Peter Lanyon

at TATE

Lost Mine, 1959

You are deep underground. Everything is a hue of black. Suddenly, the water is flooding the place(blue). You see water pouring in from everywhere. Now, seemingly strong and solid structure holding up the place start to crumble. You understand that it is not only the structure collapsing it is your life(red). Some flares of (white) hope keep you running for the exit. But the only things you see in the escape opening are the new waves of blue ruthless water.

Amir Mogharabi

at Ibid Projects (Frieze Art Fair New York 2013)

Untitled. 2012

The  black triangles are the art works on display. But the actual artist's intentions are the yellow structures. The intentions are followed by associations (black lines). Then the artist's skills were in play (grey-white ribbons on the right and at the bottom). The result of this process are black triangles with some parts missing.

Naum Gabo

at Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert(Art 43 Basel 2012)

Dissonanz, 1940

It is the birth of nazism. Greed(yellow) with racism (white) and romanticism(blue) creates the nazism(the grey cancer tumor). The nazism mix with pedantism(the brown figure) produces a double edged knife (the semi-transparent ribbon). The knife is a cold killing machine that is ready to cut anything and anyone, including its parents when it gets an order.

Amy Sillman

at Campoli Presti

A Shape that Stands Up and Listens #18, 2012 

Voyeurism is based on curiosity and a feeling of belonging. Those two are the basic instincts that a human being has to survive. People have been looking for new sources of food and shelter as long as they exist. Men herd all the time for better security. When you are peeping onto someone, you are succumbing to you curiosity. And when you see something that you should not, you feel belong to a group that knows the secret.

Voyeurism  . exhibitionists.voyeur

Amy Sillman

at Campoli Presti

A Shape that Stands Up and Listens #2, 2012 

Fear. You jump from every slight shadow ( a grey background figure in the middle). The fear makes you imagine things much more powerful and a lot frightful than they really are (a black silhouette at the right part of the painting). The fear shackles you (the grey figure from lower left corner to right middle). The fear leads you to a wrong direction, thus making the most damage to you.

Eva Berendes

at Ancient & Modern

Untitled, 2008

You open a box(white triangles as part of box upper lid). Inside the box there is another box. Or it could be several boxes. Inside those boxes there more boxes. The box could be a good one (blue or green), a bad one(yellow, red or black). It depends how you open it. You are going through the numerous boxes until you get to where you started (the white box). That is your life. And all those boxes are a lovely screen that tries to cover up the emptiness of the room.

Afro Basaldella

at Haunch of Venison

Doppia Figura, 1954

Nude figure. Laying next to you. The room is half-lit. The colors are muted. Shadows. It is a nice view. You are attracted to the person that is laying naked with you. But the attraction is much deeper than a plain sight. It is intricate network of memories, experiences and feelings that you share with that person. This virtual network strengthens and enriches the physical pleasure.

Max Bill

at Annely Juda Fine Art (Art 43 Basel 2012)

rotation around expanding white, 1981

The best comedian is a very sad person. You have to be a philosopher to joke away. You have to have those grains of salt in you(the white squares). These give you a different angle to look at things, because a philosopher and a sad person are lonely persons. And lonely persons are outsiders. The outsiders see things differently(the triangles of different colors around the white squares). That is a great foundation for a good joke.

Lisa Ruyter

at Alan Cristea Gallery (Art 43 Basel 2012)

Count the Hours, 2012

Waiting. It is a process, a journey from one point in time to another. You make that journey in a sail boat. The sails are made from a huge number of small things: Hope, Anticipation of something new/exotic, Dependence on others, Patience, Jealousy that someone bit you to the finish line. Sometimes your sails erode, and you need to move to plan B (motor boat?). 

François Morellet

at Bernard Jacobson Gallery (Art 43 Basel 2012)

Pi Puissant n1 = 10 14 décimales, 1998

It is hard to choose your path.The straight line is not always the shortest or the best way.The chosen path changes you and your environment.

Jon Thompson

at Anthony Reynolds Gallery (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

The Tornonto Cycle #12, CADENCE and DISCORD (V1) Traer los Sentidos, 2010-2011

 People see things differently. They have various opinions and interpretations on exactly the same events.The same thing can create different associations for different people, thus creating different mood in which they interpreter the events they witness.  Well what do you expect when people can not agree on the colors they see?

Sean Scully

at Timothy Taylor Gallery (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Doric, 2011

There are black days. Those are the days when you just survive. When later you try to remember those days, you cannot because nothing happened. There are better days(gray). They are filled with hopes, dreams. On those days you do things to improve your life. And there are bright days. Those days you remember all your life. On those days you feel that you accomplished something, you have improved your life or lives of others. On those days you were happy. The bright days are the pillars of your life. There are not a lot of bright, happy days, but if you have any, your life can withstand any disaster

Juan Uslé

at Frith Street Gallery (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Zebulon Metro, 2009

 It is very important to have a good foundation. When your base is solid, robust, and well-designed for the task you can build anything.  When your foundation, your spine(black-gray rectangles) is full of steel and black energy, you can withstand any problem or burden that is laid on you. Nevertheless your spine should be flexible, because the heavy loads ask for a certain flexibility. The stiff spine breaks easier.The things that don't break your spine make you stronger(the color bands create a new spine in the center).

Tom Friedman

at Stephen Friedman Gallery ( Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Untitled (The garden), 2010

Seemingly wilderness of a garden is a product of a careful design and hard work. All these efforts are trying to put the right plans in and to rid of the wrong ones. The weeds are not wrong, they just don't follow gardener's rules. The same  applies to people. It's your rules that divide people to the right ones and to the wrong ones.Your weed person is the perfect right person for someone else.

Victoria Morton

at Sadie Coles HQ (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Figurine, 2011

The person's life consists of myriads of small dot-sized tasks. There is a lot of commotion that fills up all your space/time/soul. They are necessary things to do. But because you are busy you are postponing your big things - your dreams. "When I grow up". "When I get rich". "When I graduate". "When I retire". "As soon as I turn 30/40/50....". People think that the time is unlimited resource. When they get to the point where they suppose to start implementing their dreams, they find other more urgent things to do. So they move from a checkpoint to a checkpoint in their life, but their dreams are left out. The dreams are only frames to dot-filled pictures of their life.

Phillip Allen

at The approach (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Permanence of the Unexpected Windfall, 2011

Our life experience as it moves from the current events(the bottom of the painting) to the distant past converts into logs. Wood logs (the central and upper parts of the painting). The father the events in time( farther up from the bottom) the more the logs are condensed, some events even collude creating a memory of an event that is actually several events happened a long time ago. All those memories (the logs) burden down onto our life, influencing our behavior and decisions. But we are getting help with this load. Our memory fails(the white-bordered semi-transparent figures). It fails for good reasons. It lets us make new decisions easier. It makes our memories feel better than they were.

Victor Vasarely

at William Weston Gallery Ltd( TEFAF Maastricht 2012)

Kapolna - Réponses à Vasarely. Replies to Vasarely, 1973

 It's a box. You are looking inside the box.Usually you hear: "Think outside the box". But life in the box is not as easy as it seems. The inside is not a big empty space. It is sets and sets of collections of other smaller boxes, figures and shapes. It is a difficult task to arrange them, so they fit into a nice pattern.And for those who want to go outside, there are always doors. You just need to find them (orange and violet figures).

Joan Miró

at Waterhouse and Dodd (TEFAF Maastricht 2012)

Sans Titre

You have a hive of different thoughts (the gray figure in the lower left corner). You have passion (the red figure in the lower center). Then one of the thoughts adjacent to the passion gets extended, becoming an idea(a black line between the gray figure and the red figure going up to the black figure in the center). Fueled by the passion the idea grows into a  something real. It is already a thing that you do. Combining it with other ideas of yours(the black line bordering the red figure from the right) and with ideas from others(the black line from the yellow figure) takes your thing to another level. In the process of doing the thing you create other ideas(the black lines extended from the black figure). They may not lead to anything else. And maybe the thing will die off eventually, but the main thing is that while you are busy with all of these, you find new passions(the color circles : green, blue, violet, gray).

Karel Appell

at Osborne Samuel(TEFAF Maastricht 2012)

Personnages, 1960

A great movie or a play has several layers of content. There is a main plot that is easy to spot and follow(black paint). There are several supporting plots (red and blue paint). They are shorter, less obvious, but not less important. All plots are interacting, intersecting and converging with each other. These interactions create the sandbox where the personages live. The last layer is the number of citations, visual clues(the doodles). They connect the movie to other pieces of artwork, thus putting the movie in th global art context.

Otto Dix

at Richard Nagy(TEFAF Maastricht 2012)

 

Franzosisches Dorf, 1918

You travel to a nice small village. Everything seem different, new, even strange : colors of buildings, people's clothes, stone-paved streets. But as the mystery of new place wears off, you are stRting to feel the urge to move on. The purpose of the journey is not the destination, but the process of traveling, exploring the unknown.