ADAA: Artwork Highlights at the New York Art Fair

Neither the biggest nor the boldest New York art fair, The Art Show nevertheless presented in-depth exhibitions by wonderful, often overlooked artists.

Organised by the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA), The Art Show returned to the Park Avenue Armory this week. More than half of this year's 70 booths were solo presentations, including standout exhibitions by Jeffrey Gibson and Mika Tajima.

Sam Gilliam at David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles

Born 1933 in Tupelo, Mississippi, Sam Gilliam emerged as an innovative colour field painter and lyrical expressionist in Washington D.C. in the 1960s. David Kordansky exhibited untitled paintings (pictured top), each almost two metres tall, realised in delicate materials—watercolour and acrylic on washi paper.

Rodrigo Cass at Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco

Born in 1983, Rodrigo Cass lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. From a distance, works in his series 'Sem Titulo (provisory)' (2019) resemble screen prints or risographs, but on closer inspection they have surprising three-dimensionality achieved with concrete and tempera on linen.

Jeffrey Gibson at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York

The recipient of a 2019 MacArthur Foundation 'genius' grant, Jeffrey Gibson combines Native American and Western art forms and materials. Works such as GODDESS IS ALIVE MAGICK IS AFOOT (2020) incorporate text written in glass beads that is at times almost lost in the works' bold geometric patterns. Of Choctaw-Cherokee descent, Gibson has been collected by institutions including the Smithsonian and the National Gallery of Canada.

Ficre Ghebreyesus at Galerie Lelong & Co., New York

Ficre Ghebreyesus was born in Eritrea, East Africa, in 1962, during the Eritrean War of Independence. He left age 16 and ultimately settled in the United States where he received an MFA from Yale University in 2002. He died unexpectedly ten years later at the age of fifty. Though he didn't often show during his lifetime, acrylic on canvas paintings such as Red Room (c. 2002-07) evidence his facility with colour. Galerie Lelong & Co. will hold a solo exhibition of Ghebreyesus's work in April.

Mika Tajima at Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles

In her 'Negative Entropy' series, Mika Tajima uses a Jacquard loom, considered by some to be a proto-computer because it can be programmed using punch cards to generate weavings. Her works are created using image information derived from two sources—textile factories and 'lights-out' data centers, where very little human oversight is required. The works thus compare our estrangement from physical production in the early 19th century with our estrangement from the creation and management of information today.

Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo at Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco

Gallery Wendi Norris showed works by two female surrealists, British-born Mexican Leonora Carrington and Spanish artist Remedios Varo. During World War II, Carrington was in a relationship with German surrealist Max Ernst. After he was arrested, first by the French as a 'hostile alien' and then by the Nazis for creating 'degenerate' art, she fled Europe for Mexico, where she entered a relationship with Varo, and later became a founding member of the country's Women's Liberation Movement. Her paintings eschew surrealist's usual interest in sex and romantic muses and instead explore alchemy, the occult and animal energies, as evidenced by paintings such as La Artista Viaja de Incognito (the artist travelling incognito) (1949). —[O]