Category: Travels

Art Chicago and NEXT  

I finally looked back through the various cards and artist bios I collected a couple of weeks ago at Art Chicago and NEXT. Here are a few artists that caught my interest: Galería Leyendecker, based in the Canary Islands, was showing (photo) a series of large-format photographic prints from a film by German artist Julian Rosefeldt. The images look like outakes from a western, with a shadowy cowboy figure in a desert landscape. Fittingly, the film was shot at Fort Bravo Texas Hollywood in Almeria, Spain, a film set originally used in one of Sergio Leone’s classic spagetti westerns. Dietrich […]

Fire and Disorder  

Last week I stopped by the Adamson Gallery to see “Touched by Fire”, a collection of works by French photographer Martin d’Orgeval. One year ago, a fire destroyed Deyrolle, a famous taxidermy shop in Paris. D’Orgeval was there to photograph the shop after the fire, capturing scenes of half-charred animals amidst the disordered shop. At first glance, the images appear to serve primarily as a documentary record of a point in time. While items of furniture and other debris are piled up haphazardly, it is clear that someone has already come through and begun the process of cleaning up. However, […]

The Urban Crisis  

One of the running themes that emerged at ARCO this year was about the expansion and transformation of urban spaces. Perhaps its not surprising that this theme was so prominent in the midts of an international economic crisis and declining real estate market. Cities around the world have experienced a boom in construction in recent years, only to see newly fabricated neighborhoods remain uninhabited. In other cases, existing urban areas are under growing pressure from expanding populations. Several photographers have focused on this problem. Belén Uriel: Uriel’s photograph Ideal House shows a colorful billboard with the outline of a cartoon-like […]

ARCO  

In February I had the opportunity to attend ARCO, the international contemporary art fair that occurs every year in Madrid. I’d been curious to attend the fair, which has strong representation from galleries in Spain and Latin America, but I had no idea beforehand of the size and national prominence of the event. ARCO takes place in an enormous convention center (the entire complex has over 200,000 square meters of exhibition space) near the airport. The metro train from central Madrid was packed — at first I thought there was a soccer game on, but everyone was heading to ARCO, […]

Cárcel de Carabanchel  2 

The Carabanchel prison in Madrid is one of the most infamous architectural landmarks from Spain’s decades of dictatorship. General Francisco Franco ordered construction of the prison in the 1940s to house the regime’s many political prisoners. The complex is designed on the panopticon model, with the cell blocks extending outwards from a round central tower. This arrangement, first proposed by 17th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham, allowed guards to easily observe all areas of the prison and was intended to amplify the prisoners’ sensations of powerlessness.   Carabanchel was finally closed in 1998 and its few remaining inhabitants moved to other […]

Constitutional Crisis  

Strangers in a Strange Land  

In my space at Artomatic I decided to show a series of images from two very different subjects, the monumental titanium constructions of Frank Gehry and abandoned houses along the coast in Almeria, in southern Spain. In a recent trip to Spain I stopped in Bilbao to photograph the Guggenheim museum before heading south to Almeria. I found both settings to be fascinating but also austere. Gehry’s organic forms take on a more sinister air at night, as the artificial lights impose gold and brown hues on the metal plates and Louise Bourgeois’ spider sculpture appears less playful. The abandoned […]

Castellon Opening  

  On Friday March 14, over 300 people filled the marble-lined foyer of the Museo de Almería for the opening of the exhibit “Federico Castellón: de Almería a Nueva York.” Along with dozens of original prints and drawings and several paintings, the exhibit includes illustrated books, personal letters and family photos, and a recorded interview with the artist. The setting is outstanding, a well-designed exhibit space within a light-filled modern building. In fact, the museum was recently nominated for the European Museum of the Year award, which has previously been awarded to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and […]

Guggenheim Bilbao  

                          Even for an art museum, location is key. The industrial city of Bilbao was an unlikely place to locate an international art museum and architestural landmark, but in retrospect it was a very forward-looking decision. What makes the Guggenheim in Bilbao so inviting is not so much what is inside as the building itself and the grounds that surround it. It was given a prominent place alongside the river at one end of the city center, where one of the main entrypoints to the city passes right […]

Federico Castellon  2 

My great-uncle, Federico Castellon, was a respected surrealist painter and graphic artist. Throughout the time I was growing up, we always had a few of his dream-like lithographs on display in our house. While Federico spent most of his career based in New York, he was born in Almeria, Spain. The stark desert landscapes of southern Spain can be seen in the background of some of his works. The exhibition “Federico Castellón, de Almería a Nueva York” opens later this month at the Museo de Almería. I plan to be there for the opening and to do some more photography […]