Curated Friday: Selections from the West Collection
The West Collection is the private collection of the West family, on loan to the SEI Investment Firm in Oaks, PA (about a 35 minute drive outside of Philadelphia). They have been collecting the work of young artists actively since the mid-90s and the West Prize is a recent extension of that goal.
This year’s West Prize finalists are David Almeida, Nathalie Alony, Julie Weitz, Ryan McLennan, Kevin Cyr, Sharon Levy, Miyo Yoshido, Leah Bailis, Sarah Kabot, and Revital Falke. As they are an active investment firm, one can usually only tour the Collection by booking in advance by contacting lee@westcollection.org. But you can see this year’s winners, as well as last year’s winners at the upcoming West Prize Award Ceremony, April 16th.
And now, for some of my favorites from their collection.*
Michael Jordan, Save the World
by Norm Paris**, 2005
An installation of 23 Michael Jordan’s trying to catch 24 nuclear bombs.
Untitled
by Martin Klimas, 2006
A non-edited photograph created by repeatedly dropping ceramic figures, and captured by high-speed cameras.
Juvenile Bliss
by Peter Funch, 2007
Floating
by Zhao Huasen, 1 of 7 photographs, 2005
Photograph with digitally removed bicycle.
Scene No. 9
by Minako Abe, 2006
Painting from computer-edited landscape photo.
Architecture of Density #99
by Michael Wolf, 2007
Thieves
by Alex Da Corte**, 2006
Shark 6
by Yong Ho Ji, 2008
Animal made out of discarded automobile tires.
The Slow and Inevitable Death of American Muscle
by Johnathan Schipper, 2007-2008
Installation that crashes two 1970’s muscle cars over the course of three days.
*All images were straight up taken from the West Collection website. My bad, dudes.
**Denotes artist that used to live & work in Philadelphia. In both cases, not anymore.
I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
Thanks for posting these- I recently toured the West Collection but not all of these works were on display that day. I highly recommend a tour. Possibly the coolest part of the tour is the “Hot Hall” (I think that’s what it’s called) where they hang works that employees found controversial and they then post employee and visitor comments about the work with it on the wall. Awesome.
You’re welcome Danielle~ I wonder if we were on the same tour? With Fleisher?
I also really really like the Hot Hall as well, but found it’s hard to explain in casual conversation. So here’s my second attempt.
Employees at SEI Investments work in branches, and when in need, a small group from each branch goes to “adopt” some artworks from The Mart, where the curators display recent acquisitions. Once installed, if too many people complain/are offended by said artwork, it is banished to the Hot Hall. Here, anyone can post anonymous comments about the work while the curators attempt to explain it in context.
One work I remember was this Jill Greenberg piece, which a lot of people hated, as mothers/fathers who have to deal with crying children at home. Other people thought Greenberg’s lollipop-stealing practice was downright cruel. And still others loved it. And it was great to see that the West-heads not only set up this forum, but would also collect more work from artists who could elicit this type of heated response.
You explained it very well! I went on a tour with some friends: artists and curators. Also in the hot hall were some Ken Weaver drawings that I thought were terrific.