Hasta La Ideas

Our collection of the most beautifully detailed and maniacally constructed works from the Miami fairs

In our third selection of the goods from Art Basel and the surrounding Miami fairs, we focus on the meticulously detailed and painstaking work of artists who tend to get romanced by the details. Below you’ll encounter precise and repetitive line drawings, lottery ticket collages and sticker-composed Hindu deities that explore the complicated inner-workings of the creative mind.

This aerial of an imaginary golf community from Clay Ketter reminded us of a bit of a Rorschach test in its creative use of symmetry. Dubbed “Spider Woods” 2010, this piece comes from the Wetterling Gallery in Stockholm.

Tom Friedman displayed “Untitled (Broadway Boogie)” 2011, a complex circuitry of colors and lines from Luhring Augustine, New York. Meanwhile, the Kashya Hildebrand gallery at Art Asia presented Aghighi Bakhshayeshi’s “Untitled” 2011, a dazzling calligraphic composition that had viewers in a trance.

“Veil From Oceanus” 2011 is part of Sam Messenger‘s “Six Veils” series, a set of ink-on-paper pieces that accomplish rich monochromatic textures through razor-thin intersecting lines. This piece came from the Davidson Contemporary gallery.

Also from the Davidson Contemporary gallery, Ghost of a Dream‘s “5 Times Daily” 2011 takes discarded lottery tickets and rearranges them on a panel to make geometric patterns reminiscent of Navajo tapestries.

Seen at Pulse, Joan Linder‘s hyper-detailed drawing “Purple Weed (71st Street D Line MTA left and right)” 2011 uses old school quill-and-ink techniques to record a fascinating natural subject—shown by Mixed Greens.

Adam Fowler cut and layered graphite renderings to create “Drawing One (trilogy)” 2010, which we caught at Pulse through Margaret Thatcher Projects.

We loved the radial design of Dean Smith‘s “Untitled (a18)” 2011, a work of graphite on paper on view through Gallery Joe. His short, slender marks create hypnotic movement that belies the static medium.

This fun and colorful take on ritual Hindu iconography uses a multitude of stickers to compose a distinct take on a timeless image. Called “A World of Joy” 2009-11, we were lucky enough to catch this piece by Ye Hongxing at Art Asia.

Building off of the minute fragments of broken LCD displays, Josepha Gasch-Muche’s “17.2.2011” is a luminous piece that combines ethereal abstraction with gritty construction. Seen through the Heller Gallery at Art Miami.

Marco Maggi’s “Graph” 2011 is a graphite-on-graphite drawing from Nara Roesler at Art Nova. The industrial geometric forms are endlessly complicated and multidirectional, giving the piece many distinct points of interest.

Sticking nickel-plated pins into gatorboard, Tara Donovan’s “Drawing (Pins)” 2011 further develops the artist’s dedication to simple compositions rife with tactile innovation. The Stephen Friedman Gallery exhibited this famed American’s work last week.

Contributions by Josh Rubin, Jonah Samson and Karen Day

Consumerist society’s refuge becomes art in the artist’s second solo show at NYC’s Susan Inglett Gallery

As one of the most unique artists to emerge from the anti-establishment movement of the 1960s, George Herms creates unconventional assemblages from a range of refuse materials. By rescuing civilization’s discards to make art, Herms creates two- and three-dimensional works that prove the point of cause and effect—and, more light-heartedly, that old adage about trash and treasure. Back in NYC for his second solo show at the Susan Inglett Gallery, opening 1 December 2011, Herms offers a selection of work spanning sculpture and collage with the familiar foundation of found objects.

For this series of sculptures, Herms has enlisted society’s more dejected physical objects. Although not necessarily imposing in stature, the powerful sculptures do encourage one to consider the economic and environmental impact of a modern “throw-away” mentality.

The accompanying collages—sourced from his recent exhibition “Xenophilia (Love of the Unknown)” at Los Angeles’ MoCA—are constructed entirely of shredded pieces of Madison Avenue “consumerist propaganda.” These seemingly chaotic layered pieces include everything from a “perfect” set of legs to sports cars, referencing society’s classification of wants against needs.

George Herms’ solo show will be run from 1 December 2011 through 21 January 2012, closing for the holidays between 19 December-3 January. For more information on the exhibition and the artist visit the Susan Inglett Gallery online.

All images courtesy of the Susan Inglett Gallery

Collages, calligraphy and grids in a retrospective of the late Beat painter Brion Gysin’s work

by Isabelle Doal

The work of British-Canadian artist Brion Gysin, defined by techniques like mixed collages, systematic repetition and “cut-up” (a method he invented), is experiencing somewhat of a revival since his death in 1986. A stream of contemporary artists have recently taken interest in the artist and the newly-opened “Alarme” exhibition at Paris’ Galerie de France illustrates the scope of his oeuvre, following two recent important exhibitions of his contributions.

The Pompidou showed a film, jointly produced by Gysin, William Burroughs (the two were good friends) and Antony Balch, demonstrating “semi-conscious states and trances,” while his work on sound-collages, a medium he conceived with his former NYC studiomate Ramuntcho Matta, was featured in a group show on the topic at Galerie Anne Barraulthe.

Gysin’s based his works on crossings, formally represented by the constant use of grid patterns. Most of the time he employed a rudimentary printing technique, rolling a paintbrush on a paper sheet over a canvas of wire threads, consistently incorporating script letters and photos into the grids.

Both poet and painter, and part of the Beat Generation, Gysin has always played with words and letters as graphic materials. He arrived in New York during World War II and started experimenting with literature and various kinds of writing experiences. He created “permutation poems,” repeating a single sentence several times with the words rearranged in different orders so that each reiteration is a new discovery, for example “I don’t dig work, man/Man, work I don’t dig.” Many of these variations he derived using a random sequence and was inspired by free verse, but several also followed a mathematical structure.

The cut-up technique was used by writers such as John Dos Passos and laid the foundation for “Naked Lunch.” “Alarme” shows a couple of artworks featuring pieces of text from the pivotal novel, using letters as signs on small square water-colored papers, created by rolling paintbrushes on metallic grids.

A couple of panels show the four-year-long construction of the Pompidou through a photographic series consisting of vertical stripes stuck together. Small square photos from contact sheets act as grids, one by one incorporated into inked columns reminiscent of skyscrapers.

Completing the overview, a series of ink-painted letters in Asian and Arabic scripts speak to Gysin’s devotion to painting and drawing. The artist, who spoke Japanese and Arabic, played with the opposition between the Japanese vertical script and horizontal Arabic writing with an interest in painting these figures to make crossings and grids.

“Alarme” runs through 2 April 2010 at Galerie de France.

A Parisian artist channels her passion for natural history and evoking the past with a series of unearthly collages

by Isabelle Doal

An archaeologist-turned-anthropologist-turned-artist, Parisian Gaelle Faure uses collage to tell her own version of history. She forages flea markets for antiques and second-hand items, such as old photographs, dolls, dried butterflies and other hidden treasures, which she combines with anonymous letters, postcards and diary entries from old journals in order to give the past new life. Formerly specializing in funeral rituals, Faure’s interest in evoking memories by resurrecting forgotten stories seems a natural fit for the curious creative.

The daughter of sculptors, Faure discovered a passion for uncovering the past through her grandfather, a scientist who used to collect skulls, bones and old academic medical books.

Through a combination of thoughtfully-positioned artifacts placed in frames, her anachronistic microcosms reflect her overall sense of humor. For example she illustrates the literal translation of “rack your brain” which in French translates to “to dig one’s head” with a series of headless images culled from a 20th century magazines.

Faure is currently working on the re-construction of an old photo album, which she found in a flea market. The photographs are taken from the album, scanned and scrambled into a humorous picture, to create what she calls “a poetic omelet.”

Her interest in found objects also extends to furniture like lamps and chairs, which she customizes and sells upon request.

Take our reader survey and enter to win a CH Edition Jambox!

Artist Michael Riedel’s first introspective show reinterprets source code as textual printed matter

A man seemingly obsessed with extraction, abstraction and repetition, Michael Riedel takes printed matter and toys with it until most sense is lost. With an almost “Matrix” style of approach, Riedel uses text to “write with writing,” a technique in which he excerpts the works of others in order to make his own statement. His current work—on display at the David Zwirner gallery in an exhibition titled “The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog“—finally sees Riedel use himself as his subject.

Culling HTML code from websites that feature Riedel (mostly MoMA and David Zwirner), the Frankfurt-based artist created massive linear collages by copying and pasting the text in InDesign. By layering and turning the text, the arrangement appears nonsensical at first glance, but there is a clear pattern defined on each canvas. There is also seemingly a theme for each of the silk-screened “poster paintings,” with individual keyboard commands like “click,” “print,” “color” and “alt” highlighted in bold type.

Hung against a wallpaper backdrop of even more black-and-white code, the canvases are accented by colorful circles—a new foray for Riedel. The color not only helps to balance out the web of text, but with their geometric pie-like structure they also seem like the spinning beach ball Mac users encounter when their computer is processing.

A pangram used to test typewriters and keyboards, here “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” underlines the detached relationship Riedel found between text, canvas, paper, and architecture.

The exhibition opens today and runs through 19 March 2011 at David Zwirner gallery, where he will also be signing his catalogs on 5 March 2011 from 4-6pm.