Graham Gillmore, Your Proportions Are Not That Exquisite (2012).
Courtesy Gallery 16, San Francisco.
Galleries participating in this week’s inaugural Silicon Valley Contemporary fair are faced with the tricky challenge of figuring what type of art tech industry people might want to collect. To that end, most dealers are going for variety rather than hedging their bets. The offerings will include Devorah Sperber‘s Warholian Op art from Phoenix’s Bentley Gallery, street artist KATSU’s Drone Paintings—as in, paintings actually executed with the help of a drone aircraft—in New York gallery The Hole‘s booth, a work by Gary Hill melding new media and blown glass from Seattle’s James Harris Gallery, and a fantastic and colorful book sculpture by David Kracov courtesy of San Francisco’s Eden Fine Art. Below, find a selection of works that will be tempting the techies at the San Jose Convention Center this week.
Bay Area local Gallery 16 will be showing a variety of works including a piece by 2014 Whitney Biennial co-curator Michelle Grabner, a meticulous cut-paper drawing by Reed Anderson, and Your Proportions Are Not That Exquisite (2012, above), a colorful, embossed text painting in oil and enamel by Graham Gillmore. priced at $30,000.
David Kracov, Book of Life (2014).
Courtesy the artist, Eden Fine Art, San Francisco.
Though seemingly buoyant and playful, David Kracov’s sculpture Book of Life (2014)—which will be on view in Eden Fine Art’s booth and available for $27,000—takes its inspiration from I Never Saw another Butterfly, a book of poems and drawings by children who were held at the Terezin Concentration Camp near Prague during World War Two. Kracov was especially moved by “The Butterly,” a poem by a child named Pavel Friedman.
Wendy White, Green Brigade (2014).
Courtesy David Castillo Gallery.
Miami’s David Castillo Gallery will be showing works by a number of the artists on its roster, including a quilt by Sanford Biggers, photographs by Luis Gispert and Xaviera Simmons, and New York-based artist Wendy White‘s foggy text painting Green Brigade (2014)—which Castillo is offering for $19,000.
Drone Painting by KATSU in progress.
Courtesy the artist, The Hole, New York.
Ubiquitous street artist KATSU is adding a high-tech element to his practice for the Silicon Valley crowd, enlisting the assistance of a small drone aircraft to produce a series of abstract spray paintings. The Hole will be showing the Drone Paintings series in its booth, with works tagged in the $3,000–10,000 range.
Devorah Sperber, Before Warhol (2010).
Courtesy the artist, Bentley Gallery.
Though SVC may not bring out the type of crowd that goes for Warhol, it seems well-suited to optical tricks and pixelated remixes such as those of Devorah Sperber. Her installation Before Warhol—an upside-down recreation of the Pop artist’s iconic Campbell’s Soup Can’s made of 701 spools of thread and viewed through an acrylic ball—will be on view in Bentley Gallery’s booth.
Tara Donovan, Drawing (Pins) (2011).
Courtesy Pace Gallery; © Tara Donovan.
Pace Gallery‘s participation in the inaugural SVC amounts to a major stamp of approval for the first-time fair, never mind that their offering will only be visible to visitors with access to the VIP lounge—where the London-New York–Beijing gallery will be showing Tara Donovan‘s largest-ever pin painting, from 2011. The rest of the tech set will have to wait until next week’s opening of Pace’s Menlo Park pop-up space.
Gary Hill, Klein Bottle with the Image of Its Own Making (after Robert Morris) (2014).
Courtesy the artist, James Harris Gallery.
James Harris Gallery will be showing a beautiful glass vessel by new media artist Gary Hill that doubles as a surface for bold and colorful projections. That piece, created in an edition of five (plus one artist’s proof), will be priced between $55,000 and $65,000.
Philippe Pasqua, Stella (2012).
Courtesy Zemack Contemporary Art Gallery.
One of the galleries traveling the farthest distance to be at SVC is also bringing one of the fair’s biggest works: Tel Aviv’s Zemack Contemporary Art will be showing an enormous oil-on-paper piece by the French artist Philippe Pasqua. The Jenny Saville–like portrait, which is 10 feet tall and 6½ feet wide, is priced at $100,000.
Silicon Valley Contemporary runs April 10–13 at the San Jose Convention Center. Check back later in the week for artnet News’s coverage from the fair.