Riprendono le grandi fiere statunitensi, fra le più gettonate in primavera sicuramente The Armory Show, che vuole bissare il grande successo dell'anno scorso, proponendo un variegato e ricercato programma di eventi ed incontri
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This March, The Armory Show will debut Platform, a new, curated exhibitor section that stages large-scale artworks, installations and site-specific commissions across Piers 92 & 94. The inaugural edition of Platform, entitled An Incident and curated by Eric Shiner, encompasses thirteen artworks by internationally acclaimed artists from a range of generational perspectives.
The Platform section is a realization of The Armory Show’s new vision to stage ambitious projects that activate and draw inspiration from the fair’s unique industrial venue in Midtown Manhattan. Situated across the fair’s 250,000 square feet of exhibition space, Platform offers an opportunity for galleries to showcase artworks that extend beyond the traditional booth context.
Participating artists include: Abel Barroso, Patricia Cronin, Douglas Coupland, Abigail DeVille, Sebastian Errazuriz, Dorian Gaudin, Jun Kaneko, Per Kirkeby, Yayoi Kusama, Iván Navarro, Evan Roth, Fiete Stolte, Lawrence Weiner and Ai Weiwei.
“We aim to play a greater role in the artistic life of New York, supporting artists and commissioning new artworks to create exciting experiences for our visitors—experiences like no other art fair,” says Benjamin Genocchio, Executive Director of The Armory Show. “Piers 92 & 94 are an immense industrial venue prime for site-specific works and located in the heart of Manhattan; it is a tremendous opportunity to present artworks that activate and engage the space while creating a wholly unique fair experience.”
“With my selection of artists, I endeavor to present a series of incidents that start to change our relationship with the art fair—a series of happenings, interactive works, objects and images that make the viewer take pause, think, refresh, smile, and remember that art, by its very nature, is meant to provoke, incite and challenge,” says Eric Shiner. “It is my hope that the artists and works included in An Incident will bring a new energy to the art fair model, encouraging visitors to share in the moment, and to enjoy the phenomenal offerings in vendors’ booths with gusto.”
An Incident showcases an impressive collection of artworks ranging from new commissions to significant historical works restaged in a contemporary context. Victoria Miro (London) will present a recent, 11- piece installation by Yayoi Kusama, situated at the center of Pier 94 within the newly created Town Square. The presentation of Guidepost to the New World (2016) coincides with Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors at The Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C. and celebrates the beginning of a national tour of Kusama’s multi-reflective installations. Presented by Paul Kasmin Gallery (New York), Chilean artist Iván Navarro has created Chant, a text-based light and sound sculpture made specifically for The Armory Show. The loud and soft noises made by attendees during the fair will be captured by sensitive microphones and then represented in light, charting the various levels of sound intensity in a three-dimensional sculpture composed of metal and Plexiglas. Jun Kaneko’s monumental 63-foot painting, Mirage (2016), presented by Edward Cella Art & Architecture (Los Angeles), will serve as a dramatic entrance to the expanded and relocated VIP Lounge on Pier 92. Galerie Forsblom (Helsinki) will present a suspended sculpture made of bamboo and silk by renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. Douglas Coupland’s installation Towers (2014), created for the artist’s 2014 survey exhibition Douglas Coupland: everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything at the Vancouver Art Gallery, will be presented by Daniel Faria Gallery (Toronto). Presented by Cristina Grajales (New York), Sebastian Errazuriz will suspend a large piano over the Champagne Lounge on Pier 94. Evan Roth, presented by Caroll / Fletcher, will display a multi-screen installation in the west end of Pier 94, within the Presents section.
On Pier 92, a recent sculpture by Abigail DeVille will welcome visitors while Dorian Gaudin’s hand- crafted, self-roving structure, Missing You (2016), will cut through the fair’s open-plan space, presented jointly by DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM (Berlin) and Nathalie Karg Gallery (New York). Fiete Stolte, presented by albertz benda (New York), will engage visitors with Eye (2014), an interactive photo booth that uses a built-in camera and arranged mirror to create one-of-a-kind portraits that can be acquired for a nominal fee. Patricia Cronin will restage her acclaimed 1997-98 mixed media installation, Tack Room, which presents equestrian equipment and paraphernalia with oil paintings and bronze sculptures creating an erotically charged environment that addresses female autonomy, desire, power and class. GALLERI SUSANNE OTTESEN (Copenhagen) will present Per Kirkeby’s Mönchengladbach (1986) and Lawrence Weiner’s CAREFULLY BALANCED ON THE EDGE OF A HOLE IN TIME (1999), pairing two important historical works that form a dialogue between European and American Post-Minimalism. Presented by Pan American Art Projects, Cuban artist Abel Barroso’s seven part interactive installation, Emigrant's Pinball (2012) will activate the Pier 92 Mezzanine Lounge where visitors can play Barroso’s fictional pinball game, which employs New York iconography and gameplay to pose question about migration and cultural identity.
The Armory Show announced details of Armory Live, which will bring together prominent curators, critics, artists and collectors for a thought-provoking series of conversations, panels and screenings, taking place at the fair and online.
Clocktower Productions, a radio station produced in collaboration with Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn, will operate as an extended platform for Armory Live through a series of live broadcasts made available during the event. Listeners may tune in for live programming during the event, or download the recorded podcasts after at thearmoryshow.com/armory-live, and clocktower.org/radio.
Armory Live will take place Friday, March 3 – Sunday, March 5, 2017 at The Armory Show on Piers 92 & 94. The complete program is listed below.
In a series of conversations ranging from panels to intimate dialogues, current themes and visual cultures will intersect to highlight a number of crucial topics within the artistic community. Armory Live features 15 internationally celebrated contemporary artists, in addition to curators, collectors and critics from around the globe.
Armory Live participants include David Salle who will lead a conversation with fellow artists Joe Bradley, Alex Katz, Dana Schutz and Chris Martin on the painting life. Influential curator, Phaidon author and founder of MoMA’s video and media collection, Barbara London, will lead a discussion on art in the digital age with artists Marilyn Minter, Shiva Ahmadi and Charles Atlas, as well as producer and director, Thomas Allen Harris. Felix Burrichter, Editor and Creative Director of PIN UP magazine, along with Mark Davy, Founder of Futurecity, will engage Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta of Studio Drift in a conversation on technology, design and art in the public realm. Focus curator Jarrett Gregory will host Dutch artist Renzo Martens for a presentation and conversation about the projects of the Institute of Human Activities (IHA) and the Cercle d'Art des Travailleurs de Plantations Congolaises (CATPC). CATPC is featured in the fair’s Focus section concurrently with their exhibition at SculpureCenter in Long Island City. Writer and culture critic Glenn O’Brien and dealer Jeffrey Deitch and collector Andy Spade come together to discuss O’Brien’s recent book, Like Art: Glenn O’Brien on Advertising, which explores the relationship between art and advertising in the 1980s and 1990s. Platform curator, Eric Shiner, will host a conversation between artists Patricia Cronin, Shahzia Sikander and Executive Director of the National Academy, Maura Reilly, which will attempt to situate the history of feminism as it relates to art. Writer and critic Orit Gat will lead a three way conversation on the topic of
Internet and digital art with multi-media artist Joshua Citarella and Troy Conrad Therrien, Curator of Architecture and Digital Initiatives at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Conversations on Collecting, presented by Athena Art Finance Corp., brings together prominent individuals across a variety of fields to address and debate the current state of the international art market—from the challenges posed by collecting digital art to the notion of the home as museum, to hypotheses on the future of a post-election market. Auctioneer and author Simon de Pury, collector Alain Servais and gallerist Dominique Lévy will join advisor Todd Levin and financier Andrea Danese of Athena Art Finance to debate predictions on the future of the art market in a conversation moderated by Kelly Crow, art market reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Erica Barrish, President of EAB Fine Art Services, will lead a conversation on the intersection of art, technology, preservation and posterity with Tabor Robak, artist; Chrissie Iles, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art; Michael Connor, Artistic Director, Rhizome; Sima Familant, curator and art advisor; and Michael Xufu Huang, collector and co-founder of M WOODS. Jane Stageberg, principal of Bade Stageberg Cox, architects of the 2017 fair, will discuss space and architecture as a context for contemporary art with architect Richard Gluckman of Gluckman Tang Architects, Suzanne Modica, art advisor and curator of Stonescape, and collectors Gregory Miller and Bernard Lumpkin.
As part of Jeffrey Deitch’s re-staging of his legendary “Florine Stettheimer Time Capsule Salon,” first presented at the 1995 Gramercy International Art Fair, Jeffrey Deitch will host a series of salon-inspired conversations at his booth during the fair. In the style of Stettheimer’s salon, artists, curators and art historians will be invited to lead discussions and exchange dialogue. The full schedule of these salon talks will be released in the coming weeks.
Sara Raza, UBS MAP Curator for the Middle East and North Africa, and Assistant Curator Amara Antilla, both of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, acted as curatorial advisors to Armory Live.
The Armory Show announced the fair’s 2017 Focus section, encompassing twelve solo presentations of new or rarely seen work by some of today’s most relevant and compelling artists. The artists are chosen by Jarrett Gregory, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
The Focus section is part of The Armory Show’s new vision to increase engagement with prominent international curators, emphasizing solo-artist presentations and strong curatorial viewpoints. In addition to the new Focus section, The Armory Show 2017 will include Platform, a new section for site-specific projects, curated by Eric Shiner.
“It is with great pleasure that we invite visitors to experience the Focus section. Promoting and supporting curators is at the core of The Armory Show’s mission and we are thrilled to be working with Jarrett Gregory of LACMA,” says Benjamin Genocchio, Executive Director of The Armory Show. “After seven years of looking at specific geographic regions we felt it was time for a change. The 2017 Focus section brings a strong and independent curatorial vision to the fair with the single defining criterion for the curator to assemble, in their view, the most relevant and vital art of the moment.”
What Is To Be Done? borrows its title from Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s eponymous 1863 novel, composed while the author was imprisoned. Through constructed characters and storylines, What Is To Be Done? laid the groundwork for Russia’s socialist revolution and is considered to be one of the most influential works of Russian literature. The Focus section includes twelve artists grappling with some of the world’s most pressing social and political issues.
“Each artist demonstrates an acute awareness of his or her local conditions as well as the failing structures, conflicts and ideologies that define our era,” says Gregory. “This project emerged from conversations with artists during trips to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Moscow, where I witnessed, among other things, the aftermath of widespread social and economic failure. Following this research, power structures have been at the forefront of my mind.”
Gregory cites the artist Jimmie Durham as a source of inspiration for her curatorial statement. In his text “Creativity and the Social Process,” Durham argues for art that does not speak to other art, but that speaks to life: “To use art as an escape,” he writes, “is a sign of inhumanity.” What Is To Be Done? takes this statement as a point of departure, bringing together artists who employ various methods of engagement to probe the relationship between creation and participation.
Highlights include new works by American-born Pakistani artist Amna Asghar whose work reflects on the exchange of imagery between East and West; sculptures from the Cercle d'Art des Travailleurs de Plantations Congolaises (CATPC) that confront the trauma of colonialism; a film by Johan Grimonprez exploring the global arms trade; Deana Lawson’s striking photographs, which investigate the body’s ability to channel personal and social histories; a new installation by Ibrahim Mahama; an installation by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles; Senga Nengudi’s sculptures from the 1970s; new works by Vietnamese artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen; Polish artist Roman Opalka’s attempts to paint infinity; a video and installation by Mathilde Rosier; collaborative experiments by Koki Tanaka, who represented Japan in the 55th Venice Biennale; and a new project by Moscow-based artist Anya Titova.
"This is not political art, nor does it have an agenda – it is art that helps us to see the historic moment in which we are living,” says Gregory. “These artists aren't afraid of big questions, and they approach their subject matter with varying degrees of purity or interference. I'm incredibly grateful to The Armory Show for the support and creative liberty they have afforded me in developing this project."
The Armory Show
The Armory Show is New York’s premier art fair and a definitive cultural destination for discovering and collecting the world’s most important 20th and 21st century artworks. Staged on Piers 92 & 94, one of the city’s industrial gems, the fair features presentations by leading international galleries, innovative artist commissions and dynamic public programs. Since its founding in 1994, The Armory Show has served as a nexus for the international art world, inspiring dialogue, discovery and patronage in the visual arts.
