Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Like VOLTA, the Art on Paper fair on Pier 36 was a modestly gauged and user-friendly alternative to the massive and unwieldy Armory Fair. It also presented consistently rich work from a geographically and stylistically broad range of galleries. Here are a few eye-catching selections. From the Upper East Side (but soon to relocate to a larger space in Chelsea), C. G. Boerner presented a flock of Martin Assigs pastel-and-wax drawings, rich but compact, which with handwritten text inscriptions constitute succinct philosophical essays.
At the fair’s northeastern edge were San Francisco artist Henry Jackson’s playfully lugubrious edge-of-abstraction paintings — unobtrusively combining oil paint with other media — shown by Stewart Gallery of Boise, Idaho.
Two elegantly louche hipsters vibrantly collaged within a single large frame by Mersuka Dopazo and Teresa Caldern, who are from Spain by way of Bali, anchored the booth of Rebecca Hossack Gallery of Soho (and London).
Paulson Bott Press (Berkeley, CA) offered a winsome 2014 Martin Puryear etching, abstract though it seems to bow from the chest.
Montreal’s Beaux-Arts des Ameriques showcased several of architect-by-training Patrice Charbonneau‘s bright, tactile landscape and interior paintings, which deftly impart the personalities of absent inhabitants to the objects or scenes depicted.
Hal Katzen Gallery (E. 78th Street) provided a lot of bang per square foot, arraying small works by Elizabeth Peyton, Alex Katz, Helen Frankenthaler, and David Hockney on a single wall.
And there was no escaping Frank Stella, here by way of his collage displayed by New York’s David Findlay Jr Gallery.
Rebecca Morgan‘s wryly off-color and on-target drawings graced a wall for Chelsea’s Asya Geisberg Gallery.
In keeping with its host city, the Art on Paper Fair offered something worth seeing literally around every corner. It was an afternoon well spent.
Related posts:
Rebecca Morgan’s eye on the figurative (and a bit of abstraction)
2016 Spring/Break Art Show Quiz
UES: Rudolf Stingel, Alex Katz, Jane Kent, David Storey, Richard Diebenkorn
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Interesting artwork. Thanks for sharing.