Obsession, untitled, ca. 1870, paper collage, 29 x 24 cm. Courtesy of Delmes & Zander.
"In a New Location, the Independent Art Fair Feels Like Home"
"It’s a typical view of suburban
life that seems strangely off, drawing you in to survey the scene. I was
reminded of this weird domestic dynamic just a few booths away, at Delmes & Zander,
albeit in an extremely different work. Perhaps the oldest pieces at the
fair, the series consists of three photographs from the 1870s.
Proving just how bizarre some Victorians were, the black-and-white
pictures show what seems to be a husband wielding a knife, while his
wife appears calmly decapitated in various frames. It’s a great example
of trick photography that stands out at the fair for its age, made long
before we were able to manipulate reality with the fast and
simple clicks of a mouse."
Helen Stoilas from THE ART NEWSPAPER picks DELMES & ZANDER at the Independent
Michail Paule, untitle, 1930-37, mixed media on paper, 35.1 x 26.7 cm. Courtesy of Delmes & Zander.
"One/other is a display of self-portraits, many by anonymous artists ,
that makes visible their creator’s inner demons and secret fantasies.
...The works cover more than a century of obsessive artistic production,
from a series of violent early photo-collages from the 1870s, in which
the unknown photographer envisions himself as a sabre-welding
executioner, to erotic pencil drawings from the 1990s by a man named William Crawford made on prison letterhead."
"A line of several hundred shivering, elaborately dressed art
enthusiasts stretched down the block outside the Independent art fair
last night in SoHo, as the final phase of New York’s art fair
week opened with a bang and more than a few outraged collectors. “But
I’m VIP!” wailed one woman in a geographically untraceable accent as she
was turned away at the door.
That collector, along with scores
of other art lovers, can take heart: There are so many fairs (at least
eight) and so many thousands of works of art on view that it was almost
impossible to see, let alone appreciate, everything on offer. And that’s
why we’ve collected 10 works that, for various reasons (an
under-the-radar artist, an emerging trend throughout the fairs, a
surprisingly reasonable price, or, in more than a few instances,
an artwork that is simply compelling) were worth checking out. (...)
Outsider Art, which
generally refers to artworks by people who didn’t (usually) intend for
their artworks to be sold, popped up in multiple booths at multiple
fairs this week. Several booths included works by the famous outsider
artist Bill Traylor, but some hidden gems were also for sale, including
this hand-painted collage from the 1870s, “Obsession,” which is
double-sided and sells in the range of 14,000 to 18,000 euros. Delmes
& Zander Gallery
Another outsider artist is the
self-taught Von Bruenchenhein (1910-1983), who lived in Milwaukee and
worked in total obscurity until after his death, when his art was
“discovered” by a friend of the family who arranged for the Kohler Arts
Center to acquire a huge body of his work. Many pieces remain on the
market, but every one of his works at the Independent were bought at the
preview. (...)"
Eugene
von Bruenchenhein,untitled,
undated (1940s-50s)
Gelatin
silver print, 25.4
x 17.8 cm. Courtesy of Delmes & Zander.
Delmes
& Zander I Berlin will show the photographs of “Marie” by
visionary artist Eugene von
Bruenchenhein shot in the 1940s and 1950s.
An
artist with unpaired creative output, von
Bruenchenhein (born 1910) produced an expansive universe of multiple
mediums spanning from poetry, photography, ceramics, sculpture,
painting and ballpoint drawing for over a 50-year period, between the
late 1930s until his death in 1983. He lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
and worked as a baker during most of his life, but cultivated a
passion for botany and history, and wrote extensively on his own
metaphysical theories of biological and cosmological origins and the
primal genesis of a genetically encoded collective knowledge.
Most
remarkable perhaps are von Bruenchenhein's countless photographs of
his lifelong obsession „Marie” (her real name was Eveline Kalke),
his wife and muse he had met in 1939 at a state fair in Wisconsin and
who he believed descendent from blue blooded royalty. Shot before
patterned backdrops (often curtains or bedsheets with leaf and floral
motifs) with exotic costumes, strings of beads and even ornaments for
Christmas trees, von Bruenchenhein turned Marie into the object of
his desires in intimate vignettes: a tropical princess, a topless
ingénue, a Madonna or a tinseltown vamp staged in a luscious mise en
scène at their domestic Midwestern home, where he developed the
photographs in a makeshift darkroom. His work was
known mainly to family and closed friends during von Bruenchenhein's
lifetime, but was only publicly recognized after his death.
In
recent years, Eugene von Bruenchenheins work has been shown at the
New Museum (2008), the American Folk Art Museum (2010-11), the
Hayward Gallery London (2013) and the international group show at the
2013 Venice Biennale.
It
is represented in outstanding museum collections including the John
Michael Kohler Arts Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum, American
Folk Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
This exhibition was organized in collaboration with Andrey Edlin Gallery, New York.
