Artists Space, a staunchly anti-commercial gallery founded in New York’s Soho neighborhood in 1972, will take part in the city’s biggest art fair this year. The association will hold a stand at The Armory Show (September 7-10) under the auspices of the fair’s Armory Spotlight initiative, which spotlights a New York institution with a free booth.
At the fair, Artists Space will stage live performances and a traveling exhibition by Drake Carr, a Michigan-born, New York-based artist known for his luminous, sometimes cartoonish portraits of members of the arts and nightlife scenes, often informed by his work as a bartender. The project, called Home visitswill bring Carr’s practice of making commissioned portraits to clients’ homes upstairs at the Javits Center.
“Drake’s reflective practice carries an awareness of what, where and how he is seen, which will surely make for a thoughtful and crisp presentation that reflects some of The Armory Show’s particularities about itself,” Jay Sanders, executive director and chief curator of Artists Space, said in a statement.
Visitors will see Carr at work in a studio-like setting that will change over the course of the fair. The project is an evolution of Carr’s drawing residency with performance, Without an appointmentwhich took place at the New York Life Gallery in Manhattan last winter, where he made over 150 drawings during a two-week residency.
Drake Carr, Torah2023 Courtesy of the artist, Espace Artistes
“I’m really a fashion designer, but I don’t know how to make clothes and I don’t want to learn, so I paint and design clothes and they just live there, in 2D,” Carr said. white wall last year on the occasion of a solo exhibition in two parts in the New York galleries Situations and Fierman. “I didn’t want to paint on rectangles because for a while I didn’t want to worry about background and decor, I just wanted to do people. But now it’s interesting to me, and I’m trying to figure out why I’m so attached to the bar as a set.
The Armory Spotlight initiative kicked off last year with a presentation by The Kitchen, another staple of the downtown New York scene, which featured material from its archive.
“Artists Space has played a pivotal role in positioning New York as a global leader in the art world, nurturing talents like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin through the formative stages of their careers,” Nicole Berry, executive director of The Armory Show, said in a statement.
In addition to the Artists Space booth, The Armory Show’s usual special area for nonprofits will include booths from Aperture, Ballroom Marfa, International Studio & Curatorial Program, Light Work, the Lower East Side Printshop, Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, Skowhegan, Tate, the Invisible Dog, Wave Pool and Whitechapel Gallery.
