MORE ON MIAMI
by Ben Davis(excerpt)
Dane Picard’s Gibbon Hands at the booth of Richard Heller Gallery at Pulse
Pulse Miami
The two-year old Pulse Miami set up in a low, white tent at 2700 NW 2nd Avenue, a short ride away by taxi -- or by pedicab, groups of which clustered at the entry, waiting to drive fair-goers to the nearby Scope or Photo Miami fairs or the Rubell Collection. Above the door to the tent, giant wooden letters read, in French, Je ne regrette rien (I regret nothing), an artwork by Tom Ellis that could have come straight from the mouth of the impenitent Warhol.And really, what was to regret? "We did better this year than last," said Chicago dealer Monique Meloche. Occupying center stage at her booth was El Zorzal Criollo by Minneapolis-based Alexa Horochowski, a streamlined "low-rider bed" made of fiberglass and painted hot-rod red, mounted on hydraulics that could be controlled from switches on the floor. Guaranteed to liven up some collector’s bedroom activity, the piece was $28,000 and on reserve.
Meloche directed attention to a pair of canvases by Chicago artist Todd Pavlisko, each depicting in high relief the face of Jesus in moss-like fields of plastic product fasteners, one orange and the other pink. The work proved so popular, Meloche said, that the collector who bought it was already receiving offers to sell it at a handsome profit.
Patterns made using aggregations of everyday objects were a theme, perhaps in a nod to the fact that you could spin gold out of almost everything at the fairs. At Santa Monica’s Richard Heller gallery, Cal Arts grad Dane Picard was represented by a video titled Gibbon Hands, a short, nonsensically repeating loop showing bits of the artist’s hands digitally collaged together and animated to resemble a simian cavorting against a white background. The video was priced at $3,500.
