The Master Tinkerer: Q + A with Jack Brogan

Despite having spent more than five decades in Los Angeles, Tennessee-born Jack Brogan still clings to his Southern roots, from his soft-spoken drawl to his head-to-toe denim outfits and cowboy boots. Brogan's unassuming manner belies the influential role he's played as a fabricator, collaborator, conservator and right-hand man for an entire generation of California Light & Space artists—Peter Alexander, Larry Bell and DeWain Valentine among them.

Brogan was in town recently to install Robert Irwin's latest show, "Dotting the i's & Crossing the t's," on view through June 23 at Pace's 57th Street gallery. Brogan and Irwin have worked together consistently since the early '60s, most recently on an ongoing series of painted honeycomb aluminum panels for which Brogan created a special paint color that, he says, is "so black it makes other blacks look brown." The second installment of Irwin's show, opening this fall, will feature a pair of nearly transparent acrylic columns that the 82-year-old Brogan also fabricated.
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David Weiss of Fischli/Weiss Has Died

A.i.A. has confirmed that David Weiss, half of the artist-duo Fischli/Weiss, died this morning, age 66. According to his New York gallery Matthew Marks, Weiss had been undergoing treatment for cancer since September of last year. "It was more advanced than anyone realized," said gallery director Stephanie Dorsey.
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Curator Pati Hertling Activates Her Artists

"Heart to Hand," an exhibition curated by Pati Hertling, fills the main two-tier level at the Swiss Institute's new Wooster Street space [through Apr. 15]. The show features five artists—the brothers Oscar Tuazon and Eli Hansen, Klara Lidén, Zoe Strauss and Adam Pendleton—whose work is formally abstract with a subtle undercurrent of political disobedience.

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Walking the 2012 Armory With Clarissa Dalrymple

Despite being, according to the New York Times, "the most aristocratic bohemian on New York's contemporary art scene," Clarissa Dalrymple, curator-about-town, occasional art advisor and eternal champion of young artists, kept a relatively low profile at yesterday's Armory show preview. There was a bit of the requisite cheek-kissing and non-committal chats about upcoming parties, but for the most part Dalrymple, casually dressed in a loose-fitting black top, pea coat and flats, focused on the art, darting in and out of booths and checking her scribbled-over map to make sure she didn't miss anything.
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