Art Fair Week Round Up

Volta, Installation View: Maria Nepomuceno, c/o Marcio Botner, A GENTIL CARIOCA GALLERY
The Armory Show is a mecca for the who’s who in the international art scene. More importantly, it always offers dealers, curators, critics, collectors, artists and other art luminaries the ability to party and network in the name of the emerging art scene. Not to be clich√©–but here an artist’s career is easily made.
A natural outgrowth of the Armory has been the satellite fairs. Often, these are for younger, less connected galleries. While some might look down on these as lesser quality, it was at the satellite fairs that I saw the best work. Why? Because these galleries are hungry for it. Right now, the Armory feels like a craft fair. The installations are less thought out, the floor plan is a little chaotic and the overwhelming number of participating galleries makes the works less palpable.
So, if you are in the mood to check out the fairs next year, you should skip the Armory and head down to Volta, Pulse and the like. Below are some highlights from this year.

Volta

Ian Davis, Auditorium, 2006, c/o Leslie Tonkonow Art + Projects
One word comes to mind when I think of Volta: polished. Originally organized as a satellite fair by Chicago’s famed Kavi Gupta gallery to coincide with Art Basel, the difference between Volta and Armory are obvious and striking. Volta is an invitation-only, curated fair; this translates to one artist per gallery per booth. Here, there were galleries represented from Slovenia, to China, to Brazil. Works obviously ranged from many mediums (even prototypes for the Venice Biennale).
This year’s fair addressed the Age of Anxiety. Ioana Nemes (Romania) and Ian Davis (America) offered two striking takes on this idea–both touching on the cultural effects of living in a consumptive society. Here, Nemes uses furniture- and mask-like sculptures to address Romania’s traditional folk objects being usurped by a “Made in China” mentality. Davis’s paintings, however, reduce the human presence to small finite beings that operate more like abstracted (sometimes architectural) elements of the composition; the result is humbling at the least.
WGA Tour

On Saturday night, the Williamsburg Gallery Association organized a gallery tour of Williamsburg. The usual haunts were represented– Momenta, Front Room. One of the youngest galleries Like the Spice has a promising show solo show of Rachel Beach’s wooden, circus-like sculptures.
The highlight of the night was, of course, Pierogi’s unveiling of its new space: The Boiler Room. Displaying previously shown work by Tavares Strachan, the high ceilings and gritty character of the walls provided the perfect atmosphere for Williamsburg art connoisseurs. (I can’t wait to see the the future installations in this space.)
Scope

Ryan Wolfe, Branching System, 2007, c/o Dam Stuhltrager
One of the last fairs I attended was Scope where street art or those who have evolved from a more DIY practition were very much represented. Greeting visitors at the entrance was characteristically colorful installation of Maya Hayuk’s. Another must see was the work of German-based stencil artist EVOL whose architectural renderings on salvaged wood and cardboard are intended to expose the follies of urban society.
What seemed to draw many crowd goers was Scope’s panel on street art–Private Property, Public Ideas: Street Art in Transition. Boasting an impressive roster of street artists and critics/curators (Carlo McCormick, Pedro Alonzo, Ron English, Steve Powers (aka ESPO), Marc and Sara Schiller), the audience as well as the speakers seemed thoroughly engaged in heated dialogue. The topic of choice was: Shepard Fairey’s work in a cultural context vs. museum/traditional art institution. While Pedro Alonzo (Independent Curator, ICA Boston) tried to defend the institutionalization of the street art and the subsequent need for an institution to control people’s access to its street art collection, Marc Schiller (Wooster Collective) point was more compelling: the work’s original context is the public sphere and in the age of technology it will continue to do so‚Äîperhaps the biggest threat to the art institution.

Related posts:

1. Art Fairs in NYC
2. Last call for art
3. After Hours in Williamsburg
4. Dead Herring Craft Fair on Sunday
5. Jeff Bechtel Art Opening

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