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Come October, The Met will probably declare “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” exhibition their most visited ever. Those who have seen it in person, battled the phone-wielding crowds for that mandatory photograph will certainly agree that it will not be an exaggeration. The expansive installation of more than 150 ensembles ranges from elaborate wedding gowns, gem-encrusted capes and bolero jackets, to an armor dress Jeanne d’Arc would have on her wish board.

Thom Browne. Wedding Ensemble, spring/summer 2018. White silk organza,white nylon tulle, embroidered white silk thread, gold bullion, pearls, crystals, clear glass, and mother-of-pearl, white mink. “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”. ©Kristina Nazarevskaia for galleryIntell

List of designers featured in this show reads like the “Who is Who” of haute couture: Valentino, Giorgio Armani, Christian Lacroix, Dolce and Gabbana, John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Jean Paul Gaultier, Lanvin, Chanel, House of Dior, Rodarte, Versace, Philip Treacy, and others. What unites them is the shared Catholic upbringing. Frankly, it’s hard to imagine Lagerfeld,  Gaultier or Galliano as pious church going folk, but for the sake of this gorgeous show, let’s pretend they are the confession-types.

Rodarte. Ensembles, 2011. Gold metallic silk satin trimmed with beige feathers, embroidered gold metal paillettes, wire, beads, and gold metallic ribbon. “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”. ©Kristina Nazarevskaia for galleryIntell

Valentino SpA. Autumn/winter 2016-2016. Haute Couture. Black wool, black silk velvet and satin, nylon tulle, and appliquéd wool gabardine. “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”. ©Kristina Nazarevskaia for galleryIntell

The exhibition extends across two of the Metropolitan Museum’s three buildings. It starts at the main building on 5th Avenue and continues in The Cloisters, the tucked away medieval structure in Fort Tryon Park in Uptown Manhattan. What makes this a worthwhile exploration is not just the colorful visual journey (think of the surreal Comme des Garçons or the lusciously seductive Alexander McQueen shows). What makes this exhibition worth seeing several times is that Andrew Bolton and his curatorial staff installed each dress (or a grouping) in a dialogue with the religious work that inspired its creation. So as you meander  from gown to gown, pay close attention to the statues, altars, draperies, and paintings near the mannequins. Signs around the gowns will point you to the relevant work of art .

Ricardo Tisci. Ensemble, autumn/winter 2005-06. Black silk jersey, white cotton poplin, embroidered glass stones. “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”. ©Kristina Nazarevskaia for galleryIntell

While you’re in the main building make sure to visit the Costume Institute’s lower level galleries where the “real jewels” are. Bolton and his team not only saved us a trip to The Vatican, but managed to bring to New York several exquisite Papal vestments (robes and accessories) that have never before left The Vatican. The workmanship on these pieces is breathtaking. In the hands of the craftsmen each thread comes to life, each object gains dimension.

Embroidered Papal dresses and coats shimmer and glow with unparalleled beauty. You can’t help but think, how is it possible to create something so beautiful with something so simple as a silk thread and a needle? Of course, we’ve all seen exquisite embroidery but trust me when I tell you that this is on a …. “celestial” level.

Unfortunately, by choosing to replace hi-resolution photographs of these gowns with scanned composites, the exhibition catalogue fails to capture the true beauty and dimension of each piece. You’re better off skipping the book and spending more time at the show.

Rodarte. Ensembles, 2011. Gold metallic silk satin trimmed with beige feathers, embroidered gold metal paillettes, wire, beads, and gold metallic ribbon. “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”. ©Kristina Nazarevskaia for galleryIntell

Mugler. Ensemble, autumn/winter 1984–85. Ivory silk taffeta and gold-painted feathers. “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”. ©Kristina Nazarevskaia for galleryIntell

From the Met: “Heavenly Bodies features the work of designers who for the most part were raised in the Roman Catholic tradition. While their current relationships to Catholicism vary, most acknowledge its enduring influence on their imaginations. On the surface, this influence is expressed through explicit Catholic imagery and symbolism as well as references to specific garments worn by the clergy and religious orders. On a deeper level, it manifests as a reliance on storytelling, and specifically on metaphor—which the sociologist Andrew Greeley describes as the essential characteristic of a particular sensibility he defines as “the Catholic imagination.”

This exhibition explores how the Catholic imagination has shaped the creativity of designers and how it is conveyed through their narrative impulses. These impulses are reflected in the organization of the exhibition, which unfolds as a series of short stories told through conversations between religious artworks in The Met collection and fashions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Catholic imagination also operates on an experiential level, and, accordingly, the show’s configuration evokes the concept and practice of a pilgrimage.”

The exhibition is on view until October 8, 2018 and if you pay full price admission on your first trip you can use your ticket for the next 3 days to visit the other Met locations!

This article and video © galleryIntell

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“I see in nature and in the best of humanity an incredible beauty; but I also see in our technology and aggression a will and ability to destroy that beauty, either actively or inadvertently … I paint to try to make people think of the fragility in which we exist.” – Morgan Bulkeley 

Morgan Bulkeley, ‘Blackpoll Warbler, Red-cockaded Woodpecker, Barnacle Goose Mask’, 2014. Image © Morgan Bulkeley

American artist Morgan Bulkeley has spent a life time exploring humanity’s impact on the environment, the perilous state of nature and the corporate agenda of promoting mass consumption that lies at the core of the increasing threat to wildlife and humanity itself.

Bulkeley has been described as the ‘The Hieronymus Bosch of the Berkshires‘. His superbly detailed and emotional paintings can be seen as modern-day calls to action for protecting the world around us. The wonderfully prolific artist, who communicates his vision through a variety of media, including sculpture, hand carved masks, paintings on canvas, gouache and watercolors on paper, and even short video, made advocating for the natural world the main focus of his narratives. It is through these poignant visual statements that Morgan Bulkeley, a soft-spoken, yet deeply passionate painter has constructed whole series of “sentences”. We sat down with Morgan Bulkeley to talk about his paintings and what informs his work visually.

Morgan Bulkeley: “Most of my paintings are about a war between culture and nature and they really are about what is dominant, what is happening in our culture and in the world today. And the way I see it there are just so many sad tales of abuses to air, water, earth. Many of these things are produced by corporate interests and people doing things without really thinking what is the effect?

Morgan Bulkeley, ‘Black-crowned Night-heron Mask’, 2013. Image © Morgan Bulkeley

Philip Guston really, was huge in my mind. I saw a show of his, probably in 1975, at the Whitney Museum of American Art and in that show I saw a piece that was probably 8 feet long and 5 feet tall and, basically, it was a line across the middle of the painting and the top half was sort of a dark green and the bottom was kind of a pearly grey. When I saw the piece, I didn’t know what it was. I felt like crying and I looked at it and I must have sat there for 15 minutes just staring at this piece. It was a transformation for me really to feel that intensity. And I began to really, think about his work a lot more after that and, really, that’s what kind of pushed me toward looking for a way to paint figures that weren’t specific.

I think of it as almost a mouse chewing on a bone, it’s like chewing and making little marks and building it up. Mine is much more agitated, anxiety-ridden, I guess. I think of it as little marks that are kind of almost shaking, your hand shaking or something.

I was an English major and read an awful lot of literature in my earlier days. There are too many stories to tell and there always will be.

Morgan Bulkeley, ‘American Golden Plover Mask’, 2014. Image © Morgan Bulkeley

One of the things that’s happened with my work is that I’ll do a piece and it gets so dense and complicated and kind of intricate, entangled really, and it feels like you can’t even move through it. Often after that it will feel like I have to do a piece that is more open, that has a clarity and a sense of possibility, of movement in it. I find that often pieces really suggest the next piece. So there’s been a kind of a natural progression for me in terms of seeing where I’m going by looking back at where I’ve just been.

The artist has had solo exhibitions at the Berkshire Museum in 1973 and in 2012. The 2017 50-year retrospective will offer viewers a complete look at his distinguished and prolific career. A catalog to accompany the retrospective is available starting September 2017.

Exhibition dates at the Berkshire Museum:

September 29, 2017 through February 4, 2018

Opening Reception with the Artist

This article © galleryIntell

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Collecting anything is about bearing witness to the process and development of a chosen topic or an object. Essentially collecting catalogues history through the objects one selects. It is a process where the collector is fully engaged with the artists and essentially becomes an active participant in the creative dialogue. This exchange, this conversation ultimately benefits all sides, and dealers are often essential in fostering this relationship between artists, their art, and collectors. We spoke to Edwynn Houk, founder and owner of Edwynn Houk Gallery, about AIPAD, The Photography Show, about what types of people attend the art fair, and what collectors should consider when buying art. Below is the transcript of our conversation.

Edwynn Houk: “It’s a wonderful opportunity to meet the entire field; to look at the work from some of the youngest galleries to some of the oldest and most established; to meet the owners of the gallery. To have conversations and get the opinion of a lot of the leaders of the field in photography, which is a very different perspective then one would maybe get from an auction house, which is handling what passes through their doors and is limited to that, whereas the galleries have made personal decisions: this is the artist I want to show, this is the work of theirs I want to present.

Eleanor Carucci, ‘Love’, 2009. Edwynn Houk Gallery, AIPAD. Courtesy the artist and Edwynn Houk Gallery

Edwynn Houk: The kind of people who attend an AIPAD fair contrast very sharply with our experience at all the other fairs. It’s really the most serious of collectors, the highest level of quality and, obviously, exclusively focused on photography. The audience has a very high representation of museum curators and collectors who come in person. Also, there’s more discovery, there’s more to learn by being there in person.

Edwynn Houk: Don’t collect as an investment. One should collect work that you want to live with, that you find enriching, that you like looking at all the time. Also if you are spending a considerable amount of money, it also makes sense that you’d like to know the reputation of the artist, their standing, that it’s a major talent, someone who has a real role in the history of the medium.

Andreas Meichsner, #12 aus der Serie ‘Willkommen im Club’, Robert Morat Galerie, AIPAD. Courtesy the artist and Robert Morat Gallery

Edwynn Houk: What I find very interesting about one of the areas really being explored recently is the renewal in interest in antique processes, whether it’s collodion printing, daguerreotypes and different forms of that but adapting it to very contemporary world, a contemporary esthetic. So someone like Vera Lutter using camera obscura, but taking pictures that are just hauntingly modern or Sally Mann doing collodion plates where her re-creation of the technique includes quite a few flaws. She hadn’t perfected it like the 19th century photographers but she didn’t expect to and embraces as though to make it part of the image. Or someone like Adam Fuss with daguerreotypes. At the same time, that other people are experimenting with the computer and scanning negatives, digitizing, making small to, sometimes, very large manipulation in it. So the public, unless they are very knowledgeable in photography, really needs some information, some education as to what is altered by computer, in a very modern sense, or what is very basic photo optics and technique.

Edwynn Houk: We like to have something new if we can. If we represent a photographer that would be a great opportunity to really announce it, to the public and to show whatever body of work we’re going to kick it off with. If we have major works of historical importance; we’d certainly bring it there more than any other fair.”

Maurizio Galimberti, ‘Casa di Leon Trotsky… studio, Città del Messico, ottobre 2002’, polaroid, Paci Contemporary AIPAD. Courtesy the artist and Paci Contemporary.

This interview was conducted in partnership with AIPAD.

The Edwynn Houk Gallery was founded in 1980. Since its inception, the gallery has specialized in vintage photographs from 1917-1939 by the leading figures of the Modernist movement. The gallery has mounted over 200 exhibitions and published more than a dozen monographs.

Houk Gallery has served as the exclusive representative of the Estates of Brassaï, Bill Brandt, Dorothea Lange, André Kertész, Ilse Bing, and the Robert Frank Archive. Beginning with exclusive representation of Sally Mann in 1989, the Edwynn Houk Gallery has acted as the sole agent for a select group of leading contemporary photographers, including Robert Polidori, Lalla Essaydi, Annie Leibovitz and Abelardo Morell.

In 2010, on the occasion of its 30th anniversary, the gallery opened a second location in Zürich. 

Mr. Houk has served on the Board of Directors for ADAA, Paris Photo, AIPAD, and on the Selection Committee for Art Basel and Paris Photo.

Edwynn Houk Gallery is a member of AIPAD. The gallery is located at 745 Fifth Avenue New York, NY

The Photography Show March 29th – April 2nd, 2017 at its new location on Pier 94, New York.

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It really is all about scale. We want our technology smaller, and at the same time we want to be able to interact with images on a larger, more life-like scale. So cameras are getting smaller, printers are getting larger and artists like Ed Burtynsky, Martin Usborne, Massimo Vitali, and Scarlett Hooft Graafland are now able to create images on a more monumental scale. Thanks to innovations in digital, photographers are now able to work on the scale Abstract Expressionists first adopted in the 1940’s and 1950’s. And it makes a difference.

We sat down with Howard Greenberg, founder and owner of one of the most influential and prominent fine photography galleries in the US, to talk about the origins and evolution of landscape photography, the importance of skilled print making, and how our expectations of landscape photography have changed over the years and decades since Andre Giroux, Eugene Atget, Gustave Le Gray, Ansel Adams and Edward Weston first printed their images. Howard, who really is one of the most engaging and charismatic people we’ve ever had the pleasure of talking to, opened up a whole new world that only an expert like himself would ever be privy to.

And if you think of landscape photography and large scale landscape photography the name that instantly comes to mind is Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky is a star in his own right and has been featured in many illustrious print and digital publications. Ed is a master of melding reality and abstraction, often producing mesmerizing aerial views that read like a Helen Frankenthaler, Conrad Marca-relli, or a Jack Tworkov colorfield painting. In November Burtynsky’s newest images were shown simultaneously at two major NYC galleries: Howard Greenberg Gallery and Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery.

Salt Pan #16, ‘Little Rann of Kutch Gujarat’, 2016. Chromogenic Color Print. © Ed Burtynsky. Courtesy the artist and Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York. AIPAD

Burtynsky is the recipient of the ICP Infinity Award for Art (2008), the Rogers Best Documentary Film Award (2006), the inaugural TED Prize (2005), the Dialogue of Humanity Award at Rencontres d’Arles (2004), and the Roloff Beny Book Award (2003).  In 2006, he was awarded the title of Officer of the Order of Canada, and holds six honorary doctorate degrees. Burtynsky was recently commissioned to create an immense permanent installation of photographs at the National Holocaust Monument of Canada.

Howard Greenberg: “It’s that way in every art fair including AIPAD. I’m always surprised that there are collectors who collect exactly what we have in the gallery who I’ve never met before.

Howard Greenberg: I came through the door being a photographer. I loved beautiful print making. When I look at photographs in galleries or museums, that’s what turned me on. I love the sense of photography as vision and craft. You know you make the picture and then the craftsmanship that you put into making the print, creates the final photograph.

Beth Moon, ‘Shebehon Forest’, 2010. Courtesy the artist and Vision Neil Folberg Gallery, Jerusalem. AIPAD

Ed Burtynsky: With Weston it was that ability to take the ordinary and elevate it to the extra-ordinary, in a way as a painter would look at a blank canvas and how do you fill it and how do you make every square inch of it intentional. So I was heavily influenced by Robert Adams and Baltz, and [Frank] Gohlke, and Joe Deal, and the ability to begin to look at landscape. Not just as an esthetic exploration but as a critique that there’s something else being told. AIPAD has a more select audience that appreciates photography and understands the history of photography.

Edward Burtynsky, ‘Rice Terraces #4, Western Yunnan Province’, China, 2012 Chromogenic color print on Kodak Endura Premier Paper. Printed 2014. Courtesy Ed Burtynsky and Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York. AIPAD

Howard Greenberg: I think scale in photography is its own unique evolution. In the past, landscape photography was more about making a beautiful print of the landscape which was wonderful. 8×10, Ansel Adams brought it up to maybe 16×20 and larger, but basically it was a small image and if you were a good printmaker and you could make luscious beautiful prints fully detailed and so on. You could hold a small landscape and be moved by it but again, that’s shifted.

Jörn VANHÖFEN ‘Chicago 2767’, 2010. Chromogenic color print mounted to dibond. © Jörn Vanhöfen, courtesy Robert Mann Gallery, New York

Today one wants to look at a larger picture. We’re getting sensitized. It feels more natural to look at a larger picture. I enjoy looking at large format now.  You can walk into it, you can really see it.

If you look at content, content is about history. Content is about a moment in time. The digital revolution if you will, has opened up a door really wide that just didn’t exist before and the fact that you can make large, and larger, and larger prints, and the quality remains equal, in the sense of sharpness and tone, gradations, and all that kind of thing, it’s really changed color entirely.

Ansel Adams,’ Jeffrey Pine, Sentinel Dome, Yosemite’, 1940. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy G Gibson Gallery, Seattle. AIPAD

Howard Greenberg: Sometimes a photograph becomes transformative. Something in the combination of ingredients, that makes that final print. I say it works. What’s working? You get some feeling from it. You get some sense of place, of time, of human emotion, of information that you just don’t get other ways. What you include in the picture, what you don’t include in the picture, and then there is light and shadow, and there are happy accidents. When the Gods are good and the universe is lined up – a great photograph can happen.”

This interview was conducted in partnership with AIPAD.

Howard Greenberg Gallery is a member of AIPAD. The gallery is located at The Fuller Building, 41 East 57th Street, Suite 1406, New York, NY.

The Photography Show March 29th – April 2nd, 2017 at its new location on Pier 94, New York.

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In conjunction with the Galerie St. Etienne’s current exhibition, ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER: Featuring Watercolors and Drawings from the Robert Lehman Collection (through July 1), Eric Fischl shares his thoughts on the art of drawing.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, ‘Resting Head’, 1912. Pen and ink on thin cream wove paper. Image courtesy Galerie St. Etienne

The nature of painting and drawing, and sculpture, as well as photography, is to stop the world. [To] create for the audience, the feeling of something fleeting that people can come and perceive over and over. The object, actually, was forever, but it gave you an experience of evanescence or ephemerality, or something like that.

Color is amassing form and it’s light-filled so you simultaneously get through a gesture, a relatively simple gesture, you can get an essential feeling of a body that’s very physical and real, and also get the luminosity of it, the lightness of it.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, ‘Three Figures At Cafe Table’, Circa 1915. Graphite on thin cream wove paper. Image courtesy Galerie St. Etienne

In black and white, and certainly in the charcoals, it’s a slower labor to achieve. There is an essentialness to the black and white, a spontaneous, an essential quality to that it seems like it’s a revelation of the first order.

Gustav Klimt, ‘Pregnant Woman and Man’ 1903-04. Blue crayon on heavy tan wove paper. Image courtesy Galerie St. Etienne

One of the fun things to do when looking at drawings is to imagine where on the pencil they’re holding. It gives you a sense of their deliberateness, sensitivity, the heaviness or the lightness of the line. With Klimt, he seemed to almost be holding the feeling of it, not the actual thing. It was almost like he was holding it closer to the top, so it had a kind of a interesting ‘stroking’ quality to it.  He was also somebody who never took his eyes off the model. That [hand-eye] coordination, that confidence with which he cold not see what he was doing, and also accept the distortions which were not based on realist observation, but were based on a feeling.

[Egon] Schiele knew from the neck down to the tip of the finger exactly where he was going and was nervous the whole way.

Egon SchieIe. ‘Self-Portrait in Street Clothes, Gesturing’
1910. Watercolor and pencil on brown paper. Image courtesy Galerie St. Etienne

I work from photographs. The photograph slices life so thinly that everybody is off balance. Everybody is in a state of motion and within a narrative structure you need that kind of animation to trigger the whole scene. Photography receives the image, Kirchner goes out and gets it.

I think that one thing that people do looking to art is they are looking for authenticity: the authenticity of beauty, the authenticity of eroticism, and anguish. It’s where you go to feel that this is the essential place for meaningfulness.

Founded in 1939, Galerie St. Etienne specializes in Austrian and German Expressionism and in works by European and American self-taught artists from the 19th century to the present.

This video and transcript © galleryIntell. Images courtesy Galerie St. Etienne.

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“There are numerous, varied and sometimes conflicting aspects to my work, usually intended but definitely also spontaneously emerging.” – Wim Botha

Some artists spend their careers exploring properties and limitations of a single medium: working all their creative lives exclusively in oil, bronze, or wood; while others prefer to construct a broad narrative and deliver it through an all-inclusive range of materials. Wim Botha, a young South African artist, who represented his country at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013 is, certainly, the latter. Wim’s grotesque busts, surrealist torsos, spatially complex light processions, and various abstracted shapes catch the uninitiated by surprise, forcefully and monumentally inserting themselves into the viewers’ space: mental and physical. Once you see and engage with a Wim Botha sculpture, you can’t forget the emotional impact it had on you.

Wim Botha, Bust, Encyclopedias, Wood, Stainless Steel. Image © Wim Botha, Courtesy  the artist and STEVENSON Gallery

It’s an immersive process, one which takes the viewer through several stages of realization. First comes the recognition of classical Roman sculptural portraiture as the principal influence in Botha’s busts and torsos. Then subtle purpose and intention of the chosen materials reveal themselves much like physical and visual elements in Antony Minghella’s cinematic masterpieces. Each decision in Wim Botha’s work is deeply imbued with purpose. White Carrera marble, one of the most expensive sculptural materials, is carved to reveal typically African features — symbolism most pertinent in a country whose recent history was defined by Apartheid and oppression of its black citizens. Conversely, burned and charred wood is used to portray typically European faces – another commentary on the issues of perception and inequality.

Bust of a Man Early Imperial, Julio-Claudia mid first century AD. Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

Wim Botha, ‘A Thousand Things’ part 10, Detail. Treated wood and black ink. Image © Wim Botha

Busts that feature double heads, or heads attached to sculls recall Hamlet’s famous conversation with Yorick’s scull at the start of the play’s third act.

“In my paper works, I carve subjects from stacked or compressed documents containing selected texts with content and meaning significant to the work. By carving a form from these texts, the information it conveys becomes a part of the physical substance of the work and is directly related to the form.”

Wim Botha, bust, 2010 Portrait Bust (Daughter), 2010 carved Afrikaans bibles, 56 x 53 x 38 cm

In Wim’s elaborate installations Afrikaans bibles are used to create images from Western culture and history, drawing attention to the invasion of one culture by another and, subsequently, inverting it. White polystyrene busts are cast in bronze, transforming weightless objects into heavy, immovable ones. And then there is the issue of the pedestal. Like Rodin, Boccioni, and Giacometti before him, Wim Botha reinterprets the purpose and perception of the classical support element, adding to its evolution.

Wim Botha, ‘Prism 10 (Dead Laocoön)’ 2014. Bronze, Image © Wim Botha, courtesy the artist and STEVENSON Gallery

“In my work there is seldom a distinction to be drawn between the prominence of the concept and that of the medium. I work with materials central to mass consumerist applications, that are subsequently transformed in essence and meaning to a point at which material and concept becomes integrally interdependent. The works take the form of sculptural installations. I appropriate well-known, sometimes trite and over-saturated subject matter which, coupled with traditional shaping and technological elements, become the nucleus of a series of references around the inherent implication of the subject.” 

‘Solipsism 4’ (detail) 2012 Polystyrene, wood, fluorescent tubes . Image © Wim Botha, courtesy of the artist and STEVENSON Gallery

His sculptures are best viewed in the context he creates where each individual object carries equal conceptual weight in relation to the entire composition, as well as the space itself. Abstract paintings and drawings often complete the narrative and should be regarded as part of the statement.

Wim Botha, ‘Self-Portrait as a Heretic’, 2008, bibles in South African indigenous languages. Image © Wim Botha, courtesy the artist and STEVENSON Gallery

Legato Bereng, Associate Director of STEVENSON Gallery, Capetown and Johannesburg talked to galleryIntell about Wim Botha’s most recent body of work, his reinvention of Michelangelo’s ‘Pieta’, and the philosophy behind the artist’s imagery.

Legato Bereng: It’s kind of a moment of South African intervention of Western history which, essentially, we all have been fed. Wim inverts that. He’s done it through subtle ways of looking at the Afrikaans bible and creating it into this marble bust, sort of imposing South African-ness on a particular history, which is removed from the country. Wim is really interested in history and art history, looking at the traditions of marble and classical sculptural busts and he is also interested in material, in kind of looking at the different ways the material can invert itself. He creates these busts out of wood, out of marble, and out of books. Basically he carves it as one would a marble sculpture. Working with it as though it’s this obsolete material. The information in the encyclopedias, I mean, it’s a completely obsolete medium now.

He also creates sculptures out of polystyrene and then casts them in bronze, so this light, white, weightless substance becomes this heavy, immovable dark substance, which is another thing he likes to do: invert the meaning of the material.

He often decides to create rooms more than he decides to create sculptures. He creates interventions within the sculptures in the way that they are exhibited. So, the pedestals for instance, at times he does traditional, refined looking pedestals, other times he decides to use found wood, or chunks of wood, in other instances he suspends them, but it’s all just playing with the idea of presentation and how he’d like them to exist in space.

‘The Epic Mundane’, 2012 various materials. Image © Wim Botha, courtesy of the artist and STEVENSON Gallery

‘Untitled’, 2014, Wood, cardboard, lacquer. Image © Wim Botha, courtesy the artist and STEVENSON Gallery

Each artwork travels with its own room. It could be a subtle piece of wood that emerges from the wall, or a suspended frame that implies particular kind of architecture in the space, so he likes to carve space. He likes to suggest new spaces: spaces within spaces.

Wim Botha’s maize meal ‘Pieta’. Image © Wim Botha, courtesy the artist and STEVENSON Gallery

His most memorable work to date is this mieliepap “Pietá” that he made out of maize meal. He created the ‘Pietá’ to scale, recreated it, and carved it, as one would a marble block, but it was made out of maize meal, which is a staple food that is seen across the continent of Africa. There are those kind of subtleties, or particular kind of a poetic language that he uses and his choice of material.

This video interview and transcript © galleryIntell. Images © Wim Botha. Courtesy of the artist and STEVENSON Gallery.

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We were delighted to meet Patricia Conde, founder and director of the Patricia Conde Galeria, during this year’s installment of The Photography Show.

The Mexico City based gallery was invited to participate in the photography art fair (this is the last year that the fair is held at The Park Avenue Armory before moving to Pier 94) and we had a chance to talk to Patricia about the images she brought with her.

Some of our favorite images were jewel-like, one-of-a-kind, hand-colored photographs from the 1920’s. Other notable images were rare glimpses into the lives of legends, while others – candid snapshots from people’s every-day lives. The gallery began its programming by exhibiting mid-career artists with no prior gallery representation, then expanding the roster to show previously unseen archives as well as promising contemporary photographers.

Mexico – Tenochtitlan Francisco Mata. Patricia Conde Galeria, Mexico City at The Photography Show 2016 presented by AIPAD.

Rodrigo Moya. Frutas y Pascuines. Patricia Conde Galeria, Mexico City at The Photography Show 2016 presented by AIPAD.

Hector Garcia. Entre el Progreso y el Desarrollo 1950. Patricia Conde Galeria, Mexico City at The Photography Show 2016 presented by AIPAD.

Patricia Conde: Mexican photography has great recognition in the world, and here I brought a history of techniques and the best of the best that I have. And I decided to bring these unique pieces and start from this, to the newest, to the more contemporary [art]. I started with only the mid-career artists, who never had a gallery that represented them, but slowly I have moved towards archives because they look for me and I have access to these archives and also to the most contemporary young proposals.

Rodrigo Moya El Che Melancolico, 1964. Patricia Conde Galeria, Mexico City at The Photography Show 2016 presented by AIPAD.

I have Héctor García, Rodrigo Moya, who had the opportunity to shoot Che [Guevara]. [Che] was available for only 20 minutes and [at that time] there were only rolls of 24 frames, so [Moya] only had the chance of taking 24 shots. This is one of them. I have, of course, Graciela de Iturbide, Francisco Mata, who is a great and recognized artist in our country, and I have [Enrique] Metinides. He started in the press very, very young, at the age of 9 – 10 years-old, and these are the first photographs he took. I brought this beautiful mosaic, which are unique pieces too.

Kati Horna was at Jeu de Paume and the Museo Amparo, and she is going to the Reina Sofia, and [other] important museums all over the world. Carlos Jurado, who is having a [retrospective] in Centro de la Imagen very soon, and Manual Ramos, who was working with the revolution during the very first decade of the 20th century.

Katy Horna. Remedios Varo Mexico, 1957. Patricia Conde Galeria, Mexico City at The Photography Show 2016 presented by AIPAD.

I am the only gallery that specializes in photography and I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to meet wonderful people who have archives, so they look for me to carry them to some places like [AIPAD] or Paris Photo, or places like that, in which they can be seen and known, so I am starting to build some names. These names are very important in Mexico: for the professors, for people who know, but maybe they are not known as well. That is why I bring them.

Patricia Conde Galeria is the only gallery in Mexico that specializes in photography and represents primarily Mexican mid-career and emerging photographers.

This video and interview transcript © galleryIntell

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With the 36th installment of The Photography Show about to launch at The Park Avenue Armory galleryIntell sat down to talk to Christiane Fischer and Vivian Ebersman of AXA Art Americas to talk about the international insurer’s long time support of the fair and its member galleries, and what they offer to the collectors of photography — be they experienced connoisseurs of the medium, or someone making his or her first steps into the world of photography collecting. Below is the transcript of the video interview, and in the coming days we’ll be posting a full transcript of our conversation, so make sure to come back and read all the wonderful insights and recommendations these two experts shared with our team.

Gordon Parks Invisible Man Retreat Harlem 1952. Image © The Gordon Parks Foundation. Courtesy The Gordon Parks Foundation and Weinstein Gallery

Christiane Fischer, President & CEO AXA Art Americas: AIPAD brings together the world leaders in photography, and what they provide with this fair is a place for the galleries to show their knowledge, to show their wares, obviously, and represent the artists, but also to help reach collectors that are specifically interested in photography collecting, and foster that level of understanding and connoisseurship. I think it’s this interaction between the gallery representatives and the collector that ultimately brings a lot of value to the fair and to the membership of AIPAD.

Vivian Ebersman, Director Art Expertise at AXA Art Americas Corporation: We like our collectors to be aware of aspects of their collection that they might not think about, having chosen the works – then what happens next. We feel that we are very, very well versed in the care and handling of works of art through our collective experiences as a global company. In others words, there are lots of stories that we’ve heard. So we try to talk about furthering the depth of their enjoyment of the collection through connoisseurship, through research. We try to encourage people to be very good record keepers about what they have, and we try to encourage best practices in shipping and handling. We’ve seen such a growth of interest in photography and it’s really blossomed and it’s blossomed among collectors as well as artists. And in a way, coming to the fair really helps the visitors prepare to look at the works that they see in museums and in galleries and to understand how artists, who’s primary practices may be focused on sculpture and painting, also utilize photography. So the fair is a wonderful delight for us.

Ruth Bernhard, Two Leaves, 1952, Silver Gelatin Print, Image courtesy Scott Nichols Gallery AIPAD 2016

Christiane Fischer, President & CEO AXA Art Americas: We are honored to be supporting the only global art photography fair that is happening in the world. For the last 4 decades, AIPAD has been promoting and encouraging the connoisseurship as well as the appreciation of photography as a medium, and that is very important, especially also because photography is the way for many young collectors to enter the collecting market. We can support the AIPAD members on a global scale. So wherever AIPAD members are located, AXA Art will be able to offer them an insurance solution and support their activities locally, I think one of the advantages of being a truly international art insurer is that we have the knowledge in each individual market place, and we are very, very closely working with all the local members in each art, sort of, community. So we know all the international shippers but we also know the local people. We know the local conservators, we know the local appraisers so our network is very international and very local at the same time and this is what we can bring in support to also the members of AIPAD and their clients ultimately, if they have questions.

This video and transcript © galleryIntell and ArtReels Production.

Gordon Parks, Untitled, Nashville, Tennessee, 1956, Archival pigment print PHOTOGRAPH BY GORDON PARKS

Installation images in the video provided by AIPAD, The Association of International Photography Art Dealers, AXA Art Americas, Kristina Nazarevskaia.

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In our second exclusive video interview for AIPAD and The Photography Show we sat down with Steven Kasher, Founder and Director of Steven Kasher Gallery and member of AIPAD to talk about the photography’s origins, primary types of photography collectors and the one trait that unites most AIPAD dealers. Lots of unique insights, facts, humor, and, as always beautiful images provided so graciously by the many wonderful AIPAD members. So, our thanks to everyone who sent us photographs on such a tight schedule! You can find a complete listing of images at the bottom of the article. Enjoy!

Max Kozloff, Francesca Woodman, 1981. C-print, Image courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery

Steven Kasher: I find photography so interesting because it’s a bastard. It’s a bastard medium. It has one foot in the technical apparatus of photography: recording of light in this mechanical, chemical process, and then it has its other foot in so many other places. It could be in the art world. The thinking behind the photograph could come from fashion, it could come from science, journalism and it’s just this very broad endeavor, that everybody in the world participates in.

One of the things we do as photography dealers is educate the public. The primary means we do that is through exhibitions. So exhibitions are this incredible resource. Where else do you get something for free, that has been organized with so much care, and time, and understanding, and presented in a beautiful way, in a beautiful space?

AIPAD 2016, The Photography Show. Image © Kristina Nazarevskaia

So, who are the people who buy photographs from us? I sort of categorize them as 4 ‘C’s’. There is, first of all, a Customer – someone who comes in, buys something once…he may want to have a picture to hang in the living room… Then there is a Client – The client is someone who is a repeat customer, who comes back, who enjoys our gallery, who enjoys several of our artists, who finds it comfortable in any particular gallery. The third is the Collector. The collector is somebody who is deeply engaged in understanding the medium, in understanding, maybe a particular artist, a particular photographer, who is amassing a story, a narrative, about a subject through the subjects they collect. And then the fourth ‘C’ is the Curators. We often times work with museums. Museums are some of our best and most important clients and they have their own stories to tell.

Massimo Vitali, #4874 Tropea Shadow, Calabria, 2015 © Massimo Vitali. Courtesy the artist and Benrubi Gallery

So, one of the things I like to do, and I think all of the AIPAD dealers would agree with me, we like to listen. We don’t only like to talk, we like to talk too, but we like to listen. We need to hear, from our clients, whether they are new collectors, or very experienced collectors, whom we’ve gotten to know, or curators we know, we need to know what they are interested in. It’s a big part of our job to find out what you’re interested in, what kind of photograph do you want? We will point you in different directions. I mean, all of us have these vast inventories in our galleries and we basically, want to expose all of it to everyone, but what we have to do is listen to find out what particular things you’re interested in, what artists, and even within the artists, what aspect of their work? Their beginning work, their portrait work… so it’s really a wonderful dialogue we’re trying to have all the time, and I would say, the most important part of that dialogue is the listening part.”

Featured images:

Photogram, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, 1939, Gelatin Silver Print, Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gallery installation images courtesy:

This video and transcript © galleryIntell and ArtReels Production.

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This year, in anticipation of the 36th annual Photography Show that will take place at the Park Avenue Armory April 14 – 17, 2016, galleryIntell and AIPAD, the Association of International Photography Art Dealers joined forces to bring you a series of exclusive video interviews with the Association’s top photography dealers.  As a curatorial and educational platform, galleryIntell has covered The Photography Show for a number of years, and this year we are thrilled to partner with AIPAD as its Exclusive Video Partner.

Our first interview is with Catherine Edelman, President of AIPAD and founder of the eponymous Chicago gallery. We spoke to Catherine about photography’s evolution, its increasing presence in the public’s collective perception, addition of photography t many private and corporate collections, and how technology changed the progress and direction of the medium.

Catherine Edelman: I think photography is the most relevant tool because it can respond immediately in a way that maybe, by process, painting can’t, or sculpture can’t, because it is so immediate. It’s also an understandable and relatable tool.

It’s invaluable for communication and it’s invaluable for art, and you see it exploding everywhere. The photographic medium, whether it’s the mixed media photo-based collages, videos, or paintings, people are just mixing it all up and using that art form as a good foundation. And there are still regular photographers who just take these straight black and white photographs, but there are more and more people who are using it within other art forms and are mixing it all up, which didn’t use to happen.

Broadway on a Rainy Day, Edward Anthony, Albumen Print, 1859 Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

Back in the day, when photography was a big hand-held camera and you had to look down, it was very much a profession that the average person didn’t have access to. Then through instant cameras like Polaroid or other cameras where we sent in our film to a drug store, we all started to understand the access to photography. Most people use cameras to document their own histories. Photographers, who are using it as an art form, use it to document other people and other situations. Predominantly, sometimes their own, but to talk about a politic greater than them.

Fred W. McDarrah Robert Kennedy in Slum Apartment, May 8, 1967 Vintage gelatin silver print. Image courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery

AIPAD, which is the Association of International Photography Art Dealers, started more that 35 years ago by a group of dealers who came together to support the medium. Over the years, of course, we’ve grown to be more than 120 dealers world wide, who are considered to be the experts in the medium, and we pride ourselves on great ethical standards, understanding the medium much more so than any other dealer who is not specifically involved in photography, and the exhibition allows us to showcase that. And so, in the exhibition you see everything from the first photographs ever made: from salt prints, to mixed media, photo-based videos that are behind me, which really have expanded the direction that artists are working today with the medium. So our strength is to show you, obviously what we think, is the best, as dealers, but also sort of give you a history of the medium within a setting over the course of a few days at an art fair. And you’ll see some of these real gems: undiscovered pieces, that might come out of an attic, so to speak, to pieces that could have been made by a recent graduate that haven’t been tested in the market but the dealer thinks there is fantastic because it’s advancing the ideas and concepts behind photography.”

Cover image (detail): © James Welling, “001, A+& (from ‘Flowers’)”, 2006, Chromogenic print, Courtesy of ClampArt, New York City

Featured images:

Video installations featured in the interview with Catherine Edelman are by Gregory Scott

Gallery installation images courtesy:

This video and transcript © galleryIntell and ArtReels Production.

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