Armory Week: Volta Highlights

Anthony Goicolea with Galeria Senda in Barcelona

During Armory Week I got to visit The Armory Show (thanks to the benevolence of an awesome co-worker who scored me a VIP pass), Volta and SPRING/BREAK. Volta still remains one of my favorite pieces of Armory Week–mostly because of the environment (they somehow manage to achieve a maximum level of tranquility with ample space and the help of a soft grey carpeted floor). I went on Thursday (albeit the day after their free, public Vernissage) and it was such a pleasant experience compared to other experiences this week. SPRING/BREAK has changed a lot since it’s pre-2014 days when it was located in a former Lower East Side school. It has since partnered with Artsy and while it tries to be a homegrown/DIY/curator focused anti-art fair (which, for all intensive purposes, it still is), its increasingly higher-brow patrons looking to ‘see what those kids in Bushwick are up to these days,’ make it feel more and more like the very thing that it tries not to be. While everyone complains that The Armory Show starts to get repetitive after successive years–the same galleries showing the same artists in the exact same booth locations–Volta does a good job at mixing it up and showing a decent sampling of solo projects from emerging international artists. They also try to make the whole experience ‘feel like an intense sequence of studio visits.’

Anthony Goicolea with Galeria Senda in Barcelona

My favorite booth at Volta this year was Anthony Goicelea’s work with Galeria Senda in Barcelona (pictured above). The works focus of the architecture of the human body to ‘create worlds predicated on fantasy but based in reality.

Tim Kent, Slag Gallery, Brooklyn

Tim Kent’s works were also particularly awe-inspiring. The pieces splice architecture (construction) with natural elements in order to discuss ‘the threat of encroaching expansion.’

Ibrahim Ahmed

Abrahim Admed’s work (above) included in the “Something I Can Feel” section curated by Derrick Adams reminded me of the work of Heidi Bucher that I saw at the Swiss Institute in 2014. Bucher’s work took the form of “room skins,” made of latex casts of her parents’ bedroom. Admed’s work also evoked something similar to Do-Ho Suh’s architectural sculptures/installations. Admed’s mixed-media works are supposed to express the feeling of losing a nation as well as one’s identity (before immigrating to Freehold, New Jersey, the artist lived in the Kingdom of Bahrain, Egypt and Kuwait). His work employs cultural symbols and forms of language.

Amy Schissel

Then there’s this Amy Schissel work–which is so rad. (Her work confronts the current complex anxieties about the role of painting in the Internet and Information age through the development of immersive painting and video installations).