Image courtesy of Roberto Chamorro for The Armory Show.
Armory Week is here again, and that means more than twelve art fairs will be descending on Manhattan in the next few days, bringing thousands of artworks to examine, Instagram, and for an affluent few, purchase. Aside from the big name show that gives Armory Week its name, the smaller fairs that address specialty art interests allow art lovers to see their favorite work without feeling too overwhelmed. Art on Paper exhibits exactly what its name implies; Moving Image New York focuses on video-based works; the New York City Art Fair exclusively exhibits contemporary Asian art; SPRING/BREAK Art Show is displaying more than a hundred curators take on a single theme; and VOLTA NY (now an Armory Show affiliate) only exhibits solo projects by contemporary artists.
- Also happening in art this week, more than forty artists and writers including Lawrence Weiner, Richard Serra, and Stephen Sondheim, signed an open letter in support of Apple’s refusal to build a “back door” for iPhones’ security settings for the FBI.
- The Metropolitan Museum is changing its wording from “recommended” to “suggested” for its $25 admission charge in response to two lawsuits that claimed the current signs are misleading.
- Artist George Boorujy’s drawing-in-a-bottle that was thrown into a New York waterway two and a half years ago was just found, 3,542 miles later in France by fellow artist Brigitte Bartholomew.
- Google’s art “generator” DeepDream, had its first gallery show.
- France commissioned street artist C215 to paint public art but then promptly and accidentally removed it.
Work on view by ART21 artists
- New York Close Up artist Mary Mattingly’s new ecology-focused exhibition House and Universe, is open till March 18th at Dwight-Englewood School’s Swartley Gallery in New Jersey. There will be an artist talk this afternoon from 3:30-5pm.
- Season 6 artist El Anatsui is participating in an Armory Show panel discussion on Thursday March 3rd from 5:30-6:30pm titled “Looking Back, Leading the Way,” with artist Sam Nhlengethwa and Founder and Artistic Director at Center for Contemporary Art, Lagos, Bisi Silva.
Events & exhibitions in NYC
- Monday, February 29th —
- ART21 is hosting a screening and discussion from 6-8pm tonight at CORE:, where a special screening of ART21 films featuring African artists will be followed by a discussion on the role of visual arts in Africa, lead by new ART21 Executive Director Tina Kukielski and The Armory Show curators Julia Grosse and Yvette Mutumba of Contemporary And (C&).
- An exhibition of work by Alex Katz titled Present Tense: Sixty Years of Master Drawings opens tonight from 6-8pm at Richard Gray Gallery.
- Thursday, March 3rd – Sunday, March 6th — Most of the major art fairs open on Thursday and close on Sunday. See the ARTnews guide for details. For an historical look at The Armory Show, check out Tom McCormack’s ART21 essay, The 1913 Armory Show: America’s First Art War.
- Friday, March 4th — Shaun Leonardo’s participatory workshop and performance, “I Can’t Breathe” will be hosted by VOLTA NY at 5pm.
- Saturday, March 5th — Curator Elvira Dyangani Ose will be moderating the discussion, “Me/We: Creating Collectively” from 4-5pm at the Armory Show, as an investigation into how different generations of African artists continue to build upon and transform the continent’s artistic production and methodology.
Last chance! Exhibitions closing this week
- Hard Love, a group show featuring work by artists John Ahearn, Keith Haring, Deborah Kass, and David Wojnarowicz among others is closing this Saturday, March 5th at Martos Gallery.
- Fridman Gallery’s group show Lucid Dreaming, with work by three New York artists is also closing March 5th.
