This Week's Events: Collective Design Fair, TEFAF NY, Frieze, Art New York, Kips Bay Show House & More

New York

Collective Design Fair
Skylight Clarkson Square

May 3-7, 2017
550 Washington Street, New York, NY 10014

For information, call 212.741.8583 or visit http://collectivedesignfair.com/fair

New York is an international hub of modern and contemporary design. Each May, creative minds in the arts gather in Greenwich Village at the Collective Design Fair to exchange ideas and "mingle" with masterworks of the 20th and 21st centuries. It's also where experimental art is explored and discovered. Celebrating its fifth anniversary in 2017, the fair brings together a global visual voice to illuminate creative process and diversity of our collective material culture. Here visitors will find emerging and established galleries exhibiting side by side; juxtapositions of iconic and innovative works; and educational programming sparking lively debates and conversations. 

This year, the fair will honor the Swiss-born furniture maker Mattia Bonetti. A survey of Bonetti’s work—which he calls “a very little retrospective”—will showcase the designer’s repertory of methods and materials: patinated bronze, marble, gilded rock crystal, 3D printing, robotics and modern acrylics. “Ideas come from the material itself,” Bonetti told Incollect. “From things I’ve seen, other designers, the past, the present … One of the most inspiring things for me is nature, whether it’s vegetal, mineral, clouds light. I’m also inspired by talking to people—they conjure up images verbally.” It has frequently been observed that Bonetti’s furniture has a surreal or otherworldly quality, as with Descartes (2014), from David Gill Gallery. The show at Collective Design is curated by Glenn Adamson, a senior scholar at the Yale Center for British Art and former director of the Museum of Arts and Design, in New York.

In addition to David Gill Gallery, participants include Donzella, Lost City Arts, Maison Gerard, Glass Past, Wexler Gallery, and Galerie Negropontes. The fair is a program of Collective Design, an arts community based in New York focused on fostering dialogue and providing a platform for designers, architects, curators, collectors, and gallerists who recognize the need for a new design platform.

Art New York/CONTEXT New York
Pier 94
May 3-7, 2017
711 12th Avenue, New York, NY 10019
For information, call 305.517.7977 or visit http://www.contextnyfair.com/home

Also on tap this week are two fairs presented by Art Miami: Art New York and CONTEXT New York. This one-two punch is expected to draw legions of collectors, curators and art advisors to browse offerings from some 120 contemporary and modern galleries, including Adelson Galleries (New York), Cavalier Galleries (New York), Long-Sharp Gallery (Indianapolis), Vallarino Fine Art (New York), and Gallery Henoch (New York).

The emphasis at Art New York is on Modernism, Post War, and Pop, with works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Willem de Kooning. By contrast, CONTEXT New York will feature emerging and mid-career artists on the cusp of stardom, such as Eric Zener, who specializes in dynamic paintings of bodies submerged in water. In HATCH (2017), a man in a well-tailored suit is plunging toward the bottom of a pool, perhaps an allegory of financial hardship or suburban ennui. “The artists for this year’s special projects… are putting forth works that will drive visitors to ask questions and to participate in the ever-changing social conversation,” says Julian Navarro, director of CONTEXT New York.


TEFAF New York Spring

Park Avenue Armory
May 4-8, 2017
643 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065
For information, call 212.370.2501 or visit https://www.tefaf.com/fairs/tefaf-new-york-spring

The first-ever edition of the TEFAF New York Spring Fair devoted to modern and contemporary art & design kicks off this week at the Park Avenue Armory. More than ninety exhibitors will offer works of art and design from the 20th century to the present, interspersed with a small number of jewelry dealers and galleries specializing in African & Oceanic art, and in antiquities, the aesthetics of which dovetail with modern and contemporary design.

TEFAF is recognized for its extensive vetting process, which confirms the quality, authenticity, and condition of works before authorizing them for inclusion in the show. The decision by TEFAF to expand to North America with two new fairs—TEFAF New York Fall (launched last October) and TEFAF New York Spring—reflects a recognition by the non-profit foundation that the New York art market is too big to ignore. In the words of show organizer's, Manhattan holds “the world’s most buoyant art market.”

TEFAF New York Spring comes on the heels of TEFAF Maastricht 2017, which featured 275 exhibitors and attracted 71,000 visitors from sixty countries. The fair made a splash with its annual Art Market Report, which revealed a dramatic shift in the global art market, as collectors moved away from the auction format in favor of the anonymity and discretion of private sales and increasingly working with dealers and galleries.

Frieze New York
Randall’s Island Park
May 5-7, 2017
20 Randall’s Island Park, New York, NY 10035
For more, call 212.463.7488 or visit https://frieze.com/fairs/frieze-new-york/

This week, Frieze New York will pitch a big white tent on Randall’s Island, at the confluence of Harlem River and the East River, to accommodate one of the biggest events of the spring: a gathering of 190 galleries from thirty countries on six continents.

The four-day event will place an emphasis on 20th-century art, as well as a variety of social and political issues. To that end, organizers have planned a rich program of extracurriculars, including panel discussions on “Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985” and “Art, Architecture & Visions of Modernism.” As with Frieze London, the spirit of this event is one of fearless innovation, with a battalion of cutting-edge practitioners of contemporary art like Dora Budor, Jon Rafman, and Elaine Cameron-Weir. (The latter, a Canadian sculptor who works in New York City, will build a military-style bunker outside the fair.)


The 45th Annual Kips Bay Decorator Show House

 May 2-June 1, 2017
125 East 65th Street, New York, NY 10065
For more, call 212.755.5733 (Nazira Handal) or visit http://www.kipsbaydecoratorshowhouse.org/

On May 2, a neo-Georgian mansion in Manhattan will be converted into a showcase of fine furnishings, art and technology selected by some of the most celebrated designers in the world, including Kirsten Kelli, LLC (New York) and Robert Stilin, LLC (East Hampton, New York). The Show House Chair is Bunny Williams, a noted philanthropist and perennial on AD100.

The event began in 1973, when supporters of the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club conceived of a designer showhouse as a means to raise funds for school and enrichment programs for New York City children. Since it was established, the annual event has raised over $21 million for the organization, which currently works with more than 10,000 young people at nine locations in the Bronx and is considered a “flagship” of the Boys and Girls Club of America.


Skin and Tonic: David Palumbo and Todd M. Casey
Rehs Contemporary Galleries
May 4-26, 2017
5 East 57th Street - 8th Floor, New York, NY 10022
For information, call 212.355.5710 or visit http://www.rehs.com/contemporary.html

“Skin and Tonic,” which opens this week at Rehs Contemporary Galleries, deploys classical realism to investigate two well-established genres: the nude (or partial nude) and the still life. On the one hand, we have David Palumbo’s depictions of women in various states of undress, sometimes assuming an erotic pose or staring boldly at the spectator. On the other, we have Todd M. Casey’s still lifes with alcohol, which renders boozy beverages with the precision of an Old Master painting. While at first it may be hard to discern the connection between “skin” and “tonic,” the correspondence between the two reveals itself upon close inspection.

“David’s work, on the surface, appears erotic, but is far deeper and more sensual,” according to the galleries.“The female figures arouse a sense of intimacy—well-crafted and composed to give you a window into a very private moment in time.

“Todd takes on a very different subject though his still life work … [W]hat brings Todd’s work to another level is the emotion that this imagery can evoke—we celebrate with alcohol, we commiserate with alcohol, and we escape with alcohol. Todd, too, draws on this feeling of intimacy, allowing the viewer to connect the work with their own experiences.”


Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry

The Jewish Museum
May 5, 2017-September 24, 2017
1109 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10128
For information, call 212.423.3200 or visit http://thejewishmuseum.org/

Just up the street from Cooper Hewitt, site of a blockbuster show dedicated to the Jazz Age, is another show infused with the unbridled spirit of the Prohibition era.

“Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry,” which opens this week at the Jewish Museum, is the first major U.S. exhibition focused on the artist in over twenty years, bringing together fifty objects that poke fun at the social milieu of New York and Paris in the 1920s. At the same, Stettheimer was more than just a satirist with a paint brush, making use of radical pictorial strategies associated with Modernism.

“Stettheimer has sometimes been typecast as a lightweight feminine artist with a whimsical bent,” observes Stephen Brown, Neubauer Family Foundation Associate Curator at the Jewish Museum. “The view is belied by her powerful thinking of portraiture and her astute adaptation of European vanguard ideas, most notably Symbolism, to uniquely American imagery.”


Richmond, Virginia

Yves Saint Laurent: The Perfection of Style
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
May 6-August 27, 2017
200 N. Boulevard, Richmond, VA 23220
For information, call 804.340.1400 or visit https://vmfa.museum/

In the 1960s, Yves Saint Laurent took it upon himself to detonate gender-specific dress codes by adapting items from the male wardrobe—the safari jacket, the pantsuit, and the tuxedo—for a female clientele. This was but one way that the influential twentieth-century designer helped to modernize fashion, drawing on a variety of sources, from Piet Mondrian and Tom Wesselmann to Greek vase painting and African art.

“Yves Saint Laurent: The Perfection of Style,” at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, brings together a wide array of objects and documentary materials related to his practice, including 100 examples of haute couture and ready-to-wear garments. The exhibition begins with “Paper Doll Couture House” (1953), created by Laurent when he was a teenager; proceeds through his time at the House of Dior and his sartorial innovations of the 1960s; and concludes with a selection of chromatic eveningwear from late in his career, a chorus of black silk, blue-green chiffon, and white damask.


To view more work by Mattia Bonetti, click here.

To view all inventory at Rehs Contemporary Galleries, click here.

To read “From The Jazz Age, 100 Jeweled Splendors,” click here.