Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1477684
wenty-eight years ago — a lifetime ago in contemporary art, and nearly a decade before the first Art Basel Miami Beach was staged — a micro art fair was born that would go on to shape both the New York and U.S. collecting scene for a generation to come. It eclipsed the then-dominate Art Expo in Chicago and built a brand, with curatorial chops and a commitment to diversity and inclusion. Just four dealers participated that first year, setting up in rented rooms in the art-filled Gramercy Park Hotel. The fair expanded, with a move to the Upper East Side's historic 69th Street Regiment Armory, then to the West Side Piers, and Fair Game now its latest home, Javits Center. This year's Armory Show offers stimulating and robust programming, as well as the main attraction: a roster of more than 240 dealers (up since last year's count of 212), encompassing galleries from 30 countries as well as America's finest, including more than 60 from the heart of the American scene, New York, as well as far-flung art capitals including New Delhi, Budapest, Dubai, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Shanghai, and London. In our age of discontent, fraught with extreme global social and political challenges, The Armory Show brings the art world — and welcomes the curious — to a big-table, inclusive dialogue that's always about more than a canvas on the wall. Calendar these dates: by-invitation VIP Preview, Thursday, September 8; public days Friday through Sunday, September 9 through 11. Five Sections to Explore Ever one to probe the edges of the scene, where fresh curatorial vision happens, The Armory Show in its second iteration at Javits Center has expanded its embrace of emerging dealers (defined as less than 10 years as gallerists), to forge the Presents area of the fair, now showcasing 40 galleries that devote booths to either solo or dual presentations. Presents is one of five sections at the Armory; others include the expansive main Galleries and Solo, which offers an immersive look at a single artist from the 20th or 21st centuries, either established or emerging, historic or today. The other two categories add a prescient point of view: Focus and Platform. This year, both share a single and singular perspective for the first time: Latin American and Latinx art, curated respectively by Carla Acevedo-Yates, Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago, and Tobias Ostrander, Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator of Latin American Art at Tate, London. Aligning with this important topic, the Armory has tapped a renowned Texas museum curator to chair the fair's scholarly fifth annual Curatorial Leadership Summit: the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's Wortham Curator of Latin American Art, Mari Carmen Ramírez. Top of Armory 2022 When taking in the fair, it's de rigueur to check out global gallery brands, especially David Zwirner and Perrotin. The former organizes a two-person exhibition in the Galleries area, pairing YBA Chris Ofili, a Turner Prize-winning painter, with American drawing master of the high and low, Raymond Pettibon. Perrotin is among the Platform dealers that deploy 12 installation-based works along the curated theme of Ostrander's section, "Monumental Change." In Platform, Perrotin presents Wild Flowers by Colombian-born artist and filmmaker Iván Argote, now based in Paris. Argote postulates a post-apocalyptic world where flora takes over and regenerates the planet — in this case, vis-à-vis imagining the monument to George Washington that defines Wall Street's streetscape, toppled and transformed into a planter box. By Catherine D. Anspon The art season accelerates: The Armory Show unveils Thursday through Sunday, September 8 through 11, at Javits Center, Manhattan. Follow our guide to intriguing artists, must-see booths, and the four Texas players at "New York's art fair." Naomi Rincón Gallardo's The Formaldehyde Trip, 2017, at PROXYCO Gallery ALL IMAGES COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND THEIR RESPECTIVE GALLERIES Trenton Doyle Hancock's Mound #1 and The Color Crop Experience, 2019, at Hales Gallery and James Cohan © TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK 2022. COURTESY THE ARTIST AND JAMES COHAN. PHOTO BY TONY LUONG FOR MASS MOCA. (Continued) ELIANA CETTO 174