Airport, please! to Sonoma Valley’s Donum Estates where wine makes a delicious mix with Olaf Eliasson’s sculpture

‘Vertical Panorama Pavilion’, designed by Studio Other Spaces is now complete at the Donum Estate in Northern California.

DONUM ESTATES

Founded in 2011, The Donum Collection is one of the world’s largest accessible private sculpture collections. More than 50 monumental works, including open-air sculptures, are placed on The Donum Estate, with over a third being site-specific commissions. Throughout our 200-acre estate, each piece plays with scale, nature, and imagination. This evolving collection brings together a global community of artists, including works from leading practitioners from 18 nations, across six continents. Donum brings to life a delicate balance between wine, land and art that has made it an international destination.

‘Vertical Panorama Pavilion’, designed by Studio Other Spaces is now complete at the Donum Estate in Northern California.
Taking inspiration from the history of circular calendars, the wine-tasting pavilion has an elevated conical canopy lined with recycled glass panels. Stacked up vertically above 12 columns that emulate the months in a year, the colourful hues of the glass panels depict the weather conditions essential for the creation of Donum’s wine – solar radiance, wind intensity, temperature, and humidity. (Photo: Adam Potts)

For Eliasson and Behmann, the pavilion is in fact for all senses as well as discoveries. “Look into your glass when you are having a glass of Pinot Noir under the pavilion,” says Eliasson. “You will see an incredible reflection of colors and shapes in moving inside.” 

Tripadvisor quote

Olafur Eliasson
The Moss Wall, 1994

OLAFUR ELIASSON COMMISSION AT THE DONUM ESTATE

Vertical Panorama Pavilion at the Donum Estate by Studio Other Spaces.PHOTO: ADAM POTTS

Wind, earth, sun, and microbes… The natural ingredients to transform grapes into wine have remained unchanged for millennia, although, over the years, mass production has altered wine-making’s inherently organic process. Upon an invitation from Sonoma’s Donum Estate  to build a wine-tasting pavilion, Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson and his German architect partner Sebastian Behmann in their firm,Studio other Spaces, (SOS), realized they could reverse our bacchanal habits back to its roots. 

“We started with an attempt to ‘un-numb’ our tastes and free the wine experience from everyday corporate side elements,” Eliasson said, standing underneath SOS’s 22 feet high color-busting canopy, Vertical Panorama Pavilion. Perched close to the 200 acres estate’s David Thulstrup–designed main tasting center, the Donum Home, the oculus is built with 12 intertwined stainless steel columns and 832 colored recycled glass panels.

Throughout the past two and a half decades, Olafur Eliasson’s sculptures, installations, paintings, photography, films, and public projects have served as tools for exploring the cognitive and cultural conditions that inform our perception. Ranging from immersive environments of color, light, and movement to installations that recontextualize natural phenomena, his work defies the notion of art as an autonomous object and instead positions itself as part of an exchange with the actively engaged visitor and their individualized experience. Described by the artist as “devices for the experience of reality,” his works and projects prompt a greater sense of awareness about the way we engage with and interpret the world. Not limited to the confines of the museum and gallery, his practice engages the broader public sphere through architectural projects, interventions in civic space, arts education, policy-making, and issues of sustainability and climate change.

https://galeriemagazine.com/olafur-eliasson-donum-estate/

Olafur Eliasson
Performance, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

As fires rage in California and the world turns upside down on its axis, as we are threatened with Covid-19 and monkeypox, illness and solitary angst when all our customary pastimes are taken away, Olafur Eliasson’s immerse works celebrate the environment and our perceptions of it.

Born in Copenhagen in 1967, Eliasson grew up in both Iceland and Denmark, where he studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Art (1989–1995). Upon graduating, he relocated to Berlin, where he established his studio in 1995. Today it is comprised of craftsmen, architects, archivists, researchers, administrators, cooks, programmers, geometers, and art historians. From 2009 to 2014, as a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts, Eliasson led the Institut für Raumexperimente (Institute for Spatial Experiments), a five-year experimental program in arts education located in the same building as his studio. Eliasson currently lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin.

Since the mid-1990s, the artist’s work has been at the center of numerous exhibitions and projects around the world. In 2003, Eliasson represented Denmark at the 50th Venice Biennale with The blind pavilion and, later that year, he opened the celebrated work The weather project at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.

Eliasson
The Weather Project
Turbine Hall, Tate, London

The artist’s first retrospective, Take your time: Olafur Eliasson, opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2007 before traveling to the Museum of Modern Art and PS1 in New York; The Dallas Museum of Art; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, through 2010. His second retrospective, In real life opened at the Tate Modern, London in 2019 before traveling to the Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain in 2020.

Olafur Eliasson
Tate Turbine Hall
The Weather Project

Other significant solo exhibitions include Sometimes the river is the bridge, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2020); Symbiotic seeing, Kunsthaus Zurich (2020); Y/our future is now, The Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art (2019); Reality Projector at Marciano Foundation in Los Angeles, CA (2018); The unspeakable openness of things, Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing, China (2018); Olafur Eliasson WASSERfarben, Graphische Sammlung – Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany (2018); Olafur Eliasson: Multiple shadow house, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal, Canada (2017); Olafur Eliasson: Nothingness is not nothing at all, Long Museum, Shanghai, China (2016); Olafur Eliasson: Verklighetsmaskiner, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2016); Olafur Eliasson: BAROQUE BAROQUE, The Winter Palace of Prince Eugene of Savoy, Vienna, Austria (2016); Olafur Eliasson: Riverbed, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (2014); Olafur Eliasson: Contact, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France (2014); Olafur Eliasson: Your trust, Kunsthalle Mannheim, Germany (2014); Olafur Eliasson: Your emotional future, PinchukArtCentre, Kiev, Ukraine (2011); Olafur Eliasson: Seu corpo da obra, 17th International Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil, São Paulo, Brazil; Innen Stadt Außen at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin (2010); Your chance encounter at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan (2009–2010); The New York City Waterfalls, a major public art project for the city of New York (2008); Notion motion at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (2005); Colour memory and other informal shadows at Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst in Oslo (2004); Chaque matin je me sens différent, chaque soir je me sens le même at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in France (2002); Your only real thing is time at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (2001); and The curious garden at Kunsthalle Basel (1997), among many others.

Eliasson
Life
Fondation Beyeler,
Switzerland

Eliasson’s work is represented in many prestigious collections worldwide, including those of the Museum of Modern Art in New York; Tate Collection, London; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh; The Art Institute of Chicago; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C.; Leeum Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark; MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Dallas Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,

New York City Waterfalls is a public art project by artist Olafur Eliasson, in collaboration with the Public Art Fund, consisting of four man-made waterfalls placed around New York City along the East River.

The artist has been granted numerous awards over the years, including the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT (2014), the Wolf Prize in Painting and Sculpture (2014), the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award (2013) (with Henning Larsen Architects and Batterid), the Joan Miró Prize (2007), and the 3rd Benesse Prize (1999).

http://Olafur Eliasson | Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.pdf

Olafur Eliasson
VR experience Your view matter

ELISASSON’s VR EXPERIENCE: YOUR VIEW MATTER

The artist Olafur Eliasson has been working in virtual and augmented reality for six years, but his latest piece, Your view matter, is far more ambitious artistically and technically than any VR work he has shown before. It also exists as an NFT, commissioned by one of the pioneers in crypto art, MetaKovan (aka Vignesh Sundaresan), who caused a global stir in April 2021 when he paid $69.3m (with fees) at a Christie’s auction for Beeple’s NFT Everyday: The First 5000 Days (2021).

The NFT of Your view matter is a one-off, non-editioned, token created for MetaKovan —its ownership and provenance captured on a permanent ledger on the blockchain —and has been minted on Polkadot, a platform regarded as having the lowest total electricity consumption and total carbon emissions-per-year of all crypto platforms.

Olafur Eliasson
‘Your view matter’, 2022.
A VR artwork by Olafur Eliasson presented by Metapurse & Acute Art. A new immersive artwork exploring bodily perception in the digital space

Being conscious of the environmental cost of minting NFTs is, Eliasson says, of enormous importance, and something that he discussed with MetaKovan. “It is a relatively new field, [and] there has been a quite strong increase in that consciousness … The truth is the whole blockchain universe is actually quite progressive. It is remarkably similar to the rest of our world. A lot of talk and not as much doing. But a group of doers, too.”

AR and VR versions of the piece will be available free to view on the Acute Art app and via a link for viewing on a computer or in a VR headset . The commission came to Eliasson through Acute Art, one of the cutting-edge players in presenting art in all forms of extended reality. Both AR and VR versions “are really made to work with the largest possible audience,” Eliasson said. “Acute is very conscious of that. That was also an aim for both the client and for myself.”

For Eliasson, the NFT commission worked much as it would have with a more traditional format: “It was very much centred [on] making a great work of art.” And, on the contract implicit in the NFT format, he says: “Normally when you buy an artwork off me, you get a paper that this artwork is authentic artwork by me. There is a picture of the artwork, and a little bit of technical information. Now that is an NFT.”

For Acute Art, the piece is part of a move into the NFT space. Their artists had “perhaps been a bit hesitant” to date, according to Acute’s artistic director, Daniel Birnbaum. but working on Your view matter with Eliasson represented a chance to take the NFT into a rich, more technically ambitious space. The company’s chief technical officer, Rodrigo Marques, has created some new VR functionality specifically for the piece, according to Jacob de Geer, chief executive of Acute Art.

Eliasson was featured on Acute Art early in the Covid-19 pandemic, withWunderkammer, a charming collection of AR pieces, including a puffin, a rain cloud, and a haloed sun, well-calibrated to delight the spirits of users mired in lockdown. Your view matter exists on a higher, more primal, plane, one aligned with Eliasson’s experimental work, much of it carried out in his Berlin studio, on movement and human interconnectedness.

In Your view matter, the user moves between linked geometric spaces based on the Platonic solids, the tetrahedron, octahedron, icosahedron, dodecahedron, and cube, before concluding in a sphere. The Platonic solids—each made up of regular, identical shapes, joined in the same way at every apex—are, says, Eliasson, “mathematical small miracles. They are pre-Renaissance. They [do not subscribe] to the sense of perspective like modern architecture. They suggest ‘let’s see what dimensions are’.”

Eliasson was inspired to move into VR, he says, “from my interest in dance and movement”, and in cognition and motor skills. He has no patience with VR that suffers from what the calls the “dolphin effect”, typified by a user in VR who passively luxuriates in observing a dolphin swim around them in a “blue lagoon”. The format only comes alive for Eliasson when it is triggered by the user’s movement and visual interconnection with the artwork. In Your view matter, that “disturbance”, the distortion of the moiré effect, is animated when the user moves their head and eyes, overlaying the close-hatched patterns in his surfaces—some brilliantly coloured, some in black and white—over the pixels of a computer or phone screen, creating a scintillating, ambiguous, random, effect. The user is the “you” who “matters” in the piece.

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/09/05/olafur-eliasson-launches-a-virtual-reality-work-and-nft-commissioned-by-metakovanthe-man-who-paid-693m-for-that-beeple

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery: contemporary art in the global marketplace

Mark DION
Trichechus manatus latirostris
2013
plastic skeleton, tar, found objects in steel and glass case
72 x 40 x 176 inches

 

INTERNATIONAL EXPOSURE IS CRUCIAL FOR ARTISTS IN OUR GLOBAL CONTEMPORARY ART MARKET. MANY GALLERIES NOW SUPPORT MULTIPLE VENUES, MAINTAINING SPACES WITH STAFF AND YEAR ROUND EXHIBITION SCHEDULES NOT ONLY IN NEW YORK BUT ALSO IN LONDON, HONG KONG, BEIJING,  PARIS AND OTHER INTERNATIONAL CITIES TO REACH THE SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF GLOBE-TROTTING CONTEMPORARY COLLECTORS WORLDWIDE , TO EDUCATE THE ART COLLECTING PUBLIC AND TO INTRODUCE THEM TO THE WORK OF NEW AS WELL AS ESTABLISHED ARTISTS.

TANYA BONAKDAR GALLERY, WHILE LOCATED IN CHELSEA IN AN EXPANSIVE DUPLEX GALLERY SPACE AT 521 West 21st STREET, HAS ESTABLISHED, IN ITS TWENTY YEAR HISTORY, AN IMPRESSIVE TRACK RECORD FOR BRINGING THE WORK OF THEIR ARTISTS TO INTERNATIONAL AUDIENCES AND INSTITUTIONS AROUND THE WORLD. http://www.tanyabonakdargallery.com/

FOR EXAMPLE, ERNESTO NETO WAS SELECTED TO REPRESENT BRAZIL AT THE 49^th VENICE BIENNALE IN 2001, SARAH SZE’S TRIPLE POINT INSTALLATION DOMINATED THE U.S. PAVILION AT THE 2013 55th VENICE BIENNALE, TOMAS SARACENO PRESENTED A MAJOR INSTALLATION AT THE 53^rd VENICE BIENNALE IN 2009 AS PART OF THE GROUP EXHIBITION, Fari Mondi/Making Worlds, AND MORE RECENTLY CREATED A SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATION FOR THE ROOF OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, WHILE OLAFUR ELIASSON CREATED THE NEW YORK CITY WATERFALLS IN 2008, A MAJOR PUBLIC ART PROJECT THAT TRANSFORMED THE BRIDGES THAT SURROUND THE CITY.  THESE ARE JUST A FEW OF THE MANY INTERNATIONAL HONORS AND AWARDS THAT THE GALLERY ARTISTS RECEIVES.

Sarah Sze
360 (Portable Planetarium)
2010
mixed media, wood, paper, string, jeans, rocks
162 x 136 x 185 inches; 411.5 x 345.4 x 469.9 cm
Gallery Installation

TODAY, GALLERY DIRECTOR, RENEE COPPOLA, SHARES HER PERSPECTIVE ON THE GALLERY’S INTERNATIONAL SCOPE AND INFORMS US OF A WONDERFUL NEW EDUCATIONAL VENTURE THAT TANYA BONAKDAR INITIATED THIS YEAR.

RENEE, HOW DOES THE GALLERY SUPPORT AND SUSTAIN SUCH A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF ATTENTION FOR THEIR ARTISTS WITH A RELATIVELY SMALL STAFF THAT INSTALLS AND OVERSEES TEN EXHIBITIONS A YEAR IN NEW YORK WHILE EXHIBITING AT THE NUMEROUS ART FAIRS THAT PROVIDE PIVOTAL EXPOSURE FOR THE GALLERY ARTISTS IN THE CURRENT ART MARKET?

Although we have many very active artists who show internationally, as mentioned the 35 artists are divided between four gallery directors.  This helps to lighten the load when dealing with major exhibitions.  Plus, most of these very significant shows like the Venice Biennale or the rooftop installation at the Metropolitan are years in the making so the planning is slower than that of a gallery exhibition or art fair.  But the great strength of the gallery’s staff is its collaborative nature and teamwork.  All of us, from our Preparators and Registrar to our Archivist and the Gallery Assistant work on the art fairs and the exhibitions together, so if one director is particularly focused on a major exhibition, the others help to balance out the workload.  This flexibility is a plus.  Not to mention, after 20 years, Tanya has a very streamlined system at work.  The yearly schedule is generally understood in advance and well considered. 

CHARLES LONG
UP LAND
Gallery 1
September 11 – October 18, 2014

THE GALLERY RECENTLY INITIATED A SERIES OF DISCUSSIONS TO COINCIDE WITH ITS EXHIBITION SCHEDULE WITH THE GOAL OF EDUCATIONAL AUDIENCE ENRICHMENT. TELL US ABOUT THIS PROGRAM, HOW IT CAME INTO BEING AND WHAT IS INVOLVED?

E/I: Saturday Discussions is a year long series of talks between gallery artists, curators, critics, artists, writers, and intellectuals.  The series takes its title from communications industry parlance, in which E/I stands for “educational and informative.” On Saturday mornings, the Federal Communications Commission mandates that commercial broadcast stations meet a quota of E/I programming, with the goal of educational audience enrichment.  Like their namesake, the E/I talks at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery provides the public with an opportunity to hear more from the artist whose show is currently on view as they discuss and debate the ideas behind their new work.  In general, the artist lectures are held on the first (and sometimes second) Saturday morning after the opening. http://www.tanyabonakdargallery.com/talks/

Charles LONG
Aue
2014
patina on bronze
78 x 23 x 23 inches

IN REVIEWING THE GALLERY NEWS ON THE WEBSITE, AT LEAST 15 OF THE 30+ ARTISTS YOU REPRESENT ARE CURRENTLY EXHIBITING AT MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES AROUND THE WORLD. THIS ALSO ENTAILS A GREAT DEAL OF COMMUNICATION AND PLANNING WITH MUSEUM CURATORS AND REGISTRARS. HOW IS THE GALLERY STRUCTURED IN TERMS OF HANDLING THE GALLERY EXHIBITIONS AS WELL AS ALL THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS THAT ARE ALSO TAKING PLACE. WHAT IS THE EXHIBITION SCHEDULE FOR THE YEAR AHEAD?

As mentioned, it is helpful that museum exhibitions have a long planning schedule, which provides a lot of room for discussion and research about the best artwork for the show. Our upcoming gallery exhibitions include:

Tomas Saraceno [Galleries 1 & 2]

March 26 – May 2, 2015 

Rivane Neuenschwander [Galleries 1 & 2]

May 9 – June 20, 2015

IN WHICH FAIRS DOES THE GALLERY PARTICIPATE? HOW DOES THE GALLERY DECIDE WHAT TO EXHIBIT IN AN INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR BOOTH AS OPPOSED TO A SOLO GALLERY EXHIBITION?

Because of the number of artists that the gallery represents, we generally mount a solo exhibition of an artist’s work roughly every 2 years.  Within that time, the artists are naturally working on other projects, starting new bodies of work, exploring new ideas.  Art fairs give us the opportunity to show the most recent work by these artists, whether or not they have had an exhibition at our gallery that year.  

RENEE, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR CONTRIBUTING TO THE LRFA BLOG AND SHARING THE MANY ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE GALLERY ARTISTS WITH US.

PROFESSIONAL APPRAISAL OF FINE ART AND DECORATIVE ART IS A CRUCIAL COMPONENT IN SO MANY ASPECTS OF COLLECTING AND DONATING ART. APPRAISERS WORK WITH PRIVATE AND CORPORATE ART COLLECTIONS AND PARTNER WITH COLLECTORS, ATTORNEYS, ACCOUNTANTS, MUSEUMS, FAMILY FOUNDATIONS AND INSURANCE CARRIER TO PROVIDE ESSENTIAL INFORMATION AND EVALUATION OF ARTWORKS THAT SPAN CENTURIES AND MEDIUMS.

IN OUR NEXT LRFA BLOG, I AM VERY PLEASED TO INTRODUCE BETTY KRULIK IN HER CAPACITY AS PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN APPRAISERS ASSOCIATION.  BETTY IS A SEASONED DEALER WHO HAS CONTRIBUTED HER EXPERTISE ON AMERICAN ART IN AN EARLIER LRFA BLOG AND NOW HAS GENEROUSLY AGREED TO DISCUSS THE ART OF ART APPRAISAL.

WE WELCOME ALL COMMENTS AND INQUIRIES. I LOOK FORWARD TO POSTING THE AAA BLOGS AND TO HEARING FROM YOU.

MANY THANKS!

 

The art of Installation Art at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Tomas Saraceno
Installation View

INSTALLATION ART IS SITE-SPECIFIC, A  THREE-DIMENSIONAL WORK SIGNIFICANT IN SCALE THAT TRANSFORMS OUR PERCEPTION OF A SPACE. THE TERM GAINED CURRENCY IN THE 1960s TO DESCRIBE AN ARTIST’S METAMORPHOSIS OF AN INTERIOR, OFTEN FOR A TEMPORARY PERIOD OF TIME, CHARACTERIZED BY THE ARTWORK’S PHYSICAL DOMINATION OF THE ENTIRE SPACE. INSTALLATION ART  INVITES THE SPECTATOR TO LITERALLY ENTER INTO THE  WORK OF ART, OFTEN ENGAGING NOT ONLY THE VIEWER’S SENSE OF SIGHT BUT OFTEN HEARING AND SMELL.

ONE OF THE EARLIEST INSTALLATIONS WAS YVES KLEIN’S THE VOID IN PARIS AT GALERIE IRIS CLERT,  A 1958 PRESENTATION, RADICAL FOR ITS TIME, OF AN EMPTY WHITE INTERIOR IN A COMMERCIAL GALLERY. ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CONCEPTUAL SPECTRUM, A YEAR LATER THE SAME GALLERY WAS TRANSFORMED BY ARMAN’S FULLNESS, WHEN THE ARTIST CRAMMED THE SPACE WITH RUBBISH SO THAT THE WORK COULD ONLY BE VIEWED THROUGH THE STOREFRONT WINDOW. 

 

IN NEW YORK, EARLY INSTALLATIONS INCLUDE JIM DINE’S THE HOUSE AND OLDENBURG’S THE STREET. IN APRIL, 1966, AT LEO CASTELLI GALLERY, ANDY WARHOL CREATED TWO SEPARATE INSTALLATIONS: A ROOM FILLED WITH SILVER HELIUM PILLOWS, SILVER CLOUDS, ANOTHER COVERED WITH HIS COW WALLPAPER, BOTH CHALLENGING OUR PRECONCEPTIONS OF THE NATURE OF ART AND APPROPRIATE MATERIALS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65obeVlgD9E

 

SINCE ITS INCEPTION, TANYA BONAKDAR GALLERY HAS DEMONSTRATED AN IMPRESSIVE COMMITMENT TO THE CHALLENGES OF CONTEMPORARY ART AND THE GALLERY ARTISTS IT REPRESENTS WITH ITS DEDICATION TO EXHIBITING AND PLACING SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATION WORKS IN PRIVATE COLLECTIONS AND MUSEUMS. THE GALLERY, LOCATED IN THE HEART OF CHELSEA AT 521 WEST 21st STREET,  PROVIDES ARTISTS WITH THE TRUE MEANING OF ARTISTIC LICENSE BY SUPPORTING THEIR NON-COMMERCIAL PROJECTS THAT EXPAND THE POSSIBILITIES OF SCALE AND SCOPE. http://www.tanyabonakdargallery.com/

IN TODAY’S LRFA BLOG,  RENEE COPPOLA, GALLERY DIRECTOR, WILL DOCUMENT SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS IN THE TWENTY YEAR HISTORY OF THE GALLERY EXHIBITIONS.

Charles Long
Untitled
2010
aqua-resin fiberglass and latex paint over steel with found objects
51 x 51 x 32 inches; 129.5 x 129.5 x 81.3 cm
DETAIL

TANYA BONAKDAR OPENED THE GALLERY IN 1994 ON PRINCE STREET IN SOHO. WHO WERE THE ARTISTS THAT MADE UP THE OPENING ROSTER OF THE GALLERY? HOW DID TANYA BECOME INTERESTED AND INVOLVED IN THEIR WORK AND WHAT PROMPTED HER TO OPEN A GALLERY?

Many of the artists who were showing at the gallery in the early years have enjoyed a long, productive relationship with Tanya and the gallery. Uta Barth, Charles Long, Olafur Eliasson, Mat Collishaw, and Ernesto Neto are just some of the artists who were shown in Soho during the 1990s and still exhibit with us today. Tanya is very interested in showing international artists, as they provide a great range of perspectives and different ways of seeing the world.  She has been consistent in this respect, and the gallery’s roster of artists represents a very diverse group.

Olafur ELIASSON
Your now is my surroundings
2000
Skylight, mirror, concrete tiles, drain pipe, drywall, insulation
Installation, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, 2000

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF PAST EXHIBITIONS THAT HAVE DRAWN THE GREATEST CRITICAL, MUSEUM AND COLLECTOR RECOGNITION?

So many exhibitions have been well-received by the public and press.  Sarah Sze’s first show at the gallery in 2010 was incredibly popular and led directly to her Venice Bienniale nomination and ultimate commission.  Olafur Eliasson’s show at the gallery in 2000 won the Art Critics of America Award for Best Gallery Show of the Year.  More recently, Ernesto Neto’s exhibition of interactive, crocheted sculptures in 2012 generated great interest from curators, and from there Neto was invited to present a major solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Bilbao.  So it is true that the gallery shows have historically been a catalyst for many major exhibitions.

ERNESTO NETO
SLOW IIS GOOOD
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York
14 APRIL – 25 MAY 2012

THE GALLERY ROSTER IS EXTREMELY DIVERSE REPRESENTING MORE THAN THIRTY ARTISTS AND COMMITTED TO SHOWING WORK IN A LARGE DIVERSITY OF MEDIA. I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN IMPRESSED BY THE SUPPORT THE GALLERY SHOWS TO ITS ARTISTS IN EXHIBITING WORKS THAT ARE DEMANDING IN TERMS OF INSTALLATION AND PLACEMENT. WHO ARE SOME OF THE ARTISTS THAT FOCUS ON INSTALLATION? WHAT IS THE MARKET FOR THESE WORKS?

Our last exhibition (January 8 – February 14, 2015) is work by Susan Philipsz, an artist best known for often very large-scale indoor and outdoor audio installations.  For our show, Susan will present an immersive, 24-channel sound installation, inspired by 1930s émigré artists, Hollywood film scores, and McCarthy-era censorship.  (This piece was originally shown in the large Hamburger Bahnhof space in Berlin.)  Although on the surface the work seems immense – requiring the space of an entire room and somewhat specialized audio equipment, there is actually great versatility to her pieces that I believe make them quite easy and adaptable and suited for many different types of spaces.  However, it is true that there are many works of art that are large-scale and require much more space than your average painting or domestically-scaled sculpture.  These installations are certainly well-suited for museums and institutions, yet there are also some very passionate and committed collectors who don’t mind devoting a room in their home or office to a major work!

THE GALLERY MOVED TO ITS CURRENT LOCATION AT 521 WEST 21^ST IN 1998. IT WAS AMONG THE FIRST TO EXODUS SOHO AND DEFINE CHELSEA AS THE DOMINANT GALLERY AREA IN NEW YORK. WHAT DID THE NEW SPACE ALLOW THAT THE ORIGINAL SOHO SPACE COULD NOT?

Our move coincided with a period of tremendous growth for the gallery, and Chelsea offered the gallery a possibility to continue with this trajectory of expansion.

OLAFUR ELIASSON
Your engagement sequence
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York
28 APRIL – 27 MAY 2006

IN 2006, THE GALLERY EXPANDED EVEN FURTHER, ACQUIRING 5000 SQUARE FEET OF STREET LEVEL SPACE. THIS DOUBLED THE SIZE AND CERTAINLY ENHANCED THE GALLERY EXHIBITION CAPABILITIES AND ITS PROGRAMMING. SPECIFICALLY, WHAT ARE SOME OF THE EXHIBITIONS THAT THIS NEW EXPANDED SPACE MADE POSSIBLE?

The first exhibition in the new downstairs space was Olafur Eliasson’s Your Engagement Sequence and really represented how the renovation allowed for new opportunities in regard to the program.  For example, that artwork used light within a totally darkened room, which the artist viewed as an opportunity to explore what he calls the “fifth dimension” of an individualized perspective of the dimensions in space. The enhanced size of the gallery helped make the work even more successful.

IN OUR NEXT LRFA BLOG, RENEE WILL DISCUSS FUTURE EXHIBITIONS WE CAN ANTICIPATE AS WELL AS  A RECENT ADDITION TO THE GALLERY PROGRAMMING -E/I DISCUSSIONS- AN EDUCATIONAL AND INFORMATIVE YEAR LONG SERIES OF SATURDAY TALKS.

I APPRECIATE YOUR COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS AND, MOST OF ALL, YOUR READERSHIP!

 

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, a stronghold for experimentation and talent

RENEE COPPOLA
Director
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

SINCE ITS INCEPTION IN 1994, TANYA BONAKDAR GALLERY HAS LAUNCHED AND NURTURED THE CAREERS OF A KEY GROUP OF INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS. TANYA HAS A UNIQUE EYE AND AESTHETIC SENSIBILITY AS WELL AS A FIERCE DETERMINATION THAT SERVES WELL IN IDENTIFYING AND ESTABLISHING SUCH BRILLIANT TALENTS AS ERNESTO NETO, THOMAS SARACENO, AND THOMAS SCHEIBITZ, TO NAME JUST A VERY FEW.  THE GALLERY, AN OUTSTANDING DUPLEX SPACE LOCATED IN THE HEART OF CHELSEA ON WEST 22nd STREET,  OFTEN PROVIDES ARTISTS WITH THEIR FIRST SOLO EXHIBITIONS IN NEW YORK AND INTRODUCES THEIR WORK TO COLLECTORS AND MUSEUM CURATORS THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES AND INTERNATIONALLY. http://www.tanyabonakdargallery.com/

Ernesto Neto
SLOW IIS GOOOD
Gallery Installation
April 14 – May 25, 2012

THE GALLERY STAFF IS KNOWLEDGEABLE AND FULLY INFORMED ON THE SCOPE AND BREADTH OF EACH WORK AS WELL AS THE PROFESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS  AND CAREER HIGHLIGHTS OF EACH ARTIST. IT IS ALWAYS A PLEASURE TO HAVE A CLIENT IN MIND WHO WOULD RESPOND FAVORABLY TO AN ARTIST REPRESENTED BY TANYA BONAKDAR AS I KNOW THAT  GALLERY DIRECTOR, RENEE COPPOLA, WILL PROVIDE INFORMATION AND IMAGES ON AVAILABLE WORKS AND A DEPTH OF BACKGROUND MATERIAL WHICH FURTHER INFORMS MY CLIENT OF THE SIGNIFICANCE AND CONCEPTUAL THINKING THAT FORMS THE BACKBONE OF THE ARTWORK.

I AM VERY PLEASED TO INTRODUCE RENEE COPPOLA TO THE LRFA BLOG. I KNOW HER WELL ON A WORKING BASIS AND LOOK FORWARD TO LEARNING ABOUT HER PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND AS WELL AS THE WORKINGS OF THE TANYA BONAKDAR GALLERY, A FORERUNNER OF CONTEMPORARY ART AND INSTALLATION,  AND SHARING IT WITH YOU. 

Tomás Saraceno on the Roof: Cloud City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, 2012
Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York
Photograpy by Studio Tomás Saraceno, © 2012

RENEE, WHEN DID YOU FIRST JOIN THE GALLERY? WHAT WERE YOU DOING PRIOR TO THAT?

I joined the gallery in 2010, right after completing an M.B.A. in Management and Marketing.  However, my background is actually with arts institutions and museums.  I have an undergraduate degree in Art History and have worked at MoMA NY, for The Broad Foundation in L.A., and was Deputy Director of the Las Vegas Art Museum, a museum of contemporary art spearheaded by curator / writer Libby Lumpkin.

Susan Philipsz
Part File Score
January 8 – February 14, 2015
Installation

WHEN DID YOU REALIZE YOU WERE INTERESTED IN ART AND DECIDE TO PURSUE A CAREER IN THE ARTS? WHAT PROMPTED YOUR DECISION TO WORK IN THE GALLERY WORLD?

I grew up in a home that encouraged engagement in the arts, and so studying and working in the visual arts was a natural inclination.  However, when I was in Las Vegas, I received a very thorough education in the financial workings of a museum – from exhibition production to financial development.  It became clear that working at a gallery was not so different from working at a museum.  Both institutions are committed to mounting the best exhibitions possible and interact with many of the same vendors, collectors, and artists.  One advantage to working at a gallery is exposure to the very early stages of the artmaking process, since you work so closely with artists on the production of each show.  I really enjoy that kind of involvement at the nascent stage.

Susan Philipsz
Parat File Score III, 2014
Digital print and silkscreen print on canvas

WHO WERE SOME OF THE ARTISTS THAT THE GALLERY REPRESENTED WHEN YOU FIRST CAME ON BOARD? WHICH ONES RESONATED THE MOST WITH YOU AND WHY?

This is a tough question!  The gallery represents 35 amazing artists who are all compelling and ceaselessly interesting in their own ways.  Each of the directors is assigned to certain artists as their liaison for the gallery, and so I’ve worked most closely with Haim Steinbach, Charles Long, Mark Dion, Teresa Hubbard & Alexander Birchler, Mat Collishaw, Jason Meadows, Sabine Hornig, Liz Larner, Jeffrey Vallance, as well as Brazilian artist Sandra Cinto.  It has been very satisfying to watch their development and learn about their work in great detail and depth.  This is an opportunity that you just don’t have outside of a gallery environment.

IN OUR NEXT LRFA POST, RENEE WILL EXPLORE THE WORK OF SOME OF THE NEWER ARTISTS WHO HAVE RECENTLY JOINED THE TANYA BONAKDAR GALLERY ROSTER.  WE WELCOME YOUR QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS AND LOOK FORWARD TO HEARING FROM YOU.

 

Tis the season! very special gifts culled from Ursus Books by Doug Flamm

ARTISTS’ BOOKS ARE MADE AND CONCEIVED BY ARTISTS AND COME IN MANY DIFFERENT SHAPES AND SIZES. DOUG FLAMM, OF URSUS BOOKS, A NEW YORK BASED BOOKSTORE SPECIALIZING IN ART BOOKS AND ILLUSTRATED BOOKS, HAS A DEEP KNOWLEDGE OF AND PASSION FOR THIS UNIQUE AREA OF PUBLISHING. PRIOR TO JOINING URSUS,  DOUG WAS AN INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLER, DEALING IN THESE EXTRAORDINARY BOOKS THAT RESONATE WITH ART AND BOOK CONNOISSEURS ALIKE.

URSUS BOOKS PROVIDES AN INTERNATIONAL CLIENTELE WITH A COMPREHENSIVE SELECTION OF ARTISTS’ BOOKS, REFERENCE BOOKS, EXCEPTIONAL COPIES OF RARE BOOKS IN ALL FIELDS AND FINE ANTIQUE DECORATIVE PRINTS.  LOCATED ON THE THIRD FLOOR OF 699 MADISON AVENUE AT 63rd STREET, URSUS IS AN INVITING AND WELL-STOCKED NICHE WITH A WELCOMING AND INFORMED STAFF. http://www.ursusbooks.com/

IN HIS ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION TO THE LRFA BLOG, DOUG EXPLAINED THE REVOLUTIONARY INFLUENCE THAT ARTIST ED RUSCHA HAD ON ARTISTS’ BOOKS (FORMERLY IN THE FORMAT OF LIMITED EDITIONS BY 20th CENTURY MASTERS SUCH AS PICASSO AND MATISSE, OFTEN CONTAINING AN ORIGINAL ETCHING OR LITHOGRAPHY BY THE ARTIST.)

Ed Ruscha turned this category on its head. He changed the definition of what an artist’s book is. He conceived of ideas and projects using the commonplace technology of off-set printing. He selected very banal subjects (as he does in his paintings and works on paper) – parking lots, gas stations, swimming pools, and produced these images in a rudimentary way that parallels his artistic genre. In so doing, he created extraordinary objects that don’t fall within the traditions of livres d’artiste but have a value and vitality very much their own and liberated this form of artistic invention.

 

Douglas Flamm
URSUS BOOKS

 

 

I WAS DELIGHTED WHEN DOUG AGREED TO GATHER TOGETHER A WONDERFUL SELECTION OF ARTISTS’ BOOKS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE AT URSUS – A MEMORABLE GIFT FOR THE HOLIDAY SEASON OR A GREAT ADDITION TO ONE’S OWN LIBRARY YEAR ROUND.

 

Olafur Eliasson

ELIASSON, Olafur. Your House.

908 pp. Illustrated by Olafur Eliasson using computer-aided laser die-cuts. Oblong folio, 285 x 440 mm, bound in original cloth. New York: Library Council of the Museum of Modern Art, 2006. (#157176) $18,500.00

Conceived by Olafur Eliasson as part of the Contemporary Editions series at The Museum of Modern Art, this book is one of the more exciting new achievements in book making in the 21st Century. The subject of the book is Eliasson’s house in Denmark that is rendered in a vertical cross-section through an elaborate laser die-cut process of each page. The format of the book allows Eliasson the space to fully realize his idea on a scale of 85:1, so that each leaf corresponds to 2.2 centimeters of the actual house.

Eliasson summarizes the experience of viewing this book, “Reading a book is both a physical and a mental activity. It is like walking through a house, following the layout of the rooms with your body and mind: the movement from one room to another, or from one part of the book to another, constitutes an experiential narrative that is physical and conscious at the same time.”

Signed by Eliasson on the colophon. One of an edition of 225 copies. Condition is as new.

Born in 1967, Olafur Eliasson is a Danish-Icelandic artist whose sculptural and installation works are deeply informed by culture, ecology, and the nature of human perception. His works are inspired by his investigation of the relationship between subjective perception and natural phenomena. Perception, according to Eliasson, is as much an immediate sensory experience as it is rooted within the cultural framework of our memory.

Among the recurring themes in Eliasson’s works are light, ephemerality, and the environment. Such projects like The Weather Project (2003) in which an ecological model is placed into an institutional model frame of the Tate Modern, are fundamental rejections of object-based art. In creating environments and situations that engage our most basic sensory responses, Eliasson’s works democratize the experience of art. Participation and the act of viewing brings Eliasson’s works to life as he once explained, “I like to think that my work can return criticality to the viewer as a tool for negotiating and reevaluating the environment—and that this can pave the way for a more causal relationship with our surroundings.”

LEWITT, Sol. Complex Forms.

Comprised of four (4) large double-folded colour screenprints, 355 x 1420 mm (14 x 56 inches). Square folio, 360 x 360 mm, bound in thick paper over board, lettered spine and both covers with original colour screenprints by Lewitt. Preserved in black cloth folding box. Zurich: Annemarie Verna & New York: Brooke Alexander, 1990. (#156784) $30,000.00

Sol LeWitt

Edition limited to 15 copies signed and numbered by Lewitt. These four original coloured screenprints printed by Watanabe Studio in New York capture on paper the amazing Lewitt series of wall paintings that the artist conceived in 1987-88. Complex Forms represents Lewitt’s experiments with fracturing the cube into component parts. The application of four colours juxtaposed in variations of hue and saturation further expands the visual experimentation.

 

A key factor to emphasize is that Lewitt’s wall paintings were executed directly on the wall for a limited duration, usually a month or two. When a given exhibition was over, many of his creations were not sold and carried away like a painting or sculpture. They were simply painted over and permanently lost except for the original drawings and/or colour gouaches.

Sol Lewitt

“The essence of Lewitt’s work is the original idea as formulated in the artist’s mind. Because it emphasizes conceiving rather than implementing, this kind of art has often been referred to as conceptual art” (Andrea Miller-Keller, Sol Lewitt: Twenty-Five Years of Wall Paintings 1968-1993 in the exhibition catalogue of Addison Gallery, University of Washington Press, 1993, p.37). Condition is “as new.”

Sol LeWitt, whose deceptively simple geometric sculptures and drawings and ecstatically colored and jazzy wall paintings established him as a lodestar of modern American art. Sol LeWitt was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1928. As a child, he attended art classes at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. LeWitt completed a BFA at Syracuse University in 1949 and then served in the United States Army in Korea and Japan during the Korean War. In 1953 he moved to New York, where he took classes at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School and did production work for Seventeen magazine. LeWitt subsequently worked in graphic design in the office of architect I. M. Pei from 1955 to 1956. During the first half of the 1960s, LeWitt supported himself by working as a night receptionist at the Museum of Modern Art, where he met future critic Lucy Lippard and fellow artists Dan Flavin, Robert Mangold, and Robert Ryman.\

LeWitt is regarded as a founder of both Minimal and Conceptual art. Inspired by Eadweard Muybridge’s sequential photographs of animals and people in motion, LeWitt incorporated seriality in his work to imply the passage of time or narrative. Two important essays by LeWitt, in particular, defined the new movement: “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” (1967) and “Sentences on Conceptual Art” (1969). The earlier text proclaimed: “The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.” He began making wall drawings in 1968. The earliest consisted of pencil lines—in systematized arrangements of verticals, horizontals, and diagonals on a 45-degree angle—drawn directly on the walls. Later wall drawings included circles and arcs and colored pencil. LeWitt would eventually use teams of assistants to create such works.

In the early 1960s, LeWitt made paintings and reliefs before concentrating on three-dimensional works based on the cube in the mid-1960s. For these, he used precise, measured formats such as grids and modules, and systematically developed variations. His methods were mathematically based, defined by language, or created through random processes. He took up similar approaches in works on paper.

RUSCHA, EDWARD. Every Building on the Sunset Strip.

Every Building on the Sunset Strip
Edward Ruscha

Accordian fold artist’s book illustrated in b&w. 8vo, wraps preserved in a new cloth box. 1966. (#105867) $7,500.00
First Edition, first printing. Photomontage showing contiguously every building on both sides of the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.

Sunset Strip
Ed Ruscha

Approximately 22 feet long when folded out to its full length. Ruscha identifies street numbers and the names of cross streets. The folded accordion paper of Ruscha’s “Sunset Strip” has an extra 2″ flap of paper folded over behind the last page, therefore making this a true first edition. The final Jaguar building is pictured alone on this last half page. All other editions are cut evenly on the final page, including later printings that say “first edition” in front. Apparently the printer made an error in estimating the proper folding length of the printed paper the first time, but this was corrected in subsequent editions. Chip to silver mylar of slipcase and slight crease to spine of book, else a very good copy.

Sunset Strip
Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha’s photography, drawing, painting, and artist books record the shifting emblems of American life in the last half century. His deadpan representations of Hollywood logos, stylized gas stations, and archetypal landscapes distill the imagery of popular culture into a language of cinematic and typographical codes.  The ironic choice of words and phrases that are a dominant feature in his work draw upon the moments of incidental ambiguity implicit in the interplay between the word and image. Although his images are undeniably rooted in the language of a piercing observation of  American life, his elegantly conceived art addresses complex and widespread issues regarding the appearance and function of the world  at large and our transient place within it.

Ruscha’s artist books have proved to be deeply influential. They have widely influential other artists who have adopted their disaffected look. Their influence also extends to architects: Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi and Frank Gehry, who has known Ruscha since the 1960s. Inspired by the unassuming books that he found on street stalls during a trip to Europe, in 1962 Ruscha published his first artist book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations under his own imprint, National Excelsior Press. 

MORE SPECIAL ADDITIONS TO YOUR HOLIDAY GIFT LIST IN OUR NEXT LRFA BLOG.