After an almost two years’ absence from art fairs due to COVID-19, “it’s exciting to travel again and to bring artwork to Intersect Aspen,” says Susan Barrett, president of Barrett Barrera Projects.
Barrett and her team traveled to Aspen, Colorado, earlier this month to introduce visitors to artists represented by her gallery, and to explore the works of others. In a week that saw Barrett promoting the gallery, connecting with gallerists, and selling art, she took time to select a few standout works and share them with us. “It’s always hard to choose favorites,” she says, “but here are a few of mine.”
Quartz Eroded Basketball Hoop (2021) by Daniel Arsham
One work that immediately struck me was a sculptural piece titled Quartz Eroded Basketball Hoop (2021) by artist Daniel Arsham, presented by Perrotin. The work takes a rather banal and ubiquitous object and re-contextualizes it, using the intentional erosion of the basketball hoop decorated with quartz to create a contemporary relic. There are layers upon layers of emotional, cultural, and aesthetic associations that can be drawn from this work, underscored by the conflation of the past, present, and future, and driven by the dematerialization of a contemporary world increasingly defined by the digital. I especially love the reference to David Hammons, an artistic predecessor of Arsham’s, who executed a basketball hoop sculpture made of crystal chandeliers and frosted glass more than 20 years ago. Using crystal, Hammons elevated the basketball hoop to the baroque during a period of celebration of the sport. Arsham, on the other hand, incorporates quartz to create a similar visual beauty but invokes an altogether different and haunting sense of the passage of time and modern obsolescence. This nod to Hammons is personal to me, as it brings back a wonderful memory of meeting Hammons in New York after a Studio Museum opening—my first as a lender—and being led by him to a studio where he showed us his work.
Floating World (The Red Hill) (2008) by Andy Millner
It was wonderful to see St. Louis so well represented at the fair by both artists and galleries. William Shearburn Gallery traveled to Aspen with great work, including a large-scale pigment print on paper by local artist Andy Millner from 2008, titled Floating World (The Red Hill). I absolutely love the complexity of the forms in this work! Natural plant forms are repeated to the point of obsession, hovering on the edge of abstraction in their almost infinite repetition. His use of color is incredibly vibrant, with a palette that includes a larger, bolder range of hues than some of his other work. I’m also drawn to Millner’s artwork because of its scale, especially given the medium he uses. Every intricate detail of his process and the final product can be studied at this scale, as the work takes over the entire visual plane of the viewer. His attentive study of the contours of leaves, the curves of blades of grass, the overlapping of earth, creates sumptuous fields of line and color that open to a rich and complex visual experience. For several years, Millner has used a computer to create his work, using technology to render the natural world, and it’s so interesting to think about this dialectic, while also considering the potential blurring of the two different realms, and the relationship between them.
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Effigy for a New Normalcy VI (Accepting Greatness) (2017)
I was thrilled to see a couple of works by mid-career artist Kendell Carter in the Edward Cella booth. Based in Los Angeles, Edward Cella Art & Architecture takes a unique approach to its programming, representing both contemporary artists, architects, and designers. I had the chance to speak to Cella about Carter, a California artist whose work I adore, and it was heartening to experience the enthusiasm and genuine appreciation that Cella has for Carter’s practice. The sculptural artwork Effigy for a New Normalcy VI (Accepting Greatness) (2017) is part of a series that we included in our 2017 group exhibition Transparency Shade: Seeing through the Shadow, curated by Modou Dieng. In this series, basketball shoes are resurfaced in gold. Taken from people in the artist’s life, the items are re-contextualized as icons. Besides the excitement of seeing this familiar piece, I was happy to learn more about Carter’s work with paints. Adam (Adam Silver) (2020) was created with innumerable layers of cast latex and aerosol. Allowed to harden and then peeled from the plastic, the work was then painted upon and mounted. The concept is brilliant in the ambiguity it presents between painting and sculpture. It’s a painting with no canvas, or a flat sculpture. In this series, Carter creates physical form from the paint, reifying the process as the product. Continuing his exploration of the personal, Carter names each work in this series after a person. He spreads his message of love by inscribing the word backwards, like a puzzle, on the surface of the work.
