The Art Show
The Park Avenue Armory at 67th & Park
February 28-March 3, 2019
The annual ADAA (Art Dealers Association of America) art fair opened on Wednesday, February 28th with its traditional Gala Preview supporting The Henry Street Settlement.
The fair features 72 galleries drawn from the membership.
This year, nearly half the fair has been devoted to ambitious solo exhibitions, with many featuring new works on view to the public for the first time. Among those presenting new work: Sean Kelly, with the premiere of a new series by abstract artist Sam Moyer and Peter Blum Gallery highlighting new paintings and works on paper by Dutch artist Robert Zandvliet.
Among the many art world luminaries on opening night were William Kentridge, Joan Bankemper, Marian Goodman, Jeanne Greenberg, Sean Kelley, Matthew Marks, Peter Blum, Jeffrey Deitch, Paula Cooper, Steve Henry, Peter MacGill, Alexander Gray, Valerie Cassel Oliver, Richard Armstrong, Ian Alteveer, Isabelle Dervaux and Gala co-chairs Tom & Janine Hill.
Tom and Janine Hill, co-chairs of the Gala Preview which raised approximately $1 million for Henry Street Settlement, adding to the nearly $31 million the fair has raised for the non-profit over a more than three-decade-long partnership.
Mr. Hill will join panelist Pamela Joyner on Saturday, March 2 at 11AM in the Board of Officers Room at the Park Avenue Armory for a discussion moderated by Michael Findlay, Director, Acquavella Galleries —” Private Collecting for the Public Good.”
The Nohra Haime Gallery featured “Wilderness,” a solo presentation of work by Lesley Dill focused on language, the written word, and the investigation of divinity and deviltry during the wildness of Early America.
The long, thin figures appearing in Dill’s work wear the strength of the words of the authors they represent. Each persona has powerfully impacted and personally connected with the artist through their words.
Dill posits that there is something untamable, fierce, and persistent in their beliefs, which ultimately unites them. Her sculptures, figurines, and works on paper present a new way of reading and absorbing the words of these idiosyncratic characters.
Ceramicist Joan Bankemper who lives and works on Riverside Drive.
The Nancy Hoffman Gallery had a solo exhibition of ceramic mosaic sculpture and gouaches by Ms. Bankemper.
These works follow the artist’s love of nature and its transformations. They are not simple pieces; they are complex tapestries of life, filled with abundance. Bankemper has only recently begun to exhibit her sculptures, new territory for her after her devotion to creating conceptual gardens.
Jeanne Greenberg, Salon 94, featured Ruby Neri (b. 1970, San Francisco) whose sculptural practice embraces a broad spectrum of figuration, drawing upon idiosyncratic 20th-century West Coast traditions as well as a global catalogue of art historical and anthropological modes.
Her totemic, life-sized vessels rely solely on red clay and glazes to generate forceful, highly sexualized representations of the female form.
Marian Goodman and Philipp Kaiser — “I’m her art husband,” he said. Mr. Kaiser is, as we all know, the recently appointed chief executive director of artists and programs at the Marian Goodman Gallery.
This year’s show was dedicated to the photography of the German artist Thomas Struth. The selection of work presented included street scenes from New York in the 1970s, five of which will be on view for the very first time. Struth visited New York in the late ’70s through an inaugural scholarship from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. He stayed for nine months, capturing street scenes from a central perspective.
Joan Semmel (born October 19, 1932) is an American feminist painter, professor, and writer. She is best known for painting large scale, realistic nudes of her own body as seen from her perspective in an effort to question the objectification of women’s bodies.
Text and photographs © by Jill Krementz: all rights reserved. Contact Jill Krementz here.
