#untitled gallery

[okckent]

Untitled gallery. Artist Paul Medina. Title: Roses and thorns. Ambulet 15. 2021

[vincentleelatham]

Today I found an article listing the best 10 art galleries in Manchester. Then I made a shortlist of the ones that were most suited to my style, ie figurative (not conceptual, countryside landscapes, or sculpture). I was left with the following five galleries:

Untitled Gallery

Artzu

Bureau

Castlefield

Whitworth

Then I sent an email out to all outlining a proposal for an exhibition - showing my body of work available to show. All but Untitled Gallery sent... they must not update their website much - their email doesn’t work. It is the first time I have approached any gallery since late 2013.

[stillhouse]

Click photo for images of Brendan Lynch’s Mountains Collection at Untitled 

[artistandframer]

Brendan Lynch at Untitled Gallery

[max-art]

Henry Codax at Martos Gallery until October 4

If you have not seen the crisp, shiny chrome paintings of Hanry Codax, you still have through Saturday to do so.

Who is Henry Codax? The best information is that he is a fictional artist, a character in the short novel “Reena Spaulding ”. His painting are also rumored to be a collaboration between the elder Olivier Mosset and the young and up and coming Jacob Kassey. Visual similarities render this a viable possibility. Mosset

And Kassey

Yet in March of 2012, when Christies claimed that a Codax painting up for auction was the work of Mosset and Kassey, Mosset forced Christies to read his denial of authorship. Christies still allowed the painting to go to auction claiming it now solely the work of Kassey, who remained silent, and the work failed to sell. Although on a much smaller financial scale, this bit of subversiveness towards the auction house rivals what Wade Guyton did last spring when one of his digital print works was also being offered at Christies. In an attempt to undermine the price he published on Instagram, photos showing how he had made many duplicates of the work from the same 2005 digital file.

Codax, who first made an appearance through the Shoot the Lobster exhibition platform, is certainly not the first pseudonym to gain recognition. The most famous assuredly is Duchamp as Rose Selavy, although Ducamp's identity was never in question

More recently, in the 1980's, the art dealer Colin de Land collaberated with the artist Richard Prince to create work under the name of John Dogg

In that post-modern, post-minimal age, the validity of authorship and originality were called into question. For Codax, the imperative seems to be an art market gone off the deep end. By keeping the authorship a mystery, the viewer must confront the paintings on their own terms. The Minimalists first did this by forcing us to ask the question, "is it art?" For Codax, it is, does the art have merit on its own without known authorship? A recent Auction at Phillips, "Under the Influence" illustrates the problem. "Flipping" has become the term of the moment. It is taking the work of a young artist, hyping it, and then auctioning it. Last January, Untitled Gallery presold all of the paintings of the first show of Kour Pour, fresh out of graduate school, for $15,000. One showed up at the Phillips sale estimated at $30-40,000, enough of a jump to raise eyebrows.

The hammer went down and the price became $116,000. A great many of the works at the beginning of the auction were made after 2010 by young fledgling "stars". Later in the sale were the mid-career also rans, a lot of whom were once upon a time future stars. You get the idea. So whomever is responsible for the Henry Codax work, I'm glad they have the courage and the fortitude. By the way, the paintings are $10,000 ( one just sold at auction in London for $22,000).

[max-art]

Frieze and other fairs

Doesn't it seem like we've just made the rounds to a bunch of art fairs? La plus ca change, la plus ca le meme chose. One thing seems certain, it's no longer the art that's driving the art fair bus, it's the $,€,£. There's just so much stuff around, and then wait and see what the contemporary auctions bring next week. More fuel for the fire. First I saw Pulse. It is my very sad duty to report that unfortunately pulse has flat lined. Next I went to the LES for Cutlog. It looked like a student exhibition. What was missing at these fairs is anything cutting edge. Is it an omen in western culture now that we can make things that can look so good and sleek, and yet lack any content or depth whatsoever? Then I went to Frieze where I found it extremely difficult to focus and concentrate. I think it was an "I've seen it all before" feeling. Still, a couple of works caught my attention. Since it seems to be the year for abstract paintings, I took note of 3 artists who had impressive work at Frieze, 2 of them from LES galleries and 1 from a Chelsea mainstream. Nick Goss, at Simon Preston, employs a soft, subtle palette to make poetic work.

Brendan Fowler, at Untitled, like many artists of his generation, is mining aspects of Abstract Expressionism and lending his own personal gesture and palette. And they are not paintings, but rather industrial embroideries making them all the more impressive.

At Anton Kern, there is an Ellen Birkenblit that shows her at lyrical, biting best. She has a terrific sense of color.

Also of note, is the photo based work of Barbara Kasten at Bortolami, abstract in nature, is visually complex and rich in light. The small ones, made from Polaroids, function like drawings

And the large works, geometric images of glass and frames have a vanitas quality and remind me of some of the images referred to last month in this blog of Sarah Jones.

[hannahmarven-blog]

[artwaddle]

(artwork: Heavenly Horses, 2013)

Kour Pour, at UNTITLED, ends 23-Feb.

Each of Pour’s paintings references a specific Persian rug. He starts with a silkscreen image, and then paints over it, erasing, and re-painting, editing the historical narrative of the rug.