Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Is Photography Dead? SFMoMA tries to answer....

San Francisco Museum of Art is hosting a provocative seminar titled "Is Photography Over?". They've assembled an impressive roster of panelists to debate the topic. You can read more about it here:






















I mention it here - fully aware that most of us won't be able to go - because of the wise format of the seminar. The topic question has been asked in advance to all of the participants, and their answers are posted online here. It's one of the pithiest collections of photographically themed essays I've read in a long time. Highly recommended. None of them are more than a few paragraphs, and a few are gems. Check it out.

Houston Fotofest report coming soon.....

Friday, March 19, 2010

Evan's AIPAD Overview.

Better too late than never is an aphorism I've always enjoyed, so here now, too late, are my first impressions of the 2010 edition of the AIPAD show. Perhaps those of you heading to the fair on the weekend will get some benefit from the overview, though I suspect most of my readers have already been at least once and made their own first impressions.


Attendance seems good and the energy was high in the first days. Even during work hours on Thursday and Friday, the aisles were never empty. AIPAD is not the place to find the most cutting edge work in the field, but I was happy to see a few examples of forward thinking art. For example, Stephen Bulger from Toronto was doing brisk business with Alison Rossiter's "lament" series. Ms Rossiter has been working with expired photo paper in a variety of ways over the last few years exploring the material's rich surface as well as damage that has accrued to the paper. Some pieces chart only the damage as she prints the unexposed paper revealing scars from mold, light, and handling. Other paper is put into contact directly with developer chemical by dipping or pouring. The result is a remarkable "photogram" that is achieved without the use of light communicating sadness at the loss of photographic materials that is quite poignant.

On the classic front, there are many more superb examples to illustrate. Charles Schwartz can always be counted on to bring an array of stunning 19th century work. In addition to some intriguing Orientalia, his pride of place went to a fine example of Robert Howlett's portrait of a ship owner from 1857. Another amazing example is at the Met as part of the Gilman Paper Collection.











































































































































[Isambard Kingdom Brunel Standing Before the Launching Chains of the Great Eastern]  
Robert Howlett (English, 1831–1858)

The Weston Gallery had a marvelous anonymous diptych featuring a cyanotype photogram of a pair of ferns paired with the actual botanical examples used to make the print. I have no idea how these fragile little plants have survived 180 years, but here they are for us to see:

Gary Edwards brought another set of brilliant hand-tinted tintypes and salt prints. Featured were a set of soldiers and another set of African-American portraits. Gorgeous, subtle, and rare. Take a close look.

Moving forward in history a bit, Charles Isaacs had praiseworthy photos both on his walls and in his bins. On the walls, one is treated to a Brancusi portrait of his own iconic scupture, Bird in Space. Though conservation has been done to this print, it's still a stunning object. Details and provenance below:
Constantin Brancusi: Bird in Space. Vintage silver print, 11-1/4 x 8-9/16 in. (287 x 218 mm), c. 1930/1945, unmounted. w1589. Gift of the artist to the photographer Bernhard Moosbrugger in 1955, when he and journalist Gladys Weigner made eight visits to the artist.  

Also in the booth at Isaacs' is a solarized nude by Blanc & Demilly. It's already sold, so take a look before it disappears:
In the bins and available upon request are a deceptively modern Pompeii study attributed to Giorgio Sommer, William Larson fax pieces and figure studies, and a Nathan Lerner study in light on paper titled, "Car Light Study #7". It's a vintage silver print from 1939. Lerner (1913-1999) was one of the original students at the New Bauhaus in Chicago, and later became the Head of the Photography Department at the School of Design, and then Dean of Faculty and Students. If you're interested in Chicago School work, ask Chuck to bring it out.

Continuing our march up the photo history timeline, Hemphill Gallery has a wall of vintage William Christenberry Kodak Brownie color landscapes, L. Parker Stephenson has a fun Umbo photogram of stockings (as well as my friend Raphael Dallaporta's Antipersonnel series),
And Paul Hertzmann had a lovely 1935 solarized nude by Osamu Shiiara.

Steven Kasher's booth was full of unexpected pleasures and treasures. Top on my list was a collection of hand-tinted, vernacular portraits of African-Americans from the 60s. Vernacular may be an erroneous term here since the pictures show a sure professional hand, so perhaps anonymous is a more apt description. In any case, I loved their quirky flavor:

Deborah Bell always delivers with great examples from still-under-appreciated Gerard P. Fieret. If I had the cash, I would buy a box of them. I'm confused why they don't catch on:


Laurence Miller also was pitching to my wheelhouse with a striking example of a nude composite from my perennial favorite, Ray K. Metzker along with a wall vintage Helen Levitt that deserves close attention.
Also in Miller's booth were film strip explorations by Barbara Blondeau. Blondeau died young and left us little work to admire, but what she accomplished shows that she would have been a keen contributor to the Chicago legacy along with her Philadelphia compatriots Ray Metzker and William Larson. Sorry for the particularly crappy jpeg:

I was helping Tom Gitterman in his booth this year, so I can't say I'm neutral, but I'm a big fan of his selection of both Kenneth Josephson and Ferenc Berko. There are prime examples on the walls and in the bins.

Last, and not least, is the booth for AXA art insurance. While they were not intentionally displaying artwork, the examples they brought of burned and destroyed art was sublime and beautiful perhaps above anything else I saw at the fair. If you put a wall label of an established artist like Thomas Zipp under either of these works, you could have sold them at last week's Armory fair for high 5 figures. Take a look when you pass by:
More to come. Comments welcome and encouraged......

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

A plug for my own event

Here's a quick notice about an interview I'll be doing at the NYPL this Saturday. I thought I'd post it before the madness of AIPAD starts. I'll be busy with dispatches from the fairs over the next few days, so I wanted to be sure I let everyone know about this which I copy from a NYPL press release:

M i d - M a n h a t t a n L i b r a r y
   
presents
 
  An Artist Dialogue Series Event  
 
Christian Erroi and Evan Mirapaul
 
  Saturday March 20, 2010
2:30 p.m. on the 6th floor
   
Mid-Manhattan Library
The New York Public Library
40th Street and 5th Avenue
New York , NY 10016
212-340-0871
 
Elevators access the 6th floor after 2p.m.
All events are FREE and subject to last minute change or cancellation.
 
Evan Mirapaul, contemporary art collector, will join artist Christian Erroi to talk about art and life and to discuss his site-specific Art in the Windows exhibition Leads and Traces .
 
Christian Erroi is a photographer who lives and works in New York . His wellsprings of inspiration have long been from nature and introspection about his own physiological studies. Since 2001, his personal work has ranged from abstracted landscapes to calligraphic figure studies. He studied at the International Center of Photography in New York. His work was selected for two Art + Commerce Festivals of Emerging Photographers. In 2008, he had his first solo exhibition in the United States, at Poissant Gallery in Houston, as part of Houston Fotofest. He has exhibited his work in numerous group shows in the U.S. and Europe, and also in several solo exhibitions in Switzerland. In 2009 he was a featured artist in the LiShui Photo Festival in China . His work is held in many private collections worldwide, and in the collection of Museum of Modern Art , New York; the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; the Museo Cantonale di Lugano and the Musee de l'Elysee, Lausanne, Switzerland.

Initiated in 2004, the Artist Dialogues provide a forum for understanding and appreciation of contemporary art. Artists are paired with critics, curators, writers or other artists to converse about art and the potential of new ideas.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Dispatches - 3/12/10

It seems I've gotten some good response from posting more often even without extensive commentary from me (maybe because of less commentary from me?!). So, I'm trying to keep up the pace for awhile. Thursday, I hit Chelsea for a few hours and then headed uptown for a few openings. In no particular order:

The Frederick Sommer show at Bruce Silverstein remains one of my favorite shows in the current cycle. I was a Sommer fan before, and this exhibit cemented his status for me, as well as introduced me to facets of Sommer's practice of which I was unaware. An artist whose life spanned the century, his work shows dadaist and surrealist influences while maintaining a rigorously personal style. My favorite is a pairing of two of the musical drawings - one is a traditional drawing and the other is a photogram drawn with fixer on photo paper. They encapsulate for me the diverse yet focused practice of a still too unknown artist. Not to be missed.

Rick Wester has a solo exhibit of the work of Sharon Harper's One Month, Weather Permitting. As the press release notes, cameras have turned towards the heavens since the invention of the medium. One recalls Quentin Bajac's show and book, Dans le champ des étoiles - Les photographes et le ciel, 1850-2000 just to name one particularly fine overview. Ms Harper's series is a satisfying addition to the canon as it engages simultaneously the medium itself and the act of taking a picture. Her picture-taking responds both to indexical control as well as the embrace of chance and improvisation. Visually, the work recalls Misrach, Hans-Christian Schink ("One Hour" series), and Chris McCaw. But emotionally and conceptually it stands on its own feet. Ms Harper is an artist who had remarkable success 10 years ago and has fallen somewhat off the radar since then. I hope this show will mark a return of her star on the horizon.

Two shows that disappointed were by marquee artists at high profile galleries: Daido Moriyama at Luhring Augistine and Wolfgang Tillmans at Andrea Rosen. In the case of Moriyama, the older work in the back gallery reminded why he is an important photographer. The large scale b/w prints in the front room seemed emotionally blank to me; a jazz trumpeter riffing on a song he's played too often. Tillmans I sometimes just don't get. I am a fan of the abstract work and assorted other series. But his "slice of life" work that tries to mimic casual, personal photography leaves me flat. While I am engaged by the intellectual intention, I don't find the intention embodied in the pictures. Still from such an important artist, the show's worth a look. You should make up your own mind.

Matthew Marks Gallery has a vintage show of Robert Adams' Summer Nights, Walking project. Mr. Adams revisited the prints from which he chose the original book and decided that less was not more in this case. It's subtle, ephemeral photography -- as we would expect from this artist -- and well worth walking through on a quiet, early spring afternoon.

Back uptown, I stopped in again at 764 Madison for two openings. Higher Pictures had the first US solo exhibit of Japanese master Issei Suda, and Parker Stephenson had the opening of Yuichi Hibi's Shanghai show that I mentioned in a previous post. Both qualify, for different reasons, as work you've probably not seen before. They're wonderful exhibits on their own merits, but for freshness alone they make my must see list.

Last, there is a delightful, quirky show of wallpaper (yes, wallpaper) at the International Print Center of NY. It is not an important show in any way but is a treat to see if you're fan of design, usable art, or the history of printmaking. The link and short press release are below with a sample image. Check it out:

Wallworks:
Contemporary Pictorial Wallpapers

Curated by Sarah Richards
On view: March 11 - April 24, 2010, Tuesday - Saturday, 11 am - 6 pm
International Print Center New York announces the presentation of Wallworks: Contemporary Pictorial Wallpapers, opening on Thursday, March 11th and remaining on view through Saturday, April 24, 2010 in IPCNY’s gallery at 526 West 26th Street, Room 824.

Wallworks contextualizes contemporary wallpaper design by examining its evolution over a period of some two hundred years. Curated by decorative arts specialist Sarah Richards, it will include 35-40 examples of commercially available wallpaper illustrating the intersection of the decorative arts and culture at large.  The range of technologies included in the exhibition will illuminate the commercial application of fine art printmaking techniques. Traditional mediums, such as woodcut and screenprint, will be shown along with mechanical reproduction and modern digital techniques.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

2 openings and a collection visit

After a much needed respite from the art fair tsunami last week, I'm back in the water eager to swim through more of the events of an art-packed month of March. Looking back on the profusion of fairs, I see positives and negatives. We've heard the negatives already; fairs are too commercial, boring, crowded, safe, anti-artist, numbing, elitist, etc., etc., etc. It's all true. But there's a positive side, too. I look at fairs as a kind of précis. I can't investigate every work I see, but I can take a visual overview; a summary. One artist I know had a good first impression at one fair he attended, but, as he waded farther into the booths, his view turned sour as he realized much of what he was seeing were versions of better known work he'd seen at other fairs. This aerial picture of a vast collection of art gives us perspectives like this. I think it's a neglected positive view. I lkearn alot from fairs, even when I don't enjoy them. But I digress.....

I started my evening at an ICP sponsored collection visit at the home of Alice Zimet. Ms Zimet is the founder of Arts + Business Partners, and has been a presence in the photography world for a generation. Her collection is eclectic and personal, spanning styles, periods, and genres with ease. From Berenice Abbott to Vik Muniz, from Brassai to Ingvar Krauss, it was a pleasure to see a collection so lovingly assembled.

Next was Ryuji Miyamoto's opening at Amador Gallery. Pardon me while I gush just a bit -- I just love this photographer's work. It's passionate and emotional without a whisper of sentimentality. It's formally precise, yet feels free and spontaneous. The iconic Kyoto earthquake photos are here to be marvelled at as well as brilliantly deceptive photograms of insects that are right up my alley. Definitely a show to see.

Last stop was to see Martin Parr's "Luxury" opening at Janet Borden Gallery. Mr. Parr's signature visual wit was out in force highlighting the anomalies and quirks of the wealthy and their high society events. It's the kind of thing you'll like if you like that sort of thing, as a friend of mine was fond of saying. If you're a fan of smart, witty visual commentary, this show should be high on your list.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Armory week, day 4. Humble Arts, EFA Open Studios, & Scope.

Ok, I'll admit it. You didn't ask, but I'll tell you anyway: I'm getting a bit grumpy. I don't know if it's because of the Clockwork Orange-like deluge of art I've subjected myself to over the last few days, but I'm definitely feeling a bit snarky. Is it me? Always possible. Is it the art? Well, yes, that's always a possibility, too. There have been highs and lows (I love either extreme for the way they challenge me), but there have been way too many "nothings". No reaction. I get snarky when I see truck load after truck load of art that just leaves me without comment. So maybe it's time to take a breath. Take a pause. Let some of the metaphorical meal digest.

A quick overview of my Saturday:

Scope is a shadow of the fair it once was. It made me sad to walk through. The only ray of light was at Witzenhausen Gallery which was showing Jowhara Alsaud. Aperture Magazine recently featured her work and have released a photo of hers through their print program, so I'm not exactly Paul Revere on this one. Still I like the work. Ms Alsaud's work is also part of a group show at the Camera Club of New York. The revelation for me there was the "Representations" series by Cynthia Greig. Ms Greig whitewashes ordinary, everyday objects, then traces their outlines with marker. The end result is photographed. The end result is not what you would expect from my description and is both delightful and complex (a rare duo). Check out the show and definitely ask Stephen Bulger about her at the upcoming AIPAD show.

I always enjoy making my way through the open studio dates at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. I've written about my favorites in the past, so there's no need to revisit them here. Suffice it to say that you should add your name to their mailing list and check it out for yourself. Some great work has come out of that building.

Humble Arts produced a show called "31 Women in Photography" which is on display in the Affirmation Arts building on 37th St. The title is hard to argue with as there are indeed 31 female artists represented in the show. If there is any other trend, interpretation, curatorial position, or overview to be gleaned from the works chosen, it was lost on me. I have always found fault with Humble's choice to show only one example of any artist's work. It is a curatorial practice which shorts both the artist and the viewer. It's like reading the first-line index of a poetry anthology without access to the anthology. But I seem to be in the minority in this view as the organization has been wildly popular. I'm also surprised to see Charlotte Cotton's name connected with the show as I've always found her view of photography to be pithily grounded. I'm curious what her contribution was exactly.

But all of that adds up to the kind of snark that I mentioned in paragraph one, and I don't really want to be snarky. I wish success to any artistic endeavor even if their approach is not one that I would choose myself. So, I'll take a few days off, catch my breath, rest my feet, and come back with a fresh view of some of the other events happening around town in this art-filled month of March.

Tomorrow: a walk in the park.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Armory week, day 3. ADAA, Independent, and a couple of galleries.

I was back out on the pavement early this morning starting with three collection visits in upper Manhattan. I prefer not to gossip about privately held work, so, even though these homes were opened to the public, I will remain silent on thir identities and content. The last collection was on the Upper East Side which made for a convenient bridge to the ADAA show.

In the past, ADAA fair has been a museum-level display of some of the finest examples of 20th century art on the market. The fair had a bit of a musty, private club kind of feel, but there was no doubt that the work was consistently of the first order. I still remember an exquisite, small Rothko I saw at Greenberg van Doren Gallery. I still wish I'd had the million dollars on hand it would have required to take it home with me.

The buzz I'd heard was that ADAA was trying to update their image to include more living artists and to evince a snappier vibe. It did seem a brighter, livelier atmosphere than last year, but perhaps at a price. While there were still fine examples by A-list artists, the sense that one was seeing the best possible examples available was very much absent. But I digress from the photographic. As one would expect, the Princes of the photo gallery world were on hand with some great work in tow. Fraenkel Gallery devoted their booth to Hiroshi Sugimoto making the case yet again why he is an important artist. Howard Greenberg had his usual exemplary examples of mid-century masters. And Hans P. Kraus showed a stunning Taj Mahal diptych by Dr. John Murray showing an albumen print above the 1864 waxed paper negative of the same image. Not cutting edge contemporary work, but a spectacular piece that any photography lover would swoon over.

Across town, things could not have been more different at the Independent Fair. Or....I should say, we were being told by fair organizers that things could not have been more different. As Holland Cotter mentioned in his New York Times review on March 4th, 2010, many of the galleries and much of the art was quite well-known and frequently seen at A-list galleries around town. I am very happy to see works by Roe Etheridge, Eileen Quinlan, and Liz Deschenes any day of the week (they are all personal favorites), but I can and have seen them at Andrew Kreps and Miguel Abreu on a regular basis. I feel misled to find them at a fair billing itself as alternative and edgy. Same deal at McCaffrey Fine Art where I saw more Jiro Takamatsu after his solo show there earlier this year. I love the work, but....

Continuing on a theme, John Stezaker's collages always deserve a look. I've written about them on these pages many times. London gallery "The Approach" had a fine small set. New? A world apart from other fairs?
Ditto Jose Davila from Renwick Gallery:
 
Somewhat less familiar were the works of Roman Ondak at gb Agency. Worth a look and I wish they'd brought more. Sorry, no pic.

One work at the fair which knocked my socks off was not a photo though it's source was a newspaper photograph. A drawing by Andrea Bowers used densely packed pencil marks to define negative space with obsessive force, leaving the the scene limned in the lower right hand corner to stand out with quiet power.


In between ADAA and Independent, I hit a few Upper East Side Galleries. I had been meaning to see the Sam Falls show at Higher Pictures for weeks. It closes tomorrow, so I just caught it. Owner Kim Bourus stole the show last year at AIPAD with her low-priced, highly reviewed show of Jaimie Warren. Expect Sam Falls work to fly off the walls in the same way. This young MFA candidate at ICP is looking strong in a well-selected group by the gimlet-eyed Ms Bourus. In what is very much a personal visual style, Falls is still ironing out a few stray influences. But have no doubts, the work is very good and will make a splash at the upcoming AIPAD fair.

I also stopped upstairs to preview L. Parker Stephenson's Yuichi Hibi Shanghai series. It looks wonderful. This artist, who has had a vibrant publishing career with 4 highly acclaimed books from Nazraeli Press, has had scant exposure in New York Galleries. Ms Stephenson is looking to change that, and the work argues that we should see much, much more of Hibi's work. 

Tomorrow: Humble Arts at Affirmation, EFA studios, and whatever fairs I can make it to that I haven't yet seen.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Armory week, day 2. Volta, Pulse, Verge.

Feet still aching from 6 hours at the piers yesterday, I slogged back into the belly of the beast, face still black with art soot. Today's art-coalmine schedule would start with Volta, the sister-by-marriage of the Armory Show. Volta, as many of you know, has a solo show philosophy; one artist per booth. This makes for an artist friendly atmosphere, and definitely ramps up the focus on which artist the gallery chooses from their roster. I usually enjoy Volta as an experience, but find it wanting in the art satisfaction department. This year was no different. I find I am usually somewhat in the minority opinion when I poll my art friends about Volta. Again, this year was no different. Many voices I trust found this to be a satisfying, nourishing fair, so take my view with the shaker of salt it deserves.

The day as a whole yielded very little in the way of photography I felt compelled to include here. My favorite of this fair (though not without reservations) was Svätopluk Mikyta at Emannuel Walderdorff Galerie. Mr. Mikyta takes photos from found sources like yearbooks and catalogs then modifies and transforms them with various overlaying techniques. Like David Maljkovic, who I mentioned yesterday, this artist references memory (or the fading thereof) in a distinctly eastern european accent. The artist professes no political bent to the work, but it's hard for me to see them without projecting a Stalin-era veneer on those faces. I will be eager to follow this artist's career. Worth a look.
 
 Also worth a look were Roberto Pellegrinuzzi's layered photo-based works at Pierre-François Ouelette Fine Art.  Though I wish this artist would embrace a subject more suited to his layering process than landscapes, I find the work visually stimulating, and I enjoy its tension between obliterated abstraction and simple representation. The work is complex to reproduce, so it's best seen on the gallery's website.

On to Pulse Fair. Baer-Ridgway, who rarely disappoint, had photo collage work from Brion Nuda Rosch. Though they strongly recalled John Stezaker in many ways, the best examples held their own. 

My favorite photo-based work at Pulse was by Sam Messenger at Davidson Contemporary.
I loved how the artist has crammed imagery into a space but made it inaccessible in every way except as a promise. This promise would only be important to collectors and galleries which fires this wonderful tension between the images we'll never see and his promise of uniqueness and exclusivity. Great. (Click on the photos to enlarge.)

There were some other galleries at Volta showing photography, but I think you've heard me comment on them before or you've seen them yourself. The same cannot be said of Verge Fair. I have never commented in this blog on anything I saw there, and I suspect you've never seen any of the work on display. This is as it should be. That's all I'll say on the subject. Attend at your own peril.

Tomorrow: ADAA, Independent, and Scope.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Armory week, day 1. All day at the piers.

Well, we're off and running. As promised, here is installment number 1 of my personal preferences for the photographic work I saw  in my 6 hour slog through piers 92 and 94. In no particular order and without much elaboration, definition, or comment from me:

Iran do Espirito Santo had 4 photograms at Sean Kelly which were overlaid with graphite pencil. The photogram was on a mirrored surface, so the silver of the backing referred to the silver of the emulsion, which referred to the silver in the graphite. Very satisfying and a beautiful counterpoint to the mirrored wall constructions next to it by the same artist.
Jack Shainman had his usual spectacular booth. I never tire of seeing new Nick Cave soundsuits or El Anatsui wall hangings. The Rashid Rana photo construction was a bit disappointing, though. We've seen too much of this kind of computer generated photomontage, and Joan Fontcuberta still did it best.
Gallery Sfeier-Semler showed a typology easily mistaken for a Becher grid. But instead of watertowers, we were looking at Israeli watchtowers - heavily armed and fortified - by Palestinian artist, Taysir Batniji. A wonderful political twist on the flat, formal constructions of the Bechers.
 I saw some of the photo collage and video of Croat artist David Maljkovic at one of the Berlin Biennials. I was impressed and wrote a brief paragraph here in May of 2008. Galerie Georg Kargl from Vienna has a solid display of new work which continues to explore architecture and it's role in memory. Take a look. My crappy jpegs really don't communicate the work:
London's Corvi-Mora had Anne Collier's ongoing exploration of representations of the eye. The work continues to speak to me and impress.

Zeno-X from Antwerp had a few Dirk Braeckmans. These photos break no new ground, but I always love to see them.
 
 Barbara Probst was the principal photo artist at Murray Guy, but there was also an intriguing series from Moyra Davey(whose work deserves wider play). I have not always been a fan of Probst's work, but she continues to grow within her practice of multiple perspectives from multiple cameras fired simultaneously. I liked these especially:
 Galerie Filomena Soares had a few examples from Helena Almeida. I love many of the explorations this artist creates with photos, but this was not high on my list. Still, an artist not seen enough in the US.

Seventeen Gallery was showing Graham Dolphin which is not strictly photographic but a personal favorite. On the photo front, they had Abigail Reynolds' collages; manipulated constructions made of found pages from guide books and atlases. She successfully breaks the 2 dimensional plane of a photograph while simultaneously traversing multiple moments of time. Great work.

If more proof were needed that San Francisco has a vibrant gallery scene, Altman Siegel would be fine evidence. Trevor Paglen's cosmic musings (introduced to me by Becky Smith of the departed Bellwether Gallery) and Matt Keegan's photo deletions were both examples of the excellent program at this gallery. Sorry, no pics.

Last and by no means least I would like to praise Sicardi Gallery from Houston. Year after year this gallery puts together a remarkable booth with spectacular examples from Latin America especially the op-artists. Leon Ferrari, Jesus Rafael Soto, and Carlos Cruz-Diez are particular favorites of mine, but there were others as well. On the photographic front, I was introduced to the modernist work of Geraldo de Barros. The negatives date from the 50s and are made from visually arresting combinations of photogram, negative manipulation, and reflection. Unfortunately, these were not vintage prints, but perhaps this can be forgiven in the cause of wider posthumous distribution for a neglected artist. If I'm the only one who hasn't heard of him (I hope so!), then I'll enjoy my new, personal find. If he's new to you, too, check it out. Great work.

 
Tomorrow, Volta and whatever other fairs I can cover. Comments and additions welcome.