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Business as Usual?
John Haberin New York City
The 2022 New York Art Fairs II
I miss fall openings. I miss the brunt of that week after Labor Day, as galleries return after a gloriously lazy summer. I miss the challenge of keeping up across the city, even as I know I shall fail.
I miss it because who has time for all that since art fairs moved to September? I can only see what I can and hope to catch up in the weeks ahead. I can only point, too, to my wrap-up of Frieze and the remaining May New York art fairs that are already history. Only recent history, of course, but it may seem ancient, as people do their best to pretend that the pandemic is past. What began as a tentative recovery in 2021 is now a headlong rush. Galleries have gone under, and others have moved to Tribeca and beyond, but art is back in business. 
And I do mean business. It may burden the likes of me, but not the fairs. They moved from March precisely to take advantage of the rush, when dealers and collectors are reliably back in town. The Armory Show, the first to make the shift, once again supplements the action at the Javits Center with an online fair, cheaper for all concerned. As usual, though, let me look past that to the alternatives, not all of which feature alternative art. The Independent and Spring Break are the most elegant and the craziest, Works on Paper and Salon Zürcher the most specialized, Clio and Superfine the least concerned for the mainstream or the alternatives.
Still independent?
Is the Independent still independent? For a moment you might not think so. Now with a presence on both fair weeks, May and September, it is a fixture, and it represents a vital part of the art world—the galleries that sustain emerging and established artists without vast spaces and fortunes to match. It welcomes past art as well, which the Armory Show has come to disdain. It is also closer than ever to big money, in a Cipriani restaurant beside the ferry to Governors Island, where ordinary artists go to succeed or to fail and ordinary families go to play. The well-dressed waiters on its balcony café set the tone for all.
While its spring fair has returned to Tribeca and its roots in New York, Europe, and the cutting edge, the fall Independent has a classier tone at that. It is thinking big, right from the entrance, where large abstractions by Ron Gorchov (with Cheim & Read) and (with Parker and Gordon Robichaux) lead seamlessly to big, bright colors by Herbert Gentry (with Ryan Lee). Do not be surprised if hints of faces and figuration are already creeping in. Their size and themes dominate much else as well, like classical allusions from Francisco Clemente (with Vito Schnabel) and urban vibes from Vincent Smith (with Alexandre). Silvery prints and drawings by Hervé Bize (with Nicole Klagsbrun) assert their beauty and their class.
Gorchov's work dates from the 1970s, as do big color fields in regular geometry and canvas strips by Al Loving (with Ross + Kramer). Others look still further back, to gladiators by Giorgio de Chirico (ironically, with Nahmad Contemporary) and Joan Miró with his early, iconic stains (with Luxembourg). Set not on the booth itself but on easels, they look as fresh as if he had painted them today. They may be dead white males apart from Loving, but the few hints of diversity unsettle things once and for all. Another African American, Joe Ray, leaves a map of Africa beside smears of black, while Kate Millett flaunts quick curves for a woman's breasts and a carrot nose and tie for a sorry male. Is that enough for an alternative view of the mainstream? If not, the Independent will be back soon enough.
Spring Break is not your typical fair either: it's a zoo—and a short walk from the Central Park Zoo at that. The peripatetic fair has come a long way from its origins in the dark corners of the Farley Post Office and, of course, spring. And it keeps moving, challenging you to navigate two floors of a Madison Avenue office building, amid cramped rooms and cubicles, where the works spill over and hide away. Billed as the city's curated art fair, it avoids the business as usual of galleries and the indulgence of self-curated alternatives. Woe to you who care to identify the artists, but they are the show's stars along with the chaos.
Not that it lacks for something as ordinary (and sellable) as painting. The medium dominates, including abstraction as colorful symbols by Elspeth Schulze and as glowing stains by Sarah Faveau, Surrealism for today like a mermaid with a toilet as her lifeboat by Anna Souvorov, and plenty of straightforward realism. Amy Hill adopts Renaissance portraiture to the occasion. Above all, there are bodies in, to put it mildly close proximity, in a fair billed this year as "Naked Lunch." Above all, though, there are installations, filling spaces better known for a stifling uniformity. Talk about a return to the office after Covid-19.
They may serve as settings for more traditional media, like a young woman entering an opera house, in photographs by Flavia Junquiera (with a nod to Candida Hofer), with real balloons and glitter on the floor. They may create fictions of their own, like The Pause Apothecary by Adam White or a beach party by Colleen Terrel Comer. You can walk on real grass or beneath greenery, while a robotic pet takes your measure. Astroturf is more common still. Shona McAndrew covers it with machinery aspiring to nature and gold nuggets—free, says a sign, for the taking. If I have my doubts about that and the entire fair, art does not often come cheap.
Out of excuses?
Works on Paper is, as always, a lost opportunity. Works on paper are essential to many an artist's craft and thoughts, like drypoint and woodcuts by Georg Baselitz that opened at his Chelsea gallery, Luhring Augustine, the very week of the fair—or pen and ink drawings by Rick Barton that closed that same weekend at the Morgan Library. They can be as precious as book art, like Barton's own sketches, which take the form of accordion books. So why have past years on an East River pier looked more like an extended print, poster, and frame shop? Booths still hold mostly galleries that you may never see again. Yet they also hold signs of the artist's hand and signs of life.
Right by the door, Felrath Hines has textured pastels and watercolors and Sam Middleton his densely collaged paper strips, along with others from Spanierman Modern. Nearby, José Manuel Fors stacks and binds weathered paper (with Pan American Art Projects), and the one-named Penny, true to her name, manipulates money (with Harman Projects). Her very images hint at terrorist acts. Nor can one deny the care in photorealist portraits by William Beckman and Cleon Newton (with Forum) on an impressive scale. It would be foolish to pick more winners from among all but exclusively group presentations. Still, for once even sculpture returns to paper.
Featured projects, in the aisles and by the bar, have often been the fair's highlights, at the cost of a tenuous connection to its surroundings. And Yuko Nishikawa still fashions a mobile from wire and clay. Leah Hewson makes the largest work and the greatest impression with bright colors on honeycombed cardboard. Knife drawings by Lucha Rodriguez, in contrast, are strictly two-dimensional, featured or not. Still, that leaves pure white paper strips assembled into a tapestry or wall by Bang Geul Han, a labyrinth by Angiola Churchill, and lacy circles by Shanthi Chandrasekar that gently diminish as they descend. I have my doubts, but there may yet be hope for works on paper as well.
Am I running out of excuses to feature Salon Zürcher among the fairs, apart from the convenience of an early opening, on a Monday—and a critic's determination to see it all? What began with a mix of European and American galleries is now a modest group show that few, given the restriction to fair week, will ever see. Still, who needs excuses, given an all-woman cast with discoveries galore? As Zürcher, the Noho dealer, runs through successive installments, it becomes a cumulative survey as well. It is not so much feminist, in a gallery that has favors abstraction by such older artists as Kazuko Miyamoto, Lynn Umlauf, Tom Doyle, and Merrill Wagner. It is about "Women of Spirit" all the same.
Is that a coarse totem or a mask, by Carol Bruns, and is that Wonder Woman with cream pie on her face, from Mary Sue—and is the joke on you? Is that "women's work," in a portrait as dense as collage by Jessica Weiss? A figure leans over to take care of things, like the folk art of Nellie Mae Rowe at the Brooklyn Museum, while her face gives way to a Japanese interior with a very different image of women. There may be a message in cursive from Pixie Alexander, but it fades into the grid of a dark but colorful city. Much is mysterious and likes it that way, like a seascape set inside tunnel vision from Cari Rosmarin. More often, though, the gallery stays true to form.
The most impressive may be the most straightforward, Jane Erlich, with white shapes set against orange or green like abstract hieroglyphics. The rest seek to unleash ambiguities in Minimalism. Do plastic strips from Jaanika Peerma translate into painted swirls or photograms? Laura McCallum sets broad X's against visibly parallel brushstrokes in black, like highways to nowhere. Caroline Burton sticks even closer to her roots in punctuated monochrome akin to printmaking or Agnes Martin. Yet she lays her painted weave over gold and color, and the layers shine through.
Cutting or roaring back?
So is art roaring back or cutting back? You may have reveled in a streamlined, almost manageable fair last spring, with Frieze at the Shed, or deplored it. You may have feared for the worst in the economy. Yet perpetual fairs are still a reality—all the more so with the ADAA Art Show due a month after the rest, in October. And the week's centerpiece, the Armory Show, is as massive as ever, in its second year in New York's largest convention center. Still along the Hudson, it is also closer to the action along the High Line and in Chelsea.
Those dealers relegated to the Armory Show online? They, too, could represent an expansion, and the art has grown to match. The fair's layout alone is daunting, stretching out from the entrance to every side. It also exploits an enormous oval at its center, for seating and for sculpture. It serves as a "Platform," a section of the fair on the theme of "Monumental Change"—but with the accent firmly on the monumental. It starts with two entire gardens by Iván Argote (with Perrotin) and Ebony G. Patterson (with Monique Melosh and Hales), of wildflowers and glitter, and things only grow from there.
Wooden towers are Heroes for Juan Fernando Herrán (with Proxyco), and Gavi Gupta has her purple superhero or heroine as well. Others have apartment towers, a rainforest, an imperial throne, a tepee with a blue cartoon head, and an enormous white blob that may or may not have hints of figuration. Back in the booths, art run large, too, with a similar emphasis on diversity. Jennifer Bartlett has two entire walls for a successor to Rhapsody (with Locks), Roberto Huarcaya a ninety-foot photogram (with Rolf), its dark outlines unscrolling on the floor. William T. Williams (with Rosenfeld) has one of his largest abstractions yet and Kehinde Wiley, by no means shy of boasting, his largest portrait (with Templon). I guess African American artists can think, big, too.
Sure, the fair has its solo booths, in their own section. Still, I found more interesting solo acts elsewhere, like dark woven fibers by Olga de Amaral, now in her nineties (with Richard Saltoun). Women by Grace Hartigan (with ACA) and Lise McGurn (with Simon Lee) look all the more assertive and insightful for their loose, spare style. And sure, the fair tosses in a curated section as well. "Focus" claims to focus on landscape as the "undone," whatever that means. Glenda Leon has her puns on drug formulas and constellations, globes and playgrounds, Stefana McClure her tapestries and hangings weighted with unseen stones (both with Bienvenu Steinberg). There is an undone or unfinished landscape out there, but it may lie beyond the fairs.
Sure, too, the Armory Show has a section for galleries still on a budget, as "Presents." Kathy Ruttenberg has her ceramic alter egos lost in a garden (with Lyles & King), Claire Oswalt her splashy abstraction (with Broadway). Photography is a rarity, but Nona Faustine devotes every inch of her booth to imposing black women (with Higher Pictures), face front and center. Jan Kiefer takes on Paul Cézanne himself with skulls and labels artist pallets VERITY (with Kai Matsumiya). Here even emerging dealers have high aspirations. Once the fairs have ended, they can return to real life.
Some artists would dispense with dealers altogether, like the self-curated mess of Clio and its modest events space in Chelsea. Superfine has moved across from the Essex Street Market on the Lower East Side for much the same a week later, packing up to two dozen works (plus flat files) into a booth. The energy is infectious. Yet they can only hammer home how much art relies on galleries, curators, and the fairs. Just be grateful that Superfine has lost its concluding exclamation point. The Armory Show and others never needed one.
These New York art fairs ran mostly September 8–18, 2022. Related reviews report on past years, the May art fairs just past and the spring 2023 art fairs and fall 2023 art fairs to come, claims for the death of art fairs after Covid-19, and a panel discussion of "Art Fairs: An Irresistible Force?"