This quarterly I am focusing my efforts on one big blue chip gallery, Pace. They are a powerhouse gallery, showing established artists in a space that feels like the best church on earth (given the right exhibition of course). If you guys have an hour in Chelsea, take your time here.
Tara Donovan
She was one of the first artists I saw who effectively used household products as transcendent material. I think I might have reviewed her work here once before, but its worth repeating. She makes huge installations with nothing but plastic cup or scotch tape, but the material tranforms into snowy landscapes or a desolate desert. She got a McArthur genius grant. Big deal gal. But all of Pace's artists are, or they would not be there.
above, untitled, Styrofoam cups
He is more of a state of mind. Minimalist. There is a book about him called Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing that One Sees, good good read. Pioneer of the California light art movement.
Thomas Nozkowski
I am really excited about his abstraction, have been for a few years. Right up there with Luc Tuymans in my book, but more of a "painter's painter". Decided in 1984 to only paint on store-bought pre-stretched canvases that are 16 x 20. Radical, considering that in the 80's everything in the glut of the art market was selling--and the bigger the better.
This is kind of a shameless plug for our coffee table, and to the Eames oeuvre. Noguchi died in the 80's and made stunning sculpture before. He was convinced of art's social role so made a lot of public sculpture.
Possible the creepiest and most arresting (without being loud or huge) piece I have ever seen was by this artist at Pace circa 2004(5?). The work is a video of shrouded figures (several repeated) dancing/moving slightly and projected on a stone tablet. I first read the figures are language, then noticed that they were figures. She is Israeli, and that informs her work.
My best inside art joke ever was inspired by Richard Tuttle and his lecture at Lipscomb a few years back. I love his work, in the same way I love Nozkowski, Ryman, Twombly--they make arresting abstraction yet also kind of stand for a male macho-ness to me (kind of taking the Ab-Ex baton that Pollock and DeKooning handed off). His lecture was hilarious, and all about his work without at all being able to follow.
