Early May was a bustling time for the New York art scene with exciting new gallery and museum exhibitions, Frieze New York and TEFAF art fairs, and spring art auctions. LSS Art Advisory has outlined some of our favorites from our week’s visit:

ART FAIRS:

Frieze Art Fair
The seventh annual edition of Frieze New York, a renowned art fair originally founded in London in 2003, witnessed record visitor attendance, helmed for the first time by Loring Randolph, recently appointed by Frieze Art Fairs as Artistic Director for the Americas.  Here are a few highlights from the over 190 galleries that exhibited at Randall’s Island Park this year:

Tal R at Cheim & Read
A new series of drawings by artist Tal R, entitled a ship called New York, was the focus of Cheim & Read’spresentation at Frieze NY 2018.  The works,, executed in crayon, ink, acrylic and oil on paper, primarily in tones of blue, merge a vision of the open sea with the artist’s conception of New York as a city that is unique in the world. The artist has said, “New York is always what you imagine it to be as an outsider; it is both a city and a mental state.”

McArthur Binion at Lehmann Maupin
Lehmann Maupin’s booth brought together three artists whose work is thematically connected in their respective explorations of language and communication: McArthur Binion, Shirazeh Houshiary, and Cecilia Vicuña. LSS Art Advisory was particularly captivated by Binion’s presentation, his first with the gallery since announcing their representation of the artist in March. Binion, known for his autobiographical abstract works, was a writer before he ever considered pursuing art and language remains an influence on his work, as much as his personal history. Creating his own brand of Modernism, his compositions are defined by rich pattern, texture and color that reference his rural roots and the geometries of his mother’s quilts and West African textiles.

The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF):
Founded by art dealers in 1988 in Maastricht, Netherlands, TEFAF art fair has a history of showcasing masterpieces in categories of fine art ranging from antiques, Old Masters and Haute Joaillerie to contemporary painting, works on paper and 20th century design. Marking the second annual edition of TEFAF New York Spring at the historic Park Avenue Armory, this year’s fair featured 90 internationally acclaimed art galleries and dealers and is well worth a visit.

Sam Francis at Richard Gray Gallery
For TEFAF New York Spring 2018, Richard Gray Gallery presented masterworks by Sam Francis and Isamu Noguchi from the 1950s and 1960s. LSS Art Advisory was particularly captivated by Francis’ stunning large-scale paintings. In the early 1960’s, Francis began painting a series of predominantly blue works as he suffered through hospitalization for kidney disease. Featuring orb-like organic forms, the drips and splatters characterizing this body of work mark the trajectories of particles moving through space.

Josef Albers and Giorgio Morandi at David Zwirner 
David Zwirner devoted their booth at TEFAF to the concept of seriality in the works of Josef Albers and Giorgio Morandi, juxtaposing a series of five red Albers Homage to the Square works, alongside paintings and drawings by Morandi from the 1950s.  The artists are best known for their decades-long explorations of a singular motif: Albers employed his nested square format to experiment with endless chromatic combinations and perceptual effects, while Morandi investigated our perceptual understanding and memory of everyday objects and spaces.

GALLERY EXHIBITIONS:

Ursula von Rydingsvard at Galerie Lelong
TORN, a solo-exhibition of new and recent works by Ursula von Rydingsvard, is on view at Galerie Lelong through June 23rd. Celebrated for her large-scale sculptures in public spaces and museums in the United States and abroad, von Rydingsvard’s exhibition presents works built from her experimentation in cedar, paper, bronze, and resin. In addition to TORN, the artist has two concurrent museum exhibitions currently on view at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Marlene Dumas at David Zwirner
Myths & Mortals, an exhibition of new work by Marlene Dumas, is on view at David Zwirner Gallery through June 30, 2018. In this exhibition, the artist’s second with the gallery and first solo-presentation in New York since 2010, Dumas debuts an expansive series of works on paper originally created for a recent Dutch translation of William Shakespeare’s narrative poem Venus and Adonis (1593) by Hafid Bouazza. Alongside these works, the exhibition features a selection of new paintings that range from monumental nude figures to intimately scaled canvases that present details of bodily parts and facial features.

Math Bass at Mary Boone Gallery
On view through July 27, 2018 at Mary Boone Gallery is a solo-exhibition of new paintings by LACMA AHAN awardee Math Bass. Curated by Piper Marshall, the exhibition, entitled My Dear Dear Letter, presents a recent addition to the artist’s ongoing “Newz!” paintings in which she explores the contour of a shape through repetition and reorientation, often within one composition.

Additional Notable Gallery Shows:

• Charles Ray at Matthew Marks Gallery
• Tomas Saraceno at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
• Charles Gaines at Paula Cooper Gallery

MUSEUMS HIGHLIGHTS:

Zoe Leonard at the Whitney
Zoe Leonard: Survey, on view at the Whitney Museum through June 10, 2018,  is the first large-scale overview of the artist’s work in an American museum. Looking across Leonard’s three decade long career, the exhibition highlights her engagement with various themes, including the history of photography, gender and sexuality, loss and mourning, migration, displacement, and the urban landscape.

Being: New Photography MoMA
Being: New Photography 2018,  the latest edition of MoMA’s longstanding and celebrated New Photography series, is on view through August 19th.  Presenting works by 17 artists working in the US and internationally, including Sam Contis, Aïda Muluneh, and B. Ingrid Olson, the exhibition investigates charged and layered notions of personhood and subjectivity in recent photography and photo-based art. Together, the works on view explore how personhood is expressed today, and offer timely perspectives on issues of privacy and exposure; the formation of communities; and gender, heritage, and psychology.

Danh Vo at the Guggenheim
Take My Breath Away, the first comprehensive survey in the United States to date of work by Danish artist Danh Vo, was presented by the Guggenheim. Filling the ramps of the museum’s rotunda, the exhibition will offer an illuminating overview of Vo’s production from the past 15 years, including a number of new projects created on the occasion of the exhibition. Ranging the full spectrum of Vo’s oeuvre – from early conceptual works to his recent sculptural hybrids of classical and Christian statuary–the exhibition will interweave installations, photographs, and works on paper from various points in the artist’s career to amplify their thematic resonances.

Also Worth Visiting:

• Stephen Shore at MoMAthrough May 28, 2018
• Tarsila do Amaral at MoMA through June 3, 2018
• Adrian Piper at MoMA through July 22, 2018
• Huma Bhabha at the Met through October 28, 2018
• 2018 Triennial: Songs for Sabotage at New Museum through May 27, 2018