Hello friends,
It’s been too long since I wrote you all but it is great to be back in touch.
I’ve worked in the art business for years now, having developed an advanced and intricate understanding of the various mechanisms of the art market and its players. Recently (in the last year) I’ve focused my sight on crypto and NFTs, and I’ve found an exceptionally curious, excited, and engaged group of people.
Those of you reading this email are, for the most part, from one of these two worlds. Thanks for joining me. Some things I care about and consider below.
5 Fantastic Exhibitions in New York City
Ruth Asawa: All is Possible at David Zwirner Gallery, open through December 18th.
537 W 20th St, New York, NY 10011
Asawa is an artist I’d followed since not long before working at David Zwirner in 2019. Photographs of the artist making her characteristic wire sculptures while literally inside of them first intrigued me. I’d seen some of her drawings, intimate depictions of her son, but this exhibition expanded awareness around the breadth of her practice and thinking very successfully.
I came away with a vision of an incessant creator whose art making practice was as active a part of her life as brushing her teeth. She was tireless, constantly seeking to involve her family and community in her practice, focused in pushing the boundaries of her aesthetics and creativity.
Elizabeth Murray at Gladstone Gallery, open through December 18th.
515 W 24th St, New York, NY 10011
Elizabeth Murray is one of the greatest painters of the late 20th century.
I was enthralled by her show “Painting in the 80s” a couple years back, and make a point to visit her work in museums as I travel. Murray’s playful, masterfully shaped canvases are exceptional in their experimenting with pop and expressionism. Viewing these daring constructions/canvases from the side is nearly as intriguing as seeing them head-on.
The show is worth seeing, but is ultimately an uninspired curation of works. First, the aforementioned exhibition brought together far more of these seminal works, where viewers could build some kind of an idea of how her practice evolved. Secondarily, I hungered to know more about Murray’s origins. A native Chicagoan, the artist’s imagery seems to have influenced and been influenced by the Chicago imagists (Jim Nutt, Gladys Nilsson, Eleanor Dude). Murray took an emerging vocabulary and added it into a lexicon of contemporary painting. This is a story that demands, and remains, to be told.
Wilfredo Lam: The Imagination at Work at Pace Gallery, open through December 21st.
540 W 25th St, New York, NY 10001
Any exhibition which brings together a number of mid-century masterpieces from private collections impresses me, and Pace’s recent Wilfredo Lam show explores the artist’s oeuvre with exceptional breadth and clarity. We’ve seen a movement of top-tier galleries presenting nearly academic shows—commercial spaces taking on the educational role of museums. Regardless of where my politics lies on this issue, it doesn’t deter me from the youthful excitement I feel encountering these vignettes.
Lam is an artist who pulls from various cultures and norms, and it this through this en vogue lens that the curator decided to examine—and convey—the artist’s interests and inspirations.
The artist’s take on modernism challenges the Eurocentricity purported by his contemporaries (Picasso, Matisse, Braque), reasserting the influence of pre-colonial artwork in such radical painting. Over decades, his mark making evolved with his materials, yet the authority of mid-century expressionism did little to distract him from the multi cultural story he set out to depict.
Robert Longo: Lazarus Manifold at Pace Gallery, open through December 21st.
540 W 25th St, New York, NY 10001
After seeing the exhibition of five of Longo’s signature large-scale charcoal works on paper, I asked an individual in the elevator what they thought. He replied, “it’s all about technique, but not much insight.”
I find Longo to be a Warholian artist, situating his politics treacherously close to his market finesse. His intricate repetition conflates devices of mass media with contentious imageries, and he designs a poetics by marrying these devices with revered technique. This sounds like insight of a sort to me.
Two years ago I spent time with Longo’s show Fugitive Images at Metro Pictures Gallery. Characteristic depictions of Jamal Khashoggi and a defaced Jewish Cemetery imprinted upon my brain. A year before that, I sat mesmerized by the artist’s phenomenal triptych Untitled (Raft at Sea) at the Brooklyn Museum.
Here’s an artist whose seminal body of work has remained relevant over the more than four decades he’s been constructing it. What does it take for an individual to achieve such a feat? He’s surveyed—and continues to survey—the social moment.
JÓNSI: OBSIDIAN at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, open through December 17th.
521 W 21st St, New York, NY 10011
After entering a pitch black space and cautiously finding your way to a cushioned bench in the center of the room, pulsing speakers all but consume the attention of spectators. The bass wavers, and a single softened light source, situated above, ebbs and flows: lighter, lighter, darker, lighter, darker, darker.
To see such an unconventional show presented in a commercial gallery space too—in galleries that will be showing paintings just a month from now—gives me hope for a more progressive gallery model. A world where there’s a marketplace which can embrace such compelling works and support such ambitious creators.
Go see this f*cking show.
As always, thanks for reading.
Yours,
Gabe
How (and why) art museums, auction houses, and galleries collaborate