Laguna News-Post

ART WAVES

Artist and His Art Form Intimate Relationship with Nature , by ROBERTA CARASSO , 11/26/09

Artist Michael Kessler is passionate about exploring and creating art based on the dynamics of nature. His acrylic panels, in his solo exhibition at the Art Cube Gallery, are responses to questions he continually ponders: How do various natural processes affect the physical world? And why do natural substances get to be shaped the way they do?

Thus, Kessler’s techniques and original methods emerge from his close observation of nature and deciphering how it creates. In this way, the artist and his art form an intimate relationship with the natural world.

While scrutinizing natural specimens, the artist continues to question phenomena such as erosion, how the wind or water slowly sculpts rocks, manipulates soil, changes waterways, is constantly in a state of building, destroying, rebuilding, and altering the world at every moment. Kessler’s artistic processes, therefore, have become like natural processes.

The artist is not concerned with recreating how the world looks, capturing a static landscape. Rather, he uses numerous methods he meticulously devises, to bring about holistic, abstract imagery that is born from Kessler’s reconfiguring the never-ending forces that continually affect our planet.

Kessler is truly a seasoned painter and Laguna Beach is honored to have his art displayed here. He exhibits internationally, is a Rome Prize recipient as well as having received the Pollock/ Krasner Award, and praise for his work in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program.

Making art consistently for 35 years, Kessler has much experience working with nature-based abstractions. Using many layers of paint, sanding, building up textures then removing layers, and adding more, Kessler gets closer to ways nature creates.

The final work of art shifts between representation and abstraction. When looking at his sophisticated panels, we don’t see nature, per se, but somehow each panel reminds us of some aspect of nature’s familiar wonderland.

Kessler is inspired by the endless examples nature provides. He might pick up a rock, turn it over and relish the colors of calcium rust or iron or the accumulation of oxidation. He ponders too how water seeps on to a stone and gives it its present color and shape. Nature constantly feeds his curiosity and artistic appetite.

Kessler is never at a lost for subject or for a new painting possibility. Yet Kessler’s style of painting is spontaneous, without plans or preconceptions. Arriving at his studio, he studies each panel and allows it to awaken an idea. The materials call to him and as an artist he responses, beginning the process in concert with the materials. One thing leads to another and the art evolves.

At the outset of the process, Kessler chooses certain parameters, such as colors that do affect the work. He avoided green colors for many years, but two years ago, Kessler decided to take up the challenge of greens when he observed how movie sets frequently use green walls for interiors. Greens enhance human skin color and create a harmonious setting. Gallery visitors, seeing Kessler’s work are inspired, even uplifted by his engaging imagery. It evokes a positive response as each painting enriches people’s vision of the world.

"Untitled" by Don Hazlitt, Sculpture: mixed media, 7.5" x 6", Date: 1980

The Utah State University’s Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art has been selected to receive a gift of 50 works of art from New York collectors Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, with the help of the National Gallery of Art, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Gallery MAR is bringing “Herb and Dorothy,” a documentary about this collector duo, to the Park City Film Series on December 3rd at 7pm. Learn more about the screening here: “Herb and Dorothy” Screening.

In a press release, U.S.U. tells us that the gift is part of a national gifts program entitled “The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States,” which will distribute 2,500 works from the Vogels’s personal collection of more than 4,000 works of contemporary art throughout the nation, with 50 works going to one selected art institution in each of the 50 states.

“The Vogel Collection is unique among collections of contemporary art, both for the character and breadth of the objects and for the individuals who created it,” said Ruth Fine, curator National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. “Herbert Vogel (b. 1922) spent most of his working life as an employee of the United States Postal Service, and Dorothy Vogel (b. 1935) was a reference librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library. After visiting the National Gallery of Art on their honeymoon in 1962, they prioritized collecting art above personal comfort; the couple used Dorothy’s salary to cover their living expenses and devoted Herbert’s salary to buying primarily minimalist and conceptual art by unknown artists. Their two rules for collecting? The piece had to be affordable, and it had to be small enough to fit into a taxi and then into their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment.”

“This gift represents the hard work and the dedicated staff and donors who have built the reputation of the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art,” she said. “We will be able to offer more unique experiences to our students with the generous gift from the Vogels and the government agencies supporting this project. This is one more step to offering excellence — something we’ve had and now we are drawing national attention. Being selected as Utah’s only recipient [of these 50 artworks] is an extraordinary honor and comes to us, unsolicited, after 26 years of establishing a collection and building a reputation for the museum,” Berry said. “We look forward to developing educational programming and featuring these works along with others from our permanent collection for visitors from throughout the state of Utah and the entire intermountain region.”

Berry said receiving the gift is a natural fit for the museum, expanding the collection to represent artists working in conceptual and minimalist art in New York. “Now, with these works at our museum, traveling to see work of this caliber will be a little easier for students and residents of Utah once the gift has arrived sometime in 2009,” she said.

You can see the U.S.U. works here: Vogel Collection.

There are signs of prosperity in the art market and things are beginning to look up. When it comes to art, there will always be collectors who can’t live without their next acquisition. Buying a Warhol is like buying gold, and after last year’s sagging auction sales, signs now point to go!

This Wednesday night, Sotheby’s in New York auctioned off several post-war and contemporary art pieces to a total of over $130 million. One of the top sales was an Andy Warhol piece entitled “200 One Dollar Bills,” which sold for $43.7 million. The circa-1962 piece was last sold by Sotheby’s over 20 years ago for $300,000…. a fantastic investment for that collector, a taxi-cab tycoon! The winning bid is thought to have  come from a phone bid, and far surpassed the $12 million estimate. In addition, another bidder paid $6.1 million for Warhol’s 1965 “Self Portrait.”

Sotheby’s reported total sales of $181,770,000 on and featured five works that sold for more than $10 million. The cautious auction house initially thought it would take in $115.3 million.

As for the auction bidders, they included some famous names such as fashion designer Valentino Garavani and jeweler Laurence Graff.

On the retail front, mega-dealer Larry Gagosian has recently opened up his first retail store on Madison Avenue in New York. Gagosian buys and sells hundreds of millions of dollars in paintings and sculptures each year and has galleries from New York, to LA, to his newest space in Athens, Greece. In his new retail shop, price points are much more accessible. Design objects like books, wallpaper, and furniture are for sale, as are posters and other works from his “stable” of artists: Ed Ruscha, Marc Newson, Jeff Koons, and Richard Prince.

Downstairs of the shop you’ll find “Other Criteria,” the art house created by Damien Hirst (Gagosian’s client) and others that offers limited-edition books, posters, magazines, and accessories. “Other Criteria” is based in London and the Madison Avenue store will be the first U.S. location. The Gagosian Gallery store will have a complete, publicly available archive of the gallery’s publications. Shown above are white-glazed porcelain “Puppy Vases” (1998) by Jeff Koons, in an edition of 3,000,000. They retail for $7,500 each plus shipping. Get ‘em while they’re hot!

And the winner is… Chakaia Booker’s sculpture “Discarded Memories”! The young Benefactors chose this piece at last night’s Annual Acquisition Dinner and Gala. Our $18,000 budget will be used (in part) to add this piece to the Utah Museum of Fine Art’s collection. Many thanks to Jessica Peterson and Jill Dawsey for organizing and bringing this event to fruition. Based on my table’s opinion, this piece won by a landslide.

The event brought many local collectors and art folks together; our new Salt Lake Art Center’s executive director, Adam Price, was at our table, as was Brent Schneider, who gave a very inspiring speech, challenging us to ask “what is art?” A few Gallery MAR collectors were in the house, so thank you for supporting the UMFA!

If you enjoy discussing modern and contemporary art, the Young Benefactors at the UMFA is a perfect fit for you. Don’t let the name fool you: there is no specified age range for membership and they welcome everyone. “Young” represents fresh, innovative ways of seeing and experiencing the visual world. I’ve enjoyed all of the opportunities that the Young Benefectors membership has provided me. My favorite event was the “Behind the Scenes” tour of the museum’s collection.

[From the UMFA website]:  Established in 2004, the Young Benefactors organization of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts is a leadership association for individuals dedicated to cultivating stewardship for the Museum and its collections. Young Benefactors use a portion of their combined membership dues to purchase a work of art for the UMFA’s permanent collection each year; making the group vital to the future of the UMFA, and to the cultural vitality of the community and the State of Utah.

Young Benefactors membership offers a unique opportunity to mingle with a diverse group of people who share a passion for learning about, and encouraging advocacy for, the visual arts. Group activities include a variety of educational programs and social events including curator and director-led tours of museum exhibitions, tours of private art collections and artists’ studios, and private receptions at area art galleries.