Good Stuff House just returned from New York City, where we installed a souvenir version of the Soft Shop at the Verge Art Fair in Greenwich Village. We got a couple teeny web mentions on ArtInfo.com:
…Still, a conversation between two visitors couldn’t help but catch my attention: “Do you ever notice that the only difference between an ‘independent’ or ‘alternative’ fair and the ‘major’ institutions,” one asked his friend, “is that the ‘independent’ guys are always broke?”
For better or for worse, the man had a point. Formally, the smoothly mapped-off plains of color in acrylic paintings by Japanese artist Tsutomu Nunokawa could be confused pretty easily with oil paintings I saw by American artist Andrew Masullo at the Whitney this past March. The fort made of quilts and cushions made by Chicago’s Good Stuff House (artists Kayce Bayer and Chris Lin) seemed like a riff on the late Mike Kelley, highlighted in an underwhelming homage in the Whitney. I’m just as sure that Esmerelda Kosmatopoulos’s giant inflated canvas glove, titled “Palm Authority,” could fit in pretty much anywhere, no matter how glitzy or drab. The point is this: This work looks like contemporary art, as good as bad as any other contemporary art, but not meaningfully alternative enough, perhaps, to feel really underground — which is what a fair like this needs to spotlight to best serve its purpose.
Although a critique of the Fair itself and the concept of “alternative,” it’s nice to share a sentence with a Mike Kelley reference. Full article here.
Also, we were included in the Slideshow for “Best of Frieze Week”–alongside some very big names in art!
More photos to come.