Art Platform L.a.fair Los Angeles By Deborah Ripley
Could a new art fair possibly debut under the big black sun of "Pacific Standard Time" (PST)
, with its 60 affiliated art shows at
museums, galleries and alternative spaces? This was the question haunting Art Platform Los Angeles, Sept. 30-Oct. 3, 2011, and its
organizer Adam Gross, a native Angelenos who joined the fair-management team at Merchandise Mart Properties Inc.
(producer of the Armory Show and others) in 2010, after being a development staffer at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and
a private art dealer.Art Platform brought 75 galleries to the L.A. Mart, a 50,000-square-foot warehouse downtown. Three other fairs
also crowded their way onto the weekend schedule: the midsize Pulse Los Angeles, which put more than 60 gallery booths under a tent
near the downtown convention center; Avant LA, a small ancillary fair with emerging art, also located in L.A. Mart; and Fountain, the
scrappy New York-based fair.
In the Art Platform VIP room, Gross opined that PST was crucial to the success of his operation. All the important collectors and
museum trustees are coming in for this event and will provide the impetus that galleries need to bring their very best works, he
said. He also mentioned that he had an Art Basel-style talk with local collectors, emphasizing that to make the fair successful,
they would need to open their wallets and buy, as well as open their houses to VIP fair visitors. Gross successfully attracted an
A-list art crowd, but in the end it all amounts to sales. If the dealers are happy, then I am happy," he said.
Spotted on opening night were Don and Mera Rubell, sitting in the booth of Chicago dealer Kavi Gupta and discussing the possibility
of acquiring a major work by Chicago artist Theaster Gates for their private Miami museum. The estimable Gates, whose exploding art
career should help fund his social outreach efforts (via a string of pottery centers), is the subject of a solo show at MOCA,
privately financed by the Chicago collecting couple Paul and Linda Goskind. Gates' exhibition ran concurrently with curator Paul
Schimmel's Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-1981," celebrating the Helter Skelter side of L.A. art.
California collector Robert Shimshak, who owns a substantial number of works by assemblage art pioneer Wallace Berman (1926-1976),
was spotted with fellow collector Mark Richards outside the booth of Michael Kohn Gallery. The dealer, who represents the Berman
estate, had some gems by the artist, including an untitled collage from 1968 made using a Verifax, a brand of obsolete copier, which
was priced at $48,000.
Shimshak was also touting Speaking in Tongues: The Art of Wallace Berman and Robert Heinecken, a show on view at the Armory Center
for the Arts in Pasadena. He said he was excited to see the two artists exhibited together for the first time.
Cirrus Editions founder Jean Milant has printed graphics aplenty by Ed Ruscha, which are on view in several museum shows as well as
in Art Platform booths. Milant was hoping, however, to find a home for the rarest work he had brought to the fair -- a large 1973
vacuum-formed painting by the late artist Craig Kauffman, who died last year. (Artist Ed Moses dropped by the booth to ask the price,
which was $250,000.)
by: aarenbrowns
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