March 14, 2006
Rambling through the fairs (with an emphasis on the "rambling")
I have passed through the feelings that usually arrive on the Monday after an art-fair weekend--slight nausea, horror concerning who saw you do the things you can't remember doing, bewilderment at how such a confluence of events came to be in the first place--and am now back to thinking somewhat clearly about what I saw and experienced over the weekend. (Recovery takes longer after the fair weekend in Miami, which is in every way so wildly unlike my everyday life in New York.) After ten hours on the Armory Show floor on Thursday, the result of which was posted here, I visited the LA Art Fair on Friday, and Scope and Pulse on Saturday.
My personal reactions to the Armory Show differ slightly from those of others I reported at artforum.com. While I too noticed the "missing center," so to speak, the fair remains by far the best in the city. There were plenty of artworks I was glad to see—and that I might not have seen at all were it not for the fair—and, in most cases, the booths were more sensitively installed than those at the other fairs. The Armory Show suffered, as usual, from its location on Piers 90 and 92, which is uniquely inhospitable to trade shows; "lounges" mid-way down the corridors, like the one sponsored by Artforum, do little to temper the feeling that one's journey will never end. The feeling is akin to trying to reach Gate 116 at Newark Airport, only without the moving walkways. The fair managers' decision to decrease the number of galleries is admirable, but the resultant reconfiguration (such as moving some exhibitors upstairs into the former lounge area) definitely requires tweaking.
The Armory Show's organizers were likewise smart to recognize that public (and collector) interest in art fairs is not a zero-sum game, and to support the presence of the other, "satellite" fairs, such as the three I visited and DiVA, which I missed. In conversation with various dealers, artists, critics, and curators over the weekend, I floated a test-balloon theory that stated the Armory Show is past its prime, and is now on the gradual downward slope that Art Chicago recently tumbled down at an alarming rate. I suggested a "shelf life" of approximately ten years for most fairs. Everyone seemed to think that the Armory Show is stronger now than Art Chicago ever was, and that the lure of New York would itself sustain a fair in a way that traveling to Chicago, say, or Cologne, never would.
So everyone seems to be in agreement that the Armory Show is fine, for now . . .
The LA Art Fair, however, made a strong case for a new way of conceiving fair weekends. Not only were (low) costs spread more-or-less evenly among the sixteen participating galleries, but several of them could have applied to the Armory Show and been accepted. (Several have exhibited in the Armory Show in the past.) Instead, they got together, rented a suitable building in a convenient location, and kept things intimate; it took no more than ninety minutes to tour the premises. The quality was fairly consistent, and I saw for the first time a handful of artists whose art I am eager to learn more about. Across town, Pulse, although neither quite as intimate nor as consistent, pursued a similar agenda, renting the iconic 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue and presenting roughly fifty galleries.
This "balkanization" of the fairs should be welcomed. For those of us for whom professional obligations and/or genuine interest requires that we see "everything," doing so in smaller chunks—collections of fifteen to fifty galleries, versus 200+ at Art Basel or 154 at the Armory show—allows for a richer experience (to use a marketing term). If several of the galleries that have "broken off" from the Armory Show in recent years banded together to create smaller fairs akin to LA Art, the energy that attends to mid-March in New York could easily be sustained, no matter what happens to the Armory Show. New York should invest its energy in a more diverse fair portfolio.
Despite several web postings complimenting Scope, it seems that switching to the conventional booths-in-a-warehouse format did little to strengthen its sense of identity. The buzz of activity that animated the space seemed to be little more than a veil covering the fact that there are too many booths filled with bad art. Any large collection of galleries will produce duds, as even the best spaces have off years, but Scope's quality-versus-quantity ratio still seems way off.
A few artworks that caught my eye at LA Art: Scott Grodesky's large-scale, reverse-perspective cityscape painting and Alan Saret's mid-'80s color pencil drawing at Daniel Weinberg; Nathan Mabry's sculpture at Cherry and Martin; Richard Hoblock's photographs at Lightbox; Kaz Oshiro's painting-sculptures at Rosamund Felsen (word on the street is that we'll see much more in Miami in December); and Jonathan Callan's drawings on found images at Marc Selwyn.
A few artworks that caught my eye at Scope: Graham Dolphin's black ink drawings based on fashion magazines at Seventeen; some of Frances Twombly's woven-paper sculptures at Moti Hassan; the larger of the two Xylor Jane drawings at Wendy Cooper; and John Otte's modified Polaroid at Solomon Projects.
A few artworks that caught my eye at Pulse: Luigi Ghirri's beachside photos at Nicola Fornello; several of Catharina van Eevelde's drawings at Anne Barrault; and Maria Chevska's paintings at Andrew Mummery.
(One can see how attention dissipates as the weekend drags on.)