We started the Armory Show at Vernissage on Wednesday night with all the “glamorous” masses. Vernissage is a bourgeois art fair term for the VIP opening night, for which you either need to be invited or pay $100. The word references varnish in French, apparently in the “old days” artists would have parties when they were finished with a work and friends would come over for the varnishing of the piece. Today in the art world circle, it’s a complete shitshow where everyone goes to see and be seen, which is all it’s really good for because it’s so crowded you can barely see any art. I got there relatively early, hoping to beat the late-night crowds, which worked for about 20 minutes before the place was billowing with men with angular haircuts and Euro-trashy girls in very, very high heels. There wasn’t that much the grabbed my attention or seemed new or revolutionary, nor where there some greats – Nauman, Flavin or any of the others I saw at Basel Miami in December.
The only great highlight was a booth completely void of walls and completely enclosed by an illuminated fence. It was created by Ivan Navarro at Paul Kasmin Gallery. Other highlights included Jacob Hashimoto's "Positive and Negative n. 1" 2003 at Studio Lacitta, a beautiful resin piece in black and white with smooth and crystal clear crater-like landscapes. I would say Phoebe Washburn's "Pickle Project" at Zach Feuer was interesting, but looking back at it a month later, I don’t think so. I was starving for something beautiful, and this was the best of it, not to say it wasn’t interesting, it just didn’t stop me in my tracks. However, "Untitled (Nothing is wholly obvious...)", 2011 by Muntean/Rosenblum did grab my attention. There were several paintings of this style together in the gallery and there combination of a somewhat eerie scene mixed with brilliantly captured light were haunting and beautiful. I also loved the oversized painting by Norbert Bisky at Galerie Daniel Templon. The more you looked at it, the more you saw – it was gay erotic homicide – very interesting combo. Almost felt like a window (albeit a very, very large window) into the mind of a madman – a gay madman.
We tried to bust out of there as quickly as possible, but I was convinced we needed to get a towncar to take us from the Armory Show to Scope. Both are on the West Side Highway and trying to get cabs was a nightmare – so was waiting for our db (deadbeat) towncar. So we waited in the freezing cold for 30 minutes. Somehow my boyfriend did not kill me – thank god one of us is patient. However, once we got to Scope – everything was immediately better!
Almost every gallery in the show had something interesting or different and some were real mind-fucks, which I always love. Hamburg Kennedy had one great photograph after another. Artists Wanted had taken up residence in a corner and staged a miraculous royal thrown of sorts. The hipster king and queen were at the top of a big red box – him eating raw meat from the bone and her creating juice from crushing grapes in her mouth and spitting the juice into a gold bowl. With them were performers either lounging, posing or handing out this freshly squeezed juice. It was hot-mess amazingness – a welcome reprieve from the uptown snobbery. The show continued to be very interesting. Hector de Gregorio at Opus Art had beautiful punk period paintings that were hard and beautiful at the same time. Wayne Coe's "Art Basel Boys/Bijou" was a hysterical reinterpretation of the 1970s baths and old school gay porn updated with the heavy hitters of the current art world. The night ended with an amazing dinner at ‘eno in the west village.
The next two days I tried to sneak out of work to see the other fairs, but that didn’t happen. Thursday night I made in down to Chelsea for Pulse and then Soho for Red Dot. Pulse was very simple, noting really amazing. Stephen Abbleby-Barr was there with a few new pieces – should have totally bought a piece last year. His work is so amazing and a great combination of historical, period styling with an all-male cast that has a somewhat mischievous undertone. Andres Basurto at Lyons Wier was the only other notable work, a collection of beautiful broken glass skulls. The light made each of these pop even though there was a creepy, almost religious tone to them. Otherwise, the show was a lot of misses – nothing really new or anything that stood out. From there I ran down to Soho for Red Dot – which was so amateur and seemed like a regional art fair not worthy of a global city. There were some small regional galleries that had bad pieces you’d see in a resort town – a lot of snoresville woodwork sculptures and landscapes. The only great works were a corner full of beautiful paintings by Nicholas Evans-Cato – they were of unique and rare shots of the New York waterfront. Simple but still interesting.
I ended up going to Volta twice – once by myself on Friday and it was so good the bf and I went back Saturday. It was so good – I don’t even know where to start. Natasha Kissell’s paintings placed art museums and major institutions in fairytale settings – beautiful over-stylized landscapes with the New Museum just popped in the center. Jill Sylvia at Magrorocca took mathematical graph paper and sliced each box out perfectly to create amazing clean and geometric works that were simple in their design but perplexing in their creation. Christian Schoeler at Schuebbe painting dream-like paintings with young, naked boys in landscapes. They were not sexual at all – more ethereal and harkening back to a simple time when nakedness did not equal sexuality (if ever such a time existed).
Michael Decker in the Lobby of the Volta show created a sculpture out of a collection of old ironing boards. The piece was not anything monumental or significant – just fun and entertaining. Finally, Bertram Hasenauer at Fruehsorge created beautiful works. My favorite, which totally reminded of Salsitano, was a simple, elegant drawing of the side of a man’s head. This work was the only one that really stopped me in my tracks and really pulled me in. it was way out of my price range – which was basically $10 – but the work gave me inspiration and reminded me why I love going to the fairs. Volta’s diversity and quality made up for some of the misses this week.
After Volta, the bf and I ran over the West Chelsea to hit Moving Image and Independent. Moving Image was a collection of video works, mostly historically, set on suspended flat screens throughout the main space of the Tunnel building. Some I had seen before, but my favorite was a new work and not on a flat screen. It was a rectangular box created with light bulbs that were slightly larger than Christmas lights. The lights were timed to show animated people walking by – it was such a visually beautiful piece – again, really simple but still stunning. From there we rushed over to the Frying Pan for Independent. This was the one show we had to pay for as it was their opening night and my fancy-pants MoMA membership didn’t get me in. The bf hated it – it was too cheap, grassroots, and hokey for him. I loved it. It was very start-up, interesting, thought provoking and a total mind-fuck. We only had 15 minutes – which totally sucked! I wish we had at least an hour – we would have had a drink and taken in:
1980’s cartoon characters all with oversized penises wallpaper
real life naked Jesus in front of a light box cross
a sketchy, smelly lower level with tons of small works
the Golden Girls made with spray paint
It was total visual overload- everywhere you looked was something new, provocative and interesting. Even if it wasn’t the most detailed work or expensively built sculpture – its more art that is feeding your mind, imagination and consciousness. We had to run to a dinner – bad planning on my part.
What I would have done was blow off the Bushwick Arts collective as it was a shitshow of a different caliber. We thought we schlepped out to the Morgan stop on the L train to see some performance art. Instead we got videos of performance art. Luckily, we had a fabulous brunch and a few drinks instead – thank god it was a nice day and we could walk to amazing restaurants and bars. It ended up being one of those great days where we started with art, rolled into brunch, then drinks, then dinner, then a party and ended up dancing our faces off till 4am. It was a crazy day – one that should not be forgotten.
And that was my Armory week. I guess in hindsight, it was a good week. Next year, assuming I am still in New York, I might have to take a day off for it. But it’s no Miami Basel – where you need at least three days. There were a few highlights, but overall I learned I never plan enough time. Need more of a buffer for great shows and outs for bad ones.
