Rise and shine, New York – art fair season is upon us and the Spring Break Art Show should not be left out! Organizers swapped the checkerboard floors of the fair Ralph Lauren’s former headquarters at 625 Madison Ave for a final lap at its original space, the Old School on Nolita’s Prince Street, for a “spontaneous salon-style” exhibition highlighting the works of more than 100 returning artists. The exhibition was unmistakably Spring Break in his fixation on the weird and the humorous, but I found the sculptural work far more compelling than anything two-dimensional.
The exhibition occupied the two corridors and four large rooms spread over two floors of the renovated Catholic school, reminiscent of a time when the exhibition was much smaller and found its bearings. Deliberate or not, the show’s main themes were mermaids, ceramics, and enough remixed cigarette designs to make up a Mac DeMarco studio album with bonus tracks. I mean seriously, there was a plastered American flag made from mentholated Newport packets, a revamped toy gun to fire cigarettes, AND several aesthetically pleasing sculptures of crushed cigarette butts across various media.
It was the majority of the paintings and designs on the mineral green and slate blue walls that warranted no further consideration beyond mere recognition, but there were a few highlights, including the oil pastel paintings by Ronan Day-Lewis in Room 3 and Lee Smith’s slice. candid oil paintings of landscapes and figurative works on the first floor.
When I think of Spring Break, I think of “DI-Yt-ness”, a little term I coined to describe the intentionally awkward aesthetic that has underpinned so much of the work shown at the fair over the years. If you’ve been to the semi-annual shows recently, you’ll understand what I mean: the revival of carpet tufting and fiber arts, heavily textured and arbitrary-colored panel portraits, exhausted assembly work, and neglect deliberate. which is supposed to convey a sort of menial folk art style, but misses the mark in its search for self in an inexplicably and Instagram-ably White™ way. And it’s not that I’m turning my nose up at this work and those who create it, nor do I want to assert that Spring Break is inherently white (there have been so many remarkable and groundbreaking exhibitions of artists from color!), but it’s become a tired Spring Break archetype derailing its evolution. In an act of celebration of the artists who made the exhibition platform what it is today, Spring Break fell into its own trap and inadvertently became an exaggerated caricature of itself.
To give credit where it’s due, the entire showcase has been clearly organized on purpose considering the quick turnaround. Spring Break co-founder Andrew Gori said Hyperallergic that they had sent all artists and curators who had ever been involved an invitation to exhibit in the “secret” exhibition, but had intentionally left a “pretty narrow window” of just a few weeks in the interests of maintaining spontaneity. Gori and their partner, co-founder Ambre Kelly, reviewed the submissions and began categorizing the works to create a “thematic flow along the walls.” Gori said Room 1 was “generally architecturally driven,” referring to how the selected works deliberately flow together despite their thematic and material differences. “Because the time window was tighter, there’s a spirit that comes out of the whole process that’s more mercurial, more effervescent, less overworked,” Gori continued.
That being said, the tiny to moderately sized sculptures and wall hangings that were included throughout the show not only kept it afloat, but also made it memorable. I was delighted to recognize several works by sculptors Dasha Bazanova and Dave Alexander whose art I have enjoyed at previous shows at 625 Madison. Bazanova’s crude, small-scale sculptures of debauched pool parties fueled by alcohol, cigarettes, rubber duckies and mermaid dogs serve as imaginary self-portraits that grapple with implications and ramifications selecting. Bazanova examines her own attitudes and attachments to Eastern European and Western cultures and the vices that accentuate them, even adding that she uses cigarettes in her work as “more or less a form of self-portraiture”.
I also discovered the ceramic works of Vermont sculptor Megan Bogonovich, someone I would consider expert at crossing the line between personal whimsy and commercial interest with her exceptionally colorful and variable glazed vessels with so many moments visual and tactile arousal. . Plus Jac Lahav’s suspended blue friend “Meow” (2023) and that of Kevin Dudley Walter-esque plush cat buddy “Docile 3 (from It’s a Beautiful World Filled with Perfect Things)” (2023) were deliciously homemade highlights that I can revel in for their sheer ridiculousness. I must also mention Pitseolak Qimirpik’s small but mighty “Red Rose and Animal Transformation” (2023), carved from caribou antler and serpentinite stone.
Despite the loud cliches, the idea of mounting an exhibition based on feedback from fair attendees was clearly done with intent. It’s the perfect teaser for the fair’s upcoming fall theme “Wild Card,” which asks contestants to consider the fair’s latest 11 themes.
“It’s really wonderful to see some sort of evolution in people’s work, even just a year ago,” said Rachel Gamson, associate curator for Spring Break shows in Los Angeles and New York. “It’s great to see how many styles of our old favorites have progressed.”
The Spring Break show runs at The Old School at 32 Prince Street, Manhattan, through May 20. Admission tickets are approximately $13 before taxes on Eventbrite.
