by Rhonda Sonnenberg
RETURN TO NEWS & NOTES
One doesn’t go to the world’s biggest art fair on the hunt for “fiber art,” and yet there was a diverse array of art with textile materials or sensibilities, at prices reaching $650,000, at Art Basel Miami Beach (December 1–4, 2005). This work reinforced the fact that many highly collected fine artists have incorporated fiber or textiles in their painting and sculpture and even—particularly in the case of Robert Rauschenberg—have made it a primary material. As such, this four-year-old, all-out-partying Miami version of longtime Swiss fair Art Basel, which attracted more than 40,000 visitors, including the art world’s crème de la crème, demonstrated how versatile and emotionally expressive fiber can be.
Mike Kelley, Lincoln's Beacon, 1985; glued and sewn felt; 70" x 70".
Courtesy of Jablonka Galerie, Cologne, Germany.
Mike Kelley’s 70" x 70" glued and sewn felt wall-hanging tribute to Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln’s Beacon (1985), dates from a period when the video/installation artist made numerous textile works; it was offered by Jablonka Galerie of Cologne, Germany, for $375,000. A boisterous work in fabric, metal, resin, and leather, Lady on Unicycle (2005) by Yinka Shonibare, priced at $60,000, was shown by New York’s James Cohan Gallery. This London artist flamboyantly dresses mannequins in stereotypical African fabrics using eighteenth-century clothing styles to parody the West’s historic colonialism and contemporary globalization.
Yinka Shonibare, Lady On Unicycle, 2005; metal, fabric, resin, leather;
86" x 53" x 47 1/2". Courtesy of James Cohan Gallery, New York.
Robert Rauschenberg is adept at creating subtle fabric works that are essentially flowing collages in their diaphanous layering and appliqué techniques. His piece Scent (1974), a delicate collage of offset lithographed and newspaper images layered like flower petals (86" x 50"), was offered by Gemini G.E.L., the Los Angeles artists’ collaborative workshop, and priced at $32,000.
Mappa, conceptual artist Alighiero Boetti’s 1989 embroidery, was part of the “map” project the artist, who died in 1994, began three decades earlier in which each country is represented by its national flag patterns. Seoul’s Kukje Gallery was selling it for $650,000. Christo, who takes fiber art to the hyperbolic, fetishistic extreme, wrapping whole urban avenues, was represented by collages based on several projects. The 1970 collage based on Valley Curtain allied a typographic map, a crayon-colored black-and-white photographic image of the valley, and an actual piece of the orange fabric he used in the project. Shown by Galleria Tega of Milan, it was priced at $110,000.
Sandra Cinto, Untitled, 2005; permanent pen on acrylic hand-dyed paper; automobile painted wood furniture with automobile paint; about 9' x 16'.
Courtesy of Casa Triângulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
Two brand-new works, both serene and provocative, demonstrated paper’s spacially dimensional and even theatrical range. Brazilian artist Sandra Cinto’s untitled wall installation ($40,000), shown by Casa Triângulo of São Paulo, Brazil, was a study in blue, in which she carved out a dream room by covering a wall in “roof shingles”—cut paper dipped in acrylic paint with stars drawn in silver ink—against which she aligned automobile-paint-covered furniture, also in blue. Brooklyn-based Jacob Hashimoto’s paper, nylon, acrylic, and wood pieces (76" x 50"x 7 1/2", $22,000 each), shown by Rhona Hoffman Gallery of Chicago, are in essence 3-D collages, formed of complex layered planes whose individual paper “coins” from afar look like millefiori flowers under glass. They are not only skillfully made but colorful and, above all, beautiful. Like the rest of the artworks for sale in the broad category of fiber art, they more than held their own alongside the Picassos, Kandinskys, Matisses, and Warhols, not to mention the outré hairdos and costumes of Art Basel Miami Beach’s fashionistas.
About the author
Rhonda Sonnenberg is an author and journalist who lives in St. Petersburg, Florida.
For more information
www.artbaselmiamibeach.com/ca/cc/ss/
www.jablonkagalerie.com
www.jamescohan.com
www.geminigel.com
www.kukjegallery.com
www.casatriangulo.com/site.htm
www.rhoffmangallery.com
RETURN TO NEWS & NOTES |
