New Show Opens Saturday!

Saturday evening I am opening a show of Jacques Garnier's photographs entitled "Passages" as well as Liz Cockrum's photography called "Sirens".  the opening reception is from 6 until 8 pm.

I hope you can make it!

Basel news

Basel was incredible! Every major gallery from Europe as well as New York was in attendance and even a select few from the west coast. A gallery from Germany which had the premiere booth in the fair showed one solitary painting by Andy Warhol called, the Retrospective Painting. It was roughly 7 by 35 feet and was priced at $75 million. When I first saw the painting, Joel Sachs who is the Warhol Foundation's president, was also viewing it for his first time, looked at the painting in amazement and said "WOW". Galleries brought out their best works and some were very rarely seen such as the Lucien Freud paintings. Works by Yves Klein, Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Motherwell (one gallery did a whole show of large "open" canvases) Morris Louis, Franz Kline, Ad Reinhardt, Warhol, Cy Twombly, Picasso, Giacometti, Robert Longo...I could go on and on...it was there. John Baldessari's work was well represented and he was in attendance everywhere it seemed. Collectors such as Steve Cohen, Eli Broad, and Brad Pitt from the US were in attendance and buying.  Arnold Glimcher, who runs Pace Gallery, was there with Martin Scorsese presenting a new film they had recently worked on together. The Kunsthalle beer garden, the watering hole of the art world while in Basel, was at capacity every evening.

In addition to attending the fairs I visited several museums and foundations in Basel. The Foundation Beyelor, a fantastic museum designed by Renzo Piano for Ernst Beyelor, was showing a Giacometti retrospective. It was an amazing show of sculpture, painting, furniture made by Alberto's brother Diego, as well as other paintings made by the artistic family. Downstairs at the foundation, London based artist Marc Quinn who does sculptural self portraits made from his own blood were on display.  They were a bit repulsive in a fantastic sort of way as they are made from blood he draws from himself over a five year period and freezes it and makes a cast sculpture from it. I suggest googling the artist.

The Kunstmuseum had a Van Gogh exhibition of 70 landscape paintings presented in chronological order.  Pretty unbelievable, and the best ones were from American collections!

Then there was the Schaulager which is an art storage facility rarely open to the public. It is on the outside of Basel and was open for the first time presenting an exhibition titled "From Holbein to Tillmans", paintings made over the last 500 years or so. The Shaulager is an awesome building housing incredible artwork. I will post more on this institution as I have time to research it.  Basel is a fantastic destination for any art lover and June is the month to be there.

Art/40/Basel

The gallery will be closed June 7 through June 15 as we will be attending Art Basel.

The gallery will be open June 16.

Surfing Heritage Art Talk

Friday Night June 5, The Surfing Heritage Museum held a gathering of sorts to talk about art with Wolfgang Bloch and Alex Weinstein, Kevin Ansell and others. Bolton Colburn, Director of the Laguna Art Museum, Scott Hulet, editor at the Surfers Journal and Steve Pezman, publisher of the surfers journal were leading this discussion.  Even David Lloyd was in the audience actively participating.  Although the artists appreciate the publicity given them by the surf industry they do n0t think their work is just about surfing and that culture, it is about art and process, even politics and religion.  Bolton Colburn said that the more people who grew up surfing and have become financially successful subsequently purchase art related to surfing and as galleries, museums and collectors support this genre, it becomes a significant genre unto itself. As the money comes so does the "importance". Art in Southern California has been produced by artists, many of whom happen to surf and live in close proximity to the ocean. Whether it be Ed Moses, Billy Al Bengston, Ed Ruscha, Charles Arnoldi, Ken Price, Ed Keinholtz  or John Baldessari, the surfing culture and the ocean has been a part of their lives and has affected their work somehow. The ocean and the western point of view are why we live in California.

Ed Moses Images

These are two images of the five paintings currently available for viewing at the gallery.

In A Different Light

The current show blends abstract painting with landscape painting and emerging artists with established ones. Five small paintings by one of southern California's artistic legends, Ed Moses, are on view. These paintings were completed in late 2008 when Moses was 82 years of age. He currently has a show in Los Angeles that takes up two gallery spaces, Greenfield Sacks Gallery and Frank Lloyd Gallery. Moses is doing some of the strongest work of his 60 year career and we are lucky to have these works. The works are a bargain too!

Also on display are four paintings by Ed's son Andy Moses who is an art star on his own. Although many see Andy Moses' work as abstract, they are in fact landscape paintings of intense depth and beauty. His work is currently in at least three group shows in Los Angeles but has rarely been seen in San Diego. Andy Moses studied art at Cal Arts in Valencia graduating in the late eighties and has been showing nationally and internationally ever since. His studio is currnetly in Venice CA, but he spent 10 years living and working in New York and becoming a master of the painterly craft. His work is atmospherical and mysterious. His canvases are often shaped in a concave or a convex and the surfaces of his paintings border on perfect. Come check out these works, we are lucky to have them in North County.