The 2022 edition of New Art Dealers Alliance marks the first time since 2018 that the fair has held an edition in New York. The fair is now back at Pier 36, the venue it once held before moving to its location on New York’s West Side. (It later lost that venue to Google, which bought it in 2018.) “Even securing this space was tough,” said Heather Hubbs, NADA director, during today’s opening.
Despite the four-year absence, the 120 exhibitors participating this year showed up in full force. Alongside their offerings, NADA has brought on rising curator and gallerist Kendra Jayne Patrick to organize a small section that includes five solo presentations: Joeun Kim Aatchim at Harper’s, Teresa Baker at de boer, Elliot Reed at anonymous gallery, Elif Saydam at Franz Kaka, and Quay Quinn Wolf at Jack Barrett.
“The curated selection gives people something to focus on,” said Hubbs, “and as we continue doing this, I imagine it’ll be something galleries consider as they put together their applications.”
Patrick’s section is but one highlight in a fair with much to see. To showcase the finest offerings at this year’s NADA New York, ARTnews has put together a list of the five best booths.
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Rachael Browning at Moskowtiz Bayse
Racheal Browning’s photographs depict various landscapes: a patch of soil, a clump of cacti that have all been leveled by the artist herself. Browning traveled across the country in a pick-up truck with ratchets, bungee cords, and more piled up in the back. She’d use the tools to rig a little piece of nature until it stood flat enough that a level’s floating bubble stayed still at the middle. “She created problems to solve,” dealer Adam Moskowitz said. Moskowitz sees Browning’s photos as a response to the machismo of Land artists, who made huge and disruptive interventions to the environment around them during the 1970s. Instead, Browning’s works aim to make a big impact while leaving minimal effect.
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Luke Parnell at Macaulay & Co.
“You carry your culture and your trauma on your back,” said Luke Parnell, a Canadian artist of Nisga’a and Haida descent. Parnell was referencing his Macaulay & Co. booth, where he is showing a trio of box drum sculptures at his Macaulay & Co. booth, the center one of which is fitted with backpack straps. Parnell originally made the drums for a children’s festival and decided to repurpose them. The largest box, which Parnell said sounds the best because of its cavernous space, represents his culture and his grandmothers, a weight he is happy to carry. At the furthest end is a small black box symbolizing traumas in his community, including the crisis of missing and murdered Native women across Canada. “It’s the smallest one because if it was any bigger, it would be too much to bear,” said Parnell. The drum fitted with the straps is a self-portrait in which he sees himself as a fulcrum that balances the weight of the other boxes.
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Oluseye at Patel Brown Gallery
Oluseye, a Nigerian-Canadian artist who recently exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto, brought a large selection of his “Plowing Liberty” series to Patel Brown Gallery’s NADA booth. The works fuse found materials that Oluseye has collected around the U.S., Nova Scotia, and Ontario, in particular hockey sticks and farming tools, and comment on the little-known history of the Loyalists of Preston, a Black community of Loyalists who fled to Canada following the Revolution. When they settled in Canada, they were given untillable land and struggled to eke out their living. In the “Plowing Liberty” series, the farm tools, which represent hard labor, are contrasted with hockey sticks, symbols of a sport that remains dominated by white Canadians, even though Black athletes have played alongside them for years.
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Jeremy Couillard at Denny Dimin Gallery
Denny Dimin Gallery has found an innovative way to sell the work of new media artist Jeremy Couillard, whose video game Fuzz Dungeon is on view at the booth. The 15-level game, which is typically streamed 24/7 on the gaming platform Twitch, is a chaotic mash-up of songs and dialogue that mirrors the never-ending stream of content that we experience on a near constant basis. These days, you may expect works like this one to be sold as NFTs. Instead, the galley has opted to sell the work by offering a computer on which the game is downloaded. “I’m into objects,” Robert Dimin, a partner at the gallery, explained, adding, “Fuck NFTs.”Two prints by Couillard, as well as works by Sheida Soleimani and Stephen Thrope, flank the game.
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Florencia Escudero at Kristin Lorello
Florencia Escudero is an Argentine sculptor whose soft works appear heavy, thanks to the chains, speakers cast in resin, glass, and metal that are incorporated in them. At Kristin Lorello’s booth, four of her works are on view, but one in particular stands out. Gitana (2021), whose title translates to Gypsy in English, is a sculpture of a mushroom-like figure made of digitally printed satin. A cast resin face emerges from the thick stalk of the mushroom, which is adorned with various other apparatuses. Accompanying the sculpture is a sound work made by Mexican artist Lucía Hinojosa Gaxiola made by experimenting with natural materials like bark, rocks, dry leaves, a tin bucket, and a keyboard.