Art Los Angeles Contemporary

Images: Starkwhite booth at Art Los Angeles Contemporary

Art Los Angeles Contemporary vernissage

Art Los Angeles Contemporary opened last night with a lively vernissage at the Pacific Design Centre.

Art Los Angeles Contemporary

Over the next couple of days we'll be setting up our booth at Art Los Angeles Contemporary. We'll resume our posts on Friday with photographs of the vernissage.

Image: Pacific Design Centre, West Hollywood, venue for Art Los Angeles Contemporary

New fairgrounds

In the Fairs section of the 2010 artasiapacific Almanac the editors report that "as the US and UK struggle to rebuild their tattered economies, art dealers from New York, London and mainland Europe are testing the young, relatively debt-free markets in regions that are quickly emerging from recession: the Middle East and Asia. The two more resilient fairs are Art Dubai and Hong Kong's ART HK."

They say the three-year-old ART HK continues to demonstrate its staying power with dealers arriving with low expectations and leaving with declarations that they couldn't wait to come back. After a successful first foray in 2009, Starkwhite is one of the galleries returning to ART HK in 2010. 

However, we are less interested in which fair proves to be the fairest of them all and more interested in how many great fairs emerge in the Asia/Pacific region. And the signs are good as Art Los Angeles Contemporary and ShContemporary also have the potential to become must-see events on the international art fair calendar.  

Image: ART HK masthead

Asia/Pacific/Middle East roundup

The 2010 artasiapacific Almanac is on the newsstands. Artists and Starkwhite exhibitions mentioned in the New Zealand section include: et al. no free gift!; Martin Basher, Free Spirit No Interest; and Dane Mitchell, Bending Light. Mitchell also gets a mention in the controversy section for his prize-winning work in the Waikato National Art Award. This link takes you to artasiapacific's website and more information on the current issue.

LA bound

John Reynolds is the third artist in our lineup for Art Los Angeles Contemporary. He will present One Man Show, an installation of 758 text works each measuring 100 x 40 x 40 mm. 

Image: John Reynolds, One Man Show (detail), 2010, studio shot, silver marker on acrylic on canvas, each block 100 x 40 x 40 mm, installation dimensions variable

LA bound

Sydney/LA-based artist Grant Stevens is also in our lineup for Art Los Angeles Contemporary with a selection of video works including Crushing.

Image: Grant Stevens, Crushing, 2009, digital video, 4 min 13 sec, edition of 9

LA bound

This is one of the works we'll be presenting at Art Los Angeles Contemporary which opens next Thursday. As usual we'll be posting reports and photographs from the fair so watch this space for daily updates.
Image: Peter Stichbury, Self Portrait as Tom Wade, 2010, acrylic on linen, 505 x 605 mm

From the studio

John Reynolds is hard at work in his studio producing 1001 Nights which we will present at The Armory Show, 4 - 7 March 2010. If you would like to know more about our art fair programme for 2010 please contact us at starkwhite@starkwhite.co.nz
Image: John Reynolds, 1001 Nights (detail) 2009-2010, oil paint marker on acrylic on canvas, installation dimensions variable

Critics Picks

This is not recent news, but we think it is worth mentioning. Genevieve Allison (currently living and working on Berlin) is writing for ARTFORUM's Critics Picks. You can read her first review of Isa Genzken at Galerie Daniel Buchholz here.

Featured work: Layla Rudneva-Mackay

This work was first shown in Layla Rudneva-Mackay's exhibition Tell yourself you're ok [Starkwhite 2008].

In a review of the exhibition published in ARTFORUM in September 2008 Jon Bywater said: "Cinematic' suggests too great a distance from the everyday to characterize accurately the kinds of simple tableaux photographed by Layla Rudneva-Mackay. That her scenarios--portraits of people whose faces we cannot see, for example--are directed constructs is evident though. Many of the large C-prints in the Auckland-based artist's new exhibition, Tell yourself you're ok, display gestures, but without showing us the people who make them. Most actors are hidden behind cloth, emphasizing something not simply conventional but still general in their poses. In this way, the images communicate an unusual sensitivity to form and its connotations. The nonverbal cues to which we might respond from the figure and their positioning suggest a level of intuition that evokes the unspoken sense of a situation."

If you would like more information on this artwork, or others by the artist, please contact us at starkwhite@starkwhite.co.nz

Image: Layla Rudneva-Mackay, Yellow Curtain, 2008, C-Print

2010 art fair circuit begins

We are heading to LA in a few weeks for Art Los Angeles Contemporary. We'll post images from the fair which runs from 28 - 31 January 2010, but in the meantime this link takes you to the ALAC website.

Images: ALAC logo and the Pacific Design Centre, venue for Art Los Angeles Contemporary

Starkwhite hours over the holiday period

The gallery is closed over the Christmas/New Year period, open by appointment from 4 January and reopening Monday 18 January 2010. Leave a message on our answer phone (+64 9 3070703) or email us at starkwhite@starkwhite.co.nz and we'll get back to you. 

Image: Jim Speers, Crystal Spirit, installation view, Starkwhite 2009. The exhibition runs to 18 January 2010