Skip to main content
  • International Sites
    • International
    • Australia
    • Brazil
    • Canada
    • China
    • CHINA (ENGLISH)
    • France
    • Germany
    • Hong Kong
    • India
    • Japan
    • JAPAN (ENGLISH)
    • Korea
    • Korea (ENGLISH)
    • Mexico
    • Russia
    • Southeast Asia
    • United Kingdom
  • Magazines
    • Art+Auction

      Modern Painters

  • Blogs
  • Videos
  • Photos
  • Art Prices
  • Gallery Guide
  • Art Sites
  • Boutique
  • Blouin News
  • Log in

    Log in

    |Forgot your password?
    OR
    Sign up

    Not a member?

    Create an Account
Home
  • Visual Arts
    • Visual Arts Home
    • Contemporary Art
    • Old Masters/Renaissance
    • Impressionism & Modern Art
    • Ancient Arts & Antiques
    • Traditional Arts
    • Museums
    • Reviews
    • Columnists
    • Fairs
    • Features
  • Performing Arts
    • Performing Arts Home
    • Film
    • Music
    • Theater & Dance
    • Television
    • Events
    • Blogs
    • Photos
    • Videos
  • Architecture & Design
    • Architecture & Design Home
    • Design
    • Architecture
  • Artists
  • Art Prices
  • Market News
    • Market News Home
    • Fairs
    • Auctions
    • Collecting
    • Galleries
    • Art & Crime
    • ART PRICES
  • Lifestyle
    • Lifestyle Home
    • ART Parties/Scene
    • Fashion
    • Food & Wine
    • Jewelry & Watches
    • Autos & Boats
  • Fashion
  • Events
  • Travel
  • Newsletter Sign Up
  • Homepage RSS
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • foursquare
  • tumblr
 
International Edition
May 22, 2013 Last Updated: 2:10:AM EDT

Martos Gallery Makes for the Hamptons, Filling a Collector's Beach House With High-Priced Hipster Art

English

Martos Gallery Makes for the Hamptons, Filling a Collector's Beach House With High-Priced Hipster Art

  • Email
  • Print
  • Tweet
  • Pin It
View Slideshow
Courtesy Martos Gallery
Aaron Suggs's "Untitled (Camouflage Dinghy)," 2011-2012
: 
by Benjamin Sutton
Published: August 3, 2012

BRIDGEHAMPTON, New York — To reach Martos Gallery's third and final summer pop-up exhibition at an obliging collector's humble Hamptons house, visitors will most likely pass an enormous mansion whose front yard boasts monumental sculptures by Richard Serra and Mark di Suvero. By contrast, entering 112 Sagaponack Road — through a gate whose handwritten sign asks that you please close it behind you — you will pass under a tree from which the artist Virginia Overton has rigged a hanging chunk of tree trunk. "Untitled (Tree with Log #1)" (all works 2012 unless otherwise noted) sets the tone for the playful installation beyond; this is a hipper type of Hamptons exhibition.

Beginning with its title, "Creature From the Blue Lagoon" (through September 3), curator Bob Nickas's show — a follow-up to last summer's one-off parody "The 2011 Bridgehampton Biennial" and 2010's "Wait For Me at the Bottom of the Pool" — asserts its self-deflating sense of irony early and often. Before even reaching the house, where most of the show's 150-something pieces are installed, guests pass B. Wurtz's Duchampian stack of sieves "Unkind Birdbath," a constellation of rocks adorned with pornography by Aura Rosenberg at the base of a tree, and a pink tent by Servane Mary silkscreened with jewelry, cosmetics, and other tokens of femnine acoutrement like a next-wave feminist update of Tracey Emin's "Everyone I Have Ever Slept With" tent.

 

In the backyard things get wilder still. Josh Tonsfeldt has attached a Tyvek banner printed with a nearly life-sized image of a giraffe to a tree for a startling surprise, Andra Ursuta's comparatively tiny but similarly inconspicuous concrete sculpture boasts of being "A Worm’s Dream Home," and Mary has filled the single-car garage (how un-Hamptons!) with life-sized photos of Catwoman silkscreened onto plexiglas mirrors. By the pool, Johanna Jackson's still-life knitwear "Fruit Bowl" hangs ominously in a low tree branch, and John Miller's "Side Board" consists of a surfer manequin's top half balancing a boogie board and its upended lower half on its bewigged head. Aaron Suggs revisited his floating sailboat sculpture "Untitled (Camouflage Dinghy)" (2011-12), wrapping it in photos of its surroundings so that, from the right angle, it might just blend right into the backdrop.

Many of the artworks inside the house dissolve into the funky and very lived-in surroundings far more effortlessly than Suggs's ship, foremost among them Davina Semo's stainless steel triangle embedded low in the hallway wall on the second floor, "AFTER EVERYONE LEFT, SHE FOUND HERSELF ALONE IN THE ROOM," and Wurtz's dozens of colorful aluminum pan paintings hanging in the kitchen. Other stand-out works in the house include Nancy Shaver's free-standing sculpture "Daisy" (2011) — peeling layers of upholstery and house paint serving as a memorial to convential notions of domesticity and feminity not unlike Servane Mary's tent — Mary Heilmann's tectonic bas relief of glazed ceramic-on-neon red wood "San Andreas," and Nathaniel Robinson's "Weather," a giant blue cube topped with a topographic rendering of a hurricane.

Countless other creatures and micro-climates await houseguests at the "Blue Lagoon." And while the emerging artist-dominated show's pricelist remains firmly within the conventional Chelsea-Hamptons price range — between $600 and $150,000 (though most works are tagged with the four- and five-digit figures) — the atmosphere is more pool party than sales pitch.

"Creature from the Blue Lagoon" continues at Martos Gallery's summer location, 112 Sagaponack Road, Bridgehampton, through September 3. To see works from the exhibition, click the slide show.

Share This Story

  • Tweet This

  • Post to Stumble Upon
  • Email to a Friend
Go to top ↑
View Slideshow
Galleries, Contemporary Arts, Hamptons 2012, Martos Gallery, Hamptons, Pop-up exhibition, Mary Heilmann, Nancy Shaver, Johanna Jackson, Josh Tonsfeldt, Aaron Suggs, Servane Mary, Andra Ursuta, B. Wurz, Aura Rosenberg
Share:
  • Tweet
  • Email to a Friend

Comments

1 Comment
+ Add Yours
Log in or register to post comments
Oldest first Newest first

by skowskitimt on August 04, 2012 at 7:08am

fake Audemars Piguet watches Audemars Piguet Replica watches Replica Audemars Piguet Watches for Sale discount Audemars Piguet watches Audemars Piguet watches

  • reply

Most Popular

  • This Month
  • This Year
  • Why "Rediscovered Artists" Are the Art Market's New Darlings
  • Christie's Rakes In a Half-Billion Dollars, Setting a Record
  • Barbara Kruger Responds to Supreme Bitchiness
  • How Many Artists Have Traded Work With "Anthony"?
  • Donald Judd's Children Prepare His Art-Filled Studio
  • Sotheby's $230-Million Imp-Mod Sale [VIDEO]
  • Tracey Emin on Her New Show and Transcending Her YBA Days
  • What to Look Forward to at Frieze New York 2013
  • The 100 Most Iconic Artworks of the Last 5 Years
  • The 50 Most Exciting Art Collectors Under 50 (Part 1)
  • Back to School Guide: The 10 MFA Programs That Give You the Most Bang For Your Buck
  • Basquiat's Ex-Girlfriend Reveals Major Trove of Unseen Works
  • Facebook Censors Pompidou's Gerhard Richter Nude, Fueling Fight Over "Institutional Puritanism"

Popular on Facebook

Editorial

  • Visual Arts
  • Performing Arts
  • Architecture & Design
  • Artists
  • Art Prices
  • Market News
  • Lifestyle
  • Fashion
  • Events
  • Travel

Products

  • Magazines
  • Gallery Guide
  • Blouin Art Sales Index
  • Somogy
  • Art Sites
  • Art Jobs

Louise Blouin Media

  • About Us
  • Subscriptions
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • Louise Blouin Foundation
  • RSS
Copyright © 2013 All rights reserved. Use of the site constitutes agreement with our Privacy Policy and User Agreement.