Independent opened yesterday (May 14) in a new location on Lower Manhattan’s Pier 36, which is far less central and less immediately connected than Tribeca, but still worth the trip for the quality of its offerings. The larger space allowed the fair’s thoughtful selections to breathe, which matters more than you might think in a week ultimately defined by information overload. The emphasis on solo presentations, which make up 70 percent of the presentations, and the tightly focused booths make the experience digestible—even for those of us trying to hit as many New York art fairs as possible.
“The plan is generous and I think the quality of the fair is excellent, so we’re very happy to be here,” the gallerist Susanne Vielmetter said the Observer. She is presenting a three-part stand of works by Samuel Levi Jones, Robert Pruitt AND Nate Lewis in a joint conversation about paper, materiality and the tactile force of image making. Jones is presenting new collections that question authority, representation, and recorded history by physically deconstructing books associated with systems of power—from legal and historical volumes to institutional texts—and reassembling them into abstract, web-like compositions. Here, those seams of control and collapse extend into works that include deconstructed American flags and pulped paper, recalling Rauschenberg’s charged reworkings of the national symbol while speaking to the decadence and crisis embedded in the very fabric of the image. Robert Pruitt is showing new portraits in coffee wash, charcoal, charcoal and pastel, fusing the mundane and the surreal through figures draped in luxurious textiles, spiritual iconography, sci-fi references and otherworldly embellishments, expanding his mythology of a black past, present and future. The third section is dedicated to Nate Lewis, whose hand-sculpted ink prints treat paper as a corporeal and sculptural surface, layering drawing, relief, outer layer and etched structure into moving figures. Drawing from music, capoeira, medical imagery and the flight patterns and structures of butterfly wings, Lewis expands the cabin’s dialogue around surface, material memory and embodied meaning.
The response, according to Vielmetter, has been overwhelmingly positive since the first hours of the fair, with two works reserved for museums and several others already being talked about. “In this new reality, there is more than we hoped for, so we are off to a great start,” she said, acknowledging that the market is no longer performing at the pace of 2022.
Brazilian gallery Almeida and Dale there are presentations like in frieze (with François Ghebaly) and in Independent, where there is a shared cabin with David Nolan Gallery and is organizing a dialogue between Chakaia Bookertire sculptures and chromatically charged photographs of Miguel Rio Brancohighlighting the artists’ shared attention to latent histories, material memory, and the uncomfortable beauty that can emerge from what society leaves behind. Booker transforms discarded tires into compressed, twisted, shadowy forms that seem almost posthuman—dark totemic creatures in which urban waste is charged with bodily tension and a strange ritual presence. Instead, Rio Branco’s photographs dignify marginalized communities and urban environments through layered textures, subtle reflections and saturated colors, revealing the existential density of places often considered degraded or peripheral.
Merchant of New York Charles Moffett reported great interest in presenting the works of the late Swiss artist at the gallery Silvia Haydenincluding seven tapestries dating from 1973 to 2013. Heyden, who died in 2015, drew inspiration from nature while experimentally disrupting fiber art’s dominant orientation towards the grid, expanding the medium’s potential for vivid expression, internal rhythm, visual complexity and infinite movement. By evening, the gallery had sold two: one for $14,000 and another for $18,000.
nearby, Kiang Malingue there is a stand of works by Taiwanese artist Tseng Chien-Ying, whose paintings on Asian paper transform the body and its fragments into a microcosm of contemporary life, desire and shifting perception. Using ink, gouache, and mineral pigments drawn from East Asian painting traditions, gold and silver leaf, black metal foil, and the technique of moriage—an elevated decorative process more often associated with ceramics and murals—Tseng constructs surfaces where color does not simply rest on the paper, but seems to breathe into it. Drawing on Taiwanese and transcultural pop iconography, literary classics, body politics and fetishes, Tseng imbues the human form with emotional intensity and the everyday with an erotic charge. The gallery set up roughly half the booth early, with works priced from $12,000 to $27,000.
Italian gallery DRY there is a solo stand with works by Lebanese artist Omar Mismar, who many may remember from the last Venice Biennale. The presentation pairs the artist’s ancient-looking fragmentary body mosaics with his new works from “Root and Branch (شيل ما تخلّي).” Created on salvaged flexible PVC banners once used for advertising and scarred by years of sun, rain and exposure, the recent works resemble landscapes, scars, scrolls and shrouds. Throughout them, fragments of graffiti slogans associated with Lebanon’s 2019 protest movement appear, partially hidden under layers of paint, in an echo of erasure and censorship in public space. Works are priced from $9,500 to $26,000; the gallery reported that one small work sold and two large mosaics were pending.
Toward the end of the fair, 12:26 p.m., from LA and Dallas, the work of Julia Maiuriwhose paintings offer dense psychological images by combining multiple levels of commemorative space and sensation in cinematic images. Priced between $6,000 and $10,000, most sold early. Meanwhile, MARCH has a solo booth featuring works by Dianna Settles, whose rich narrative on canvas captures and celebrates the vernacular, collapsing multiple memories into single scenes as she reflects on motherhood, community and collective endeavour. Drawing on Western tradition and the art history of her father’s native Vietnam, Settles’ vibrant compositions explore what it means to exist as part of a collective, portraying the ways culture, politics, and ideology intersect in community—a timely reflection at a moment of separation. All works were priced at $12,500 and the gallery had sold some by 4 p.m. Across the board, dealers we spoke to were optimistic that the next few days will bring even more conversation and sales as fair buyers head to Pier 36.
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