By Rebekah Drysdale:

Design Miami, Elisa Strozyk & Sebastian Neeb, Miami 2011. Photo by Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images.

At the entry of the Design Miami tent, an impromptu atelier welcomed visitors to the installation performance created by Elisa Strozyk and Sebastian Neeb. Fendi, the Italian luxury fashion house, provided the opportunity for these artists to showcase their work. Fendi also provided the leather that was woven into the 18th century furniture on display.

The simple workspace was surrounded by decorative objects and antique furnishings which the artists had modified using the materials at hand. Strozyk’s sewing machine seemed to be a very early model, reinforcing an awareness of the historic continuity of methods, techniques, and materials in noble crafts. Strozyk and Neeb’s collaboration achieved an elegant, subtle exhibit.

Retna: Wynwood Walls, Miami 2011

Retna‘s distinct, over-sized calligraphy graced numerous surfaces throughout Miami. His mural at Wynwood Walls was poignant and precise. The L.A. artist (real name Marquis Lewis) began painting murals in the mid-1990s and has since had many highly acclaimed gallery exhibitions, most notably his 2010 exhibition at New Image Art.

Visually influenced by writing from around the world, Retna invented his own alphabet. His calligraphy recalls Old English and Arabic scripts, drawn with an oversized brush as if with a nib. The artist encourages viewers to interpret their meaning and clarified in a recent interview, “They all say something.” Retna’s installations transcend the street artist vs. gallery exhibition debate. His imagery and symbolism are eloquent and exacting.

By Carmen Winant:

Across the fairs — though predominantly at Basel and Nada — mirror art loomed large. From Brock Enright at Kate Werble Gallery, Heather Rowe at D’amerlio Terras, Douglas Gordon at Dvir Gallery,  and Sam Durant at Sadie Coles…the list goes on and on. I spoke to one gallerist who believed that mirror art was so popular this year because artist finally caught on that collectors just want to see themselves reflected back. I’m not sure if she was kidding or not, but the speculation is telling. If that is the case, what they saw reflected was strange and fragmented; the mirrors tended to be scratched, burned, painted over, rubbed and otherwise sanded away, obfuscating — and perhaps refusing — a desperate view back onto the spectacle around them.

Silverman Gallery, NADA Miami, 2011

San Francisco’s Silverman Gallery gallery took an unconventional route this year with their booth featuring the work of Hugh Scott-Douglass, Susanne M. Winterling and Christpher Badger. The booth was quiet and strong, not overcrowded . Good thing, because the series of large, blue abstract cyanotypes on muslin, and, elsewhere, delicate cutaways made directly in raw, stretched canvas required some contemplative space. I stayed in the booth for some time, and found the work to be delicately mesmeric, undulating before my eyes.

The entire booth was also considered — a welcome trend, catching on with some galleries this year — as Silverman considered not only the work on the walls, but the ground beneath our feet. The booth’s floor was covered in neat, slightly foamy, white tiles to walk upon. It was three sides of the perfect white cube, and the effect made the booth hard to walk by.

Sandbar Lounge, Miami, 2011

Did you know that you can smoke in bars in Florida? That part was not a highlight, and my eyes are still burning from the smoky experience. However, converging in one place with so many friends (and friends of friends) from near and far was exciting, and could only happen in a place, and event, like this. The drinks where overpriced, the music was pretty bad, and there actually was sand on the floor. But somehow, it was all perfectly fitting with the aesthetic hedonism down here, the total playful, if expensive, abandon of that this place offers its annual visitors. This is my second year in a row here. I loved it, and I think I’m never coming back.

Installation view, Scott Treleaven, 2011, Image courtesy of the Silverman Gallery

Treleaven’s new show at Silverman Gallery in San Francisco is an evolution of his genre-crossing method. It employs drawing, photography and sculpture, though delineating between them feels counterproductive, as all his mediums consciously overlap. Upon first glance, the work almost appears to have been made by several artists. On the rightmost wall hang multiple small and near-monotone 35mm images of objects photographed through aging second-hand mirrors, titled Portal Photographs, while the leftmost wall features large, abstract collages obscuring painted images, titled Cell Drawings, with a gestural effect that recalls Cy Twombly’s expressionistic mark-making. Separately, each set of works refuses narrative, but together, they engage in dialogue.

Cell Drawings (2011), Scott Treleaven, Image courtesy of the Silverman Gallery

The substance of the show, however, is the pillars in the center of the floor (Totems, 2011). Standing between four and six feet high, the triangular-shaped Totems are draped with scanned and printed C-prints from Treleaven’s own super-8 films: film strips made positive. Secured only at the top of each pillar, they hang loosely and overlap to form an object equal parts collage, photograph, and sculpture. Two out of the three are totally abstract, featuring moments of color and lens flare from the films. The third pillar intermixes frames of light, sky, and a nude young man running away from the camera with a white dog seemingly in tow. These stills, drawn from a visit to Marshall’s Beach in the Presidio, provide the one moment in the entire show in which a narrative becomes fleetingly imaginable. In relation to the mediated abstractions that encircle it, the encounter with a recognizable sense of scale and time is disquieting.

Untitled (Totem II, 2011), Scott Treleaven, Image courtesy of the Silverman Gallery

Still, much like a zine refuses the sequential structure of a book, the result here is a story that goes nowhere, a memory that’s slipping away before our eyes. Using film and photography to deny, rather than affirm, narrative is a strange thing indeed, and the effect here is at once haunting and sentimental.

I'm Dying Up Here, #6 (wood suit). Color photograph, 2010. Courtesy of Silverman Gallery.

In her most recent photographic series, I’m Dying Up Here, Carland’s isolated figures live in an unsettled state, seemingly caught mid-act. The figures rest between being obscured and exposed by the heavy dark cloaking of the background. Each background is both visible and invisible, with subtle texture only coming into focus as one approaches the photograph. Even when there is no figure present, the environments in each image lie in waiting for something, giving one the sensation of anticipation, fear and self-doubt that accompany the act of performing.

For an exhibition revolving around comedians, humor takes a surprising, and unexpected, backseat role. In so many ways, humor can be one of the best ways to protect one’s self, but in Tammy Rae Carland’s case, humor only presents itself alongside humiliation and exposure, acting as a tool to show how one is both hidden and revealed, guarded and defenseless.

Punch Line, Ink and paper, 10 × 13 Inches each, 2010. Courtesy of Silverman Gallery.

In some of the most uniquely satisfying work in the gallery, a series of ink and paper text works, entitled Punch Line, mask transcripts of famous comedians’ acts, only leaving the punch line revealed. This disguise leads the viewer to search, to postulate, and to wonder about that which is missing, only providing the feeling of being utterly incomplete, and unfulfilled. What results is a context that is lost or mistranslated, mirroring the vulnerability embedded in the I’m Dying Up Here series.

Funny Face, I love You. Various sizes. Ceramic cast and hand built objects. Courtesy of Silverman Gallery.

And, as a perfect way to complete this well articulated thought, the fragility and subtle habitation of the ceramic sculpture, Funny Face, I Love You, reveals the balance of presence and absence in all of the work in the show. As it sits in the window space of the gallery storefront, the sculpture lives both inside and outside of the space. The ethereal nature of the white ceramic simultaneously exists as the omission of a figure and as the immaterial quality of the prop to the act of performing. All of these elements combined in Carland’s well choreographed narrative leaves a place for the viewer to explore vulnerability and fear in relation to the body and mind united in the performative act.

Funny Face, I Love You will be on view at Silverman Gallery through October 23rd, 2010.