“We’re going to get a sweater so you can show everyone your penis,” a man said playfully to Los Angeles County Museum of Art curator Jarrett Gregory.
We were at NADA Miami Beach, the annual art fair organized by the New Art Dealers Alliance. It’s just the kind of thing you hear at NADA. When I asked if I could quote the guy, he said, “Yes, but you have to use my nom de plume, which is Sam Falls.” Falls is an artist.
Read on to find out what he was talking about, and about my picks for top booths and works at NADA.
Jaanus Samma at Temnikova & Kasela.
Jaanus Samma at Temnikova & Kasela, Estonia
The sweaters in question are by Jaanus Samma, who copies graffiti from public bathrooms and then has Estonian knitters create very fashionable sweaters based on the found texts and images. Some have the customary erect dicks, one has the offbeat proclamation “hair sucks,” and one reads, in French, “What a nice penis you have there.”
Guy Goodwin, Dream Queens’ Salon, 2015.
Courtesy Brennan & Griffin, New York.
Guy Goodwin at Brennan & Griffin, New York
New York painter Guy Goodwin brings Miami colors to this large wall-hung work, Dream Queens’ Salon. The shapes recall chunky, soft furniture, dog biscuits, or some sort of linguistic motifs.
David Robbins’s party banner at Green Gallery, Milwaukee.
Photo Brian Boucher.
David Robbins and Nolan Simon at Green Gallery, Milwaukee
David Robbins’s wry party banner, reading “So it’s come to this,” with black glitter, suggests resignation and forced jollity. It’s a great fit for a fair.
Nolan Simon at Green Gallery.
Meanwhile, Nolan Simon’s paintings at the same booth are partly based in Internet image overload, but they also recall New York painter and critic Walter Robinson and Bad Painting. The tape, by the way, is trompe l’oeil. Also, come on, kittens, for god’s sake.
Takashi Yasumura at Misako + Rosen, Tokyo.
Takashi Yasumura at Misako + Rosen, Tokyo
Takashi Yasumura’s photographs show architectural details from the area around Tokyo, where he lives. He transforms the generic suburban settings into magic via framing that recalls geometric abstract paintings.
Meredith James, Cuckoo 7 (Talking), 2015.
Photo Brian Boucher.
Meredith James at Jack Hanley, New York
Meredith James’s tiny sculptures are inspired by cuckoo clocks that fascinated her as a child at her grandparents’ home. When they downsized, she took the timepieces and extracted the birds, which she has reanimated with metronomes, preserving the relationship of the avian creatures with timekeeping. The metronomes cause the little creatures’ wings to flap.
Magdalena Suarez Frimkess at Adams & Ollman.
Photo Brian Boucher.
Magdalena Suarez Frimkess at Adams & Ollman, Portland, Oregon
I challenge you not to be charmed by the tiny ceramic vessels of self-taught potter Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, who also has a show at Adams & Ollman’s gallery, along with Luis Romero.
Benjamin Carlson, untitled, 2015, acrylic and oil on canvas.
Courtesy Park View, Los Angeles.
Benjamin Carlson at Park View, Los Angeles
Benjamin Carlson creates trompe-l’oeil works that look like Robert Rauschenberg collages of corrugated cardboard but are actually paintings. He’s interested in creating something that exists in both two and three dimensions at once.
Puppies Puppies at What Pipeline, Detroit
Puppies Puppies has fit the whole world into the booth of Detroit’s What Pipeline, no mean feat. In its wild contrasts of scale, the work is inspired by Charles and Ray Eames’ film The Power of Ten.
Erika Vogt at Overduin & Co.
Photo Brian Boucher.
Erika Vogt at Overduin & Co., Los Angeles
The sculptures lining the back wall of Overduin & Co.’s booth are props from performances by artist Erika Vogt, and they are sometimes more readable as objects (the phone), sometimes less so (a keyhole? a door latch?). They sold within the fair’s first hour, but you can still catch a performance by the artist at the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami.