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The Armory Show's New Urban Vision

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The Armory Show has been the quintessential New York City art fair since it premiered at the 69th Regiment Armory in present-day Murray Hill in 1913. Unlike other franchise fairs that travel to several locations, it’s hard to imagine the Armory Show taking place in any other city. Now held at Piers 94 and 92 on Manhattan’s west side, the fair’s interior architecture is not unlike the layout of the city it calls home. Last year, Brooklyn-based architects Bade Stageberg Cox, who have designed the Armory Show since 2012, took inspiration from New York’s grid plan for the fair’s interior; their design for a “grid of blocks, punctuated by open spaces that provide places of social interaction” was directly inspired by the fair’s Manhattan setting.

“Thresholds,” their theme for the design of this week’s Armory Show, builds on the urbanistic program of last year’s architecture with a distinctive twist — for 2014, Bade Stageberg Cox are using architecture to delineate the boundaries between New York City and the fair’s art city, creating spaces meant to facilitate the visitor’s thorough immersion in the art on display. By activating passageways, demarcating lounges, and simplifying circulation, the architects seek to transport Armory Show visitors beyond both the ceaseless hurry of New York City and the consuming rush of viewing and buying at an art fair.

By using interior architecture to slow visitors down, Bade Stageberg Cox seek to allow patrons to relish the art-viewing experience — and aim to mitigate the “fair fatigue” that often overwhelms visitors inside the endless rows of galleries at many art fairs. In order to create what principal Jane Stageberg calls a “mood shift” during the passage from the city to the fair, the architects have moved the ticket desk to what they call a “head house” at the end of a corridor just off the main 55th Street entrance. Whereas last year ticketing took place inside a corridor that opened directly onto the fair, this year visitors will traverse the corridor as a space of physical transition from the hurried realm of the city to the more harmonious environment of the fair. This corridor is the first of several thresholds that defines the experience of moving to and from inside this year’s Armory Show.

Inside the fair, the architects have interjected lounges and restaurants between galleries — eschewing the colored towers they built in 2012 and 2013 to alert visitors to the locations of lounges — to create simpler loops of circulation. The eight lounges inside Pier 94, where contemporary art will be sold, and the four inside the smaller Pier 92, devoted to Modern art — will serve as “neighborhood precincts,” as per Stageberg’s vision of the seating areas. Galleries, she explained, will be clustered around the parlors, so that a visitor can enjoy a brief respite before continuing to wander the aisles. The lounges will also cut through the aisles of galleries, so attendees can navigate between rows with ease (previously, viewers would have to navigate from the front to the back of a pier to enter an adjoining row of galleries).

Fellow principal Timothy Bade notes that the most intensive new feature focused on notions of passage and threshold is the interior stairway that connects Piers 94 and 92 (previously, visitors walked through a covered outdoor corridor to make the connection). The stairway, covered with a scrim (as are the lounges interspersed throughout the fair), will isolate viewers from art as they pass from higher to lower ground, offering an intimate space for reflection on artworks already viewed. The decision to use semi-transparent fabric to delineate public spaces of passage within the fair reflects the temporary nature of its set-up: the Armory Show runs a mere four days, from March 6 through March 9. The entire fair infrastructure is built and deconstructed — going “from emptiness to emptiness,” observed principal Martin Cox— in the span of a week.

Art fairs have only recently begun to hire designers to conceptualize their physical spaces with emphasis on optimizing circulation, visitor experience, and aesthetic organization through architecture — such questions were previously relegated to the realm of museum design. But by importing the questions that inform the design of permanent exhibition spaces for major institutions, BSC and the Armory Show assert that the art hung for a week on plywood walls can be just as important as the pieces displayed for years inside steel-and-glass galleries.

The Armory Show's New Urban Vision
Street Seats by Bade Stageberg Cox at the Armory's Publication Lounge.

New York

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Basquiat Estate Sues Christie’s, D.C. Arts Funding May Rise, and More

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Basquiat Estate Sues Christie’s, D.C. Arts Funding May Rise, and More

— Basquiat Estate Sues Christie’s: Jean-Michel Basquiat’s sisters, Jeanine Basquiat Heriveaux and Lisane Basquiat, who run his estate, are suing Christie’s for $1 million after the auction house did not consult them to authenticate more than three dozen works. The estate alleges that the house insinuates in its materials that the works have been authenticated when, in fact, they may be fakes. “Christie’s attempts to deceive and mislead the public into believing that the Estate authorized the reproduction of the artwork in the Catalog and that therefore the Catalog Items are authentic,” the suit states. [NYT]

— D.C. Arts Funding May Go Up: The Smithsonian Institution and the National Gallery of Art may stand to benefit from federal appropriation requests released Tuesday that would increase the arts institutions funding in the 2015 fiscal year budget. The Smithsonian nabbed a $45 million increase from 2014, bringing its total proposed budget to $850 million, while the National Gallery got a $7 million increase for a $140 million budget. Other federally funded groups such as the Kennedy Center and the National Endowment for the Arts saw no such increases. [WP]

— Italy Promises Pompeii Progress: After recent news that significant portions of Pompeii are crumbling, Italy has promised to “unblock” two million euros for restoration efforts at the site outside of Milan. Amid outrage over the conditions, Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said that the EU “can be sure that Italy is taking care of Pompeii, both in terms of emergency measures and in the long term.” Even with these promises, it remains to be seen if action can be taken quickly within Italy’s slow-moving bureaucracy. [AFPTAN]

— Artprice Releases 2013 Market Report: Artprice’s 2013 report shows an accelerating art market with Warhol and Picasso nabbing the top two spots for most sold artists by volume. [ArtpriceArt Market MonitorArt Market Monitor]

— Biennials vs. Art Fairs: Jori Finkel talks to one of this year’s Whitney Biennial curators, Michelle Grabner, among others, about how biennials are attempting to distance themselves from art fairs. [TAN]

— RIP Robert Ashley: Composer Robert Ashley, whose work is in this year’s Whitney Biennial, has passed away at the age of 83. [Artforum]

— Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum has acquired two Steve McQueen works for its collection. [Art Daily]

— The British Museum was the most visited destination in Britain last year, with a 20 percent increase in attendance. [Telegraph]

— Online art seller Art.com is being sued for allegedly hacking into another site’s servers and stealing consumer info. [Mercury News]

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Check our blog IN THE AIR for breaking news throughout the day.

Works by Jean-Michel Basquiat from the collection of Alexis Adler.

Highlights from "Quilts and Color: The Pilgrim/Roy Collection

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Top 10 Runway Shoes for Fall 2014

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The best footwear of Fall 2014's runways included sculptural heels, interesting materials and a new way to find comfort without sacrificing style, but there were 10 that captured Blouin Artinfo’s imagination.

Cases in point were Chanel’s padded knee-high sneaker boots, which are so fun that they shouldn’t just be worn for making jaunts to the supermarket; and Miu Miu’s pointy-toe transparent plastic booties, which, topped with a bow at the angle, was both girlish and mod — rather something that Edie Sedgwick might easily have worn.

At Christian Dior, color-blocked trompe l’oeil wedges managed to be the right mix of style and sport, complementing Raf Simons’ beautifully tailored coats that combined feminine Fifties silhouettes with a shoelace detail down the side.

The high-heel sandals at Givenchy, meanwhile, reflected the sexy and powerful woman Riccardo Tisci was putting forth for the season — mixing a nude, soft suede upper with a skinny gold stiletto.

At Stella McCartney, it was the rubber-soled flatform loafer that tied the collection together, pairing particularly well with super-short hem lengths that, far from being mannish, infused the elongated silhouette with an understated sex appeal.

Meanwhile, the slouchy, almost-knee-high leather boots at Opening Ceremony, with zips down the front for an expandable shaft and an elastic band at the top, are functional, evergreen, and most definitely the best weapon during any fashion week that happens to be plagued by snowstorms.

To see these stunning shoes and more, click on the slideshow.

Top 10 Runway Shoes for Fall 2014
Fall 2014 shoes from Chanel, Miu Miu and Stella McCartney

Designer Spotlight: Liv Ballard's Red Carpet Worthy Jewelry

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Designer Spotlight: Liv Ballard's Red Carpet Worthy Jewelry

The recent 86th Annual Academy Awards was a star-studded affair with many eye-catching jewels by high-end houses such as Bulgari, Harry Winston, and Tiffany & Co. sharing the red carpet with the A-listers they accessorized. But there was another jeweler sharing the spotlight that night: Liv Ballard, whose Roman-inspired gold jewelry hung off the neck and wrapped the wrist and finger of actress Rebecca Rigg— in a black Givenchy gown, alongside her husband and star of “The Mentalist” Simon Baker — at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party.

Counting Jennifer Aniston, Elton John, as well as some European royalty and rock stars among her celebrity clients, the Los Angeles- and Rome-based Ballard, whose eponymous label is almost nine years old, spoke to Blouin Artinfo fresh off of her latest Oscar showing about how her bold, contemporary designs in pressed colored stones and yellow gold helps sets her apart in the crowded and competitive field of designer jewelry.

“In most cases I think of jewelry more like sculpture — a lot of them are built,” she said. Having studied art in university, where she worked with clay, Ballard said she started designing jewelry as an unconscious but perhaps natural progression. “I love jewelry and I think visually. It was something I wanted to explore. These days, during my design process, I still work things out in clay when I need to.”

Here’s more of the interview:

What inspires you?
The way most of my pieces come about is that I’m usually looking to express a feeling in what I’m doing. When that process starts it’s a combination of feeling and symbolism that grow at the same time. The Sacro Vincolo rings are the obvious example of that, as they represent a feeling of separateness and togetherness at the same time.

What sets your designs apart from the rest?
A lot of my pieces are informed historically and mythically and are highly symbolic. While I don’t want it to be necessarily obvious for the person picking it up and appreciating it, it’s the feeling behind it that gives it meaning.

Tell us about your globe designs, which are part of your permanent collection.
It was the first piece I designed, and it’s always a great seller for me. It was really about wanderlust and a longing to travel that set that piece in motion. A lot of my customers move around a fair bit, and I like the idea that they are interactive and very playful pieces. What surprised me somewhat as I became more involved in developing the globe is that I realized it really represents our planet. In one piece I used different sapphires with gradating colors of blue to reflect the different depths of the oceans; in another I added diamond for polar ice caps because I wanted to make a statement about [global warming].

Why are you so fascinated with ancient Roman imagery?
I’m fortunate enough to have worked in Rome for the last seven years. Being in Rome is a visual feast where the eye is informed by the great beauty of even a casual thing. Just walking down the street is going to provoke something in your mind that you want to explore, and it’s a liberating experience for me.

And what’s it like working with Roman artisans?
The Roman goldsmiths have a very long tradition of working with cast metals and pressed stones and their quality of work is unparalleled. The atelier I work with goes back for generations. One thing I love so much about it is that no matter how unorthodox an idea I might present to the artisans, they never say they can’t do it. They will always help me find a way to realize it, even present and suggest new things for me to work with, and I just love that spirit. I spoke no Italian when I arrived, but now I can speak fluently about jewelry with them. They’re so generous; they just want to help you realize your ideas.

What are your favorite materials to work with?
I’m very drawn to sapphires and emeralds — and gold. A lot of pieces we do are cast, like sculpture. I love the soft sculptural quality of gold, which just seems to want to melt with a new body. I love the warmth of the color and the way it feels against your skin. As much of a visual thing it is, in the final analysis it’s also more of a tactile thing: The person has to wear it, so it’s important to have a sensuality to it.

What’s the most unique piece you’ve ever made?
I’m working on three pieces that are again highly symbolic — one of them reflects my interest in devices that keep away something bad. We live in an age of anxiety [but] what are we trying to protect ourselves from? The other two are pieces that are loaded with feeling and meaning but I can’t reveal them yet! 

Liv Ballard and the Capvt Mundi pendant of her design

Slideshow: 9 Booths Not to Miss at The Armory Show 2014

SLIDESHOW: Armory Show Contemporary Sees Bursts of Sales at VIP Opening

9 Booths Not to Miss at This Year's Armory Show

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Click HERE for a video tour of the Best Booths from this year's fair. 

Although the fair is only 20 years old, the 2014 Armory Show feels a bit like a diamond jubilee, with tones of silver, white, and black dominating much of the work on view in the contemporary section. When colors do appear, they tend to be muted: There’s far more raw canvas and taupe mixed in among the ever-present mirrors than in years past. Still, like a diamond, the fair sparkles with bright color here and there—particularly  when seen in the right light—and the nine booths below offer some of its finest facets.

Case in point is Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s “Storm Prototype II,” presented by Thomas Schulte of Berlin and Christopher Grimes of Santa Monica. The work’s two shapely silver clouds, made with fiberglass covered in titanium alloy, hang from the ceiling in an all-white booth surrounded by a series of gorgeously spare images, “Bird in Space Mach 10.” These document a whimsical experiment in which the artist placed the form of Brancusi’s iconic sculpture in the U.S. Air Force’s hypervelocity wind tunnel.

At Galerie Forsblum it’s impossible to miss Jason Martin’s aptly titled “Behemoth”, an enormous block of blackened cork like a charred mausoleum. But the dark sculpture stands in counterpoint to the neon delights of a Peter Halley painting, a voluptuous self-portrait by Chantal Joffe, and a freaky sculpture by Tony Oursler featuring a devil’s mask with a video eye, a witch’s conical hat, and a video image of a nude woman prowling over a scorched moon.

No work at the fair can match the outlandishness of Monica Cook’s seated swine at Postmasters Gallery. Crafted from an array of materials, Cook’s tusked pig boasts an open thorax in which one finds a piglet nibbling on internal grapes. Nearby, and guarded by male and female birds fashioned by Cook, hang William Powhida’s “How To Be Ok with the Contemporary Art Market,” a word painting with such helpful directives as “Temper your idealism,” as well as a number of witty abstractions by David Diao.

Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects boasts two artists showing in the current Whitney Biennial: The collective My Barbarian as well as Shana Lutker, here with a white rope sculpture that begins on the floor and runs up onto the wall and an exquisite chrome piece that looks like a globe on tilted pedestal. These are joined by a fantastic group of oddly shaped charcoal drawings by Karl Haendel.

In this year’s outstanding Focus: China section, Beijing’s Space Station also hosts a collective, the Double Fly Art Center, which is comprised of nine members (“double fly” is Chinese slang for a male-female-female threesome). They’ve transformed the booth into several riotously fun carnival-like games that visitors can play for the chance to win prizes: throw hoops onto bagged gifts, pop a balloon with a dart. You can also enter the Double Fly Happiness Lottery.

The entire aisle-facing “front room” at Marianne Boesky Gallery has been transformed by the South African artist Serge Alain Nitegeka into a black fence-like labyrinth on which unfinished boxes (recalling coffins) hang higgledy-piggledy. Navigate the maze into the back room and you’ll find fine array of paintings on wood by Nitegeka that resemble flattened versions of the fencing you’ve just traversed.

Given the tonal starkness that presides at the fair, the color bursts of Aiko Hachisuka’s fabric sculptures at Eleven Rivington offer a revivifying respite. The Japanese-born, L.A.-based artist is showing large vessels made of silkscreened articles of clothing, which seem like the offspring of sofas that have mated with coffee mugs. They’re just begging for a collector or two to climb inside and curl up. 

And if silvery 3-D spectacle wins the day at Pier 92—home to the Contemporary section of the fair—lush paintings hold most of the walls over at the decidedly more apollonian Modern section on Pier 94. At Hackett |Mill, a large, gold-hued abstraction by Jules Olitski shines like a sunburst on several equally big and intricately textured painted collages by Conrad Marca-Relli.

As first-generation Abstract Expressionist pictures have come to command stratospheric prices, their heirs have garnered increasing attention. Hill Gallery brings together several key works of second-generation Ab Ex—mammoth and imposingly beautiful pictures by Alfred Leslie—with nine diminutive pieces by the contemporary master John Walker. Walker’s series of landscapes depicting Sea Point, Maine, which deliquesce into abstraction, is painted in oil on bingo cards.  

9 Booths Not to Miss at This Year's Armory Show
Fabric sculptures by Aiko Hachisuka at the Eleven Rivington booth.

Sensory Ethnography Lab Finds Its Place at the Whitney Biennial

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Sensory Ethnography Lab Finds Its Place at the Whitney Biennial

In an interview with the critic Scott MacDonald, filmmaker Stephanie Spray jokingly refers to a film she is working on as neither fiction nor documentary, but “ethnographic sci-fi.” It’s an odd but fitting description, encompassing the rigorous and mysterious, for the large body of work produced by the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University, whose films are featured as part of the Whitney Biennial, beginning March 7.

Spray is one of the many students to emerge out of the “experimental lab,” established in 2006 by Lucien Castaing-Taylor, co-director of Harvard’s Film Study Center and a major creative force behind the group, who co-directed, along with Ilisa Barbash, one of the Sensory Ethnography Lab’s most widely seen works, “Sweetgrass” (2009). Other filmmakers who produce work within the lab are Véréna Paravel, JP Sniadecki, and Diana Allan.

As the name suggests, the lab is part of a larger project to bring two worlds — the sensory (aesthetics) and ethnographic — together. The content of the films vary, but each is engaged with human experience but devoid of the structures of informational narrative documentary as well as traditional ethnographic film, which approaches its subject from a distance. (Spray’s trilogy of films concerns the struggles of a rural Nepali family.)

They achieve this formally through a variety of methods, including explorations of time through long takes — Spray’s “Manakamana” and Aryo Danusari’s “On Broadway” — or through an immersion into the physical — especially Paravel’s “Foreign Parts,” a collaboration with Sniadecki that takes place in Willets Point, Queens, a forgotten land in danger of being wiped away due to former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s redevelopment plans, and “Leviathan,” her collaboration with Castaing-Taylor.

“Leviathan,” which is screening on the third floor of the Whitney, might be the most radical moving image work at the Biennial. Shot with consumer GoPro cameras (typically used by extreme sports enthusiasts) aboard a fishing ship, the film aims to formally mirror the arduous and often dangerous work at sea. The camera — frequently affixed to the workers or to the ship itself, released from control of the filmmakers — visually represents the movement of work. It’s a dizzying spectacle, the camera dipping and diving, sometimes underwater, other times from what seems like great heights.

Close attention is paid to sound through the work of Ernst Karel, who has edited and mixed sound on many of the films that have come out of the Sensory Ethnography Lab. The films are extraordinary as sound collages. “Leviathan” is rhythmically powered by the distorted audio of the consumer cameras being thrown around, while “Foreign Parts” creates a symphony of the clack and clang of the junkyards, the elevated 7 train rumbling overhead.

While the work of the Sensory Ethnography Lab has often been placed in the context of the museum of gallery — including PS1 and the Tate in London — it’s hard not to feel that the visceral nature of “Leviathan” will somehow be diminished tucked into the back of the Whitney, without the enveloping darkness of the movie theater. (The Film Society at Lincoln Center, coincidentally, will present a sidebar dedicated to the work of the Sensory Ethnography Lab as part of its “Art of the Real” program in April.) So much of the work achieves its power through close examination and immersion, so the casual viewing atmosphere of the museum setting does not do it justice.

Even though the Biennial this year, compared to the last few years — especially when Ed Halter and Thomas Beard curated in 2012 — is lacking in substantial moving image work, the fact that it made room for the Sensory Ethnography Lab within its overloaded program proves the museum’s continued commitment to film and video that complicates the distinction between the movie theater and the gallery. 

Sensory Ethnography Lab at the Whitney Biennial

SPRING/BREAK Holds Its Own With Armory Week Giants

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New York may still be stuck in the frigid throes of winter, but the vibe inside the third edition of SPRING/BREAK Art Show on Tuesday night was a balmy world away. Once again located inside the historic halls — some that haven’t seen visitors in decades — of NoLita’s Old School on Mott Street, SPRING/BREAK includes projects from more than 30 curators and 135 artists (five artists were added the morning of the opening), nearly double the count from the previous year as the fair climbs further up the packed list of Armory Arts Week events, to position itself as a key player. 

Founded in 2012 and organized by intrepid art world producer-artist-curator collaborators Andrew Gori and Ambre Kelly under the guise The They Co., SPRING/BREAK (through March 9) is set up as an “Old New York-style inhabitation.” Considering that the participation, attendance, and wow-factor seems to grow exponentially each year (this year’s edition kicked off with a line around the block and saw dealer Jeffrey Deitch squeezing his way through the hallways), the event is proving to be not just another passing satellite fair, but a place for some of the most exciting projects of the week to be seen and purchased. 

This year’s theme, PUBLICPRIVATE, was a broad framework given to artists and curators to formulate ideas and build environments that explore the ever-blurring boundaries between the two spheres humans operate on today. Social media platforms and various other ubiquitous technologies allow us to conflate our private and public selves, potentially giving rise to a whole new breed of social and personal conflict, and creating a very visible virtual field for the artistic process to play out on.

Filled with endless nooks and crannies and narrow halls, the academic building — a New York City landmark since 1996 and still overseen partially by the building’s former owners — lends itself to site-specific art works and presents an unconventional surface for curators to work with. The They Co. gave full freedom to participants, allowing one group to paint the walls and ceiling of a classroom metallic silver, and another to stage a live performance in a boys’ bathroom. The latter meant building a lofted platform over the toilet stalls and a stage atop the sink for Eve Sussman and Simon Lee’s performance work, curated by Maureen Sullivan

Not to be missed on the first floor is writer/curator Benjamin Sutton’s “The Monstrous Self.” The exhibition combined crude humor with serious gross-out factor, taking things to such a point that artist Sigrid Sarda had to alter the bottom half of her work “Rule 34: Charm” the day of the opening because of constraints set by the space’s institutional guidelines. The piece was undoubtedly the most talked about of the night, a tableaux featuring a self-pleasuring female made of wax and real human bones, flipping through porn and taking selfies while covered in golden maggots. It topped the price list at $17,000.

Curator Yulia Topchiy, founder of CoWorker Projects, stole the show on the second floor with Bruno Pogacnik Wukodrakula’s “Powercave4,” wherein the artist encased an entire classroom in metallic foil, covered the ground in AstroTurf and geometric patterns of spray foam insulation, and filled the remaining space with projections, CCTV cameras that played visitors’ movements on television monitors, plant life, painted skulls, dolls, neon lighting, and skeletal sculptures. The horrifying effect was that of walking into a ritual chamber, where it’s unclear whether you’re a participant or potential sacrifice. 

Gori admitted that as members of a community that is often subject to the ebb and flow of both the art market and New York’s real estate costs, temporality had been on his and Kelly’s minds when putting this year’s show together. “Even our situation here, in this building, is temporary, and we’re aware of that,” he said. That notion of nothing-is-forever is something that many in the art world are now more painfully aware of after Hurricane Sandydamaged spaces in Chelsea and along the Brooklyn waterfront, shuttering galleries and displacing artists who had studio spaces there. But Gori and Kelly saw this as an opportunity to give their peers a place to do their thing, and invited several gallerists and curators who no longer operate permanent spaces to participate in this year’s fair.

Kathleen Cullen, one such gallerist, curated a knockout group show on the third floor, including works by Michael St. John and Andy Mister, whose charcoal and ink drawing appropriations of historical images of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and frames from Leni Riefenstahl’s “Olympia” were prime examples of the fair’s theme. 

Gori and Kelly’s decision to put SPRING/BREAK’s marketplace online is an addition to this year’s fair that could be a game changer. The artworks are available to purchase through the fair’s website and through a specially curated auction with Paddle 8, where curators have chosen one artwork from their section for a small sale, portions of which will be donated to ProjectArt, a non-profit arts education program. For any collector, dealer, artist, and even reporter who has trudged through the art fairs each year trying to keep up with sales, the digital marketplace makes the process painless and easily accessible, giving collectors the time to peruse or even buy a work on their iPads.

One thing hasn’t changed, and that’s the whirlwind experience the fair creates for visitors. Gori and Kelly are efficient ringmasters who have cornered a section of the market for rising art stars with wholly original ideas, and honed in on an community-driven art experience that was all but lost in New York until now.

SPRING/BREAK Holds Its Own With Armory Week Giants
Powercave installation by Bruno Pogacnik Wukodrakula, curated by Yulia Topchiy.

See Highlights From the 2014 Armory Show

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This year’s Armory Show brought some 200 exhibitors and gallerists from around the world to Manhattan’s west side, and since it’s our belief that New York’s largest art fair deserves nothing less than an exhaustive slideshow, ARTINFO’s Benjamin Park and Eric Gonon were on the ground to document stand-out work at Piers 92 and 94. Click here to see photos of art on view at the 2014 Armory Show.  

See Highlights From the 2014 Armory Show
Highlights From the 2014 Armory Show

Top 10 Trends for Fall 2014


This Is Not a Survey: An Incomplete Review of the Whitney Biennial

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This Is Not a Survey: An Incomplete Review of the Whitney Biennial

The wall text for the 2014 edition of the Whitney Biennial opens with a defensive admonition: “The field of contemporary art is far too vast for one exhibition to encompass,” it reads, disclaiming the idea that the the biennial is actually a comprehensive survey of current practice, as most people seem to think it is. In that same spirit, let's admit that the Whitney Biennial itself is far too vast for one so-called review to encompass—lest it become nothing more than a list of names and dates, an archive of the stuff that's been crammed into and across three floors, a courtyard, and a lobby gallery.

This biennial is the brainchild of three curators, from three different places—Anthony Elms (Philadelphia, and formerly Chicago), Stuart Comer (New York by way of London), and Michelle Grabner (Chicago and Wisconsin)—and the floors have roughly been divvied up among them, with a few exceptions. One might expect this to give the Biennial a schizophrenic character, but it more or less holds together, with some nice call-outs and resonances from floor to floor.

Let's start with the weird backbone of the exhibition, and the reason why you should avoid the elevator in favor of the stairs: A 12-channel sound installation by Charlemagne Palestine, emitting from a series of speakers that have been decorated, a la Mike Kelley, with an array of abject stuffed bears and elephants and strands of bedraggled scarves. The piece (which was recorded by the artist in the museum space itself) is a mantra of unease, a bed of haunted synth-like sounds humming and dying and punctuated with the occasional affected human voice. Palestine's inclusion here (he was Elms's choice) colors much of what you see on other floors. It's not mood music, per se, since this Biennial's flavor isn't exactly Nightmarish Doom, but it does have an outsized influence on the way you experience the show.

For instance: Head up to the fourth floor, Michelle Grabner's domain, where the introductory wall text is paired with a straightforward, albeit intense, portrait of Barack Obama taken by Dawoud Bey. The Commander-in-Chief's gaze is complicated by the fact that, while you're looking at him, you're also awash in the stairwell's audio, and that droning miasma of sound suddenly makes Barack look like the sort of hard-assed Machievelli who could, well, order a fleet of drones to hit a country we're not technically at war with.

But let's start back downstairs, or at least try to make some necessarily reductive, broad-stroke characterizations about what this biennial means and how it reflects the temperaments of its respective curators. What do they care about, and why does it matter? Elms is a bibliophile, a lover of the archival and collectable, and all of that is clear from the second floor—which, and we can argue about this, is probably the smartest one here. I'd venture that everything on this level, including the sculptures and paintings, has to do with language in various forms: language that communicates, or fails to; language that is bent or broken or impotent.

The link is sometimes obvious, as in Susan Howe's Tom Tit Tot, 22 letterpress prints that take found writing and twist it into concrete poetics. These prints, arrayed in a vitrine, share a room with Elijah Burgher's excellent colored pencil drawings incorporating written spells (sigils) and a hanging acrylic-on-fabric piece that also reads like imaginary hieroglyphics. Even Charline von Heyl's grid of 36 drawings—incorporating appropriated images of Russian and Polish folk art, spray paint, graphite, and other media—takes on the appearance of a typographical chart, itemizing letters from a distant past or an unknown future. And  the Carol Jackson sculptures spread throughout the space—some on pedestals, some hanging from the walls—are like graffiti forms pouncing into three dimensions: a bit cheesy in a Frank-Stella-in-the-'80s way, but boldly confident in their alien funkiness.

Other rooms in this floor-covering expansion of Elms's brain feature archives a bit like masoleums, extolling the underappreciated dead. One corner nook organized by the collective Public Collectors is dedicated to Malachi Ritscher, a Chicago audiophile known for obsessively recording live concerts, jazz and otherwise, and also for protesting the Iraq War until  2006, when he committed suicide by lighting himself on fire in a very public place while carrying an anti-war placard. I didn't know any of this; did you know any of this? Part of the point is that you probably didn't, and that an American man can self-immolate without becoming any sort of folk hero. But here he is in the Whitney Museum, his posters and suitcases and recording devices and Butthole Surfers' set lists arrayed like holy objects, which is certainly a beautiful homage, but also a bit sad.

In an adjacent room, Joseph Grigely presents a dissection of the life of a deceased painter-cum-critic, The Gregory Battcock Archive. It brings together printed matter, photographs, postcards, and other materials in vitrines, as well as some posters on the wall. There's an art review from the New York Free Press, circa 1969, the prose all bebop beatnik bounce. On the wall there's an actual abstract painting—supposedly the only remaining work by Battcock—that is pretty bad in its generic mushiness. Is this the archive as homage, celebration, or simple oddity?

Stuart Comer's third floor is the most self-consciously hip in this biennial, and the one most interested in tapping into new media. There's a room-sized installation by Bjarne Melgaard—now best known for making a chair sculpture that Dasha Zhukova pissed everyone off by sitting on—featuring female mannequins, digitally-printed penis pillows, and videos of animals. (It's colorful and energetic but somehow flat and subdued, like a Ryan Trecartin environment that's had all the kinetic life sucked out of it.) There's a piece by Ken Okiishi: five Samsung televisions playing generic programs, turned on their side, their screens daubed with oil paint. A Fred Lonidier work—a 1976 piece that could have been made yesterday—is a wall hung with t-shirts, their fronts custom-printed with images and news announcements related to the GAF Corporation. (The shirts get larger as it goes, from child-size to a Men's Large, perhaps a nod to the way in which we grow up with companies, our lives colonized by their narratives.)

And an entire room is given over to ephemera from the publishing house semiotext(e)—including a fancy, silvery wallpaper that collages images, posters, announcements, and the like. Several semiotext(e) titles are propped on little shelves, as if we're in a highbrow gift shop. (Semiotext(e) is trending right now! Fun fact: Head over to Zach Feuer right now and you can see sculptures by Brad Troemel that vacuum-seal the imprint's monochromatically-covered mini-volumes into color field arrangements augmented by faux-dredlocks.)   

Elsewhere on the floor Comer's focus becomes a bit more diffuse. There's a whole area that seems weirdly nostalgic for the mid-'80s—David Wojnarowicz, Martin Wong, a book by Martin Beck focused on the playlist for a party held in 1984. Which is fine, the Biennial isn't a survey of our contemporary moment, and these throwbacks are paired with work by Danh Vo and others, but: Why? Meanwhile, Zachary Drucker and Rhys Ernst's photographic series Relationship, 2008-13, is one of the biennial's true stand-outs—it tracks the pair's criss-crossing gender transformations (male to female, female to male), and is beautifully composed, funny (some Sarah Lucas-y humor, wherein eggs stand for balls and bratwursts become penises), and unabashadedly sweet and sentimental. The only misstep is in hanging the series in the same room as A.L. Steiner's playfully subversive documentary images, which are close enough in style and attitude that the nearby hanging creates a sort of ghetto of photographic queerness.

Comer does include a fair amount of painting as well. Keith Mayerson's dozens of canvases, hung chockablock, are notable for having absolutely no defining signature style whatsoever. There are paintings of shipwrecks; of Elvis; of Tin Tin; of Times Square; of James Dean hanging out in a tree, masturbating. Individually, they're not much; together, they're a statement about taste (bad and good) and an obsessive work ethic.

Up to the fourth floor, which is helmed by Michelle Grabner, who touts her mission as being about “curriculum building.” That reeks of school, but Grabner's true M.O. is to focus craft: ceramics, textile, and enough color to stun an elephant. The focus here is more on things: Ricky Swallow's patinated bronze sculptures, which resemble delicate little folded-cardboard constructions; Sheila Hicks's drooping masses of rainbow materials; Sterling Ruby's Lucio Fontana-aping ceramics, like oversized horrorshow ashtrays. Everything is pretty bright and immediate and there's a mini-focus on women abstract painters: Amy Sillman, Jacqueline Humphreys, Laura Owens, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung,Suzanne McClelland (plusRebecca Morris downstairs). Philip Hanson's paintings turn quotations from William Blake or Emily Dickinson into hippy spirals that are pretty unbearable, but they're notable as a reminder of Elijah Burgher's New Age vibe on the second floor, minus whatever ironic distance that younger practitioner might have. As a curator, Grabner wants to grab you by the shoulders and say: Handmade still matters—like Karl Haendel's intricate, realistic graphite drawings, hung in a very Baldessarian arrangement, or Shio Kusaka's stoneware and porcelain vessels, decorated with tear patterns or dinosaurs.      

What does the 2014 Whitney Biennial mean? Who knows, really. If we had the time or inclination we could offer some conjectures about the ever-expanding field of painting (Dashiell Manley, Dona Nelson); Americans' obsessions with early-20th century European experimental theater (Shana LutkerMy Barbarian); self-portraiture recast as space-age camp (Jacolby Satterwhite); video-as-voyeurism (Michel Auder filming people through apartment windows, Dave McKenzie filming an unaware Henry Kissinger); or the ironic importation of the tropics into bone-cold New York City (Radames “Juni” Figueroa's cozy, heated hut out in the Whitney's courtyard).

But trying to draw too many cross-connections in an exhibition of 103 artists seems just plain silly, and arbitrary. So why not end in an arbitrary place? If there's one weird object in the entire biennial to dwell on, perhaps it can be a notebook in a vitrine of effects from David Foster Wallace, who hung himself in 2008. Its cover features two blue-eyed kittens rolling around on a bed of roses, beneath the heading Cuddly Cuties. Heartbreaking in its simplicity and aura of posthumous awfulness, it's a fitting place to stop—before you descend that staircase of dread and rejoin the wider world.      

Whitney Biennial 2014 Review

Blanket As Coat and Other Fall 2014 Trends

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Leave it to the Japanese masters of the avant-garde to take inspiration from the particularly cold winter this year. On the runways in Paris, Rei Kawakubo (for Comme des Garcons), Yohji Yamamoto and Junya Watanabe took the idea of Bedroom Chic to an extreme, ensconcing their models in voluminous, duvet-type coats, either in black, dark grey, or in Yamamoto’s case, cocooning them in bright graffiti-tattoo designs. At Comme, one model’s head was literally bolstered with little cylindrical cushions.

Plaid was a big story that many designers checked out. A more refreshing take on it, however, came from the Brits, particularly the Punk Plaid versions from Giles— an acid green hue and black lines were juxtaposed with feminine ruffles at the hem — and Vivienne Westwood, who paired her tartan-blanket-in-the-Adirondacks coat with a disco metallic striped skirt.

Mixed Media was also en vogue at Marni and Miu Miu. Marni layered wool over fur over feathers, in warm hues of burgundy, cobalt and taupe; while Miu Miu layered knit dresses over a grommeted PVC minki-skirt, or a neon-colored PVC trench over loose-fit cable-knit sweaters.

Meanwhile, the Swinging Sixties were alive chez Saint Laurent Paris and casa Valentino. Shorter hems and A-line dresses, sometimes topped with shag fur coats — all with graphic prints and contrasting colors, will make for a fun winter season.

Also jazzing things up were Clashing Prints, especially at Peter Pilotto and Stella Jean. Bold, colorblock stripes on tops were paired with voluminous, long skirts with floral or nature prints — a visually riotous combination that works delightfully well.

Other designers used different ways to add visual interest to garments through tailoring. Raf Simons at Christian Dior, Viktor & Rolf, and Yohji Yamamoto opted for Asymmetric Ruffle Hems. At Dior, the ruffled scarves hung slightly askew, giving the illusion of an unevenly-cut coat. Viktor & Rolf made a dress that started as a bustle on the model’s right hip that then dramatically swept down toward the floor. A coat by Yamamoto, meanwhile, just morphed from a nondescript grey on the right into a blue-and-grey ruffle panel on the left.

Showing off a more animalistic side were Nicolas Ghesquière at Louis Vuitton, and up-and-coming Australian Dion Lee, who trotted out Crocodile Dundee-inspired, body-skimming, femininely tailored dresses.

What does one throw over such an aggressive outfit to soften it up? Patchwork Coats, of course. Both Roksanda Ilincic and Topshop Unique rolled out stunning versions in fur, lending a couture quality to an otherwise domestic idea.

Two graphic looks round up Blouin Artinfo’s top trends for Fall 2014: De Stijl, which was paired with wonderful menswear-tailoring at both Givenchy and Yeohlee in color blocks of white, black (or dark grey) and red; and graph paper motifs, which were seen executed on soft fabrics with feminine tailoring, at Tod’s and Sacai.

To see all the top 10 trends, click on the slideshow.

Blanket As Coat and Other Fall 2014 Trends
Comme des Garcons, Yohji Yamamoto and Junya Watanabe

SLIDESHOW: Armory Show Modern, Hidden Gems

When in New York - ARTINFO's Guide to the Big Apple

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New York is currently playing host to the latest in the long history of Armory Shows. Let BLOUIN ARTINFO guide you to the best places to eat, drink, shop and sleep.

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Alder

A 56-seater in the heart of the East Village, this latest venture from Chef Wylie Dufresne offers a playful interpretation of comfort food, from Jalapeño Poppers with trout roe and ponzu to the pistachio–white fig “Pub Cheese” with specialty potato chips. Meanwhile, check out the eclectic cocktail menu, featuring choices like the Burnt Reynolds, a smooth mix of rye, smoked vermouth, and Campari.

157 Second Ave

(212) 539-1900

aldernyc.com

 

The Elm

Paul Liebrandt was the first two Michelin-starred chef to make his way to Brooklyn with the opening of The Elm this past July. Located in King & Grove Williamsburg hotel, this upscale eatery features French-inspired dishes from one of four categories: Raw, Sea, Land, and Share (for multi-person plates) — or, guests can spring for an eight-course tasting menu. 

160 N 12th St, Brooklyn


(718) 218-1088

theelmnyc.com

 

Nolita

A self-proclaimed “beverage-driven restaurant,” this cozy Nolita eatery certainly sports an impressive wine list, but the entrees served up by Chef Ignacio Mattos — from raw bay scallops with radish and yuzu to ricotta dumplings with percorino and mushrooms — give “bar food” a good name.

47 E Houston St

(212) 219-7693

 

Cherry

A hip sushi spot sporting French décor, Cherry specializes in delicious fusion dishes, such as foie gras and tuna with umeshu cherries and spiced cashews, and steak au poivre with Japanese sweet potato kakiage.

Dream Downtown, Basement, 355 W 16th St

(212) 929-5800

cherrynyc.com

Cover image by Flickr/ Matthew Field

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Evan Sun
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At The Elm, Duck: Endive, Turnip, Pomegranate Jus At The Elm, Duck: Endive, Turnip, Pomegranate Jus
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No. 8, the ballroom
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The Raven

Named for Edgar Allan Poe’s famous fowl, this dimly lit MePa haunt resembles a punked-out Victorian living room, with black leather couches and ornate blood-red walls. Presided over by on-the-rise nightlifer Henry Stimler, The Raven offers a healthy mix of grit and glitz, attracting the likes of Charlotte and Samantha Ronson and LL Cool J.

55 Gansevoort St

(888) 833-6054 ext. 7

ravenclubnyc.com

 

No. 8

Veteran club-hoppers who long for the days of quaffing cocktails at Bungalow 8 need look no further: Amy Sacco has revived the legendary hot spot in its new incarnation, No. 8, just down the block from the Dream Downtown Hotel. However, its exclusivity is also a holdover — est to know someone on the inside, or fake a convincing celeb connection: George Clooney, Liam Hemsworth, and Michael Fassbender have all been spotted behind its imposing iron door.

357 West 16th St

(212) 206-1096

no8ny.com

 

Bossa Nova Civic Club

If you’re looking to get down — down enough to dip into Brooklyn — best to check out this fast-growing party hub. With a pseudo tropical theme, an ever-bustling dance floor, and a line halfway down the block come midnight, Bossa Nova offers some respite from the aggressive quaintness of most North Brooklyn watering holes, serving up reasonably priced drinks and fresh electronic sound.

1271 Myrtle Ave, Brooklyn

(718) 443-1271

bossanovacivicclub.com

 

Le Baron

Andre Saraiva’s infamous international nightclub chain may seem like old news since its buzzworthy 2012 NYC debut, but the party rages on in this three-story Chinatown funhouse. Perfect for scenesters savvy enough to circle back around and newcomers in search of an outrageous anecdote for the friends back home.

32 Mulberry St

No phone available

lebaronnyc.com

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Courtesy No. 8
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No. 8, the ballroom
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SHOP
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Reformation

Tired of wearing last year’s duds? Well, at Reformation, you’ll beg for them back. Led by veteran designer Yael Aflalo, the Reformation design team takes the idea behind Molly Ringwald’s Pretty in Pink prom dress to a whole new level, creating one-of-a-kind garments from repurposed vintage pieces. With over 80% reclaimed materials in each one of their limited edition collections, Reformation champions sustainability and locally-sourced labor, offering a distinctly fashionable way to go green (or whatever color’s in this season).

156 Ludlow St

(646) 448-4925

23 Howard Street

(212) 510-8455

thereformation.com

 

Cloak & Dagger

Launched in 2006, Brookelynn Starnes’s “Cloak & Dagger” line was quick to take off, with its playful silhouettes and gauzy tops. Today, Starnes owns and operates two boutiques — one in the East Village, one in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn — where she sells other like-minded brands alongside her own, including Lauren Moffatt, Sessun, and Chloe Sevigny for OC.


441 E 9th St


(212) 673-0500


77B Hoyt Street, Brooklyn

(718) 875-0500

cloakanddaggernyc.com

 

Opening Ceremony

A store storied for its avant-garde international collections, this Soho fashion juggernaut shows no signs of slowing, announcing Russia as its featured country of 2014 — a timely choice, given the Olympics’ locale. (2013’s country was Belgium, 2012’s Korea.)

35 Howard St

(212) 219-2688

openingceremony.us

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Library at The NoMad hotel, NY
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The NoMad Hotel

With 168 rooms restored by French designer Jacques Garcia, the NoMad offers a Parisian sensibility, complete with handmade vintage Heriz rugs, mahogany writing desks, and a number of rooms with clawfoot bathtubs. Perks include an in-house restaurant featuring cuisine by Michelin-starred Chef Daneil Humm and French boutique Maison Kitsuné’s first ever U.S. outpost.

1170 Broadway

(212) 796-1500

thenomadhotel.com

 

The Standard

Manhattan’s top scenester haunt certainly is “standard” by now, with its hopping upstairs nightlife at Le Bain Discothèque and its central MePa locale. Still, if you’re looking for a slightly more subdued experience, maybe check out the East Village location — all the swank without quite so much brouhaha.

High Line, 848 Washington St

(212) 645-4646

East Village, 25 Cooper Square

(212) 475-5700

standardhotels.com

 

Refinery Hotel

Located in the heart of the Fashion District, Refinery Hotel’s 197 guest rooms were once home to a hat factory in the garment boom of the early 20th century — a fact the hotel preserves with pride, leaving its gothic arched entryways intact and furnishing its accommodations with millinery artifacts, such as desks inspired by Singer sewing machines. A thoroughly modern addition, however, is the 3,500-square-foot rooftop bar, featuring biochemical cocktail concoctions from Alex Ott and spectacular city views.

63 W 38th St

(646) 664-0310

refineryhotelnewyork.com

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Library at The NoMad hotel, NY
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Report: Armory Show Modern, Hidden Gems [VIDEO]

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NEW YORK — The sixth edition of The Armory Show-Modern at Pier 92 opened to the general public on Thursday with a select roster of 59 galleries from eight countries and representing the calmer and quieter side of art fair viewing.

Compared to the frothier and noisier Contemporary section on Pier 94 that boasts 146 galleries from 27 countries, including Hungary and Saudi Arabia, the Modern pier is a kind of hidden gem for those hunting more unusual fare of primarily 20th-century works.

For the first time, fair organizers initiated a selection committee to vet the Modern section in an effort to weed out lesser contenders.

Generally, it seemed to work, as evidenced by the high quality of material at New York/Berlin’s Moeller Fine Art, including “La Danse de l’ours (Barque a voile),” a rare Italian Futurist pastel on paper, from 1914, by Gino Severini priced at $1.35 million.

“I do Art Basel in Basel, Art Cologne, and the ADAA Art Show since 1989,” said Achim Moeller, “and this is our first time here because it’s so much livelier.”

Moeller said he harvested considerable interest on a number of important works on the stand, including an early Paris painting by Lionel Feininger and a rare combination of a copper plate and etching on woven paper by David Smith, from 1941. “But I don’t want to talk about a sale until the money is in the kitty.”

A little later, the Smith duo, “Women in War,” was no longer on display so it seemed as if the Moeller kitty was satisfied in the region of the $60,000 asking price.

Though most of the works on view would be considered contemporary, Marlborough Gallery racked up a number of early sales, including a sold out edition of nine small scaled, 11 ½-inch high bronzes by Tom Otterness, “Kissing Couple,” from 2013, that sold in the $50,000 a piece range.

“Sad Sphere,” a unique Otterness stainless steel sculpture on an irregular shaped limestone block from 2014, depicting one of his figurative characters bent over with his hands cupped over his eyes, sold for around $140,000

The gallery also sold Spanish master Juan Genoves’s “Arida,” from 2013, comprised of multiple figures in motion captured in blobs of acrylic paint and sawdust in excess of $100,000.

At New York’s Simon Capstick-Dale Fine Art, just a stone’s throw from the Severini, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s fiercely rendered “Untitled” head, drawn in a blood red hue on sketchpad paper, from 1982-83, sold for $300,000 to a New York-based Basquiat collector. The gallery also sold a small-scale Helen Frankenthaler oil on canvas, from 1963, in the $100,000 range. “There was a very good crowd of serous collectors yesterday,” opined the dealer, “not the sort of window dressing and shopping crowd.”

Pace Prints also made a number of early sales, led by Chuck Close’s iconic “Self-Portrait,” from 2014, an 84 color woodcut at an asking price of $30,000; Pat Steir’s abstract “Panther” silkscreen, from 2013, at $17,500; Will Cotton’s figurative, 60- by 40-inch “Dessert Skirt,” a hand colored mono-print for $16,500; and Louise Nevelson’s “Dawnscape,” from 1975, a handsome, all-white relief in handmade paper for $15,000.

“It’s fascinating,” said Richard Solomon, president of Pace Prints, “how many New Yorkers we see here who don’t come to the gallery and we’re just 10 blocks away… It’s one of the biggest ironies in life, traveling 10 blocks in order to do business, considering the rents we’re paying on 57th Street.”

Solomon described his preference for Pier 92. “We do it up here because I personally like the calm atmosphere of Pier 92 and we have more space than we would at Pier 94. It’s a much quieter mood up here, more look and see than just running by.”

There was plenty to take in at New York’s Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, including a major and early John Mason ceramic sculpture from 1960 and significant examples of still lesser known American masters, including Beauford Delaney and Ruth Asawa, as well as a prime work by Alfonso Ossorio from 1958 and several oil on canvas examples by Richard Pousette-Dart.

Rosenfeld sold a beautiful Theodoros Stamos abstract landscape painting, “Listening Hills,” from 1949, executed in oil on Masonite and measuring 24- by 30-inches in the region of the $165,000 asking price.

“It’s a real masterpiece, “ said Michael Rosenfeld. “It’s the best Stamos I’ve ever had.” 

As Rosenfeld observed, “We have a lot of things here nobody else has at the fair.”

Abstract works were also in evidence at Munich’s Galerie Thomas Modern as the pristine and stunning Imi Knoebel diptych, “Anima Mundi 302,” from 2013, in acrylic on aluminum, each panel measuring 14 ½- by 11 3/7-inches, sold to an American collector in the $50,000 range.

A Zao Wou-Ki untitled watercolor from 1972 sold for just under $100,000 to a collector from Beijing and a Gerhard Richter multiple, “Schwarz, Rot, Gold,” representing the German flag, sold for $23,500.

“So far, we’ve sold smaller things,” said dealer Silke Thomas, “and a number of bigger things are pending. It seems we never have clients who make up their minds on the big things,” she joked. “Let’s see what happens during the rest of the week.”

Even with relatively light traffic, the Modern section offered a non-commercial amenity, the crisply curated, salon-like exhibition “Venus Drawn Out: 20th Century Works by Great Women Artists,” with some 40 works on paper plus several commissioned special projects, organized by independent New York curator Susan Harris.

Dominating purple painted walls by a lounge area on Pier 92, the collage-like scope of work, ranging from Georgia O’Keeffe and Alice Neel to Lee Bontecu and Elaine de Kooning, was a kind of connoisseur’s respite from price points and hard bargaining. 

Nearly every work mentioned in this report can be seen in the slideshow, HERE. 

Watch other ARTINFO videos from Armory Week, HERE. 

Report: Armory Show Modern, Hidden Gems [VIDEO]
Report: Armory Show Modern, Hidden Gems
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