Wednesday December 5, 2007

Art Basel day 1

The gates open at noon sharp on Wednesday for the uber-elite guests. Here they are moments before, crowded into the convention center’s lobby. The regular-elite get in at 2 pm, the merely special go to the Vernissage at 5 pm, and the riff raff gets in starting Thursday.

I bring this one up because my man Wolfgang Tillmans is one of the big photographers at the fair. I saw Nice work by Candida Hoffer and Gursky as always, but Tillmans was all over the place. The far wall in this picture shows one of his quintessential photo arrangements, albeit all in frames. The still-lives absolutely slay. (neuger-riemschneider gallery)

The usual suspects at White Cube were rounded out by a huge nazi/horror movie diorama by Jake & Dinos Chapman.

Two magnetized cubes suspended in a corner. Jeppe Hein, 303 Gallery NY.

At von Senger, a concrete-drawing robot. Not a very smart roboy (they had to re-position him once in a while), but he makes up in art brawn what he lacks in brains, yes?

Lara Favaretto. Yes, she wrote that on a wall with a marker and called it art. What are you going to do about it? (“Dimensions variable,” of course.) This is at Galleria Franco Noero, where I also very highly recommend Simon Starling’s “Four Thousand Seven Hundred and Twenty Five,” A projection of a film made by a motion-control camera panning around an exquisite chair, and accompanying diagram. Don’t take my word for that one — check it out.

Last one from Noero — Andrew Dadson’s flowers in black water. Do try this at home.

Arshile Gorky (from 1946) at Matthew Marks Gallery.

At De Carlo gallery, they are probably hating having installed this fake ATM with abandoned baby in silicone. Not to disapoint, attendees kept trying to use the ATM, and ignored the baby in a basket. Hey! How are you so sure that one’s real and that one’s fake!?

George Herold’s paining, Acrylic and bricks on canvas (with, I’m assuming, some sort of Herculean frame and substructure). Aizpuru, which also had more of that rockin’ Wolfgang Tillmans.

At maccarone, an installation dedicated to the Mass MoCA / Christoph Büchel fiasco, mostly framed court documents, e-mails, and a printout from NYTimes.com.

Also there: huge chocolate Santas with dildos butt plugs. also available in a convenient 1’ size. Yawn.

New this year: Art Supernova, a separate little section where each gallery’s art is separated from their storage and office areas, resulting in supposedly a more museum-like atmosphere. Well, slightly. Anyway, here’s a guy who’ll be performing hair sculptures all week. Stop by for a trim.

Nina Katchadourian’s Continuum of Cute. You’re not seeing the whole thing, but it goes from left to right and from top to bottom. Not sure if you can rearrange them to your liking.

<img src="http://criticalmiami.com/photos/2007/basel1/