Katharina Grosse

at Johann König (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Untitled, 2010

Women need to create an aura of mystery around them. The woman is always conscientious about her look. She is always in control of her outer image. She takes the created mystery(black), wraps it tight with her mind and will (violet). Then she invents her style(yellow) to beautify the parcel. And on top of all that she puts a layer of naivety, carelessness and lightness(the blueish green).

Ivan Morley

at Kimmerich (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

A True Tale, 2011

Life is unexpected and surprising. Real things and real events could be stitched together so randomly in real life, so it creates a surreal scenario. It creates a plot that impossible to think of. If someone would put it in a movie or a book, I would say that his imagination's got too wild. The plot seems like a tale, but all the events are true. Sot it is a true tale. 

Patricia Silva

Untitled

You are cold. Your soul is frozen. Then you meet someone. He is new, funny and unpredictable. He is easy to talk to. You are spending more and more time together. His novelty and growing passion make a dent inside your icebergs. Suddenly the ice turns into a blue blue skies.

Weekend Editon 28

Wassily Kandinsky

Black and Violet, 1923

He and She. She is on the left, all curvy and round. She is full of sun rays, sunsets and horizons. She is romantic, but she is very detail-oriented. He is solid, logical. He is more about strategy and general directions. He lets her to fill out the details, while she is following his directions. They are different, but are atreacted to each other like magnets.

Mark Francis

at Kerlin Gallery (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Hadron, 2012

The black circles are the musical notes, sounds. Together they create a delicate network of melody(black lines). The subtle net of music grabs you, extracts feelings from you. It compresses the feelings(blue, white bands) into a wall of spirit. The wall is the foundation of your mood and your behavior. The delicate sounds of music create magic.

Latifa Echakhch

at kaufmann repetto (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Sans Titre (XXIV), 2012

You are slowly getting conscience. Everything is black, empty and void. You are starting to see the glimpses of light. You get the small pieces of puzzle. You have been abducted. You are very frightened. Buy your captors are treating you well. You are building some kind of relationship with them. They don't seem so evil as at first. This is your brain trying to span a net of rationalization on the black gap of reality. This is Stockholm Syndrome.

Mary Heilmann

at Hauser & Wirth ( Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Mojave Mirage,2012

You have two parts : the logic(the left part of the diptych) and the feelings(the right side of the diptych). The logic is simple, organized and easily manipulated into a square. The feelings on the other hand, are unruly, unpredictable and impossible to manage. The more you dive into the dangerous sea of feelings, the more it expands.It even can lead to the uncharted territory(the white space outside the canvases).

Armin Boehm

 at Harris Lieberman (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Aliya, 2012

Aliya is the Jewish immigration to Israel. It comes from the verb lealot - to raise. You need to move when you feel that you don't belong to your current place. You have to raise above the deep roots that you have, because you are drying out(the trees). You have to overcome the burdens of  the journey (the desert behind the trees). Your previous experience and background will help you to establish in the new place (the small town near the mountains). The life there would not be easy, those are pretty dangerous mountains surrounding this small place.But when a man has an ideal, a dream, he can move everything, even mountains.

Michael Bauch

at Galerie Karin Guenther ( Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Untitled, 2012

You create and maintain your social environment (unless of course you are forced to a specific social environment when you are found guilty breaking a law). But as much you influence your surrounding, the environment influences you. Some of your strands are pushed wide away from each other, some are hammered together.You are a bunch of your character strands (the vertical lines) bound by pieces of your social network (the rectangles) you have picked up on your life journey.

Weekend Edition 27

Richard Diebenkorn

Untitled, 1970

Winter. Naked black trees. Everything is gray. Even the snow is not white anymore. You have a cold, depressing feeling. Everything is smaller than it is used to be. The roads are narrower. You have a need to cuddle into small with your blanket. You are passive, trying to save the energy to heat yourself.

Sophie Von Hellerman

at Greene Naftali ( Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

September 01 (explosion)

Autumn is very beautiful. It is very colorful : orange, yellow, green, brown. It is bright, cheerful, sexy. And depressing. It is sad, because you know all this beauty is a preamble to emptiness, cold, gray skies, rains and winter. This is the cycle of nature  : everything dies to give room to new things. The autumn is a good reminder that the time is going by as a river with a strong stream. And we will have our September sooner or later.

Jeremy Gilbert Rolfe

at Alexander Gray Associates ( Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Dawn in any city , 2011

The man can put everything into boxes. He can organize, catalog and categorize everything. That's how we deal with the Unknown. But you cannot put Nature into a box. It will fight you. The Nature will be free or it will die. So for the Nature it is a survival fight. And sometimes when the Nature cannot escape, it will create a small world inside its box. Inside her small world the Nature is free.

Dan Bayles

at François Ghebaly Gallery (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Interior #2, 2009

Voyeurism. Everyone likes to peep. You know it is wrong. You know it is not appropriate, but still you slightly separate those slides to peek. Our fondness of mysteries and  our craving for new things win over the moral. We always are looking for something new, something unknown, a mystery. But there is not much to look at. The entire mystery is the neighbor mowing his lawn.

JD Williams

at Galerie Cinzia Friedlaender ( Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Untilted, 2010

Two siblings. They clash constantly. They ridicule, taunt, and fight each other.The elder is fighting for his already established authority and position. The younger is trying to carve a niche for himself. The elder is more weathered and more easily compromises and is ready to get outside help. The younger needs to prove himself, so he knows no compromises and doesn't want any help. Though as a youngest he is a favorite and more spoiled. The biggest prize they are fighting about is the attention of their parents.

Pablo Picasso

at Gagosian Gallery (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

La femme-fleur (Françoise Gilot), 1946

This is a an attractive, beautiful and elegant woman. She is full aware of her beauty. And she uses her attractiveness to the full extent. You can think that this is her only weapon. But she has a "killing" combination of beauty and a sharp mind. But it's not a weapon, it's a tool. She uses her talents as a flower that attracts bees. It has nothing to do with bees, the flower has its own agenda. The woman uses them to attract others and to observe them. She is an artist, because the real artist is an observer. Her observations nurtures her attractiveness and  deepens her mind.

Read about the exhibition at Gagosian Gallery

Weekend Edition 26

Jasper Johns

Ventriloquist, 1986

Midwest. Two brothers are working on the farm. They served in the army, in Vietnam. They did because they thought it was the right thing to do. now, it is not cool to talk about it, so they keep quiet about the service. They look like simple people, but they are much more sophisticated. They remind a whale, big powerful, but mostly hidden under the water. Because they are silent, somebody else uses it and put the words in their mouthes.

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.

Sanya Kantarovsky

at Marc Foxx (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

A New Talented Writer, 2012

This is a book. You can see that is a mystery fiction. It is read on one breath, it is so interesting. It is written by delicate and elegant language. The author is pretty new. He has fresh ideas as that breeze that enters the room through the window that we don't see on the left. The real talent is not only to create a book that appeals to the readers, the real talent conveys a big message, a world view as you wish, from the artist. The meta-message lays in inside layers of the creation. It works almost on sub-conscience level.  The real talent has layers on layers stacked up in his creation. The layers interact with each other.

Julije Knifer

at Galerie Frank Elbaz(Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

AP 35, 2003

Are you a black kind of person that accumulates energy(the black rectangle in the lower left corner) then runs along a narrow strip(the adjacent narrow vertical black line). Then he jumps sideways to another narrow strip (in the center), so he can build up his energy level for the next jump(the black rectangle in the upper left corner). Or are you a white kind of person that methodically and slow overcome all the obstacles and moves from the lower left corner to the upper right corner. The thing is no matter what way you choose (white or black) you will get to the same point.

David Schnell

at Galerie EIGEN + ART (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Metrum

People don't like open space. They make people feel insecure. People like to observe open spaces from above.When you are on a high ground, you seem in control. People can't comprehend huge things. In order to understand something big you need to divide it. You need to count it. You need meters, counters, gauges, timers, watches. The time is the ultimate open space. When you finished compartmentalizing, you can carve your path in the thick forest of statistics and reports.

Weekend Edition 25

Henri Matisse

Snow Flowers, 1951

You are hopping from a rectangle to a rectangle, trying things out(the white figures). But you don't feel attached to them. They are too white, too cold. You are looking for a passion, for something that could be you. Then suddenly you hit the black figure. It feels right. This is definitely you. It embraces you. It intrigues you. You have found your passion. Yes, you did have an orange rectangle before(in the lower right corner). But it was not a right time or the right place or the right figure. To find your passion you have to be in the right time/place/ state of mind.

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.

Joan Mitchell

at Cheim & Read (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Untitled, 1959

On the first look, the person looks calm, easy going, even plain. He seems joyless, removed and cold. Then you start getting to know the person. You dig a little bit deeper, and you see that he's  got  dark side. It is full of feelings, internal motion and passions. And all of those are a lot more powerful, concentrated and even fearful, because they are concealed and don't have an outlet.

Uwe Henneken

at Galerie Gisela Capitain (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Gehend, 2011

You see a pastoral : cute accurate fields, cute small village. Sun, blue sky, green grass - what could be more ideal? Then you see something you think it is confetti. But it turns out to be holes in your idealistic picture. The holes show what is there behind the mirage. It's soil, brown soil. It's hard work, mud and boredom.

Thilo Heinzmann

at Bortolami (Frieze Art Fair New York 2012)

Untitled, 1999

We always try to measure ourselves. We want to put everything into numbers - how we perform at work, at home, at life. We draw a line and we are pressing ourselves to get to the finish. Then we draw another line and we force ourselves to jump over it.Slowly we transfer our existence into statistics producing machine.The problem is after drawing too many deadlines to cross we lost our way.

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.