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The next day was the opening of the fair we had all been
waiting for – Armory. I arrived armed and ready to take it on.
The first thing to catch my eye was Canadian artist and writer Douglas Coupland’s solo booth with Montreal based, Daniel Faria Gallery. I was obsessed with the Deep Face photographs, which refer to Facebook’s slightly creepy ability to immediately recognize a face from images. I tried to figure out how everybody was getting personalized ones made with Artsy that were shooting up all over Instagram but alas, in the whirlwind of the first day, I totally failed. At least I saw his booth.
It’s always good to see Ed Fornieles. In another weird social media event I realized we were both able to see each other’s locations at all times of the day through an app on our phones. I am not sure how that happened but it alerted me to the invasiveness of having an online presence. Ed deals with this so well by creating a fox avatar so that his social media persona is hidden behind a furry.
More internet inspired work, Yves Scherer’s solo booth at Galerie Guido W. Baudach was a knockout! He had googled Emma Watson (she is the most dangerous celebrity to search for online) and pieced together all the found images into this one 3D-printed familiar figure. In tacky gold, she stands as a symbol of the internet’s ability to undermine celebrity. She is such a strong and smart feminist advocate, yet it feels like the internet reduces her to a sex symbol.
Another icon, Nick van Woert at Grimm Gallery was so strong. This is an authentic old wooden sculpture that I remember seeing in his studio years ago. It sat there for a long time before he figured out how best to use it. His solution is killer.
I also loved artist Jannis Varelas at James Fuentes Gallery and The Breeder. He is a Greek artist, based in Vienna and this playful Matisse inspired cowboy really got my attention. I was thrilled that we were able to acquire it for the Collection. In the same booth, Carly Mark had made some playful Haribo works and was giving away packets of Haribo to boot. It was fun to walk around the fair and see people munching on the gummies.
Fantastic painting by Frank Bowling at Hales Gallery. This may be the strongest painting I saw all week!
The amazing Betty Woodman ceramics with Thomas Bayrle seems a strange curatorial decision by Francesca Pia Gallery, but it works!
It’s pretty surprising to see Rirkrit Tiravanija’s ‘100 Demonstration Drawings’ in an art fair setting at 1301PE Gallery. These one hundred drawings are drawn by his students mostly from images of protests or demonstrations in the International Herald Tribune. The overall effect is extremely powerful.
Then finally it was time to kick it with friends, Vivian Brodie, Alexander Heller, and Tom Lee at Leila Heller Gallery’s booth. These people are ‘Various Miracles’ as described in Ed Ruscha’s painting behind. Friends make the art world so much more fun and rewarding.
I was thrilled to run into some Brits in NYC, David Gryn and his son Isaac with Chrissie Isles.
Then I went to the Swiss Institute for the opening of FadeIn which is a must see production with a really epic new video by Christian Marclay and awesome works by Dora Budor, Casey Jane Ellison, Alex Israel and so many more. Here’s Alex Gartenfeld with Simon Castets (and friend Matt), at an incredibly warm dinner celebrating the opening of the show. They are two epic Directors of institutions, who I really admire for all their amazing energy, commitment, and smarts.
