl kept putting it back into the very very particular location. She explained, that, possibly it was not the most appropriate installation to bring, considering the size of their space.

I am please they brought it, though. i have never heard of Alycja before, but I have now had a look at her website and I really like what I saw. I will keep my eyes open for her work.