Articles and Features
UNTITLED, ART Online – Our Curatorial Team’s Favorite Finds
The New Complement to the IRL
UNTITLED, ART and Artland have joined forces to present an immersive virtual-reality art fair that is beyond “online”, seeking to capture some of the compelling elements of a real fair, and to carve out a new physical realm in the virtual space.
Discover the booths of 40 leading contemporary art galleries from around the world for yourself in vivid virtual reality, or take a tour with our curatorial team . As we wandered the aisles of the iconic Miami Beach fair tent we found much to enjoy, ponder and covet. From the insightful to the ingenious, the poignant to the poetic, we highlight some inspiring examples below of how these galleries have chosen to represent their artists in this new digital realm.
Booth C1 : TAFETA
TAFETA, with premises in London and Lagos, presents works by two artists; Miami based Marielle Plaisir and George Osodi who works out of Lagos, Nigeria.
Osodi, a leading photographer with a background in photo journalism and participant in the Venice Biennale of 2015, will present works from his Oil Rich Niger Delta series, showcasing a selection of works subsequently subtitled ‘The Orange Light.’ The images captured in the Niger Delta region capture the phenomenon of widespread gas flaring from local oil wells happening in very close proximity to occupied villages. With the flames illuminating like an industrial back light, the beauty of the colors contrasts starkly with the horror of their impact on the people and the environment.
Marielle Plaisir presents paintings and watercolors, and speaks of her new work and process in two parts: “the activist” and “the utopia.” Through “the activist” she explores and denounces social domination, and then reconstructs the world through “the utopia” creating a re imagined world through dreamlike and surreal imagery that often references fairy tales.
The work in The Malediction of Cham series poetically examines intersectionality through lyrical abstracted portraits of activist personalities including James Baldwin, Nina Simone, and Aretha Franklin. Creating delicate renderings that include the use of inks, gold thread, and stones, Plaisir highlights figures in a highly poetic fashion who have fought and raised their voices against discrimination of race, class, and gender.
Booth C11 : Harlan Levey Projects
Harlan Levey Projects in Booth C11, based in Brussels, is showing a solo project by TR Ericsson, derived from his epic ongoing ‘Crackle & Drag’ Series which deals with the suicide of his mother. Ericsson’s ex-wife took a series of photographs of his mother at her dining room table the year before she died, almost 20 years ago now. The image below was one of those photographs. She’s taking a hit, a ‘drag” from her cigarette. One of thousands, even millions of hits and drags from countless cigarettes smoked under the dim dining room light. Her funerary ashes are spread throughout the picture, melted into the black ink. This was Ericsson’s take, from the beginning, on the line from Plath’s poem Edge, “her blacks crackle and drag” which is to say she endures. Her story is still vibrating, crackling, and it’s still hard to tell, and hard to live with, and it’s still, somehow, a beautiful story and still meaningful to tell. Originally an expression that marked the end of a theater piece, Plath appropriated “crackle and drag” for poetry, and Ericsson rekindles the phrase once more for his elegiac work.
Booth B10 : Galería Nora Fisch
Galería Nora Fisch, based in Buenos Aires, is presenting a solo booth devoted to the work of Juan Tessi (1972, Lima Peru, lives and works in Buenos Aires). These lyrical paintings, with affinities to early American modernists as well as other Expressionist movements, present an ongoing exploration of the language of painting as it moves from one pictorial support, format and approach to another. The body is ever present in all the works, moving lithely, and showing intersecting reflections of the inherent movement in the brushstroke, the human and organic form and desire. Tessi has also explored the tension between craft and technology, approaching painting both as surface and as object, the results being the creation of very personal poetics always grounded in pictorial processes. The booth focuses on a series of recent works, yet includes some pieces from 2018 and 2012.
Booth A3 : Moskowitz Bayse
Moskowitz Bayse, based in LA, bring a solo presentation by contemporary conceptual photographer Valerie Green. Carefully considered to overtly reference the online only context, the exhibition presents work that plays with and challenges received notions of representation and experience. Green’s work negotiates the relationship between physical and digital space, and by the very nature of the presentation which exists only in a digitally rendered context, it questions our perceived distinctions between the two. Her works often hone the viewers’ attention toward the point at which virtual space becomes tangible. As we continue to increasingly turn to digital technology as our primary conduit for commerce, socialization, and now–more so than ever–artistic dialogue, our screens become both a practical link to the physical world and a reminder of our shared distance from it. Seen in person, Green’s images depict, without anxiousness, the gradual encroachment of digital strategies through analog processes; seen online, the work assumes new meaning–its loving, probing edge is reconsidered as the computer screen, not gallery lighting, activates each picture.Fwd: William Pym S&P 8Fwd: William Pym S&P 8
