On Tuesday 18 December "And Who Are You? Work from Saatchi Online" opened at the Sara Tecchia Roma New York gallery. Saatchi Online's first exhibition in New York presents the work of 12 artists based in New York, all of whom are registered on the website, and whose work explores questions about how the established art world parcels out or responds to value, fame, favoritism, integrity and pretension. The title of the exhibition, which was curated by Ana Finel Honigman, a regular contributor to Saatchi Online's daily magazine, comes from the question "and who are you?", often asked at a cocktail party, or the opening gambit for flaunting one's own CV or even the catalyst for a profound crisis of existentialist and creative purpose.
The opening was attended by over 500 people, including other artists registered on Saatchi Online, New York gallerists on the lookout for young, emerging talent (none of the artists in the exhibition have gallery representation yet), and critics such as Jerry Saltz, Doug McClemont, Morgan Falconer, Joyce Korotkin, Jason Kaufman of The Art Newspaper, Jamie Wolf from Time magazine, as well as the directors of Scope art fair and curator Susan Bright whose photography exhibition 'How We Are' was at Tate Britain earlier this year.
Today the New York Sun ran an article about the exhibition - click here to read the article in full.
Eric Doeringer, The 'Bootleg' series
The artists selected for "And Who Are You? Work from Saatchi Online" include Boston-born and Brooklyn-based Eric Doeringer, who grants gallery goers' wishes for affordable small canvases of images made by their favorite art stars by selling his 'Bootlegs' series outside hot Chelsea galleries, inside international art fairs, at the Whitney Biennial and now on Saatchi Online.
Jay Batlle, 'In Two Minutes It's Done' from The Minimalist Series, 2006
Jay Batlle, who has shown extensively abroad as well as at the Whitney Museum, New York's Thomas Erben Gallery, L.A's The Happy Lion and Blum & Poe Gallery, will present an ongoing body of work entitled "The Minimalist Series," paintings that combine fragments of teaser lines and recipes from Mark Bittman's New York Times culinary column, "The Minimalist."
Sara White Wilson, 'Fuck You?', 2006
Digital Media
New York- and Paris-based photographer Sara White Wilson, who has not previously shown in New York, will present an installation of images shot on the streets of Paris and Berlin in which unintended juxtapositions between peeling posters and graffiti markings illuminate larger cultural dichotomies.
Fame Theory
The artist team Fame Theory will present a performance lampooning artist pretension. Loki-like social commentators, Fame Theory members mix Ivy League academic backgrounds in economics and sociology with sophisticated satire to emerge as agent provocateurs channeling Andy Warhol, Andy Kaufman and everyone who eagerly wished that JT Leroy was intended to be an actual hoax, not the wan brainchild of another hopeless wannabe.
Airyka Rockefeller
Examining a similar theme is recent MFA graduate Airyka Rockefeller, whose series of photographs test how much of herself an artist ought to show, when youth and cool are prioritized so highly in the contemporary art community.
Bill Durgin
Photographer Bill Durgin, whose surrealist fashion imagery could be seen in Paper Magazine's recent fashion issue, will show self portraits from his series figurations, that use physical distortion to question limitations of artistic identity and signal to the way artists' ideas can be oversimplified and pushed out of context.
Joshua Powell, Still from 'Le Dilettante Montage' (2007)
For his debut art exhibition contribution, video and sketch comedy director Joshua Powell, of Dilettante Films, will work deriding discrepancies between hipsters' hedonistic urges and aspirations for the moral high ground.
Nora May Klumpp
Questioning the legitimacy of moving art in an on-line marketplace, German-born and New York-based video artist Nora Klumpp will present a video game demonstrating the disquieting possibilities of flexible on-line identities.
Eva Roovers
In the same vein, Amsterdam-based artist Eva Roovers will offer samples of her "How to become a famous artist" kit.
Miranda Maher
Brooklyn-based Miranda Maher will stage a three-part installation entitled "The Anxiety of Influence", inspired by Harold Bloom's theories on creative influence
And artist/ fashion designer/ musician William Lemon III contributes pieces from his multi-media art-opera to highlight the importance of timeless creative inspiration and the significance of pushing past a desire for immediate artistic validation.
'And Who Are You? Work from Saatchi Online', 18 December 2007 - 26 January 2008, is at
SARA TECCHIA ROMA NEW YORK, 529 West 20th Street, between Tenth Avenue and Eleventh Avenue. Opening hours: Monday through Friday, 11am to 6pm or by appointment. T: +1 212-741-2900; www.saratecchia.com.
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