art fairs/biennials
artblog goes to documenta, miami basel, carnegie international, and the usual new york suspects.
New York Art Fairs – Armory Show Contemporary disappoints, Volta not so much
We attended the Armory Show and Volta, something we’ve been doing for a number of years. We may change it up next year because we were a tad bit underwhelmed this year. The free-for-all commercial atmosphere was not so thrilling — maybe we’re getting jaded, who knows. Below are some pictures of favorite moments at The 2013 Armory Show and Volta. Loads more pictures at Libby’s Flickr (Armory & Volta) and Roberta’s Flickr (Armory & Volta). The 2013 Armory Show. We went to both Piers (92-Modern and 94-Contemporary) Volta 2013 New York — making its debut in Soho (a move ... More » »
Sponsored Post – Long-bin Chen at Volta
This post is sponsored by The West Collection at SEI At the Volta fair, 82 Mercer St. in Soho check out Long-bin Chen‘s amazing carved magazine busts of Davinci, Beethoven, and Michelangelo. The West Collection at SEI
Art Fairs in Miami, 2012 – Traffic everywhere and a show stopper at the new Miami Project
This year the traffic in Miami defeated me. The amount of activity generated by more than twenty art fairs would benefit from public, and preferably underground, transportation. While I saw plenty of art over two days at three fairs, I saw nothing sufficiently new or challenging to make up for bumper-to-bumper traffic and streets, endlessly clogged, with drivers who didn’t know where they were going. After three fairs, I gave up. So this won’t pretend to be a best of the best, or even an overview. I spent the first afternoon at Art Basel Miami Beach with my friend, neighbor ... More » »
How To Launch An Art Fair
Back in September, I was solicited over the Internet to exhibit at the Select Art Fair at Miami’s Catalina Hotel. I was, according to the e-vite, the kind of artist that should take advantage of a unique art fair opportunity during Art Basel’s annual Miami art orgy (December 5 – 9, 2012). The pitch: For only $4,800 I would be able to show my work in a hotel room – one of only about 60 – right around the corner from Art Basel Miami. The founders proposed the curious idea that I could sleep in my gallery space! I wrote ... More » »
FIAC 2012 in Paris – art outdoors and the party inside
Like Birnam Wood the FIAC is approaching my door. Thanks to offsite/outdoor installations it is possibe to experience the FIAC further and further afield from the Grand Palais, the pit of a giant art fruit that falls onto Paris and ripens and burst every October. ( I have to wonder, sometimes, if God didn’t ask Adam & Eve not to look at something way back when in the Garden of Eden?). The Parisian outdoors are recolonised as the gardens of Paris become galleries and squares become stages. We aren’t looking at Land Art ( No artist has yet to dig ... More » »
documenta 13: On War and Memories
The commissioner of documenta XIII, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, treated the entire ground floor of Kassel’s Fridericianum (a Neoclassical building from 1779, designed as one of the earliest public museums) as her introductory statement to the 300 plus-artist exhibition centered in Kassel, with outposts in Kabul, Alexandria and Banff. When I reached the phrase in the first label …, suggesting a particular mode of proximity by way of the spacially diffused aggregation of elements that also maintain their own singularities, I realized that the reading, at least, would be hard going. To the right, the large but sparely-installed gallery contained three small, bronze ... More » »
Recession-year Armory and Volta – ok, not fantabulous
Pre-recession art fairs were imbued with a circus-y vibe that kept you walking down the long aisles looking for the next bright shiny new (or outrageous) thing. But the halcyon days of big budgets and splashy installations at the fairs are over and that irrational exuberance may never be back. This year we went to Volta and the Armory (contemporary pier) and while the art mostly was nice enough we missed the hunt for nuggets of gold. And at the Armory, on a Saturday afternoon, with a big crowd around us, it felt a little like prime time at the ... More » »
Friday picture post – Peephole from Armory
We are always checking for trends when we go to the art fairs. This year’s trends included peepholes! Those dreamy environments by Patrick Jacobs were in evidence at both Volta and the Armory. We’ll have a report of what we saw on Sunday.
Friday picture post – Outside/Inside the Box at the Icebox
Rachel Udell‘s “The Shapes of My Dreams and of My Nightmares” hangs at about eye level in the middle of the Crane’s Icebox Project Space. Part of Fiber Philadelphia‘s big juried art exhibit, the piece is a carnival of crocheted yarn, thread, heirloom clothing, fabric, felt and fiberfill. We love its Dr. Seuss-ian ambiguity — is it good? is it going to gobble you up? And it got us thinking about the late Mike Kelly, perhaps the first to use stuffed animals in his installations. artblog’s first art safari went out last Friday to see this show and some others. ... More » »
A Whitney for you and me – enjoyable, lyrical, musical!
Not a whimper of controversy surrounds this year’s Whitney Biennial. It’s an uptown show to the New Museum’s downtown triennial. If there’s activism, it’s in the curatorial choice to dedicate a humongous amount of space and time to performance for music and dance. And if there’s politics, it’s mostly about art, in the commissioned essay by artist Andrea Fraser, whose point is that everyone in the art world is compromised via money and insider politics, and yet that might make the art world the perfect place for art on the subject of money, politics and complicity. (The photographs and videos ... More » »
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