I'm in Madrid now, at yet another art fair, ARCO. This year though is extra special as Los Angeles is the featured CITY. Previous years countries were featured, not cities. So, Los Angeles should be honored. Seventeen galleries were selected by Christopher Miles and Kris Kuramitsu. I am told that these 17 galleries could have been galleries that were the ones that "accepted" the honor. There are a few caveats to being the chosen ones: you still have to pay for your shipping and flights and hotel. A few gallerists were not so happy about their invitation—and I'm curious who might have turned down the invitation. But, all in all, LA art looked pretty good. Was I blown away by anything? No. But, I've seen all this stuff before, so it's hard to be objective.
Tomorrow I will visit the rest of the fair, and see how LA measures up.
But, on to another subject. I haven't been able see any of Madrid, the city, yet. Our first night we visited the Museo Reina Sofia with a retrospective of Thomas Schutte that was, quite frankly, amazing. On first viewing, we entered a gallery that featured minimal art, lots of cut-out circles on a wall. It was not that impressive, but not offensive either. But then we started going through all the other rooms, and the work started getting more and more creepy. The "German" started coming out. The ugliness of mankind started creeping up. The Holocaust was hard to ignore in this German artist's work. I'm especially fond of the Michelin Tire guy sculptures (who was influenced by who?) This was a very powerful show, and being in the spacious beautiful old building (the first hospital in Madrid), only added to this formidable exhibit.
We also so a great exhibit our first night in Madrid, at the Ivory Press gallery. The work was Claes Oldenberg's. It was later work that dealt with writing tools. It was okay. But the space was really great, and as we wandered through the other galleries, we stumbled upon a room of Damien Hirst's early work. My husband and I were actually blown away by the over-the-hill-over-the-top artist. This only proved to us what fame and fortune can do to an artist. Truly, don't get me started on Damien.
Not a bad introduction to the art world in Madrid. More later. Ciao.
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