“Waterskiing”, 2008, 36” x 46”, archival pigment print on rag paper

During the brushfires of 2008-09, when anyone who could stayed indoors, Youngsuk Suh (or “Young” as he is known among colleagues) was outside with a 4 x 5 film camera, recording images of places throughout the West that were engulfed in flames. Through the smoky haze, he photographed not only the visible features of the landscape, but also people in various pursuits of leisure and labor: bathing, hiking, boating, rafting and firefighting.

Contrary to appearances, these pictures are not part of an explicit environmental treatise.  Rather, they are an attempt to get us to question received notions of landscape.  Using the visual conceit of smoke, Young attempts to re-frame a variety of ideas about nature and culture that have run throughout American history.  These range from the romantic impulse of Hudson River School painters to the socially engaged WPA-era pictures of Walker Evans, and from the fiercely polemical works of Robert Adams to the more open-ended existential studies of Richard Misrach.  It’s also safe to say, given the preponderance of smoky vistas, that the artist’s Korean heritage and the traditions of Asian landscape painting play an equally strong role in this project.

“Gas Station”, 2008, 36” x 46”, archival pigment print on rag paper

As such, Wildfires is a conversation across history that, without asserting a singular viewpoint, touches on the ways American landscape is used, abused, perceived and enjoyed.  Irony, alienation, majesty and an inverted sense of the sublime infuse the dozen medium-sized (36 x 46”) photos on view.  Their most distinguishing feature, apart from a persistent scrim, is the peculiar quality of the foliage: it has a fuzzy, almost pointillist texture that lends the images a physical presence that would otherwise be absent.  As for people, you really have to look to find them, and in the screen views you see here, they are difficult to locate. Nevertheless, they and their surrogates (animals and signs) are the content bearers in these images.

Squirrel, shot from a deserted vista point, shows the animal staring back at the camera with a “What, me worry?” expression, mocking Edward Abbey’s warning about the dangers of what he called “industrial tourism”.  Gas Station, which has one of those machine-powered inflatable figures cowering in the background, feels like a scene created by extraterrestrials with a taste for clever graphics.  The lone gas pump in the picture carries one of those colorful “eco-friendly” logos that corporate polluters use in magazine ads to assure us they’re the good guys.  Taken two years ago, before the BP fiasco, it feels prescient.

“Cigarette”, 2009, 36” x 46”; “Coffee”, 2009, 36” x 46”, both archival pigment print on rag paper

Others, like Cigarette and Coffee employ the kind of simple ironies that have been staples of American street photography since Walker Evans.  The first shows a firefighter in the midst of a smoke-filled scene dragging on a cigarette; the second is of a small roadside billboard for coffee.  The heat of the beverage is represented by orange flames, a case of advertising foretelling real-life disaster.

“Conversation”, 2009, 36” x 46”, archival pigment print on rag paper

All of this falls squarely into the New Topographics mode, a style of image making that originated the ‘70s and focused on the impact of development.  Conversation is a photo of a parched desert landscape with three people walking along a sandy, tree-lined trail.  At the top right of the picture we see a series of sprawling, low-slung concrete buildings, one of which is a Costco.  Seeing these elements in the same frame feels slightly surreal and yet they stand as resolute facts — one of the hallmarks the New Topographics movement.

Elsewhere, Young explores the notion of the sublime as it was conceived by Hudson River School painters like Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, and Frederick Church and the German romantic Caspar David Friedrich. Their impulse was to glorify nature by presenting it as something we could conquer and bask in.  Later, photographers adopted similar techniques to promote tourism.  But there was also a spiritual aspect, which Young, through the pictorial scrim of smoke, evokes to question the equation of nature and godliness. He does this by shooting nearly all of his people scenes (Bathers and a Dog, Bathers under a Bridge and Rafting) from high angles so that they are dwarfed by their surroundings.  The result is an upending of a historic dynamic: Where the romantic painters made nature the object of an omnipotent gaze, Young, in the manner of Misrach, puts his attentuated subjects inside the picture, asserting that nature holds the upper hand.

“Bathers under Bridge”, 2008, 36” x 46”, archival pigment print on rag paper

Scale and camera angle are not the only things that draw us into these pictures.  Given the toxicity of the air, one wonders if the people in Young’s pictures are real or whether the photographer inserted them after-the-fact.  (The artist assures that the pictures are, in fact, “straight”; the only exceptions are instances where he overlaid multiple negatives to add more people to scenes than actually appeared in any single frame.)

Young doesn’t reinvent New Topographics, but he does give it a fresh spin. By showing people operating in the face of disaster as if nothing unusual were occurring, he gives us a psychological portrait of the American West that is both unsettling and true to life.

–DAVID M. ROTH

Youngsuk Suh, Wildfires @ Haines Gallery through August 20, 2010. 

“Cover”: Bather at Sunset, 2009, 36 x 47 inches, archival pigment print on rag paper

"You Would If You Loved Me", 2010, acrylic and collage on cut paper, 94-inch diameter

For a painter, Reed Anderson is pretty clever with razor blades.  His obsessive paper works, which are both additive and subtractive, are distinguished by thousands of small, geometrically shaped holes.  These appear in various guises: in hand-cut bits of the paper ground that are removed to form negative shapes; in pieces that are hand-painted and collaged; and in spray painted, stenciled shapes that appear on the same ground from which they were cut.

Anderson’s pieces undergo a lot of surgery before they reach completion.  In the wall-sized piece, Nuppet Tree, the 86" x 90" sheet of paper has not only been cut and punched with patterns of hundreds of holes of various crisp, clean geometric shapes; it has been glued, airbrushed and brush painted, splashed with a drip of gloss medium here and marked in colored pencil there. It is also creased by stenciling actions, marked by scuffs and stains in places, and poked with an array of thumbtack holes at the corners. This evidence of manhandling brings to mind the presence and gesture of the artist’s body so characteristic of action painting; yet Anderson’s work appears to be highly nuanced — marked more by the fine motor skills of craft, than by the gross flailing glorified by Pollock or de Kooning.

"Nuppet Tree", 2009-2010, acrylic, airbrush and collage on cut paper, 84 x 90 inches

Bay Area artists such as Val Britton and Queena Hernandez, and Portland-based Anna Fidler use finely cut paper as a distinctive element in their painting.  Anderson occupies a similar space, but his work is unique in that it employs paper as both a medium and a tool.  The cut holes in his flamboyant, biology-inspired works function not only as patterns unto themselves; but also as a stencil for airbrushing patterns onto other parts of his pieces.

Take the show’s title piece, You Would If You Loved Me.  From across a room it reads like a giant doily.  This eight-foot circle of paper is cut and punched till there is almost as much paper missing as there is present.  Painted in tones ranging from violet to cadmium red, it delivers, against a white ground, a floral, leafy pattern defined by slices, folds, cuts and airbrushed “paint-throughs”.  At close range, unfolds kaleidoscopically, bringing to mind a porous, web-like membrane or the structure of bone marrow.  It might also be likened to fractals, except that Anderson claims to have little knowledge of the subject apart from what he gleans from scientific magazines and journals.  He is, however, is inspired by the idea of autopoietic systems.

Although fractals are autopoeitic, I should score one for my biomorphic interpretation, since the term autopoiesis was coined by biologists to describe living systems that self-propagate, like cells.  Better still, leave behind the “what-does-it-look-like" game that seems such an irresistible way to speak about abstraction.  Anderson’s work functions beyond a mimesis of any type of imagery.  It operates on its own principles, revealing the logic and process of its making.

L to R: "Pinko Salad", 2010, acrylic on cut paper, 29 x 27 inches; "It Was So Romantic…", 2010, acrylic and spray-paint on cut magazine, 10.5 x 8.5 inches

"I enjoy seeing all the history within the materiality of the paper." Anderson explains. "Each crease is a sign of a place or happening…each patch another mark within the complex palimpsest that becomes the finished work." The result has stunning visual texture at close view.

Throughout Anderson’s works, tensions between the obsessive, intentional cuts and the coarsely painted strokes and the incidental rough-ups have a slow-breaking effect.  Distinct layers and processes continue to reveal themselves: The positive shapes removed from the holes are re-applied elsewhere as collage materials. Color is painted in thin rims around the edges of some holes but brushed broadly over others, and stenciled through in other places.

"Good for Business 2", 2010, acrylic on paper, 26.75 x 25.75 inches

Look closely at piece like Nuppet Tree and you find even more dimensions unfolding. This "tree" has its own tensions: the marks defining its "branches" — rectangular strips painted in fully saturated primaries, secondaries and solid blacks — couldn’t be more jolting.  Against these, the floral clusters of punched-hole patterns seem improbably delicate. The whimsy of the word "Nuppet" suits this picture perfectly.

Elsewhere, several works built from magazine pages (It Was So Romantic, One for Joseph and others) are less successful, largely because the juxtapositions of text and images against the artist’s marks don’t function as cogently as the marks do alone. The works on plain paper are already rich with layers whose internal tensions are compelling.

Thus, the beauty of Anderson’s works lies in how they progressively reveal themselves at different viewing distances.  The first of these is the Internet image – how they appear online.  Some artists’ efforts don’t register through a 72 dpi screen image; Anderson’s caught my attention even there. From that point, through my first scan of the gallery, to my journey through the distressed topography of each piece, my time was well spent.  You can, of course, take the virtual view, but if you really want to understand what Reed Anderson is saying, you must see his work in-person.

–LIESA LIETZKE

Reed Anderson: You Would If You Loved Me @ Gregory Lind Gallery, SF, through July 10, 2010.

“Cover”: Detail: You Would If You Loved Me

At Fort Mason in SF: $300M worth of art from more 500 artists represented by 80 galleries.  Photo: DeWitt Cheng

In the fall of 1947 a New York art instructor teaching at the California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute), wrote to an artist friend: “The city is unspeakably beautiful & the weather is perfect …There is no doubt that by its visual attributes alone this city has earned the right to be the art center of the world, and that we must do something to bring this about.”

LA Gallerist Louis Stern with Karl Benjamin’s "#7" from 1966.  (DC)

Professor Mark Rothko certainly understood San Francisco’s appeal; but his love of our landscape didn’t stop him from returning to New York after his stint at SFIA.  Fact is, San Francisco, for all its great vistas and year-around mild climate, has never been a great art market and probably never will be due to its small population.

Nevertheless, the pool of Bay Area art talent has always been deep.  One longstanding explanation for the discrepancy between art and commerce in this region is that we are too nature-obsessed; or perhaps the views from our couches (or beaches) are too good to need accessorizing with art.

Last week, however, locals got a jolt of art-world adrenaline when the SF Fine Art Fair (May 20-23) came to town, filling up the 50,000 square feet of the Festival Pavilion on the bay at Fort Mason. It’s the same venue that housed the San Francisco International Art Expo from 1998 through 2006 before running into financial problems; so attendees were both thrilled by the new fair (a production of Hamptons Expo Group which runs fairs in Bridgehampton, NY, in July, and in Aspen, CO, in August), and cautiously optimistic, seeking good omens in bad times.

Chatting up a prospective buyer.  Photo: David M. Roth

Good omens came in the form of $300 million worth of works by more than 500 artists from some 80 galleries, hailing from New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Santa Fe, Denver, Chicago, Sacramento, Charlotte, Seoul, London, Berlin and Venice.  Big-name artists included: Diane Arbus, Charles Arnoldi, Romare Bearden, Ross Bleckner, Charles Burchfield, Roger Brown, Jess Collins, Bruce Conner, Robert Cottingham, Richard Diebenkorn, Eric Fischl, Janet Fish, Sam Francis, Robert Frank, Helen Frankenthaler, Ellsworth Kelly, Jacob Lawrence, Jack Levine, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Mapplethorpe, Shirin Neshat, David Park, Martin Puryear, Ed Ruscha, Laurie Simmons, Kiki Smiith, Masami Teraoka, Wayne Thiebaud and Peter Voulkos.  Their works, along with pieces from 475 other artists were spaciously arranged and well-lighted under the Pavilion’s lofty roof in near-perfect art-viewing conditions.

Opening VIP gala drew more than 3,000 people. (DR)

Even the best flaneurs, or art strollers, need a break, however, and the fair offered a variety of programs and events to those in need of a chair.  Pioneer gallerist Ruth Braunstein, whose Braunstein/Quay Gallery celebrates 50 years representing such artists as Peter Voulkos, John Altoon, Robert Brady, Richard Shaw, Ursula Schneider, Mary Snowden and Michael Stevens, was honored at a special ceremony with a Lifetime Achievement Award; her charity project ArtCare, a collaboration between the San Francisco Arts Commission, the San Francisco Art Dealers Association, will fund the badly needed maintenance of the city’s public sculpture.

Gallerist from Sundaram Tagore (NYC/LA) speaking about artist Kim Joon. (DR)

Braunstein, when handed the microphone at the event, didn’t cast a reflective look on her half century in the art business; instead, she appealed for donations to ArtCare and received, on the spot, a $10,000 check from art patron and philanthropist Roselyne “Cissy” Swig.

The West Coast Art Collector’s Conference, consisting of 14 panel discussions emceed by Squarecylinder’s David M. Roth, offered tips on collecting sculpture, prints and photographs; framing; appraisals; how to buy art as an investment; the modernist art of India; how galleries pick their artists; the media’s impact on the marketplace and other topics.

Attendance, which was plagued by a malfunctioning sound system, ranged from full-house (media and the marketplace; how galleries pick artists) to moderate (Indian Modernism ) to practically nil (framing) — a shame since Paul Porambo of SF-based Fine Art Services, brought more imagination to the subject than one would have thought possible.  

Special exhibits included a huge digital, interactive robotic sculpture, “Inflatable Architectural Growth,” by Chico MacMurtrie, in conjunction with San Jose’s Zero1 Biennial in September, and solo exhibition booths for five artists: John Altoon (Braunstein Quay Gallery, SF), Joachim Hiller (Walter Bischoff Galerie, Berlin), Klari Reis (Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London), Jenn Shifflet (Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, Oakland), and Jeff Wallin (Patrajdas Contemporary, Chicago).

Ruth Braunstein and Cissy Swig.  (DR)

The Bay Area art audience responded affirmatively, with 15,000 visitors participating in the four-day event. The Thursday night kickoff, a benefit for the San Francisco Art Institute (Rothko’s old employer, which was exhibiting work by its new MFA grads next door) turned out to be a tribal gathering of Bay Area art-worlders—with five times as many celebrants as the fair producers had expected.

The following morning, Hamptons Expo Group CEO and Founder Rick Friedman (himself a major collector of Abstract Expressionist art) enthused: “There’s a tremendous amount of interest in the show; a turnout of 3,000 VIPs that came in for the opening night—that’s extraordinary, in any fair in America…there are a lot of red dots, a lot of sales, some in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  This will blossom; it will be even better next year.” He praised the high quality of the work: “There really aren’t any weak spots on the floor. This is the only show I’ve seen in a long time that’s strong, front, middle and back.”

Director of Sales Max Fishko was similarly optimistic on Sunday afternoon as closing time approached: “We’re very interested in seeing the Bay Area become not only a national destination, but an international destination for the kind of art tourism you see centered around really successful art fairs — Art Chicago, Art Basel Miami Beach, the Armory Fair in New York.”

Just as important as the fairs’ “multiplying effect” in galvanizing new collectors and stimulating the market, however, are its psychological benefits to local artists, galleries, and museums: “The energy that an event like this can bring to an art market— it’s kind of a demonstration or show of force: ‘This is alive and well and you need to come here and pay attention to it.’  We all know how the wheels [of commerce] turn, but this is really a socially benevolent kind of activity.”

Whether the fair grows and thrives will depend on sales and whatever ancillary benefits accrue between now and next year.  So far, the views from most of the participating galleries have been favorable, notwithstanding various glitches including a malfunction sound system, limited food options and catalogue errors.

Here, below, is a sampling of reactions from gallerists:

Ruth Braunstein (Braunstein/Quay Gallery, San Francisco):“I felt the fair had a lot of energy, whether you like the work or not. The work was not that adventurous—not anything you can’t see somewhere else. I don’t think that dealers made a lot of money, but there were huge crowds. A lot of the local people that you never see came, and attendance stayed pretty constant for the whole three and a half days. Fairs are very expensive, and people are tired of fairs. I don’t think it should be done every year—maybe every other year [alternating with Los Angeles].”

Katrina Traywick (Traywick Contemporary, Berkeley): “Art fairs are now an established way of doing business, especially for dealers that are not in larger art markets like New York or Los Angeles… I am very pleased with the energy, the crowds and the sales from SFFAF 2010.  It will take some time to establish it as a solid, regional fair but this can be done. And it is a terrific antidote to the overcrowded and sometimes overblown mega-fairs in Miami and New York. It will take additional advertising and outreach both in the Bay Area as well as in other major West Coast cities:  Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle etc.”

Peter Fetterman (Peter Fetterman Gallery, Santa Monica): “San Francisco is one of the great cities in the world, so in terms of an art fair destination it has so much going for it.  Fort Mason, with its views, natural light and proximity to Greens Take Out makes it very user-friendly for us art fair warriors.  There was good, positive energy all round and a genuine will to see it succeed.  However, it’s really imperative that the opening night have a real sense of occasion. Here the organizers perhaps have to do some real subtle social networking and align themselves with a group that can deliver a well-heeled, sophisticated and seriously interested audience. This is hard to do from the East Coast, but it is the key to the show’s survival and growth. We look forward to hearing about new, positive developments so we can clear our schedule and continue to believe, like Annie, that "the sun will come up tomorrow."

Catharine Clark (Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco): “There were 15,000 people in attendance and that in and of itself was impressive and helped to keep energy and spirits high (for gallerists, collectors and patrons). The gallery sold work and met some people that we did not know going into the fair—the main reason to participate in any fair. The layout of the fair was clean and contemporary looking (no carpets—yes!); the collaboration with ZER01 was innovative and impressive. The outreach to the public was beyond expectation. The sound [and signage need to] … be improved upon next year…. I’d like to see more contemporary galleries participating from the far reaches of the globe.” CCG will attend next year and recommends that others do so, too. On the poor media coverage: “I find it scandalous that the Chronicle did not feel obligated to cover an event that 15,000 San Franciscans thought was important enough to show up to.”

George Krevsky (George Krevsky Gallery, San Francisco) concurs on the media being missing in action: “There was absolutely NO coverage in the SF Chronicle or West Coast NY Times, or TV coverage. Press in general was terrible.” He points out the absence of many blue-chip galleries: “This [fair] has some promise but I was disappointed with the number of qualified collectors who attended.” 

Kimberly Johansson (Johansson Projects, Oakland): “My experience at the fair was unexpectedly good. Most of the folks I placed work with were new. They had heard of the gallery but had never made the trip over the bridge to see it in person. I think it could be even better next year if we could attract some strong galleries from afar and market to collectors out of the region and perhaps also plan more events for travelers.”

Beth Jones (JAYJAY, Sacramento): “It was thrilling to be part of the revival of the art fair in San Francisco.  The venue couldn’t be better and the turnout could not have been stronger.  Sales did not meet our expectations. But on the plus side, the relationships we built with new collectors – those I believe will ultimately bear fruit. Is there room for improvement?  Yes, there is.  The panel discussions need to be focused on contemporary issues, not generic topics, and the food and concessions need to be more upscale; collectors need to be pampered and rewarded for showing up.  Small glitches aside, this was a high-caliber event.

Louis Stern (Louis Stern Fine Arts, West Hollywood) “Sales and contacts are our major register of how well any art fair has functioned, and with regard to sales we were pleased, or at least cautiously optimistic, with the results.  In terms of contacts and conversations, I was consistently impressed with the level of interest and knowledge demonstrated by the attendees.  It has been my experience that the real test of the viability of the contacts made during any fair is determined in the following six months.  How many of these folks will actually visit our website to check out our inventory or swing by the gallery when they journey to LA?  How many of these folks will actually contact the gallery and become our clients in the months to come?  That’s the real question.”

Michael Rosenthal (Michael Rosenthal Gallery, San Francisco): “The San Francisco Fine Art Fair was a welcome jolt to the San Francisco art world in scope, ambition and the range of things it gives you to think about.  However, it is disappointing that out of 48 San Francisco art galleries, only 18 actually participated.”

William Havu (William Havu Gallery, Denver) “I was delighted with the venue at Fort Mason.  What a view!  I was also delighted with the overall quality of the exhibitors and what they brought.The fair organizers, Hamptons Expo Group did a great job in turning out the audience and promoting the event and, though I did not get an opportunity to attend any of the discussions, thought that having them added an extra dimension. We did manage to sell seven pieces, all paintings and all relatively small which didn’t pay the overhead, but it was better than we had done two years ago at RedDot during Art Basel/Miami. That fair was held at an unfortunate time economically and even though I don’t think things are a great deal better, there has been improvement.  I would certainly do this fair again next year.  Everyone was having fun looking and appreciating the art if not actually buying.  It gave me hope and made me smile.”

Susan O’Malley (Curator and Print Center Director Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose) “As a non-profit art space we were satisfied with the exposure and level of awareness we raised at the Fair. Ultimately, we are happy and encouraged that San Francisco hosted a modern/contemporary fair which we hope will become a catalyst for generating an important discussion about the Bay Area art ecosystem going forward. We’re excited about the possibilities and understand that it takes a village.”

Whether gallerists did good business or missed their goals, one thing appears clear: If the results of our informal and (and admittedly nonscientific) opinion poll continue to hold, many dealers will be back next year, expecting a more polished second year and better times as the recession (hopefully) fades.  They will be evaluating the role of art fairs and the role of San Francisco in the international market, holding in the balance Rothko’s dream of a Bay Area art utopia.  

Hamptons’ Max Fishko: “It’s a tough economy. It’s a rough moment to be taking risks. “We took a risk to come out here to do it and we were lucky enough to find people willing to take the risks with us.”

–DEWITT CHENG

The San Francisco Fine Art Fair ran May 20-23, 2010 at Fort Mason.