Wet Paint: Marfa May Have Quarantined Christopher Wool, Jerry Gogosian Lands a Gallery Job, and More Juicy Art-World Gossip

Each week, Artnet News brings you Wet Paint, a gossip column
of original scoops reported and written by Nate Freeman. If you
have a tip, email Nate at nfreeman@artnet.com.

MARFA LOCALS TO CHRIS WOOL: KEEP CORONA
OUT!

There’s been an identity issue lingering in the isolated West
Texas town of Marfa ever since Donald Judd ambled
in from the desert and started to buy up Highland Avenue building
by building, alienating the ranchers and local business owners,
some of whom are descended from the families that founded the city
in the 1880s. Today, Marfa’s main economic driver is the arts, with
institutions like the Judd Foundation,
Ballroom Marfa and the Chinati
Foundation acting as major employers and tourism
generators—but there is still some tension between longtime locals
and the art worlders (not to mention the clout-seeking Instagram
influencers) who often
jet into town from New York or Los Angeles.

Case in point: On Saturday, the Presidio County
Sheriff announced in a Facebook
post that three passengers were flying into Marfa from New Jersey,
a hotspot for the coronavirus outbreak in America. The news riled
residents of the county, which is almost the size of the entire
state of Connecticut but has a grand total
of two ICU beds.

In the comments, many griped about how the passengers appeared
to be getting special treatment (apparently, they flew private due
to a lack of commercial flights, and the flight plan indicates the
point of departure was Teterboro, the Jersey jet
hub), and, more importantly, that they might be carriers of the
disease that’s infected more than a million people globally. “City
of Marfa, how dare you knowingly expose Marfa to such a horrible
virus! You all are in no way equipped to handle this—heck, major
cities are not equipped to handle outbreaks!” one user commented.
Another called it an “incredibly selfish act on the part of the
three individuals, especially considering the acts of sacrifice so
many are making to keep ‘out here’ safe.”

The City of Marfa responded to concerns by noting that all three
new arrivals would self-quarantine for 14 days, in accordance with
Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s decree, and that they
were in no position to deny any landowner’s passage. “As of now, we
cannot impose rules and restrictions without an official ordinance
or order from government local or state which means we must respect
the rights of citizens to travel with limitations,” the statement
read.

Given the timing and flashiness of the trip, it seems like the
three city-fleers could be part of the crew of high-profile
artists, collectors, and curators who have property in Marfa. One
commenter, Marfa Book Company owner Tim
Johnson, offered one clue: two of the passengers first put
down roots in the town around a decade ago, and the third has lived
in the area for 30 years. And indeed, multiple sources indicated
that two of the jet-setters were the married artist couple
Christopher Wool and Charline von
Heyl, who live mostly in Manhattan’s East Village—but
bought a house in Marfa in 2007, and have studios there, too. Rumor
has it they were accompanied by Rob Weiner, the
Chinati Foundation associate director who’s been living in Marfa on
and off since he worked as Judd’s assistant in the early 1990s.
Sources say the two addresses listed on the Facebook posting as
quarantine sites are affiliated with trio; one is the building
split into studios for the two artists and the other is a building
operated by Chinati. None of the alleged fliers (or, shall we say,
fleers) responded to a request for comment.

MEME-MAKER FOR HIRE

Last week’s Wet Paint focused on a spree of
layoffs that have hit the gallery sector, and it was, like most
of what we read today, a major downer. So it is with great pleasure
that, right here right now, we get to announce a bit of job
creation in the art world. That’s right—even with all
business frozen and the economy tanking, there are still some
opportunities, specifically in the online sphere. And so, with that
in mind, the Los Angeles gallery Various Small
Fires has hired a new digital director, and it’s none
other than Hilde Lynn Helphenstein, the mastermind
behind the Instagram art-world meme-machine Jerry
Gogosian. While her identity was previously a secret
(though not, like, that well kept a secret) Helphenstein
left La La Land for a quick NYC jaunt in March and stepped into
high society during Armory Week—what timing, given
the fact that no one was stepping out anywhere just days
later! She’s been ratcheting up content on her own platform during
the global lockdown, going on Instagram
Live with the likes of
Johann König and recording interviews with
such eminences as Emmanuel Perrotin and curator
Helen Molesworth. She began at VSF last Tuesday,
and is working on the gallery’s show of new work by John
Kline, which will debut this month in one of the few
cities that is open for business right now: Seoul, South
Korea.

BORED BILLIONAIRES BICKER DIGITALLY

No one is going to claim that wealthy collectors confined to
their mansions are actually suffering, but the weeks of
quarantine are certainly causing some to pull pretty boneheaded
moves on social media. First, entertainment
mogul David Geffen—who has been one of the
world’s top collectors for decades, and in 2015 sold two paintings
to Ken Griffin for $500 million—posted a picture of the place he’s
cooped up in: Rising Sun, his 450-foot yacht.
Many, many people who are lonely, ill, or mourning loved ones in
vastly smaller spaces were, justifiably, not pleased. We get it,
Geffen, you have a yacht. The billionaire soon disabled comments,
then deleted the post, then deleted his Instagram account
entirely.

Less guillotine-worthy but more telling was the back-and-forth
between Aby Rosen, who collects Manhattan
skyscrapers like a seven-year-old boy collects Hot Wheels, and
Alberto “Tico” Mugrabi, whose family owns the
world’s largest collection of paintings by
Andy Warhol. Rosen posted a
mock poster of New York Governor Andrew
Cuomo that reads, “Cuomo for President 2020” (despite
the fact that the governor is not, in fact, running for president).
Mugrabi fired back with a Trumpian sobriquet and said, “Im sure
sleepy joe
wouldn’t even notice .” Gamely,
Rosen responded with, “wake up tico 19 , you are blind and you
can’t even vote.” To which Mugrabi quipped, “can’t vote but my
candidate will win you can vote and your candidate will loss
”
What do we learn from all this? First, Mugrabi and Trump are both
bad at spelling. Second, if you are a billionaire, maybe don’t
isolate and Instagram.

POP QUIZ

Here is this week’s puzzler: Where, precisely, is this
Urs Fischer installed, and who owned it when it
was installed here?

The answer to last week’s POP
QUIZ is as follows: It was Robert
Gober’s Untitled (1993–94), edition of two with
one artist’s proof. The other editions are in the collections of
the Whitney Museum and the
Hirshhorn; the edition pictured was bought by
Alice Walton at the Loic
Gouzer-organized “Bound to Fail” sale at
Christie’s in 2016 for $2,285,000. Walton placed
the work in her Art Bridges program, which
organizes loans to institutions around the country. In the picture,
it was installed at the El Paso Museum of Art
in Texas.

Many, many people solved some of the mystery, and a few
got all the answers correct. If that was you, give yourself a
quarantine-approved pat on the back—this one wasn’t easy! But two
responders sent the full set of correct answers first, at nearly
the exact same time, so we’re calling it a tie. This week’s winners
are: Yayoi Shionoiri, the executive director
of the Chris Burden Estate and the Nancy
Rubins studio; and Lock Kresler, the
senior director of Lévy Gorvy in London.

As promised, there’s dinner for the winners at Minetta
Tavern on Wet Paint’s tab after quarantine. Kidding!
T&E budgets are so pre-coronavirus.

WE HEAR…

Hauser & Wirth is donating 10 percent of the
proceeds from their online shows to COVID-19 relief, but the
$125,000 price tags for the new George Condo
drawings in the first show are 25 percent pricier than similar
works were just months ago, before he joined Hauser …
MoMA is asking all employees to work from home
through June, dashing hopes that New York’s museums might be open
in the summer … a bunch of art world-adjacent socialites are on the
host committee for Zoomtopia, a digital gala
Thursday night that, with a $25 donation as an entry fee, is way
cheaper than the galas we used to have during non-quarantine life …
artist Jeanette Hayes scheduled an April 2020
studio visit with a very-busy collector way back in August 2019,
and now, it’s been pushed to November 2020 …

SPOTTED

New York Times critic Roberta
Smith liking a tweet in which Washington
Post columnist Jennifer Rubin called
Bernie Sanders a “total menace” for staying in the
presidential race *** Seth Meyers taping his
late-night show from home in front of a bookshelf stocked with back
issues of Artforum and
Parkett (props to tipster Melissa
Gronlund) … the actor Jack Black playing poker
with Mark Grotjahn in one of many epic throwback
pictures Jonas Wood posted to his Instagram story
… Tony Shafrazi on Twitter saying in an all-caps
missive that he hopes Mindy Robinson, the fierce
Trump-supporting conservative commentator, gets elected to Congress
because she is “TOO KIND & POLITE”  *** Cultured
magazine founder Sarah Harrelson posting a picture
of her and Bruce Weber, the photographer who has
been accused by male models
of attempting to grope their genitals during photo shoots
*** Gia Coppola hanging in a
Houseparty room with some art-worlders—yes, I
realize that’s pushing it, but, you know, kinda losing it here
***

PARTING SHOT

The post Wet Paint: Marfa May Have Quarantined Christopher
Wool, Jerry Gogosian Lands a Gallery Job, and More Juicy Art-World
Gossip appeared first on artnet News.