05.08.10 03.23.10 02.02.10 01.12.10 09.09.09 04.29.09 02.20.09 02.07.09 Subscribe to our e-Newsletter! If the Internet is good for anything it is for disseminating information. On the other hand, if it's bad at anything, it is for disseminating too much or too little information that is too useless or too vague. Our hope is that our contribution adds something worth noting. Our goal is to communicate not only what we are involved with in the photography and art markets but to engage our audience with information beyond the scope of our business. In future editions, we intend to use this forum to address different issues affecting our industry and the art market, reviews of exhibitions at other galleries and at museums we feel are noteworthy, and to listen to your responses, criticisms and suggestions. Given the upsetting upheaval of the economy, we have been heartened to see a powerful amount of optimism, tenacity and camaraderie amongst our clients and colleagues. We hope to make the best of the situation and turn it into an opportunity for new beginnings and creative thinking. We are pleased to announce that RWFA will remain at our current location, 511 West 25th Street, Suite 205 in the Chelsea art neighborhood through April 2009. Since moving into the gallery in October, we aimed to highlight specific artists and bodies of work. Our Picture Projects approach — creating a series of exhibitions in changing venues — will allow us to remain committed to exhibitions, while affording more freedom that could even enable us to exhibit multiple shows simultaneously. We will continue to add content to our new website, so please stay tuned. Please subscribe to our e-Newsletter by clicking here. RWFA is very pleased to announce the exclusive representation of New York based photographer Jeff Mermelstein for print sales and exhibition. We will premiere photographs from two new bodies of work, Twirl and Run, at the AIPAD fair. Jeff Mermelstein is a photographer's photographer. Schooled on the streets of New York in the instant reflex art of Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand, Mermelstein expands upon that iconographic idiom by shooting exclusively in color. His pictures are populated by people captured for their own idiosyncrasies and humanity; for their own unique way of walking, talking, eating, working, drinking, celebrating and being. Relentless in his observations, Mermelstein's photographs challenge us by first appealing to our sense of identification in others who function with all the vagaries of complex human behavior. He, however, is as sharp and determined as a Ginsu knife. Where the people in the pictures suffer from all types of distractions, Mermelstein's clarity of purpose is undaunted. Probably no other photographer defines so clearly the New Yorkerness of the grand, odd and aged city's populace. In Artforum, Glenn O'Brien wrote that Jeff Mermelstein is "one of the great snapshot artists of all time, right up there with Garry Winogrand, Elliott Erwitt, Burk Uzzle, and Lee Friedlander" (Artforum, December 2000). Mermelstein's bibliography includes the two monographs, SideWalk (Dewi Lewis Publishing 1999) and No Title Here (powerHouse Books 2003) with another in the works. His accomplishments include an Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship and The European Publishers Award for Photography, as well as frequent and numerous placement in magazines such as The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Artforum and DoubleTake. In addition to being an art and editorial photographer, he is on the faculty of The International Center of Photography and has taught at the School of Visual Arts graduate photography program. His work is in numerous collections including The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Buhl Collection, NYC, The International Center of Photography, The JP Morgan Chase Art Collection and others. Our current Picture Project, Jehsong Baak: Là ou Ailleurs has been extended through March 14, 2009. The exhibition has been reviewed on the Daylight magazine blog and Examiner.com. Guided by the adventurous formalism of Robert Frank and the Czech photographer, Josef Koudelka, Jehsong Baak has pushed beyond their legacy of powerful, wandering images, building his own lexicon of complex visual epiphanies, magical happenstance, and emotional synchronicity. These images, from Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Chicago, and New York, are at once new and familiar, private and universal, inviting and dissociative. They envelope the viewer with poignancy intricately imbedded in images of strangers, friends and lovers and in self-portraits clearly steeped in personal histories. To view Jehsong Baak's Picture Project please click here. To view Jehsong Baak's artist profile please click here. Previously only available in the EU, Jehsong Baak's monograph Là ou Ailleurs is now available in the US through RWFA: Jehsong Baak: Là ou Ailleurs Paris: Delpire, 2006 117pp., 82 tritone black and white illustrations, 10 x 11 inches $60.00 plus tax and shipping All copies are signed, limited quantities available To order a copy of the book with a credit card, please use our PayPal link. If you would prefer to pay by check, please contact us by email. LEFT Reflection of a Woman, 1999 RIGHT Jehsong Baak: Là ou Ailleurs On Thursday, February 5, Rick joined a notable group of art professionals and scholars at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, NY for a panel discussion addressing issues in the art market today, Collecting Art in an Altered World. Rick moderated the discussion. The panelists were Teddy Greenspan, of Tag-Arts, a contemporary art advisory service, Marion Maneker, editor of ArtMarketMonitor.com, a daily blog on news of the art world and Lisa Schiff of Schiff Fine Art, a New York and LA-based art advisor and curator. The event was sold out, with an eager and active audience of collectors and museum supporters. The discussion lasted a little over an hour and covered such topics as the role that the auction houses have played in the current economic state of the art market through guarantees and advances; what opportunities for collectors are opening up due to the economic downturn; and how will art fairs affect the market from now on. Pictured left to right are: Lisa Schiff, Marion Maneker, Teddy Greenspan, Rick Wester. IMAGE © Margaret Fox Photography, 2009 Annabel Elston: Somewhere Else "For over ten years, Elston has obsessively made pictures of strangers on crowded urban streets, often in the streetwise pedestrian's invisible circumference of No-Man's-Land commonly known as "personal space." She has kept the pictures mostly to herself, rarely publishing them and never printing them for exhibition or sale... The work is an expression of anonymous freedom; and the pictures are as borderless as the places she stands in to photograph." Scheduled for release later this spring, the Steidl imprint, Steidl-Miles will release Annabel Elston: Somewhere Else, a collection of 60 images by this London based photographer. The monograph — the photographer's first — surveys 15 years of work done only for the sole satisfaction of making pictures for herself and includes an essay by Rick. Remarkably, Elston's photographs have rarely been exhibited or even printed and outside of the commercial work that is her livelihood, she is practically unknown for her street work. We will post the essay on our website once the book is released. The book is designed by the award winning graphic designer, Peter Miles, a good friend of the photographer — and of Rick's. IMAGE © Annabel Elston, 2009 RICK WESTER FINE ART 511 West 25th Street Suite 205 New York NY 10001 +1 (212) 255-5560 rwfa@rickwesterfineart.com rickwesterfineart.com