If your brilliant adventures farther afield or beach didn’t quite pan out this year there is always NYC local brilliance to warm the mind’s eye. Metro Curates began in 2012 as The Metro Show: "[It] reflects the new attitude toward collecting in which a work is valued for its intrinsic qualities and the beauty of its design - not solely for its place in the historical continuum," said show director Caroline Kerrigan Lerch. "As visitors walk through our fair, they will see how everything connects."- quoted from..
Compared to the more rumbustious contemporary art fairs there’s a refreshing calm about Metro Curates and relative lack of desperate dealers foisting their goods upon you. They just know that what they have is fantastic (and most usually is) to the point where even copious vernissage alcohol only just stemmed the tide of Stendhal Syndrome! Erring heavily in content on the ethnographic, outsider/folk art, some galleries now have started to diversify like this e.g. Kasher Potamkin (well more 'designer' but there's a kindred spirit there...(there's only so much free Prosecco that words can buy;) but credit where credit is due to Caroline Lerch for spotting and leading an art fair niche even though the concept of mixing diverse objet d’art has been around quite some time e.g. Fondation Cartier in the 90’s- À visage découvert - Machines d'architecture, Azur and of course most recently Massimiliano Gioni’s Encyclopedic Palace pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale. (Life After Venice ‘Dialogue’)
The New York Ceramics and Glass Fair is theatrically set in the Czech Cultural Institute’s 1895 Bohemian National Hall. And don’t forget the first glass blower of all time at the Met Museum!
ENNION- Master of Roman Glass VIDEO HERE
Another relatively hidden gem is the Met Museum’s Warriors and Mothers Epic Mbembe Art. Video HERE.
Hot on the hors d'oeuvres of Metro Curates, quite a few of the same galleries are participating in the Outsider Art Fair 2015 that has sensibly changed dates from the Frieze NY week in May to less ‘congested’ dates in late-January (its birth slot) and a ‘Spring storm free’ rooftop tent.
Video HERE
The history of many art forms shows it took the world a while catching up i.e. photography let alone color photography. Is outsider art slowly becoming ‘insider’ art when Christies plans its first auction later in the year? Banksy’s vandalized Brit phone booth sold for $605,000 at Sotheby’s NY in 2008! (A must see film for those ‘behind the know’ is Exit Through the Gift Shop). So: is graffiti art included as ‘outsider’? ;)
Or Cave of Forgotton Dreams? More must!
We have Jean Dubuffet to thank for being the early ‘YouTube’ for Art Brut.
Borderless Art Museum: no-r-malization: The World of Art Brut in Japan-Part 2 (March 2015) including Adolf Wölfli.
Odyssey House was established in 1989 to provide treatment and education to youth and families whose lives have been devastated by drugs, alcohol, and abuse.
Book Launch and art exhibition at Pablo's Birthday Nov 25, 2014
Photos HERE
More to come….
