‘What’s this whole world coming to/Things just ain’t the same/Any time the hunter gets captured by the game’ *sexy harmonica follows*
I’ve been listening to this song incessantly by the Marvelettes, and it’s really been stuck in my head all throughout my battering from art fairs last week. I only made it to three, but as a small potatoes lightweight, I’m still totally wasted from them…
First up, I was on my friend Marjel’s guest pass for the Armory preview. Of course I was glad to experience this amazing monolith, but of course, if not for the free ticket I would never have been willing. Artists by nature dislike fairs more than anyone else, and why would any optimistic schlep pay 30 bucks to see the meat market grinding away at its hardest? Obviously, there is tons of fabulous work, but that’s beside the point.
The interesting thing though, is all the talk in the art world about, well the art world, and formats like the Armory being at its wits end... I could feel it, as if we were perusing the belly of a great old beast, holding dearly onto some fabulous prestige, trying to keep itself from imploding. The whole place felt kind of… humbled, as weird as that sounds. Over my shoulder I heard gallery assistants from these kinds of galleries, for the first time so gentle and coaxing with their explanations to potential patrons:
- Yes you know, well what makes this piece so special is that part of the area of the painting is shiny. And see here, how other sections are not, such as this part. The colours are also fantastically vivid, don’t you think? It’s another special feature. Are you familiar with Gary Hume’s work?
And around another corner:
- Much contemporary art today questions the notion of, reality. As in, what might be real, and what might not be. In photography, as in this example, the artist would like to question what exactly one might perceive as reality!
More than at any other art fair I’d been to, it was so clear cut then, that those with the booths were the ones with the merch, and those with the furs and rings were the ones with the money, on this afternoon preview since this was just before the regular ‘public’ came to validate it as a spectacle. Marjel and I felt like we were spying. You could tell clearly who was a gallerist, who was a curator, who was an artist, who was an associate of these said groups, and then who were the ones looking to invest, new money and old. As the evening progressed, normally dressed people and the eager students/artists began to stream in, balancing the demographics. That was the best part of ‘experiencing’ the whole hoopla for me, this nutty people watching. In any case, what calmed my nerves was seeing an Alex Katz and a Yayoi Kusama painting on the same day. It doesn’t matter their context, as soon as I see one, I feel so elated and peacefully content, my faith in art becomes restored. I am just an old fashioned painter after all.
Second up, the Independent was amazing for a fair, and by far the best. It was a very relaxed and chilled out ‘arty’ vibe, with lots of great work, way more my style, way more experimental and conceptual. But it made me feel like such a square, everything was presented so coolly. Michael Krebber, whose work was there, once made me feel that way when he dissed my (practice) paintings when he did an artist talk in Amsterdam…. same feeling dude.
One can easily find all sorts of great reviews for it, but while I agree with all the praise the Independent got, one could feel it was trying very hard to regain realness and intellect. A bit almost braggy for being open, more democratic, grungy (I mean one can be grungy and independent when galleries have reputations like that!) Almost like, ‘look at us, we are selling ideas once again, not just commodities!’ Anyway, I really liked how it was presented as kind of a cross between an exhibition and a farmers market, and it was much more propositional than a fair normally is, a nice big question mark.
Third up, while at the Independent we ran into a guy I met last summer, whom my friend Kate worked on a film set with, and lo and behold, turns out he’s an artist who had a booth at Scope. He gave us a free pass and I went because it was free, but unfortunately it was so horrible (Kim Dorland is in it, no offense to my friend or him), but it was a total waste of my last art fair hour. There was tons of figurative painting and I hated it, hoping no one ever lumped me into that type of hipster drivel. I really regretted that I didn’t instead rush to Volta, where my friend Jen had a booth and also there were a couple of Canadian galleries, but by then I felt like I had been captured. Time to go home… and watch the Oscars.
