Xie Lie, title unknown, Semiose Gallery
I’ve been telling myself for about a year that I need to do a better job of writing about the art that I’m looking at. I’m trying to be a curator after all (trying being the operative word). So what’s the hold up and why am I opening by inserting a personal goal? Well, Armory was almost two weeks ago and I’ve been staring at my computer screen ever since, typing and deleting, typing and deleting. Today it finally dawned on me that the psychic cinder block that has been sitting on top of this effort, bearing all of its weight down, was hauled there by the underlying self-imposed expectation that I’m supposed to write in a way that provides some kind of sexy and profound meaning that will make other people go, ah, of course yes, that’s what it is all about. I’m supposed to provide context and insight…supposed to. I guess what I decided today, and maybe it’s that mercury is out of retrograde and my brain finally jolted forward one inch after sitting in a metaphysical traffic jam that I personally enjoy attributing to planetary movements I probably don’t understand at all - takes a breath - is that I have absolutely no fucking clue about any overarching meaningful statement on the present state of art at Armory week or anywhere else for that matter. But! I sort of think that is the statement, the big ah-hah? When I started thinking about it, I realized - hey, that’s kind of what I took away from the work I saw. The art world seems to be taking a break from trying to convince you it knows something. It’s aching, instead, for some fun, some playfulness, and some whimsy.
What put the mental pieces together for me is the Hyperallergic article by Valentina Di Liscia, “I Hate to Admit it, But I Loved the Armory Show." They say, “The 2023 Armory Show had one clear message: The art world can no longer afford to take itself so seriously. And that’s a relief. For the first time in ages, I found myself feeling — dare I say it! — inspired at an art fair.” And I couldn’t agree more. The Armory felt surprising, refreshing, and exciting - even for common folk like myself. Di Liscia once again eloquently summarizes my proceeding thought adding, “Cynics will say the Armory Show aimed for cheap thrills, … or as some nose-in-the-air commentators who fashion themselves the next Donald Kuspit will call it: ‘gimmicky.’ That’s fine, it might be, but I know what I like to look at, and I think I know what others like to look at. I know what feels relevant and what people are responding to at the moment.
Fantastical figures and paintings overflowing with surrealism allow us a brief portal into elsewhere, giving us all a break from what often and overwhelmingly feels like a deluge of collective disturbances which act like flashing neon signs. (Maybe that’s why neon signs are making me so nauseous these days. I’m mentally preparing myself for more to come in Miami this December.) reminding us with every scroll that the world is quite literally on fire. Hurricanes, flash foods, rising temperatures, gun violence, unliveable low wages coupled with the ever rising cost of basic necessities, microplastics being about 99% of our bodies at this point…I can go on. Gen-Z, whatever that means, is often reported on as the most nihilistic generation and I always find myself reacting to that statement with, “Well, yeah, obviously?” As I doomscroll through my own TikTok I am shown videos commenting on a startling collective desensitization. As one TikToker pointed out (who exactly is lost to the TikTok verse), the government is convening about aliens and no one really has the extra mental space or attention to give a shit. If rent is still due and we still have to show up to our jobs, we’re all a little preoccupied.
The dystopian dissolution of reality and fantasy, online and offline, has brought surrealism so close that we aren’t just peering at it through dreams, we’re in the dream - one that often feels distinctly American. I am reminded of Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” and Marquez’s Magical Realist novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. Everything feels a little dizzying, even from rock bottom. And whether we are seeking comfort in an alternate material plane or simply gravitating to what we know like moths to a flame, at least for the moment it feels fun.
But it’s not just about entertainment, or even catharsis for that matter. I think it would be a pretty lackluster read to assert that a lighthearted approach is simply there to counterbalance relentless chaos. I think there is much more at play. Swirling around in the collective subconscious is a visual attempt to reach out and grab at what we all hope for. It’s not placation. It’s not gimmick. What is it? I don’t know, but for me it feels like some kind of optimism and anticipation, a lean toward something better in the face of impossible and inevitable tidal waves. And what’s more American than that?
So how did this all show up at art week? In my last write-up on Miami Art Week 2022 I remarked on the turn painting was taking. Following up on the 2022 Venice Biennale, “The Milk of Dreams” the work is still surreal and still very much to me a reminder that we are all a little chronically online. 2023 New York Armory week carried this torch. From Spring Break to Armory, contorted, illustrated, animated figures abound. Monsters, gods, and animals crawl through paintings and in the case of Patel Brown Gallery’s “Efflorescence/The Way We Wake” by Rajni Perera and Marigold Santos, they even escape the second dimension to crawl on the floor toward you. Figures are cast in every imaginable form, not bound by realism nor relinquished to abstraction.
Rajni Perera and Marigold Santos, “Efflorescence/The Way We Wake”, Patel Brown Gallery
While Perera and Santos crawl to you, the shrouded figure in the work of Chinese-born, Paris-based artist Xie Lie, feels at risk of drifting away behind blue light. The piece (title unknown), was one that my brain still can’t keep from circling back to. To be honest, I’m obsessed with it. For one, the piece brings up another trend I found from fair to fair, monochrome - particularly red and blue. But beyond a trend, my interest is in the choices the artist made to engulf, heightening opacity as your eyes travel up the figure. The hands press forward. What symbol spans across time and space more? It recalls endless handprints stamped to cave walls thousands of years ago. Are they reaching out or holding back? I feel a visceral urge to pull them forward and a reservation to leave them where they are. The figure and the environment become one goo that can’t be separated.
If Lie’s work was the height of my art week, it was checked at the very place I had spent the last month or so hyping up to my partner who came along. I made sure to prepare them for what was going to be a jam-packed office building off Madison Avenue, giving space to work unbridled by art world prerequisites and CVs. Spring Break, the “curator-driven” art fair known for taking itself less seriously, is where I looked for relief from art world fatigue. But I’d be lying if I said that this year’s Spring Break knocked my socks off. My socks stayed on. Instead of emerging art exploration that felt like a breath of fresh air, in many booths what I found was the gimmick pointed in the Armory’s direction. Several were packed with what reminded me of commercial objects I regularly am advertised to while scrolling through my Instagram feed. There is a difference between what I begrudgingly accept to be marketed to me online and what I want to see at an art fair. To be truthful these objects, like plant pots and ceramic candlestick holders, felt wildly out of place. Some portion of this year’s “swing and a miss” I attribute to the fair’s decision to allow exhibitors the option of any of the past 11 themes. Titled “WILD CARD!”, booths were able to decide between past titles such as “HEARSAY:HERESY”, “The Joker”, and “+IN EXCESS+”. What resulted felt disjointed and a little clumsy. I found myself asking why a theme was necessary in the first place.
Despite this, there was a handful of work that I found mesmerizing, notably Cate Pasquarelli’s, "Museum of Embellished History", curated by Sara Driver. In fact, this might be some of my favorite work from the entire week. I keep coming back to visuals motifs of family, working-class roots, small town Americana, folklore, and domesticity. Contemporary artists I’ve seen recently such as Hunter Potter, Anne Buckwalter, and Kentucky artists Ceirra Evans and Scottie Anderson come to mind. Pasquarelli’s work strips down symbols of home, place, and our roles within them. The small town Gilmore Girls-esque comfort we expect is flown away on helicopters, and barebones structures radiate a hollowness. They flip upside down, float away, and sink in sand. Displacement here doesn’t repel however, It feels inextricably seductive and alluring.
Cate Pasquarelli’s, "Museum of Embellished History", curated by Sara Driver
On the topic of seductive and alluring, another joy was seeing Samantha Joy Groff’s painting “Archduchess of the Ridge” at Armory. I saw her work in 2019 at Spring Break, a year for the fair that had me swooning, and fell in love with the artist’s work. Seeing them again at Nicodim Gallery’s booth gave me one of those, “Hey look!” moments. Spindly and femme pastoral figures combat Appalachian stereotypes of placidity and submission. Figures executed with exaggerated mannerist anatomy and dramatic Caravaggio-esque drama pull, creating tension that is rife with yearning desire. Surrealism and desire mingled in other pieces like Didier William’s "Enmeshed" at Altman Siegel, Jeanine Brito’s, “Every Mother Thinks Her Child is the Most Beautiful” also at Nicodim Gallery, and Kate Meissner’s, "Stage Left" at 1969 Gallery.
Samantha Joy Groff, “Archduchess of the Ridge”, Nicodim Gallery
Didier William, "Enmeshed", Altman Siegel
In Hannah Murray’s work at MARINARO Gallery, seduction finds its way outside of the figure. It’s in the atmosphere, but it refrains from permeating chilling hyper-realistic bodies that glance off into the distance. The dissonance in setting and subject is as visceral as my urge to yank Lie’s figure from the blue-light void. It’s decadent and seductive like Groff and Brito, and yet hollow like Pasquarelli. If anything represents 2023 Armory week for me, it’s that crossroads, a sumptuous void. It’s America in the way that only the American writer, and Louisville legend, Hunter S. Thompson could state, it’s decadent and at times a little depraved. And there’s something in Thompson’s “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved” that feels applicable here.
Hannah Murray, MARINARO Gallery