Living in a Digital World
Artist John Gerrard came personally to introduce his unique virtual sculpture at the Pulse fair with Ernst Hilger Gallery (Vienna). Like nothing we’ve seen before, Gerrard’s Smoke Tree is a digitally constructed display featuring a “living” tree in an interactive environment (viewers can spin the tree around for a 360-degree look). Utilizing computer animation, Smoke Tree visibly breathes out carbon monoxide and ages over time. The sculpture fulfills a complete life cycle over 200 years—when the tree dies and the image is reduced to an empty landscape. This new media work captured the imaginations of more than a few collectors: By the last day of the fair, not only had all six editions been sold out, but the gallery had also pre-sold two yet-to-be-completed works that will be shown at Basel in June.

Seeing Double
A surprisingly lifelike sculpture caught us doing a double-take as we strolled past Suzanne Vielmetter Projects. Victory of a False Self, a self-portrait by German artist Mathilde ter Hejine, could easily have passed as the real thing. The sculpture sat slumped over next to gallery owner Suzanne Vielmetter, looking every bit as worn out as many surely felt by the end of a long day at the pier. A startled collector must have been quite taken by the likeness as well: the work, an edition of two, sold at a price of €22,000.

Notable Quotables
"We’ve had a brilliant fair," said Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac partner Jill Silverman van Coenegrachts. "We’ve rehung (the stand) four times." … "A lot of business was done in the first two days,” said Victoria Miro’s James Lindon, "but after that, it has been an enormous cattle truck of human traffic that’s just crazy." … "It’s been a pretty good fair," said Nolan/Eckman Gallery director Katherine Chan, “but it wasn’t as exciting as Art Basel or Art Basel Miami Beach for us."

Ripped from the Headlines
We liked the paintings by Timothy Tompkins available at DCKT Contemporary's booth at Pulse for $6,000 to $7,500. The large-scale enamels on aluminum were inspired by photos the artist saw in the Los Angeles Times. In 4.28.02 (after Klimt), the painting depicts an Israeli settler embracing his two children. In 8.22.04 (after Magritte), the image shows several Iraqi men lying on the ground surrounded by U.S. Marines. In a statement, Tompkins said, "By rotating the image 90 degrees, I emphasized the compositional connection to Rene Magritte’s Golconde… This media image also conceptually connected to Magritte’s painting of falling figures, each dressed in the same mundane outfit, interpreted as a criticism of contemporary society’s potential threat to the idea of individuality."

Get the Picture?
Pulse was like a photography collector's Shangri-La, where we could hardly turn a corner without seeing stellar work by emerging and top-level contemporary photographers, including work by Andy Goldsworthy, starting at $20,000, and a gelatin silver print from 1975 by Sigmar Polke at Springer & Winckler Gallery; affordable works by Sugimoto, Thomas Ruff and Gregory Crewdson at Richard Levy; two Mapplethorpes at Galerie Stefan Ropke (which also featured a small abstraction by Sigmar Polke priced at $240,000); two Massimo Vitali photos (panoramic snapshots capturing the tanned hordes of sun worshipers on the beaches of Europe) selling at $19,000 in an edition of six at Ernst Hilger Gallery (Vienna); two large images by Timothy White Sobiesky at Galerie Michael Schultz; and a remarkable Zhang Huan photograph at Galerie Volker Diehl, which has sold four of eight prints at $18,000 (the gallery also has a great David Bowie-inspired painting by Abetz/Dreschler, priced at $45,000, reasonable considering the duo complete only about half-a-dozen paintings a year according to the gallery). At Robert Mann Gallery, the work of Polish duo Aneta Grzeszykowska and Jan Smaga caught our attention: two unique bird’s-eye-view reconstructions of Warsaw living spaces. Over at Feidler Contemporary (Cologne), two national guardsmen in full uniform were spotted admiring a work by Spanish artist Dionisio Gonzalez, a digital assemblage that seamlessly combines the impoverished shantytown homes of Rio de Janeiro with sleek modern residences that would belong more in the hills of Los Angeles. (Gonzalez was popular with collectors as well—we were told at least 10 of the artists’ prints were sold this weekend.)