In just its third year, Frieze Week has cemented its place as a powerhouse event in the New York art calendar, most recently luring the Outsider Art Fair into changing its dates and giving rise to two new fairs this year, SELECT and Downtown. The inaugural edition of the latter—a project of the veteran fair-birthing team behind Art Miami, Art Southampton, and Art Silicon Valley, among others—will run May 8 to 11 at the 69th Regiment Armory.
“We’ve been running our Art Southampton fair for the last two years in the summer,” Nick Korniloff, who founded the fair with Mike Tansey and Brian Tyler, told ARTINFO. “A lot of our collectors out in the Hamptons, they’ve always asked us, ‘When are you going to do a show in the city?’ We looked at March dates then we started to talk to some of the dealers and they really thought that May was the great period of time to have a fair that complemented the auctions but also was complementary to Frieze.”
Located at Lexington and 25th, the Downtown Fair hopes to capitalize on its proximity to the Frieze ferry (at 35th Street and the East River), and is also offering complimentary entry to Frieze VIPs.
Downtown will be a modest affair compared to the sprawling Art Miami complex that the company mounts in Wynwood. The new fair, with 51 exhibitors, has chosen not to include the curated or young gallery sections that have become nearly ubiquitous. Instead, Downtown aims to set itself apart by focusing largely on the secondary market.
“All of the other fairs are really focused in on the primary market,” Korniloff said. “The Downtown Fair will have select works from the secondary market that haven’t been seen before and fresh works from artists that are living and working today that have been made specifically for the fair. Also we are the only fair that has work complementing the current auction schedule.”
Gallerists Yossi Milo, Nancy Hoffman, and William Shearburn selected the fair’s exhibitors, who mostly hail from cities across the U.S., with a smattering of Europeans. Milo, who is planning to show photographs by Marco Breuer at his booth, expects fairgoers will be “dazzled” by the “manageable and intimate” scale of the fair.
“Working with William Shearburn and Nancy Hoffman on the committee was a wonderful experience, and we worked together well,” Milo said. “All of us were intent on making this fair fresh, unique, and more approachable than other blue-chip fairs, while maintaining a high standard of quality. Our model was the early days of the ADAA fair.”
Los Angeles-based gallery Coagula Curatorial, which is also showing at Pulse, will debut three emerging LA artists — Michael Maas, Eva Malhotra, Linda Saccoccio — at Downtown. Founder Mat Gleason chose to participate in the fair’s inaugural year because of the company’s personal touch. “The people I’ve worked with at Art Miami are great,” Gleason said. “When I was at the Aqua art fair, every time I had a little problem they gave me personal assistance to take care of every little thing. When you’re doing the fairs, it’s this chaotic storm of activity, and when you need something, a lot of fairs, they just shrug at you. At Aqua, they bent over backwards for me.”
“Fresh” is a watchword for Korniloff, and downtown aims to make itself relevant by keeping it in mind. “The selection process was very focused on galleries who would be bringing fresh work to the market, which was extremely important, both on the primary and the resale side of the market. For year one, we are very proud of the list of the galleries and I think you will continue to see this fair grow in regards to the uniqueness of it and the quality as it goes into year two next year.”
To see a slideshow preview of highlights from the Downtown Fair, click here.
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