Kenny Scharf, Fungle (detail), 2008

Armory Arts Week

The first week of March brings more art to NYC than it might be humanly possible to see — but we'll try. Artists and galleries from around the world offer their best work at several art fairs, sparking scores of local events. In this issue of Artkrush, we guide you through the Armory Show, noting the highlights from both solo and group exhibitions. And, to give you a taste of what’s happening at the satellite fairs, we interview principal players from VOLTA NY, PULSE New York, SCOPE New York, and Bridge New York, to get their personal recommendations of what not to miss. For additional coverage of Armory Arts Weeks events, stay tuned to our sister publications: Flavorpill NYC, Flavorpill Daily Dose, and Flavorwire.

- Paul Laster, Managing Editor

FEATURE

Get ready for a trip to the piers: the Armory Show, New York's colossal international art fair, is back, and it's bigger than ever. The 11th edition of the fair finds 154 galleries from 22 countries exhibiting contemporary art on Pier 94, with 70 dealers offering a mix of modern masters and historically significant contemporary art on Pier 92. While sales at the recent Art Show in New York were reportedly weak, the art market is gaining renewed confidence from the record prices just set for works from Yves Saint Laurent's collection.

The boldest galleries at the Armory Show are presenting solo shows. Galerie EIGEN + ART from Berlin and Leipzig exhibits new canvases and an installation of dreamlike landscapes and interiors by German painter Matthias Weischer. The Apartment from Athens shows drawings, videos, and a mural by Swedish artist Maria Finn, whose work revolves around existing film narratives. Christine Hill, an American artist who teaches at the Bauhaus in Weimar, turns New York's Ronald Feldman Gallery into the Armory Apothecary, a European style drug store complete with "one-on-one consultation and trusted over-the-counter care." If you're looking for something more risqué, Tel Aviv's Sommer Contemporary Art touts the persona-capturing photographs of Rona Yefman, who is still a graduate student at Columbia University — yet one who seems to be on several people's radar.

Out to top everything else on view, Kenny Scharf presents a new batch of his signature pop-surrealist paintings, sculptures, and prints at New York's Paul Kasmin Gallery, while also creating an energetic, live spray painting on five 24-foot canvases spanning the facade of Pier 94 — and providing Carzy Roy-al, a customized golf cart driven by a spaceman, to chauffeur people between the piers and around the exhibitions. Meanwhile, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin from Paris and Miami gives up half its booth to a sublime group of frames framing frames — or what could be called surrogates for paintings — by the conceptual art duo KOLKOZ, and London's Timothy Taylor Gallery shows Ewan Gibbs, the artist commissioned to create the visual identity for the 2009 fair with his dot-pattern views of New York City.

Highlights in the group presentations at the Armory Show booths include Martin Creed's new stacked-furniture sculptures at Rome's Galleria Lorcan O'Neill; Wim Delvoye's X-ray photographs of rats enacting the 14 Stations of the Cross at Geneva's Galerie Guy Bärtschi; Koichi Enomoto's painted montage of patterns defining a figure at Tokyo's Hiromi Yoshii; Mickalene Thomas' editioned screenprint of Michelle Obama — recently acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC — at Chicago's Rhona Hoffman Gallery; Bonnie Seeman's surreal ceramics, based on human bones, organs, and muscles, at Mexico City's Galeria OMR; and a seductive painting of a nude named Kiki by the late, great pop artist Tom Wesselmann at Galerie Thomas from Munich.

Regardless of the financial outcome, galleries from around the world are displaying what they believe to be the best art of the moment — and for the cost of a museum admission or the click of a mouse, it's ours to enjoy. - Paul Laster

The Armory Show takes place March 5-8 at Pier 92 and Pier 94 at 12th Avenue and 55th Street.

INTERVIEW

Armory Arts Week in New York offers a vast range of art and cultural activities, and the satellite art fairs play an important role, by adding even more international flavor to the mix. Artkrush editor Paul Laster contacted the organizers of this year's four major satellite fairs to find out what separates them from the competition, and to get their personal recommendations of art and program highlights at their venues.

Artkrush: What makes your fair different from the other New York art fairs?

Christian Viveros-Faune, curatorial adviser, VOLTA NY: The same thing that makes VOLTA different than any other fair anywhere: we highlight only solo presentations. That, and the fact that my colleague Amanda Coulson and I make a significant effort to curate the fair around a single theme. This year, that theme is, tellingly, "Age of Anxiety." We took the title from W.H. Auden's book of the same name, which he published in 1947, during another major world crisis. We're not necessarily looking to dwell on the negative, but we do want to underscore certain artists who are looking for ways that art can gain a newfound relevance.

Helen Allen, executive director, PULSE New York: PULSE is now the largest fair in the city devoted entirely to contemporary art, and we're consistently told that we're the most enjoyable. By emphasizing high-quality exhibitors, an inviting atmosphere, and engaging cultural programming, PULSE NY is in its own category.

Alexis Hubshman, president, SCOPE New York: We aim to create as many opportunities for artists as possible. From installations and solo shows to film, music, and performances, our visitors experience the spectacular. SCOPE is the longest-running concurrent event to the Armory Show and, once again, it takes place at NYC's cultural icon, Lincoln Center. In its eighth year, SCOPE presents a broad mix of emerging international contemporary art galleries, artists, and curatorial projects, available nowhere else.

SCOPE's mandate of "art fair as resource" inspired the creation of its nonprofit SCOPE Foundation, which has funded over $500K in grants and awards to emerging artists and curators, to realize projects at SCOPE Art Fairs around the world. It has also established such NY09 noncommercial programs as Cheap Fast & Out of Control, Museum Presents, the Collector Mentorship Auction, and the SCOPE Green Initiative.

Michael Workman, director, Bridge New York: We are the only art fair owned and operated by artists. Bridge was started by artists, and continues to be run by artists today. Furthermore, we are not only a domestic fair, but have staged in the past, and continue to stage Bridge fairs in several international locations, including Berlin, London, and Basel.

AK: Who are the standout galleries and artists exhibiting at this year's fair?

Keep reading for full highlights from all four 2009 fairs »

NEWSWIRE

Sex sculptor Koons gets steamy with giant train (The Times)
A suspended, 70-foot long train in LA, costing an estimated $25m, will accelerate "until it reaches an orgasm," says the artist.

Serpentine turns to Japanese architects for 2009 pavilion (The Guardian)
Celebrated for designing New York's New Museum, Sanaa is tapped for the prestigious summer project in London's Kensington Park.

Amid financial crisis, Saint Laurent art sets records (TIME)
The sale of fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and partner Pierre Berge's art and design collection restores confidence in the art market.

Tag, this artist is definitely it (Los Angeles Times)
Counterculture artist KAWS joins the ranks of street artists making a big splash in the art world.

For architects, cars are the stars (The Guardian)
Taking Foster and Partners' redesign of the double-decker bus as his jumping-off point, culture blogger Steve Rose reviews the history of architects reshaping automobiles.

Kara Walker, the Brave One (BlackBook)
Self-proclaimed "firewoman" Kara Walker discusses the languages of power and abstraction, as well as her Michelle Obama dreams, with interviewer Nick Haramis.

Alice Tully Hall renovations revealed, rapturously received (Gothamist)
Diller Scofidio & Renfro's redesign of the Lincoln Center concert hall scores high marks.

'Suicide' sculpture of Damien Hirst causes controversy in Spain (The Guardian)
A Spanish sculptor gains 15 minutes of fame and "mucho dinero" with a depiction of the British artist shooting himself in the head.

A natural retreat (Los Angeles Times)
Art collector and dealer Shulamit Nazarian lives with art and nature in her stunning A. Quincy Jones-designed LA home.