COURTESY THE ARTIST AND GALERIE ÉRIC HUSSENOT
There are hundreds of artists with work on view at the NADA New York fair this week, but only one can be crowned the winner of the New York NADA Artadia Award, which comes with a check for $5,000. That person is Josh Mannis, the Los Angeles-based artist who has been making a name for himself in recent years with angsty, anxious figurative paintings that evince touches of Dana Schutz, depraved pre-World War II German art, and Victorian-era erotic drawings. His work is on view at NADA at the booth of Paris’s Galerie Éric Hussenot.
Mannis, who has had shows at M+B and Thomas Solomon Gallery in Los Angeles and the late, lamented Know More Games in Brooklyn (with the great Becky Howland), was selected by the Hirshhorn Museum’s curator at large, Gianni Jetzer, and the Jewish Museum’s assistant curator, Rebecca Shaykin. In a statement, the two jurors lauded the artist’s “effortless combination of art history tracing an arc from Neue Sachlichkeit to Sinister Pop,” which “is countered by postcard views of American politics. The protagonists of his paintings live in a feverish dream that is fueled by conspiracy and ultimately violence.” (Which sounds a lot like the present, actually.)
New Yorkers may recall seeing Mannis’s work at Company gallery last year in a tidy three-person show with Aidan Koch and Bobbi Woods. Have a look images of that exhibition at Company’s site, and then head on over to NADA to take a look at Mannis’s work in the flesh!