Last week the art industry faced an interesting choice: travel to Korea for the first edition of Frieze Seoul, or go off-the-grid for a week, braving sandstorms while viewing the installations outside of Black Rock City. I opted for the latter. Burning Man, the iconic annual art and cultural event (Burners would say “movement”), has been located in Nevada’s the Black Rock Desert about 100 miles (160 km) north-northeast of Reno since 1991 (the event was first held in 1986 in San Francisco, CA). Black Rock City, erected in just a few days, becomes Nevada’s third-largest city for nearly a week and disappears without a trace.
Ten principles guide the event, including “radical self-expression” and countless artists bringing their creativity, passion, and hard work to Burning Man. Their artworks appear out of the blue, peppering the “playa” or desert for miles. I will write about notable artworks of the 2022 Burning Man for my next edition. For now, let us look at the most exciting art news happening tomorrow.
Burning Man 28 Aug – 5 Sept 2022
New York’s foremost art fair, The Armory Show, is at Javits Center this year and will be held from September 9- 11. As the cornerstone of New York’s cultural landscape since its founding in 1994, The Armory Show brings the world’s leading international contemporary and modern art galleries to New York. The fair plays a leading role in the city’s position as an essential intersection point for artists, galleries, collectors and others who come to view formal presentations, thoughtful programming, curatorial leadership, meaningful institutional partnerships, and engaging public art activations. It has deep roots and history, having grown out of the legendary Armory Show held between 1913 to 2013.
To complement its flagship fairs in London, New York and Los Angeles, Frieze has had its first Seoul edition at the COEX exhibition center, located in the Gangnam district. About 110 exhibitors from around the world filled the cavernous halls of Coex for Frieze and another 160-plus exhibitors are on hand for Kiaf—the Korea International Art Fair—in a hall below between
2 – 5 September 2022.
What was the 1913 Armory Show? The 1913 Armory was a show organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors. It was the first extensive exhibition of modern art in America and was held in the vast spaces of U.S. National Guard armories. The Armory Show became an important event in the history of American art. It was held in three cities: it started in New York City’s 69th Regiment Armory (on Lexington Avenue between the 25th and 26th). And then from February 17 until March 15, 1913, it toured the Art Institute of Chicago and, finally, The Copley Society of Art in Boston. Due to a lack of space, all the works by American artists were removed. Ironically, the show became an important event in the history of American art because it not only introduced experimental styles, including Fauvism and Cubism, to the American public but also served as a catalyst for American artists to find their artistic language. The Nude Descending Stairs by Marcel Duchamp became infamous and is seen in the picture below during the Chicago show.
Based on this growing interest, in 1994, four New York art dealers had the ambitious goal of creating a new art fair to support their artists and attract global attention. The result was a groundbreaking cultural moment that has become vital to the New York art market and beyond. While much has changed over the years, their ambition has not. The Armory Show is a galvanizing force in the art world and essential to New York’s cultural landscape. For instance, the Art Fair has a Platform section curated by Tobias Ostrander, the Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator, Latin American Art at Tate, London. It is dedicated to large-scale installations and site-specific works under the theme of Monumental Change. Another section is curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates, Focus is titled Landscape Undone. It will be dedicated to solo- and dual-artist presentations that examine the intersectionality of issues surrounding the environment, focusing on personal and political climates as they interact with race and gender.
However, the lifeblood of the Art fairs is art galleries, and I am most fascinated by the works they present and by discovering exciting new artists. Here are my top three picks:
Solo presentation of works by Anna Freeman Bentley – the Colour Room Series can be found at Frestonian Gallery and is a part of the Presents Section, Booth P39. These are paintings relating to the interior film sets of the 2021 film ‘The Colour Room’, a biopic of the life of pioneering female ceramic studio Director Clarice Cliff. Freeman Bentley’s works address human presence through absence and the ephemeral nature of constructed spaces.
Her paintings appear incredibly intimate as they push the emotive potential of space and its associations with longing. The spaces depicted are empty yet visual signifiers point to evidence of people and social happenings. The artist writes how her source material has expanded to include junk shops, restaurants, private members clubs, flea markets and design fairs. Central to her work is an investigation into surface, tension and the atmosphere evoked by these different interior surroundings. I am looking forward to seeing these expressive paintings that may make us enter into her interpretation of space under different historical and social conditions, changing terms of validation and identity, and shifting aesthetic tastes. Anna Freeman Bentley studied Painting at Chelsea College of Art, Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee and the Royal College of Art.
Josh Lilley is in Galleries Section (Booth 320) andwill present Works by Catharine Czudej, Rebecca Manson, Tom Anholt, Sula Bermъdez-Silverman, Rachel Maclean
I first heard Rebecca Manson’s name when the Financial Times singled her out and her new work proved particularly popular with buyers at Basel Miami 2021. Texas couples Howard and Cindy Rachofsky and John and Jennifer Eagle bought a vast ceramic installation of autumnal leaves by Rebecca Manson from Josh Lilley gallery for $350,000. I look forward to seeing her smaller-scale works for a private collection, with her subject in nature and its lessons, observed in her gardens and surroundings in the countryside immediately north of New York City. Rebecca Manson is a graduate of the ceramics department at the Rhode Island School of Design; Manson is a sculptor with a high-grade technical toolbox and a pursuit of breakable rules.
The solo presentation of new works by Dale Lewis can be seen at Edel Assanti, Presents Section, Booth P24. Although Dale Lewis’ paintings depict the artist’s personal experiences, painted from memory, they have a specific history of painting grandeur. How he focuses on subjects drawn from his immediate surroundings but turns this into the scale, compositional and narrative structures reminiscent of canonical historical art, like Renaissance paintings, is hugely impressive. The twist is in its subject matter: social immobility, consumerist excess, binge drinking culture, gang violence, lousy diet, class divides, family life and 9-5 jobs are all depicted in this cocktail of 21st-century metamorphosis, spirituality and sexuality, to name but a few. Dale Lewis (b. 1980) completed a B.A.B.A. in Fine Art at London Guildhall in 2002, an MFA at Brighton in 2006 and graduated from the Turps Studio Programme in 2015.
Standby for my Buninng Man recap and make sure that you check out the Armory Show!
Dr. Stephanie Seungmin Kim (director@sleeperssummit.com)
