The spring art fairs in New York signal the beginning of the end of winter and give us a reason to get ourselves out and about after a spell of hibernation. At this year’s edition of The Armory Show I especially enjoyed Armory Focus: Middle East, North Africa, and the Mediterranean (Focus: MENAM), which is a curated section of the fair highlighting galleries and the artistic landscape of the region. Alexander and Bonin featured work by Mona Hatoum.
To me, the gem of all fairs is The Art Show, aka the ADAA Fair. Sperone Westwater put together a stunning solo exhibit of the work of Barry X Ball, Marianne Boesky’s booth featured sumptuous Donald Moffett paintings, and Pace assembled a great overview of their gallery artists with works in black-and-white.
A few highlights from my New York City gallery outings included seeing Victor Man at Gladstone Gallery, Mamma Andersson at David Zwirner, the remarkable Jean Prouvé exhibition at Gagosian, Janine Antoni at Luhring Augustine, Subodh Gupta at Hauser & Wirth, and David Lyle at Lyons Wier Gallery. Lyle is a little-known painter whose work pokes fun at the contemporary art world.
Further afield, I visited the Anne Collier show at the MCA in Chicago and several fairs in Europe including MiArt in Milan, Art Paris, and Salon du Dessin in Paris, an exquisite old master drawing fair.
This article is published in Whitewall‘s summer 2015 issue.
