This week, ARTINFO has sent its intrepid staff into the aisles of Armory Week fairs all over New York, charged with reviewing the art they saw in a single (sometimes run-on) sentence. (To see our One-Line Reviews as an illustrated slideshow that will move more quickly than you can possibly read it, click here.)
assume vivid astro focus at Suzanne Geiss Company (booth 907), “alter visions after fatalities,” 2013, the Armory Show
The art collective known as assume vivid astro focus snares visitors inside Suzanne Geiss's booth with an immersive clash of tranny paintings, neon lights, and psychedelic wallpaper, all of which is apparently some kind of comment on gun control. — Rachel Corbett
Kevin Cooley at Kopeikin Gallery, “Launch Failure,” 2012-2013, Moving Image Contemporary Video Art Fair
Kevin Cooley has precariously stacked five television monitors atop one another, synchronizing them to play video of a disastrous rocket launch that slowly mesmerizes the viewer as the would-be spacecraft travels skyward through each of the screens before it suddenly bursts aflame and quickly plummets downwards, its path provoking that sinking stomach feeling as you watch the fireball grow smaller and merge with the ground. — Alanna Martinez
Myla Dalbesio, Juliana Cerqueira Leite, and Grace Villamil, “alonetogether” (curated by Amanda Schmitt), SPRING/BREAK Art Show
By covering the walls and ceiling of one of the Old School's classrooms in mylar thermal blankets, its floor in cushy carpeting, and projecting abstract, colorful videos over the shiny, fractal surfaces, this trio succeeded in conjuring the titular disjointed experience, one that is half sensory deprivation tank, half bleary-eyed collective acid trip, and entirely evocative of a stereotypical spring break experience.— Benjamin Sutton
Günther Förg at Galerie Forsblom (booth 506), “Untitled,” 2008, the Armory Show (sold)
Günther Förg's composition of simple, colorful paint scribblings at Helsinki-based Galerie Forsblom is one of those works that you think you could do yourself, but as you keep staring you realize that no, you couldn't. — Shane Ferro
Kysa Johnson at Morgan Lehman (booth 532), “blow up 203 - subatomic decay patterns after Piranesi's Ruins and Waiting Room (Bank of America),” 2013, the Armory Show
The furniture and walls of Kysa Johnson's full-scale recreation of a Bank of America waiting room are covered with ghostly chalk drawings that come together, from a certain angle, to depict a totally new image: a plunging vista of Roman ruins (inspired by Piranesi) that, viewed up close, is composed of jittery clouds of symbols, the notations for various subatomic particles (a brainy device which one of this New York artist’s signature). — Ben Davis
Sophia Wallace at Baang and Burne Contemporary (booth A09), “Cliteracy: 100 Natural Laws,” 2013, Scope New York
Just in time for International Women's Day, Sophia Wallace's confrontational neon, text-based work, “Cliteracy: 100 Natural Laws,” takes over Baang and Burne's booth at Scope, exploring the ways in which society uses language to describe the female body, and the pervasive misinterpretation, misrepresentation, and illiteracy that have characterized our historical inability to understand and describe female sexuality. — Terri Ciccone