A frontier-town film set just north of Malibu that’s been used in some of Hollywood’s most famous Westerns, Paramount Ranch this weekend was the site of a young, scrappy, and wildly uneven art fair that drew big crowds. Started in 2014 by the artists Liz Craft and Pentti Munkonen and the dealers Robbie Fitzpatrick and Alex Freedman, the fair has fast gained a reputation for being dog-friendly, kid-friendly and artist-friendly, and this year waived the $10 admission fee for students.
In its third year, it has also become clearer what works at the fair: low-rent sculpture, performance and interesting rocks, as in the thousands of gems and crystals, some painted by artists, spread out swap-meet style and sold to benefit High Desert Test Site. And what doesn’t: painting of just about any kind, as well as video with sound, which is simply too hard to hear. In this setting, Paul McCarthy’s giant green sculpture of a butt plug, planted in the field nearby, looked so innocent and playful it was hard to imagine how it caused any controversy at the Place Vendôme in Paris.
One of the strongest offerings, Overduin & Co’s show Field of Debris of Erika Vogt’s suspension-rope sculptures, might have looked even better in a new Chelsea gallery than the Old West setting.
There was even a smattering of floor sculptures, with Mendes Wood DM from São Paulo bringing small bronze quasi-tool-like sculptures by Paulo Monteiro and planting them underfoot.
Truth and Consequences from Geneva showed Alan Schmalz’s easy-to-miss floor pieces: cheap plastic bags, the kind that might hold Chinese take-out, littered the ground with a concrete block placed inside each to weigh them down. It is trashy work, but sometimes trashy—as an antidote to the sleek, corporate aesthetic of most art fairs—can be fun.