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Lisa Cooley

@lisacooleynyc

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Art advisor, writer, educator, curator.
Podcast for collectors and collecting curious:
@ask.oko.art

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You probably don’t know Megumi Yuasa. He’s an 87-year-old Japanese-Brazilian sculptor who has been working in clay for six decades, and his first-ever American exhibition, Letter to the World, runs @ortuzargallery in New York until April 11th. I think it’s one of the best shows in the city right now.

Yuasa was born in São Paulo — the seventh of eight children — to Japanese parents who emigrated to Brazil as missionaries. The family had one enormous fig tree in the backyard. That tree gave everything: food, shelter, a playground, the center of the world. Under that tree, Yuasa first dug into the earth and made something out of clay. He never really stopped. Trees appear throughout his work, and he has said that every tree he makes references that one fig tree. When you stand in front of his work, you are in some sense always standing under that tree with him.

His works fuse fired and glazed ceramic with iron, steel, brass, stone, and pigment. They feel ancient and alive at the same time. His recurring motifs — clouds, seeds, trees, bridges, moons — function like a personal vocabulary, recombined across six decades into works that balance weight and weightlessness, earth and sky, the grounded and the floating.

Yuasa carries a deep and lifelong interest in Brancusi. Many of his sculptures blur the line between sculpture and pedestal, just as Brancusi did — the base is not a support for the work, it is part of the work. Several sculptures carry the title Espássaro, a neologism he coined in Portuguese that means roughly “bird space” — a direct reference to Brancusi’s Bird in Space. Where Brancusi distilled flight into polished bronze, Yuasa finds it in glazed clay and iron, in forms that balance with quiet grace.

And then there are the kinetic elements — something you cannot experience in a photograph and have to see in person. The top of a tree form rotates. Other sculptures bounce gently on wire rods. Yuasa thinks of these movements as forces of nature — the wind, leaves rustling — but also as a statement about matter itself: in the natural world, nothing is ever still. Everything is always in flux, and his sculptures perform this. by @lisacooleynyc

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7 months ago

New Oko out with collector Alvin Hall ✨ Listen on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts or at our website www.ask-oko.com ✨ by @lisacooleynyc

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Na Kim at Nicola Vassell was a knockout ⚡️ The paint handling alone was deft, economical, and thrilling ⚡️ Made me think of Francesca Woodman but with paint. Nice NYT write up too a few weeks ago. Keep an eye on her ⚡️ by @lisacooleynyc

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Incredible show of Barkley Hendricks at Jack Shainman in Chelsea ✨ focusing on the cosmic in his work. In love with these two self portraits- the cockatoos (?) and the cardinal in the full length pic, and those glasses in the lil gem in slide two. I’ll take them both. Plus - watermelon, dancing shoes/moonrise, and the best black light paintings I’ve ever seen. by @lisacooleynyc

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Ulala Imai at Karma ✨ taken in Karma by @lisacooleynyc

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Oko episode two out with Marion Maneker @wallpowerpuck. We discuss how the art market is really a distribution market. Marion suggests dumping the idea that the most expensive art is the best art. He also shares his clarifying ideas about speculators, alchemy, and about the real flex that underlies all art purchases.

A longtime art world columnist and auction house insider, Marion Maneker is the founder of Artelligence, a leading source of information on the global arts market. He was formerly the president of ARTnews, a publisher at HarperCollins, and features editor at New York magazine. He currently writes Wall Power, the daily art market email for Puck. by @lisacooleynyc

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@chrisunkim’s knockout Whitney show was everything I hoped for: hilarious, playful, blisteringly intelligent, full of musicality, and mostly, deeply human. DISCUSS DRY 😂🫶🏻 go see go see! by @lisacooleynyc

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Join me as I chat with the incomparable journalist and author, Georgina Adam @georginacadam. Link in that bio.

This episode explores the evolving dynamics of the art market, focusing on the misconceptions surrounding art as merely an investment. We discuss the roles of galleries, auction houses, and the overall impact of economic and geopolitical factors on art appreciation and valuation.

• Discussion of various models and analogues for the art market

• Why is the current art market lethargic, or floppy?

• The growing trend of viewing art as a mere investment

• The state of art galleries today - their challenges and opportunities

• How auctions have grown, and how they are driving the market

• Art fairs as galleries’ way to compete with auction houses

• How to understand artists careers over time, as journey-driven

• Emphasis on the accessibility of art experiences for all

Georgina Adam has written about the art market and the arts in general for over 30 years, starting in Paris where she studied Islamic art at the Ecole du Louvre. After that she lived in London before spending five years in Japan, where she wrote on a freelance basis for a number of arts publications – The Art Newspaper, The Asian Art Newspaper, Art and Auction and Artnews - as well as Nikkei publishing.

She was art market editor at The Art Newspaper in London on her return from Tokyo, and remains art market editor-at-large for that publication. She wrote the art market column for the Financial Times for eight years and continues to contribute collector profiles to the newspaper. She is currently working on a new book.

Be sure to check out my two favorite books of Georgina’s: Big Bucks, and The Dark Side of the Boom by @lisacooleynyc

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It’s been a while! I have some great news! I changed Oko into a podcast. I realized I was too slow of a writer to produce consistent newsletters, but I realized I actually have 25 years experience TALKING about art. Also, I always pick music over podcasts, so it took me a minute to even consider the format.
Oko should be available wherever you get your podcasts. I’ve published a trailer and the first episode, but I haven’t seen them yet in Apple Podcasts or Spotify. They say it takes 24-48 hours for the podcasts to filter through the system. In the meantime, you can follow the linkies in bio and listen to the trailer, which is 5 minutes long, or the first episode with author and journalist Georgina Adam.
I have 6 episodes recorded and I’m planning on a total of about 30 for season one. You’ll also always be able to access them inside these emails and on Oko’s website: ask-Oko.com, links in bio.
For our first season, I’m taking you on a tour through the power centers of the art world. We’re talking to artists, journalists, gallerists, critics, auctioneers, curators, and art fair directors about what defines the art world right now, and how we got to this moment. For our first episode, I’m talking with journalist and author, Georgina Adam. Georgina has been writing about the art market for over 25 years. She is the editor-at-large for the Art Newspaper and she writes a monthly column at the Financial Times. Continued in comments…. by @lisacooleynyc

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2 years ago

Adrian Piper at the Met 🎯 by @lisacooleynyc

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ABMB picks: phenomenological edition

1 Fred Eversley
“Untitled (cylindrical lens)”, 2024, 2-color 2-layer cast polyurethane, 95 3/8 x 28 x 14 inches
Constantly in awe of Fred. A deeply important artist. Happy to see his two-color technique translate into his larger works.

2 detail of above

3 Christine Sun Kim
“Main Stream Interference”, 2024, charcoal on paper, 16.5 x 16.5 inches
On my Christmas list for meeee

4 Kevin Reinhardt
“Laurie Mallet house, 2nd floor stair”, 2023, oil, gesso, and thread on dyed canvas, 46 x 30 in
Domestic blinds with superposition!? Such a smart take on minimalism and geometric abstraction, too.

5 detail of above

6 Corita Kent
“if”, 1965, screenprint, 23 x 35 1/4 inches
Such poetry! And I love how the letters become abstracted

7 Yayoi Kusama
“INFINITY-NETS [XSHTQ]”, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 51 3/8 x 76 3/8 inches

8 Xylor Jane
“Feelings on a Grid”, 2023, oil and ink on wood panel
Have always loved Xylor’s work, but it’s taken on new resonance with our resident math genius in the house

9 Matt Johnson
“Temple (made from 1.86 million),” 2024, made from polychromed wood, 10 x 20 x 20 inches
Phenomenological in its versimilitude and hilariousness

10 Jiro Takamatsu
“Shadow of Penholder,” 1969, lacquer on board, 16 1/8” x 12 5/8” x 2 1/8”
Paint a shadow, capture the ephemeral by @lisacooleynyc

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I am deliriously in love with the Congolese sculptor Bodys Isek Kingelez (1948-2015)! I first saw his work in 2005 at CAM Houston right before I moved New York and I was blown away by the work’s poetry, color, exuberant style, intricate detail, and especially the artist’s profound civic love.

Kingelez built these visionary sculptures out of discarded materials he found around the city - paper, cardboard, plastic, and metal. In fact, his sculptures represent the actual buildings of Kinshasa and other cities but filtered through his subjective desires, opinions, fantasies, and memories. For example, the building of the company that made his favorite beer is 5 times as tall as the surrounding buildings in his cityscapes.

Sarah Suzuki @suzukiinthecity who curated his recent solo MoMA show in 2018, writes that “he aimed to be a force for good in the world, hoping, he said, that ‘architects and builders worldwide can try to learn from my perceptions so as to help the forthcoming generations. I’m dreaming cities of peace. I’d like to help the Earth above all.’” (Continued in comments…) by @lisacooleynyc

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