Despite the line outside the door of Spring Studios in Tribeca yesterday, there was a whisper that Independent New York is no longer quite what it was. The chatter was that the invite-only alternative to New York’s mega art shows of Curly and The Armory Show has lost its luster, having ceded some of its edge to designers and consultants. Visitors’ comparisons to the Independent’s pre-pandemic status abounded.
There could be something to these accusations. The crowd was easier to maintain than haute couture, although Valentino long live the magenta was erupting on all sides, and on the roof designer jewelry clashed with pastries sweating in the May morning heat. spring studios remains a disconcerting labyrinth, where false turns lead to sudden lounges and endless white corridors.
But change is inevitable for a fair now in its 14th edition. Among the 66 galleries and associations handpicked by the fair, there are indeed a few nuggets. New this year is Independent Editions (not the NFT genre) which sees Paris Review, Cal Arts and Texte Zur Kunst offering retro prints.
Ahead of the show, which runs May 11-14, co-founder Elizabeth Dee stress that it emphasizes “the next generations of up-and-coming galleries”. If so, the future is decidedly analog: a set of neon signs, a television, that’s about as high voltage as Independent. In this moment of digital art boom, there is still hope for painters.
Here are five booths that stood out.
The Sunday Painter
Nicholas Pope, The riddle of the chalices of the seven deadly sins and the seven virtues (2015). Image courtesy of The Sunday Painter.
After contracting viral encephalitis while studying woodcarving in Tanzania, Nicholas Pope took a long hiatus then turn to softer materials, namely pastels and glass. The riddle of the chalices of the seven deadly sins and the seven virtues wife 14 glassware, hand blown Sunderland National Glass Center, with so many swirling abstract designs. Some match easily, others not so much, making it a fun guessing game. Despite the severe subject matter, Pope’s works are bright and playful. “These are humorous pieces, he is not religious,” said the gallery manager Lisa Modiano tells Artnet, “It’s playing with the idea that one’s sin is another’s virtue.”
Susan Inglett Gallery and Specific Objects
Kusama Untitled (1969). Image courtesy of Susan Inglett Gallery.
In the mid-1960s, Yayoi Kusama realized: more people read porn magazines than art forum (a fact no doubt still true, even if the verb “read” really doesn’t go with the noun “porn” anymore). His answer ? Create Screw, her own salacious film, which she used to highlight her own “events”. One such event in 1969 was a room of sweet spotted sculptures created by Kusama for nude photo shoots. She invited people to rent her the room, a model and a camera by the half hour.
It’s the starting point for husband and wife duo Susan Inglett and David Platzker’s mini-show”Kiss and Kiss: The Sex Reviewwhich features three female artists’ responses to pornography. Original super-phallic t-shirts are also on display at the stand. Lynda Benglis screen printed to fund his infamous art form nude cover and edits Beverly Semmes has made to porn magazines given to her by a goodbye neighbor. “Rather than fighting pornography, they each used it to have a conversation,” Inglett said of the performers. “They asked questions, [such as] ‘are [the women] victims who need our support, or something else? »
Nina Johnson
Rob Davis Kitchen table (2023). Image courtesy Nina Johnson.
Revengeful contemporary politics have given nostalgia to American something with a bad reputation. But Rob Davis wants to go back, especially to the working-class Virginia of the 1970s in which he grew up. The tonality of his hyperrealistic paintings seems to scream “California!” and that says a lot about our perception of bygone American aesthetics that they belong only to the sun-tinged coastal states. Davis’ paintings focus on a lost analog world: the Beatles and Hendrix LPs we no longer touch, the landline we no longer hope will ring, the house party that will go unremembered. on social networks. “There is a darkness in the paintings” Nina Johnson tells Artnet News, “not like a murder in the building, more like the family left the kitchen table.”
Top Images
D’Angelo Lovell Williams
Like the wet lotus floating from the fertile soil of the Nile, burying yourself was never an option (2023). Image courtesy of Higher Pictures.
D’Angelo Lovell Williams is a photographer who strives to crop the black queer body and at the age of 30, with a monograph published by MACK and works in the collections of the Whitney, Tate Modern and LACMA, they are on the right track. In the artist’s first solo exhibition at an art fair, Higher Pictures presents Williams’ characteristic portraits of friends and lovers that go from flawlessly staged to spontaneous in appearance. New here is a collection of Williams weaves, one of which throws them back to childhood in their grandmother’s arms and stands in solemn juxtaposition with the nearby photograph of them standing before her open coffin.
Richard Saltoun
Eleonore Antin, 100 Boots Try Again (1972). Image: Courtesy: Richard Saltoun.
Eleanor Antin’s concept art protest against the Vietnam War involved parading a set of 100 black rubber boots from suburban California to New York’s MoMA, where she was shown in 1973, frequently posing the shoes empty along the way. She had the boots lined up prosaically photographed for the church, bank, supermarket and bus along the way. She sent these photographs as postcards to friends, curators, dealers (at $0.6 a stamp), reaching over 1,000 people and institutions. Richard Saltoun presents a framed collection of postcards by Antin as well as a series of ghostly black and white photographs taken in New York. This is the first time in 50 years, according to the gallery, that Antin’s work has been exhibited.
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