Hometown Galleries Shine at Armory Show
Photo: Jamie Lubetkin
The fall art season is officially underway with the opening of The Armory Show. With more than two hundred exhibitors, the fair can be overwhelming, so it helps to go in with a plan, and we are here to help. The fair is divided into eight sections: Galleries, Solo, Focus (this year highlighting the American South), Function, Presents, Platform (large-scale sculpture), Not-for-Profit, and Partners (site-specific presentations).
We focused on galleries that have home bases right here in New York City. Many of our hometown galleries stood out amid the cacophony of art at The Armory Show. These galleries faced the additional challenge of opening new exhibitions in their own galleries at the same time, stretching their staff’s resources, yet they pulled it off with aplomb.
Artist: Alejandro García Contreras. Photo: Jamie Lubetkin
We started in the Presents section of the fair which features emerging galleries, where we encountered a stunning display of ceramic sculptures by Mexican artist Alejandro García Contreras presented by Swivel Gallery. The ornate installation features a monumental ceramic skeleton as its centerpiece. Blending pop culture, Mexican folklore, ancient myth, and occult spirituality, Contreras transforms the space into a ceremonial altar exploring desire, death, and creation. His meticulously detailed ceramics, from the skeletal figure to elaborately adorned vessels, merge symbols of life and afterlife, ecstasy and agony, heaven and hell. Drawing from indigenous traditions, mysticism, and global pop aesthetics, Contreras creates a visionary cosmology where archetypes are continually reborn through clay. The artist described his complex process, which ends with a nail-biting Uber ride to the kiln, where a single pothole could cause fragile ceramic fragments to break before the work is even fired.
Swivel booth P5
555 Greenwich St. NYC
Artist: Isabelle Albuquerque. Photo: Jamie Lubetkin
More impressive sculptural work was presented by Nicodim gallery highlighted by Los Angeles artist Isabelle Albuquerque whose bold and emotionally charged sculptures invite many interpretations. With a background in performance, she uses her own body to explore the shifting nature of identity and to create a dialogue across time that highlights women’s experiences of desire, sexuality, and embodiment. Through casting and 3D scanning of the artist’s arms and hands, the sculptures evoke a sense of humans coming to terms with the natural world. One work features a cast arm mirrored by a tree branch, while another presents two silver hands joined at the wrists, sprouting leaves. Also presented in the booth are tapestry-like sculptures by Moffat Takadiwa, a Zimbabwe-based artist who transforms discarded materials like keyboards, bottle caps, and toothbrushes into intricate hanging works. A leading voice of Zimbabwe’s post-independence generation, his work addresses consumerism, inequality, post-colonialism, and the environment. He is also the founder of Mbare Art Space, the world’s first art center devoted to repurposing reclaimed materials, where he mentors a growing community of artists.
Artist Shuto Okayasu, wife and child with his artwork. Photo: Jamie Lubetkin
In the two-dimensional realm, Plato Gallery presents two painters: Shuto Okayasu from Japan and Kwesi O. Kwarteng originally from Ghana. Kwarteng combines hand-dyed fabrics with culturally significant textiles from around the world to create colorful abstract compositions that evoke landscapes seen from above. His work references Color Field abstraction and African American quilts while exploring how color, weaving, and dyeing reflect the unique character of each region he visits.
Okayasu’s most recent work, Pieces / Who is Sleeping?, was completed just two days before the fair. It is a self-portrait of him sitting cross-legged on the floor, holding his newborn child. In the lower left corner of the painting, Okayasu depicts a small sculptural head supported by a glass cube atop a stereo speaker, creating a sun-drenched still life worthy of a Dutch Old Master. The artist, holding his baby, and his wife were in the booth when we visited. Amidst the hustle and hustling of one of the world’s largest art fairs, it was a tender family moment.
Plato booth P28, 202 Bowery, NYC
Artist: Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu. Photo: Jamie Lubetkin
Sapar Contemporary presents the work of Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu who flew in from Mongolia the day before the show. She is a contemporary master of Mongol Zurag which is characterized by the use of traditional mineral paints depicting secular scenes of everyday life. Dagvasambuu is known for blending traditional Mongolian andnBuddhist motifs with modern themes to depict women’s lives and everyday scenes. In Magical Door two figures dressed in traditional clothing stand on either side of a mirror that acts as a portal. It appears as a traditional painting but the figures are wearing Nike and Converse sneakers and wearing VR headsets with a cell phone charging on the floor in the background.
Sapar Contemporary Gallery + Incubator booth P25
9 N Moore St, NYC
Miles McEnery Gallery has a large booth showcasing several artists, with Patrick Wilson and Tom LaDuke standing out. Wilson’s Kentucky Bourbon hangs on the outside wall, a painting that must be experienced in person. Its layered acrylic paint is applied so subtly and precisely that a photograph cannot capture its effect. Using a variety of techniques, Wilson creates a luminous, glowing quality in the work.
Across the booth, LaDuke’s A Prism of Gates initially reads as a serene landscape, a sunset over a beach with puddles left by the receding ocean and a sail boat or possibly a snow-capped mountain, or perhaps not; spontaneous smears of paint unfold into a slightly unsettling, surreal abstraction. LaDuke’s paintings layer precise imagery with gestural marks and sculptural swells of paint, creating works that reveal themselves gradually, balancing control and chaos.
Miles McEnery, booth 417
525 W 22nd St. NYC
Hollis Taggart brings three under-recognized first-generation Abstract Expressionists to the Armory: Albert Kotin, Norman Carton and Michael (Corrine) West. West was born Corrine Michelle West but started using the male name Michael to avoid the prejudice against women painters that was common in the male dominated post-war era. It was a strategy also used by Lee (Lenore) Krasner. Like Krasner she wanted her work to be judged on its merits not the gender of the artist. The artists and the paintings on exhibit express the zeitgeist of the Abstract Expressionist movement energetic gestures, with their emphasis on spontaneous personal expression over representational imagery and energetic gestures. It is to Hollis Taggart’s credit that these painters, whose names have been obscured by time, are being revisited and recognized in the context of the Armory Show.
Hollis Taggart, booth 423, 521 W 26th St. and 109 Norfolk St., NYC
Heavy hitters Kehinde Wiley, Philip Pearlstein, Will Cotton, and others were presented by Chelsea gallery Templon, which also featured an ethereal sculpture by Chiharu Shiota, who represented Japan at the 2015 Venice Biennale and created one of the year’s most Instagrammed exhibitions with The Key in the Hand, she brings a similarly captivating presence to The Armory Show. Her sculpture, made of white thread woven densely around a metal frame, cradles a photo scrapbook and vintage black-and-white photographs. The result is a mesmerizing meditation on memory and the passage of time.
Templon, booth 405, 293 10th Ave. NYC
SLAG&RX Gallery (New York and Paris) presents a solo booth of paintings by LA-based artist Chaz Guest. Born in Niagara Falls, NY, Guest spent part of his youth in Philadelphia, a city that informs his latest series, Amusement Parks & Ice Cream. These works draw on memories of his Philadelphia childhood, transforming them into celebrations of joy, resilience, and the enduring strength of Black culture.
Having lived in Philadelphia for nearly a decade, I immediately recognized the familiar row houses that anchor this composition. In this painting, young girls skip rope, their figures rendered almost transparent, like fleeting memories on the edge of disappearance. Nearby, a young boy holds a red, white, and blue “bomb pop,” a small yet potent symbol that hints at the promise of an American ideal, one that may feel elusive or unattainable for these children. Through such imagery, Guest reflects on both the fragility of memory and the larger cultural narratives that shape Black childhood and community life.
SLAG&RX booth 227, 522 West 19th St., NYC
Ceramic works dominated Albertz Benda’s space at the fair, with Brie Ruais’ conceptual wall-mounted pieces standing out. Evoking the physicality of Abstract Expressionism, Ruais begins with a clump of clay equal to her body weight, which she rapidly pushes and manipulates across a canvas on the floor. The process is quick, usually taking no more than fifteen minutes, capturing the intensity of struggle and interaction. The works are then fired and glazed, preserving the raw energy of their creation. Tony Marsh’s nonfunctional vessels are a tour de force in clay. He assembles slip-cast forms and then painstakingly pierces them with small holes. Though the process may appear meditative, the artist explains it is actually stressful, as the vessel can collapse at any moment, sometimes near completion, leaving him with nothing.
Albertz Benda, booth 305, 515 W 26th St. NYC
Shrine and Dimin Gallery present two booths by female artists whose works resonate in uncanny ways. Both Sophia Heymans (Shrine) and Emily Coan (Dimin) explore the female figure and its connection to nature. Heymans paints dreamlike landscapes where women merge with the land, while Coan depicts communal scenes of women immersed in fantastical settings. Sharing similar color palettes and a sense of reverie, their paintings seem to speak to one another. Heyman who grew up on a farm in Minnesota says “Her work explores the deep, personal, and mystical connections between people and the landscapes they inhabit and that her paintings explore the relationship between the land and humankind, seeking to illuminate the personal, meaningful, and mystical relationship we have with the landscapes we inhabit.” Amen, after a few days of looking at and writing about art I could use a walk in the woods!
Shrine, booth P03, 368 Broadway, NYC
Dimin, booth P47, 406 Broadway Fl. 2, NYC
Other hometown galleries worthy of a visit at the fair:
Massey Klein P37
JDJ P18
Mrs. P22
Chozick Family Art Gallery P45
Van De Weghe 403
Aicon 431 and 234
Sargent’s Daughters 112
Carvalho 137
