Jan 31, 2012

Caragh Thuring

Caragh Thuring at Thomas Dane Gallery (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Untitled
This is how the artist's imagination works. From a simple entrance room with tiles, you build a stairs. That takes beyond the shut doors. You can "see" things that you are not supposed to see.From there, your imagination and associations give a multitude of "stairs" to jump on. Because you can put only so much into one painting, you have to divide the dream into several pieces. Each piece become a separate artwork.

Jan 30, 2012

Alexis Marguerite Teplin

Alexis Marguerite Teplin at Gavlak (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Boy Untitled 1 (Mallorca)

The boy is very innocent(lots of pink). He is very passionate(reds). He is full of dreams and hopes(blues). He imagines wild adventures.He dreams about boats flying under a strong wind with full sail. He is absolutely sure that there are no problems or difficulties  that he can't overcome with his extraordinary abilities.But sometimes his ship of dreams crashes against the concrete of reality(the lower right corner) and the fog of imagination opens up(the white stain).

Weekend Edition 13

Egon Schiele


Autumn Trees
This is a island of color in the sea of grey. The tiny patch of bright is guarding you from waves after waves of depression. But it's very fragile and couldn't hold for long. Between the cracks of bleakness you can see the chilling white of winter.The angular form of the patch show duality in your feelings. From one side you admire the colors. From another side, you understand that they are caused by demise.

Jan 27, 2012

Joseph Stella

Joseph Stella at Galerie 1900-2000 (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Untitled
This is Changes. Look at it as a whirlpool, starting from the lower black spot, moving then to the upper black stain and continue to the center black stain.The black stains are a person and how this person changes over time. The time and history are shown as yellow and orange figures on the borders. The lower black stain is when a person is young and full of energy. He has a long flag pole full of flags (principles and ideas). As the time progresses, so the person is getting older and loses the energy, principles and ideas.

Jan 26, 2012

Leon Polk Smith

Leon Polk Smith at Washburn Gallery (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Little Doggies at Night
This is Saturday night entertainment. Night(black rectangles). Bars(yellow rectangles), doors(big background rectangles), car lights(red rectangles). Red wine (burgundy rectangle in the lower left corner). Balancing in the gray area. Tipsy. Some  things you will remember only later, if at all, and black and white hangover(top row of rectangles with white figures).

Jan 25, 2012

Otavio Schipper

Otavio Schipper at Anita Schwarz Galeria De Arte (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Serie Diapasões / Diapason Series
This is Love.The blue fiddle bow is playing music on an amorphous body of pink innocence, red desire and blue hope. The music is feeding the main body. The bow itself is part of this body. And the bow is not exactly a bow, it is a tuning fork.It lets you to correct yourself  according to your love and hopes.The separate small figure in the right bottom corner is two circles interconnected symbolizing two persons in love.

Jan 24, 2012

Alex Smusiak

Alex Smusiak


The Brick House
It could look dull. But in the openings and cracks there is so much action.The brick house looks heavy and solid, but actually it is full of dreams and hopes. It has a nice fireplace, where everyone gathers when it's cold and snowy outside.

Jan 23, 2012

Sean Scully

Sean Scully at Galerie Lelong (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Return

This is your return home, where you grew up.Warm colors. Fireplace. Everything is familiar. It looks like a box with plasticine or a quill blanket your grandma used to make.Black rectangles are some embarrassing memories, probably from the high school.But it does not spoil your cozy nostalgia. You feel nice and warm, because you know that it is temporary, a long weekend or a vacation. At the end you will go back to more interesting stuff, to the unknown(the cloudy rectangle in the upper right corner).

Jan 21, 2012

Weekend Edition 12

Edouard Manet


Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe
This is a feminist painting. Manet shows us the attitude to women in society at that time. First thing that you see on the painting is a basket. It was used, you see lunch leftovers scattered around. The second thing you see is the nude female body. It probably was also used, as you notice her clothes scattered around. Then you see two men talking. They are paying as much attention to the woman as to the basket. They are talking about something abstract, moral - some kind of mystical woman - a goddess? We can see her in the upper center. She is created by men's mind, and she is pretty modest, living in the forest alone (according to fairy tales) and nevertheless her body is covered unlike as her "real" representation. The last thing that you notice is the naked woman face. She is smart. She is fully engaged in the conversation. Manet puts her at the same level with men, as you can see her face is at the same height as theirs. Her posture tells us that she is thoughtful. She is detailed oriented, she notices things that men are not aware of - she is watching us, she knows that we are looking at her.

Jan 20, 2012

Arthur Segal

Arthur Segal at  Galerie Berinson (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Interieur mit Blickpunkt Stuhl III
This is a memory of an event, which four persons witnessed. It could be a card game. Everyone has a different version of what and when happened. Everyone remembers different things. The same object has different meaning and associations for different people. One remembers the game proper, because he has lost a big sum of money in it(left bottom corner). Another remembers the chair, because it was unconformable to sit in, or  because it was not his usual spot. His spot was to his right, where the new guy sat. This guy won the game, because there was a mirror where he saw the cards of the guy who sat opposite him (a rectangle in the upper right corner). The fourth guy was occupied with something else(the upper left corner). He had big problems, and needed money. This fourth guy is the murderer who killed the new guy to get his jackpot.

Jan 19, 2012

Adrian Schiess

Adrian Schiess at Galerie nächst St. Stephan (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Coquelicot
This is a picnic with a new date. Green grass, warm sun, flowers. You are flirting, laughing and kissing. It's a perfect date. There are a lot of flirting, hints and hidden promises.But something is missing. Is it her red lipstick too bright? Is it the sun too hot? Something is bothering you, but you can't catch exactly what is it.

Jan 18, 2012

Yehudit Sasportas

Yehudit Sasportas at Galerie Eigen + Art Berlin (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Freedom evolves

Freedom is the right to choose. You are choosing the directions. You are the director of the play, called "Your Life". When you have freedom, you have to work hard, because you are the director, the script writer and the backstage worker. And you have to defend your freedom from the outside attacks that want to slash it to pieces (white diagonal lines) and from the inside inertia (the black bush in the center). The freedom is like muscles, the more you exercise it the more you can do. 

Jan 17, 2012

Joan Mitchell

Joan Mitchell at Barbara Mathes gallery (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Untitled
You saw it coming. There were early hints(black lines). But you had hoped that it was nothing. Even if it would have something, it would have been something minor. And then you came up to the black square in the middle. That's where you have realized that this is it. The end. You are standing in front of frightening black square.Other people still have hope(blue squares), but you understand than no matter what you do, you will return to the same black square. No escape.

Jan 16, 2012

Ana Sacerdote

Ana Sacerdote at Galería Jorge Mara – La Ruche (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Untitled
This is Entertainment. The big orange structure is the veil. Behind(actually inside) it there is a stage.The orange color shows the merry, childish character of entertainment. The background is white with washed out blood - entertainment is not always merry. On the stage you see doors(the rectangles). The doors are problems, questions and dilemmas that the good entertainment  puts inside of recreation.Not all doors are easy to spot. Some of them are created by overlapping doors. One of them is put in the very corner (right bottom one). Hints, insinuations, associations are common place in entertainment.




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Jan 15, 2012

Weekend Edition 11

Pablo Picasso at the Metropolitan Museum of Art


Guitar and Clarinet on a Mantelpiece
The brown background is the earthiness of common life, where most of the time you are occupied with material needs. The mantelpiece is a decoration for a fireplace, where the fire of life is flaming. But when the fire is out, what is left are black smoke, ash and emptiness.The place is pretty gruesome. But you fell a fresh breeze (light blue at center bottom). It is a mantelpiece(blue figure in the center). It makes your fireplace prettier. Human beings have this urge to beatify the life, to invent artificial things that decorates the nature of life. The guitar and clarinet represent art as the most purified decoration of all. The art makes you dream(the white figure). And even that they are very fragile (the upper right corner of the blue figure), they make you see life much more bright (the white dotted corner).

Jan 13, 2012

Claude Rutault

Claude Rutault at Galerie Perrotin (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Definition/method 295. the challenge of painting
This is actually an installation, but I would like to look at it as a painting. The brown square is a picture based on earthiness, pragmatism that is a representative art.   The read square (hardly seen) is abstract art.The representative art is relatively easy to identify, create and consume. The abstract art on the other hand is hard to conceptualize, you need really look hard for it. You have to have an insight. 

Jan 12, 2012

Steve Roden

Steve Roden at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects(Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Untitled
This is how a process of creating art works. Something is growing inside you (a bunch of light green lines at the bottom). It goes almost invisible under the cool see of logic and conscience(the blue bunch). Everything is under the sea level, until it explodes in bright colors - orange and red. This is the artist's soul that starts to process the idea. The associations are flowing back and forth between the soul, logic and the subconscious.The dark green blobs are the artworks that being created by the process..

Jan 11, 2012

Anselm Reyle

Anselm Reyle at Almine Rech Gallery (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Untitled

This is a life of a person. First, there is nothing. You are starting to learn about borders and boundaries. Then you are trying to revolt (the pink stains at the right bottom). Eventually it goes away, and you start filling the blanks in your life(center). At some point you start degenerating, your life became black.At the end the black turns into a blank again.

Jan 10, 2012

Dianna Molzan

Dianna Molzan at Overduin and Kite (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Untitled
Everyone has his own sail. Everyone has chosen his own direction.Everyone is moving somewhere. Even he is not moving, he is drifting with the current. But actually they all are small parts of a big canvas. Everyone's bright spot is one of the dots that construct the background of this big canvas. The canvas is called statistics.

Jan 9, 2012

Alice Trumbull Mason

Alice Trumbull Mason at Washburn Gallery (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Magnetic Field

Concentrations of short lines are persons. The yellow and grey squares, long lines are forces and currents in the persons' lives. The work as a magnetic field, aligning the persons that are under the influence of the force. Some people are aligning to the wrong force, not the force that influence them in reality. Some persons are so weak, they dissolve in the strong current. And some persons just pretend to be influenced, so they look like everyone else(the figure in the yellow square).

Jan 7, 2012

Weekend Edition 10

Helen Frankenthaler at Habitually Chic


Nadir Rising
Orange. It's a tropical fruit. It makes you think about a small island in the ocean. It is a small parcel of land(pinkish pass in the upper right) in the middle of the infinite ocean. It is ideal, pink and seductive. There, the sea and the sky are of the same color.The sand is white with golden hue. Then you return to the reality(the grey stain in the upper center). You realize that it's not an ideal, it is idealized. And the only real thing is the orange in your hand.

Jan 5, 2012

Victor Magariños D.

Victor Magariños D. at Galeria Sur (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Estructura espacial II
The figure in the upper right is a person. He thinks that he is unique. He is self-cultivated, sophisticated. He is almost a perfect circle. But in reality he is a part of much much bigger construct, History. This construct looks like a circle, but it is not. It is a spiral. And the person is on the top of that spiral, building the next coil of History. And if you look closer at the person, you will see that he is not that unique. A lot of things that define him, he received from the lower levels of the spiral (red, grey, yellow).

Esteban Lisa

Esteban Lisa at Galería Jorge Mara – La Ruche (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Game with Lines and Colors
 This is relationship. Two players - he and she(2 circles in the middle) are playing the game.The game board and the rules are constantly changing. That's why the colors are bleak, the players are not sure of their moves, like everything is in the fog of uncertainty. Or it could be just before the dawn, when you are about to reveal some personal deep hidden secrets. The game is very addictive, especially when you cross certain Lines.

Jan 4, 2012

Louise Lawler

Louise Lawler at Metro Pictures (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Red, White and Blue
The first (from the left) brown line is common sense. It is depended on steel-sharp logic(the grey lines). The rightmost dark brown line is your inner desires.They are mixed with small amount of common sense and dreams(blue line). Only bold, even somewhat rough insertion of Will can turn those dreams and desires into the victory red carpet.The will spans over the logic and the common sense. The fulfillment satisfies you more than before, but the dream has gone.

Jan 3, 2012

Franz Kline

Franz Kline at Richard Gray Gallery (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)
Untitled
People change. They change physically and mentally over time. A quadrilateral in the lower left corner is a person. A big event in his life (a line from top left corner that dissects the quadrilateral) makes him, after a while of processing, dramatically turn his life's direction( a thick line that goes from the quadrilateral to the bottom). The life line continues from the bottom to the top. But there is another line, a thin one. This is a physical change line. So you see when the life (the mental) line intersects the physical line the quadrilateral has been changed in form. It is not that squarish, it is crumpled.