While SCOPE was not as strong a fair as PULSE, I did see several standout works while visiting the fair.

Ernesto Burgos (at Cynthia Broan) Cross Eyed, 2007, Mixed Media on Paper, 22 x 30 inches. Courtesy Cynthia Broan Gallery.

This artist is getting his MFA at NYU, and had a solo exhibition at the gallery several months ago. Sadly, due to the Chelsea real estate market, Cynthia Broan's lease on her LOT-EK designed space is being bought out so that the building can be knocked down for new condos. She plans to reopen in New Orleans.

Roland Wirtz, Ereignis 16 - 2.10.2006

In a recent roundup of neon art at the Armory, one writer on this blog observed that no Berlin gallery was partaking in the trend. At SCOPE, meanwhile, there was one enthralling photograph of neon lights on the façade of the Paris Cafe in Berlin. So perhaps now, Berlin too may lay claim to this fashion.

Ereignis 16 - 2.10.2006 can be found in the brot.undspiel booth at the Armory; the responsible artist is Roland Wirtz.

This is no ordinary digital color photograph photo-shopped to perfection. Wirtz turns back the technological clock and exposes this photo using a very large format camera. The glow of the neon tubes depicted in this image is meanwhile enhanced by the picture plane's dark surroundings. The image above will contextualize this unusual machine and process.

Light sensitive paper was put inside this large box and then correctly positioned for a long exposure. Looking carefully at the photograph, one can see the marks of the exposure's extended duration. Flashing red brake lights from the cars passing by managed to register on the paper. The direct exposure is also responsible for the backward orientation of the text. The long exposure exaggerated the darkness of the dim areas and intensified the sign's luminosity.

Depicting light as it illuminates the shadows has a long history in art. Its first great moment certainly belongs to George de La Tour and Caravaggio. In an era of light pollution and excessive artificial illumination, it is perhaps hard to conceive of the time of these paintings in which it was common to do tasks by the very dim glow of a candle. Such an experience burdens these historical works in a way we can only imagine to access.

What we can still learn from the old masters is that contemporary lighting technology powerfully influences the way we see and appreciate art. From my point of view, part of the explanation for the popularity and currency of neon lights lies is the dramatic shift in technology over the past ten years. With the rise of the Internet and the computerization of the workplace, we are now spending the majority of our day in front of electronic screens. If we aren't staring at a computer monitor, we are looking at our cell phone screen, our IPod, or watching a YouTube video at home on our laptop. Most of the twenty first century is passing before luminous surfaces that emit a glowing and subtle light.

It is only natural that these everyday visual experiences of luminosity will shape the gaze and taste for contemporary art. The pale glare of neon lighting feels strangely familiar. Such light is dancing on your retina right now.

The Scope art fair is a large tent next to the Metropolitan Opera House. Although, there are some familiar New York galleries, the fair was noteworthy for its strong presence of Spanish, German and Swiss Galleries as well a few Italian and London galleries. There was not a single French gallery present. It was an excellent opportunity to see the work of European artists who are not as invested in the American trajectory and its story of modern and postmodern art that still dominates the New York Scene on some level.

Victor Castillo, Lie to Me

The paintings of Victor Castillo stood at the Iguapop Gallery's stand. This Barcelona Gallery is presenting the works of this Chilean artist who now works in Barcelona. His style and subject is straight out of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas in the most clever and engaging manner possible. There is a certain virtuoso in paintings that imitate that crisp CIG animiation style. Like the movie, his works manage to be dark without becoming garishly creepy and light hearted without becoming irritatingly juvenile. He has struck an impressive balance between conflicting extremes. The long red noses of many of the works add comic appeal and Pinocchio reference. There is a tenebristic composition in many of the pieces, which produces that classic and entrancing glow.

The paintings of Vera Ida Müller stood out at Galerie Römerapotheke's stand. This Zurich gallery is presenting the works of a home borne Swiss artist. Black has a strong presence in her figurative and landscape pictures, which make all the other colors appear more vivid and striking. Looking at the dinner scene of Unter Sich 1, the broken brushwork and sketchy quality of some element and the more finished and sharper quality of other elements gave the picture a smoky appearance. It perfectly captured that strange ritual of the businesses dinner where agenda can be hazy and hidden.

Reading against the grain that there is no common style that defines the current moment, it seemed as thought many of the painters and photographers at the Scope Art Fair were engaging with the question of focus. There are two opposing camps that Castillo and Muller epitomize.

Vera Ida Muller, Unter Sich 1, oil on canvas, 2008.

At the Muller end of the spectrum, there were many works with loose brush work and a sketchy feel. Such a style can be refreshing in an era where the super naturalism of the televisual reigns supreme. Muller succeeds by having this loose and fuzzy style reinforce the underlying content of her piece. Other works did not have an apparent iconographic anchor for their fuzzy depictions of figures and landscapes. The raw appeal of the broken brushwork can quickly metastasize into something that strikes the eye as feeble and unfinished. This challenge of painting goes back to Titian and it is still just as difficult to pull it off – which makes Muller all the more impressive. Pesce Khete's oil sticks on paper just came off as messy at the Flat-Massimo stand. Many paintings in this sketchy category at Scope and the current Whitney Biennial unfortunately miss the mark.

Joe Becker, The Bountiful Spoil and the Monger Business, oil on panel, 2007.

At the Castillo end of the spectrum, there was another facet that embraced a hyperrealist and clean style similar to the animation from toy story. The virtuoso appeal of painting in a hyper realistic manner still resonates. Given the popularity of the older generation of photorealist like Goings and Estes on focused on scene that reasonably emerge in every day life, the next generation of artists seems to lean now more towards a hype-realistic image on an entirely imaginary world. This approach can backfire in the works lack ease and seem over-contrived. For example, Joe Becker's still life came off as gross and heavy handed at the Christopher Cutts Gallery Stand rather than that clever mixture of dark and light heartedness that makes Castillo's work excel.

Like any art fair, is it a process of finding diamonds in the rough. In this case, some paintings were literally as sharp as diamonds while others were just rough.