PULSE Flourishes in New Location

Courtesy Carl Hammer Gallery, Inc.

Henry Darger's double-sided "Untitled" (c. 1940) is offered at Carl Hammer's booth for $195,000.

Courtesy Kinz, Tillou & Feigen

Carlos Aires's "Love is in the Air III" (2007) was priced at $900 at Kinz, Tillou & Feigen's booth.

Horace Clifford Westermann Henry Darger Miao Xiaochun H C Westermann Party Lines Gary Panter in New York The Best of the Bay Area

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Now in its third year, PULSE NY has found a wonderful new home. They’ve been a bit nomadic up until now, and last year’s manifestation in the 69th Regiment Armory was frankly rather depressing. But let us hope that this spacious new place, Pier 40, way downtown where Houston meets the West Side Highway, becomes their permanent location. Things were relatively quiet there this afternoon — which is unsurprising, given that this is the Armory Show’s first properly public day — and one or two dealers were anxious that some visitors wouldn’t be able to find them in the somewhat labyrinthine space. But I’m sure they won’t feel that way this weekend.

Within its stable of nearly 100 exhibitors PULSE has assembled an almost sublime-to-ridiculous range of booths: There are some that would be right at home at the Armory Show, some smaller, younger-looking outfits, and even — courtesy of Parsons The New School for Design — a booth of student art.

The sort of secondary-market work which has been discouraged by the Armory Show this year is well in evidence here. Not only does it look fine, it doesn’t feel at all as if it’s squeezing newer work out. Chicago’s Carl Hammer, for example, has in his well-stocked booth both an H.C. Westermann, Dustpan Series #20/30, at $22,000 and a wonderful Henry Darger, Untitled (Double Sided), at $195,000. The 30-year gallerist told me he was worried Darger’s continually burgeoning prices might cause PULSE-goers a bit of sticker shock, but I bet him he’d sell it by Sunday afternoon. When I asked the sometime Armory Show exhibitor how he felt in the new PULSE he told me “very much at home.”

In a perfect illustration of the fair’s diversity, Hammer is neighboring Kinz, Tillou + Feigen, who have only been in business for a couple of years. They have some lovely work by Lori Field and Kim Keever as well as a fantastic set of silhouettes cut out of old vinyl records by Carlos Aires. These come from the series Love is in the Air (2007) and cost $900 each (meaning you could get 216 of them for the price of that Darger).

Speaking of diversity, there is a lot of Chinese work here, much more than I saw at Scope [and it’s Bridge that’s supposed to have the Asian theme]. Michael Schultz, who now has galleries in Berlin, Seoul, and Beijing, has plenty of it, as does Alexander Ochs of Berlin and Beijing. I was particularly impressed by Miao Xiaochun’s photographs of the half-built Olympics stadiums that Ochs is showing. Nest (2007), for example, from an edition of 4, can be had for just $8,000.

From elsewhere in Asia, Tokyo’s Nanzuka Underground is making its first U.S fair appearance with a one-artist booth featuring emerging Japanese artist Mustone, whose cartoon-inspired pieces range from $2,000 to $15,000 for the striking monster Yamatano Orochi, a painting on wooden wall slats.

Elsewhere, the ever-enterprising Foley Gallery has a booth full of mostly cut-paper work by Italian newcomer Andrea Mastrovito. The standout is an untitled mixed-media installation-scale piece in which a girl in her underwear dances ecstatically with a family of video-projected butterflies. Priced at $30,000, it will probably sell even sooner than the Darger.

P.P.O.W., meanwhile, has a set of five stunning prints by Carolee Schneemann called Nude on Tracks. Made in 2005 in an edition of 3, they record a 1975 action in which Schneemann, as the title suggests, posed nude on railroad ties. The gallery intends to keep two sets of prints intact (at $40,000), but will split the other at $10,000 per print.

And the student work? Well, for my money, one of the best pieces in the entire fair is a little untitled booth that second-year grad student Brandon Nastanski has constructed from old furniture. Tucked behind a book case is a tiny speakeasy not much bigger than a church confessional where the artist, dressed in vintage garb, will serve you wine in a teacup in exchange for a contribution. I had a cup of white — which I immediately regretted — and Nastanski had a cup of red. We were soon joined by one of the “hot black chicks” (her words) who are part of the installation Kiosk from Mike Latham and Arts Corporation. “Angel” was in high spirits, and she happily told me that she was looking for “new artists to discover and f*** with.”