Art
Young Blood at the Javits, the Armory Show Bets on New Galleries
The fair's newest dealers reported sellouts while many big names stayed away
The Armory Show opened its 32nd edition to VIPs on Thursday, September 24, inside the Javits Center on the far West Side. It ran through Sunday, September 27. By most accounts the week did not belong to the blue chip names. It belonged to the dealers who have been in business for twelve years or less.
That is the story Observer told in its sales report, and it is a useful way to read the whole fair. The Armory Show once set the tone for the American art market. Today it shares a crowded calendar with bigger spring events and, this year, with a rival that opened the very same day. Independent launched its first edition at the Breuer, and Observer reported that many of the advisors it asked preferred to talk about that instead.
The numbers at the Javits were still large. There were 242 exhibitors on the floor. Galerie Magazine counted this as the fair's sixth year on the West Side. The first day, by Observer's account, moved slowly, and many of the bigger galleries were simply not there. The space they left open was filled by younger and mid-tier dealers, and those dealers made the most of it.
The Present Tense
The section called Present is where the fair keeps its youngest galleries. This year it grew to 55 booths, and nearly half of them were solo presentations. Observer's critic found it the easiest part of the fair to walk and suggested it felt like its own event. Prices here were lower, and dealers reported strong early sales. As always at a fair, those sales figures come from the galleries themselves.
Rajiv Menon made its Armory debut with a solo booth of paintings by the Indian artist Raghav Babbar, priced from $5,000 to $50,000. It sold out. The paintings draw on the Maha Kumbh, the vast Hindu pilgrimage in northern India, and Observer praised the way his light picks single figures out of the throng.
Hannah Traore Gallery also sold out its booth. The work was by the Ghanaian British artist Kesewa Aboah, a set of quiet, abstract self portraits and body traces priced between $2,500 and $27,000. Superposition Gallery won the fair's first Bronx Museum Acquisition Prize for a work by Zoë Pulley priced at $14,000. That piece goes into the museum's permanent collection, which means it stays in the city.
There was a local story in the wood, too. Alexander Berggruen showed sculptures by Raul De Lara, who was born in Mexico and works in Queens. His carved plants turn into furniture and back again. One piece, Mis Flores / My Flowers, sets five potted flowers side by side, each made in a different color of wood. Observer reported that the gallery placed most of the available sculptures early. De Lara had also just unveiled a window installation at the Hermès store on Madison Avenue.
The space they left open was filled by younger and mid-tier dealers, and those dealers made the most of it.
Scent, Shrines, and the Caribbean
The curated section called Focus was organized this year by María Elena Ortiz of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, around artists of Caribbean descent. Kyla McMillan, the fair's director, told Observer the goal was to widen the frame. "We're really expanding the idea of what Caribbean art is," she said.
At the center of the section stood a work by Manuel Mathieu, a fragile structure shaped like a rural shrine. A small vessel inside releases a perfume. You do not see the subject. You smell it. In a fair built for looking, it asked visitors to stand still and breathe.
Nearby, the Chicago gallery Patron gave its booth to the Jamaican born artist Simon Benjamin. The installation hangs paintings and geological core samples from a wooden frame modeled on a Caribbean fish trap, with video glowing up through glass set into the floor. Observer reported seven works placed by the afternoon of the first day, at $5,000 to $25,000 each.
Money and Mood
The top of the market did show up in one corner. Galerie Magazine and Observer both reported that Michael Rosenfeld Gallery sold a Joan Mitchell painting for more than $2 million to a private collection. Galerie also listed early sales from Sean Kelly, including a Janaina Tschäpe canvas for $170,000 and a Sam Moyer work for $125,000. The magazine also noted Jodie Foster and Paul Rudd among the visitors walking the aisles.
But the mood was mixed, and Observer did not hide it. The art economist Magnus Resch compared the fair to Soho House in a line the outlet printed in full. He said it has "a convenient location, kind hosts and organizers, and something for everyone," but that "it's lost its cool." McMillan, for her part, called it "an essential North American fair." The advisor Adam Green offered a wider explanation, telling Observer that collectors are simply buying less than they used to and feel less need to attend every fair.
Both things can be true. A fair can lose some of its old glamour and still be the best place in town to see who is next. For collectors who came looking for artists under the radar, the Javits was worth the walk to Eleventh Avenue.
The fair also stayed open late once. On Friday night it held Armory After Hours from 7 to 9 p.m., according to its own visitor page. The Javits is not a room anyone would call intimate. But a gallery booth after dark, with the day crowd gone and the lights still hot, has a different temperature. It is the closest a trade fair comes to a Chelsea opening.
A fair can lose some of its old glamour and still be the best place in town to see who is next.
For a fuller picture of how the fair read on its busiest days, Observer's sales report is the most detailed account. And for another big New York show this fall, see our look at Taryn Simon at the Guggenheim.
The Armory Show closed on Sunday. Several booths in Present reported sellouts before it did. For a young dealer, that is the review that counts.