An Elegant Return to Form at the Independent Art Fair


The Independent Art Fair is back and in good shape. Back to the elegance of TriBeCa Spring Studios after a short chat farther cityThis year’s edition of the modest-scale yet elegantly curated art fair features 17 new exhibitors spread over four floors from a total of 67 people. While the general mood is more reassuring than revolutionary, there is an exciting, restless energy running through his exhibitions, and I found it more difficult than ever to make this stunning list of just 10 choices.

First floor

it’s a cliché they call the thumbnails “like jewels” but it’s hard to resist the four little delights the artist creates Altoon SultanDebuted at the Marlborough Gallery in the 1970s and now lives in Groton, Vermont. Painted with egg tempera on calfskin parchment, they show close-ups of farm machinery close to primary colors. Precise but not fussy, geometric yet figurative, they look drenched in sunlight even when there is no line of sight to a window.

It’s hard to tone out the photos in a sharp two-artist presentation. This gallery in Bowery. They contain unusually explicit depictions of glamorous, male nudity in black and white, smoked by Olivia Reavey. Three bright green bronzes that look like Oren Pinhassi’s bird-footed ironing board and include a few plastic shower curtain rings and two glass panes are similarly unsettling.

old dancer Martin Barrat has an eye for detail. Each captivating 1980s photograph of Harlem and the South Bronx is bound together by a discreet but well-observed moment. The crisp white of a lollipop that pops out like a cowboy cigarette for a little boy who opens his arms in a sudden rainstorm; For a tired drummer with eyes closed, they are fingers that gently pinch the bridge of the nose.

Fifth floor

Elegant presentation of this TriBeCa gallerypairs two navy blue monochrome paintings by Maximilian Schubert with large narrative canvases by Peter Nadin, in an interesting corner cabinet with a partially curved floor. While Nadin’s pieces are rendered with a lot of brio, the real surprise is Schubert’s pieces: Cast urethane resin – the only paint is on their trompe l’oeil canvas sides.

Sixth Floor

Pittsburgh-based installation artist vanessa german The sculpted plaster heads, various finds, and white baby hands painted black combine to create extraordinarily striking table figures, reminiscent of Betye Saar, that will likely be the hit of the fair, albeit a little more commercially. A blue and white duo encrusted with beads, shells, and vials divides the difference between Nick Cave and the Central African power figures. A limited set of works from German are also featured here. wave pool, A nonprofit arts center based in Cincinnati.

A lot happens in the three large canvases of the Somali-born artist Oman – multicolored sunspots, dazzling yellows, a low tree lined up under a huge white rock, a tall, multi-armed figure emerging from a giant eyeball with the letter MH (for Matthew Higgs, who made his debut on The White Pillars) – to get it all that you may need to schedule a few extra hours. Four handsome abstract canvases by Pam Evelyn presented by the nearby booth Approach, make a great complement.

According to gallerist Frank Maresca, Australian Indigenous painter Paddy Bedford, who died in 2007, is the only foreign artist in the world to have a catalog raisonné. But a group of gouache, in which the bulging, spider-like or riverine forms of bright yellow, turquoise, and ocher are distinctively balanced against an abundance of white space, is his first work to be shown in New York.

It takes time to understand the strangeness and wonder of these carefully crafted paintings. Kent O’Connoris an artist from Los Angeles. Still lifes, landscapes and portraits housed in thick wooden boxes may at first seem solemn or solemn. But notice the strange perspective of the painting in a still life; consider the miniature size of a bunch of green grapes in the portrait; And I’m wondering about that overly wrinkled paper bag.

Meghan Brady He produces exuberant, partially collaged abstractions he calls “paper paintings” in an old schoolhouse in Maine; this school is in a schoolhouse that Louise Nevelson also attended while it was still in service. While the pieces shown by this Maspeth, NY gallery are made with oil and acrylic, they expand Brady’s vocabulary to include simple, not quite metaphorical shapes, nautical purples and pinks.

seventh floor

This Lower East Side gallery’John Miller’s aggressively banal grayscale renditions of ordinary pedestrians, Sarah Rapson’s some surprisingly emotional natures and SoiL Thornton’s A piece of cardboard was found decorated with mirror photos found.


Independent Art Fair

May 6-8, Spring Studios, 50 Varick Street, Manhattan, independenthq.com.



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