The Good, the Bad and the Neon
New York Art Fair Week, 2–6 March, 2011
In a cab home after a marathon day of art fairs, seminars, cocktails, dinner, and more cocktails, a good friend of mine shared a saying of her grandfather: “a visitor brings happiness when he arrives, and happiness when he leaves.” Maybe it is not exactly happiness, but relief at the least. Last week, like every year since 1994, the art fairs invaded New York. They took over the city, filling it with not only artworks, but also opportunities to meet and greet the artists, mingle with colleagues, and of course, do some business. They were five days of non-stop activities, from noon until late night.
Each fair presented, as usual, a different profile: on one hand, there is The Art Show (run by the Art Dealers Association), an established art fair in its 23rd year, known for its secondary market, and its highly commercially driven profile; Scope and Pulse, ideal places to find decoration to match living room furniture; and on the other hand, there is The Armory Show with its vastness; Volta, with its solo-artist booths; and last –but not at all the least– the Independent, with its cutting-edge works.
Crowds crammed the aisles of The 2011 Armory Show every day. Both a market destination and the perfect place for an indoor promenade during the last days of the cold winter, this year’s fair presented, as usual, works from more than 270 galleries and private dealers. While many big names were missing, there was wide space given over to New York galleries and a “Focus” reserved for 18 Latin American galleries. Damián Ortega's "Ulysses Way," at White Cube (London), dominated the entrance with an accumulation of a household objects and appliances tied to a bicycle. Continuing our way to the back of the fair, San Van Aken’s “New Edens” installation at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts (New York), visiting issues of biodiversity and genetic engineering, consisted of a genetically altered orchard simultaneously producing peaches, plums, cherries, nectarines, and apricots.
Neon lights are the medium of rigor for this season. Iván Navarro’s installation at the center of Pier 94 (Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York) grabbed the attention of any distracted flaneur. A large-scale, site-specific neon installation, “The Armory Fence,” seduced the viewer like a moth to a lamp. One would think that the 2011 Focus: Latin America would be located right here, at the center of the venue. After all, a focus is the place of concentration and attention. However, in order to get to this focus, the already exhausted flaneur had to retrace the arrows past the main entrance, moving towards the left corner. After a 20-minute walk, the focused 18 galleries were found, with works by Marta Minujin, Eduardo Costa and David Lamelas at Henrique Faria Fine Arts (Caracas and New York); Tomás Espina y Adriana Bustos en Ignacio Liprandi Arte Contemporáneo (Argentina); Pedro Tyler, and Manuela Viera Gallo at Isabel Aninat (Chile); and Paulo Bruscky, Marco Maggi and the exquisite “Just to Balance” piece by Marco Chaves, at Nara Roesler (Brazil).
Although a one-hour tour at Volta was enough to see these solo shows, two works grabbed my attention. While the Italian Laurina Paperina (Perugi Arte Contemporanea), plots “How to kill the artists,” in a kitschy, humorous piece full of art historical bloody and violent deaths, the Costa Rican artist Mauricio Miranda (Galería Bickar) is up for sale. Miranda has tattooed his back with 10 squares of 10 cm. x 10 cm., and through a contract between buyers and himself, he sells his own skin, which the buyer will acquire after the artist’ death. Quite a statement about the art market of these past years and the lack of resources for the emerging artist.
The Independent was the fair to see and enjoy with time. Located at the four-level former DIA building in Chelsea, the Independent defied the big fairs with an open space of no-so-straight lines. Far from the supermarket-shelf-like visual arrangement of the major art fairs, works were displayed with a freer and refreshing look. Well located by the main entrance, the Brussels-based Jan Mot Gallery chose to exhibit two Latin American artists’ works: David Lamelas’ “Film 18 Paris IV, 70,” and the intimate space of Mario García Torres’ “Je ne sais si c’en est la cause,” showing the passing of time through a series of slides of a run-down and abandoned hotel.
While the contents of the works were different, the forms of Katinka Bock’s “Miles and Moments” clay tubes installed on the floor (shared by Jocelyn Wolff and Meyer Riegger galleries), with car tire’s imprint, reminded me of Rauschenberg's “Automobile Tire Print;” a feeling I also experienced with Rosalind Nashashibi’s “Eyeballing,” noisy projector (there were at least four film and slides projectors at The Independent) and Rodney Graham’s “Rheinmetall/Victoria 8.” Following the 2011 neon light season, Douglas Gordon and Jonathan Monk “Bloody Bloody Mary Mary” attracted crowds of cameras. The Independent skillfully deployed its white and open industrial space, allowing the visitor to return to a previous work without the monotony of walking on a straight line.
If one counts all the actual shows in the city during this past week, I would assume it would take one person more than a month to see everything with the attention each work deserves. Besides the above-mentioned fairs, there was also Pool, Verge Art Brooklyn, Red Dot, Fountain and this year’s addition: the Dependent. With this overdose of visual material, as my friend’s grandfather would say: “visitors bring also happiness when they leave.”
*Carmen Ferreyra is a recent graduate from Columbia University living in New York. Since October 2007, she works as the Manager of Operations at Pinta Art Show in London and New York. At Columbia, she has conducted research on contemporary Argentine art. In addition, she has curated shows in New York and Buenos Aires, and has collaborated at El Museo del Barrio and at Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros in New York City.
