www.kellyrichardson.net

The Buffalo News
By Colin Dabkowski
NEWS ARTS WRITER

In 2007, as the global economy sailed along unknowingly toward catastrophe, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery made one of the boldest and most prescient moves in its auspicious history.

Over the vocal objections of prominent figures in the local and national art worlds and with the support of others, the gallery’s trustees authorized the sale of more than 200 works of pre-modern art from the gallery’s permanent collection to fund future art purchases.

The bitterly contested decision drew a line in the sand between traditionalists who took the Albright-Knox’s move as an affront to the public trust and others who saw it as a rare opportunity to strengthen the gallery’s defining commitment to collecting contemporary art.

By the time the auctions were over, the gallery had bolstered its budget by $67.2 million, a financial gain of unprecedented import. The move, timed at what turned out to be the height of an art market bubble about to pop, was an important step in securing and maintaining the gallery’s position as one of the world’s top contemporary art institutions in the new century.

As gallery director Louis Grachos promised shortly after the 2007 auctions, the gallery has not markedly increased the pace of its acquisitions of new art. The increased endowment for purchasing new work, however, has given the gallery a better competitive position to acquire sought-after works by the likes of Tara Donovan, Sol LeWitt and, perhaps most notably, the soon-to-be completed joint acquisition of a piece by Felix Gonzalez-Torres with a major European institution.

As evidenced by the gallery’s new installation by Gonzalez-Torres, whom Grachos has long championed, the gallery is also combining the power of its new endowment with the increasingly frequent practice of joint purchases. It also co-owns two works with Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art and one with New York City’s Whitney Museum. This approach allows each participant to boost its buying power in an art market that, despite the ailing economy, remains highly competitive.

Far from an unrestrained shopping spree, the past three years of collecting are simply a better-funded continuation of a new direction in acquisitions that started four years earlier, with Grachos’ appointment as director.

Grachos’ tenure has been characterized by, among other things, a reinforced commitment to new abstract works by the likes of Jorge Pardo, Mark Fox and Teresita Fernandez, many of which entered the collection after the important 2005 show “Extreme Abstraction.” The gallery’s many and wide-ranging acquisitions over the past six years reflect not only Grachos’ appetite for artwork that is bold, playful and large-scale, but also the wildly diverse currents of an art world that continues to splinter into myriad directions and disciplines.

With the recent purchases of work by Kelly Richardson, Phil Collins, Bruce Nauman, Jeremy Blake, Julian Opie and Matthew Barney, the gallery is also clearly making a concerted attempt to round out its scant collection of video and film works.

Here’s a look back at some of the gallery’s more prominent purchases since Grachos signed on, with a special focus on the past three years. Check out a more extensive list, along with a slideshow of the works.

2003: “Cremaster Suite,” 1994-2002, by Matthew Barney. A collection of five photographs, all associated with a series of highly regarded films Barney made from 1994-2002. These joined a 2007 purchase of Barney’s “Drawing Restraint” film and sculpture.

2003: “Whitey,” 2003, by Ken Price. This playful biomorphic sculpture has been a regular presence in the gallery’s permanent collection exhibitions, and is now on view as part of “Topographies.”

2003: “Untitled (boy with hand in drain),” 2001-02, by Gregory Crewdson. This strange, almost mystical photograph is one of a series of 40 by Crewdson, whose highly stylized work peers into the underbelly of the everyday.

2004: “Dervish I,” 2004, by Jennifer Steinkamp. Part of the gallery’s increasing forays into digital and video work, this computer-created model of a writhing tree highlights Steinkamp’s unique talent for melding the currents of the natural and scientific worlds.

2005: “Universe (Agnes)/ Positive” and “Universe (Agnes)/ Negative,” 2000-2002, by Ricci Albenda. This abstract alien orb, which exists both as a floating sculpture and its negative impression in a nearby wall, shows Albenda’s ability to create a narrative out of thin air.

2005: “Gap from Tiny Town series,” 2001/2006, by James Turrell. This interactive piece is all about the way we see. Comprised of a darkened room and a large rectangular window of ethereal blue light, Turrell’s piece aims to bend the senses toward a sublime experience.

2005: “Light Matrix,” 2005, by Leo Villareal. By far the most visible purchase in the last decade, Villareal’s blinking series of lights on the gallery’s 1962 addition draws the attention of motorists and passers-by at night.

2006: “look and see,” 2004, by Jim Hodges. A 9-ton sculpture in the gallery’s courtyard that invites exploration from all angles, this piece is one of Grachos’ proudest acquisitions.

2006: “Untitled (domestic),” 2002 by Rachel Whiteread. Purchased jointly with the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Epic in scale and ambitious in concept, Whiteread’s negative cast of a staircase prompts us to think about the design of everyday spaces.

2007: “+ and -,” 1994-2004, by Mona Hatoum. This graceful kinetic sculpture, which rakes lines into a bed of sand and just as quickly erases them, speaks powerfully to issues of conflict and memory.

2007: Stills from “Mod Lang,” 2001, by Jeremy Blake. Acquired shortly after Blake’s death in 2007, this video installation of dripping and roiling color is easy to get lost in.

2007: “Triple ripple,” 2004, by Olafur Eliasson. A latter-day piece of Op Art, the short-lived artistic movement of ’60s and ’70s, Eliasson’s piece creates playful shadow effects.

2007: “Male Stretch #2,” 2007, by Evan Penny. Disturbing on a number of levels, engrossing on others, Penny’s stretched sculpture has the look of a digital image mistakenly manipulated in Photoshop.

2007: “No title (folding table and chairs, beige),” 2006, by Robert Therrien. The subject of equal amounts of praise and derision from gallerygoers, these gigantic and meticulously fabricated objects are meant to throw off our sense of scale.

2007: “A to Z 1994 Living Unit II,” 1994, by Andrea Zittel. Zittel’s self-contained living space prompts viewers to think about the human use of space and alternative ways of living.

2008: “Untitled (mylar),” 2007, by Tara Donovan. This sculpture rises out of the floor like a series of extraterrestrial plants. It embodies Donovan’s use of everyday construction or craft materials to achieve effects that seem to mimic natural forms.

2008: “Exiles of the Shattered Star,” 2006, by Kelly Richardson. Purchased after an exhibition of Richardson’s work at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, this acquisition of the Canadian artist’s imaginative video work shows the gallery’s interest in emerging artists as well as established brand names like Gonzalez-Torres.

2008: “Three Color Sentence,” 1965, by Joseph Kosuth. Coming out of the 2007 exhibition “The Panza Collection: An Experience of Color and Light,” this midcentury piece is an attempt to fill in some gaps in the gallery’s collection of early minimalist works.

2009: “Street Music,” 1950, by Norman Lewis. This small canvas by overlooked African-American painter Norman Lewis is a rare addition to the gallery’s peerless collection of abstract expressionist paintings. Its acquisition came after last year’s important “Action/Abstraction” exhibition, which the gallery organized with two other American museums.

2009: “‘Untitled’ (Double Portrait),” 1991, by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Another long-awaited purchase, this elegant piece by the late Gonzalez-Torres consists of a stack of poster-sized sheets printed with a sort of figure-eight pattern. As with many of the artist’s works, visitors are encouraged to lift a sheet off the pile and take it with them when they leave.

source: The Buffalo News

Recent acquisitions at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery slideshow