What You Can't Miss at the ADAA Art Show — Gallery Wendi Norris

February 27, 2020

Kira Reinke

The Art Dealers Association of America's annual Art Show runs from February 27-March 1 and features an extraordinary curated selection of modern and contemporary art. Here are the highlights.

The ADAA Art Show, now in its 32nd edition, has discreetly earned a reputation as New York's best curated art fair in an intimate setting. Held in the Park Avenue Armory, the Art Show features 72 exhibitors from the Art Dealers Association of America that showcase consistently high quality and engaging work from modern masters and top emerging talents.

The inaugural Art Show was established in 1989 with a charitable mission. "The show originally began as a unique collaboration between the ADAA and the Henry Street Settlement, an organization that provides critical social services for families on Manhattan's Lower East Side," said Maureen Bray, Executive Director of the ADAA. "We've raised $32 million to benefit Henry Street." With an important aim to give back, each dealer takes their role at the fair very seriously and curates thoughtful, show-specific exhibits.

The Art Show is committed to focusing on individual artists with over half of the booths presenting solo exhibitions this year. While some dealers dedicate their booths to well-known modern and contemporary artists like Pablo Picasso, Sam Gilliam and Tony Cragg, others highlight artists that are deserving of greater recognition, like Eritrean artist Ficre Ghebreyesus and constructivist Marcelo Bonevardi.

This year, female artists are also in the spotlight with 19 of the 72 exhibitors featuring women. These female-powered booths display artists that were instrumental in the formation of specific movements (like early Op art leader Edna Andade and Carla Accardi, a founding member of modern Italian art group Forma) and today's trailblazers whose work deals with the intersection of race and gender, such as South African photographer Zanele Muholi and graphic artist Nina Chanel Abney.

"The fair focuses on creating connections and dialogues and how these specific dialogues can help those who visit the fair have a better experience," continued Bray.

Each booth is like its own jewel box, revealing harmonious themes as well as thought-provoking juxtapositions. In an effort to foster collaboration and conversation, a few galleries have teamed up to create the dialogues that Bray mentioned, such as Fraenkel Gallery and Luhring Augustine, who place Christopher Wool's iconic typography works next to Lee Friedlander's photographs of signs and graffiti.

"The Art Show offers a curated approach to experiencing a dialogue with art dealers and artists," said Andrew Schoelkopf, owner of Menconi + Schoelkopf and President of the ADAA. "We have found engagement matters so much in the 32 years of the Show. The structure of this fair is to create intimate exchanges where visitors are able to talk directly to the dealer in a setting that encourages conservation and close looking at the works."

Here some of the highlights that you shouldn't miss at the 2020 show:

Sean Kelly at ADAA: The Art Show 2020 Solo Presentation: Idris Khan February 27 - March 1, 2020, Booth D2. Photography: JSP Art Photography. Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York

Created especially for the 2020 Art Show, British artist Idris Khan's eleven new paintings are part of a numbered series titled The Line Between the Bar at Sean Kelly's booth. The ten smaller works and single large-scale work each employ a similar, but individually unique design of ink stamps of text that becomes abstracted as the stamps are layered over each other against a soothing indigo blue background. Khan's work is inspired by different forms of communication and the manipulation of text, numbers and musical scores through layering.

Ramiro Gomez Alma’ss Tired Feet, 2013 acrylic on paper 11 x 8.5 inches Courtesy the artist, Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles and P·P·O·W, New York

Young LA-based artist Ramiro Gomez tackles social class in his artwork by highlighting the laborers that maintain private residences and commercial and institutional buildings. In his solo show at the P·P·O·W booth, Gomez has taken clippings from lifestyle publications like Architectural Digest and paints in the gardeners, housekeepers and nannies.

The P.P.O.W. Gallery booth presenting Ramiro Gomez. Image: Kira Reinke

The artist visited the Show before it opened and made his booth part of his art and message by designing cardboard cutouts of the workers who construct the Art Show and placing them throughout the booth.

Remedios Varo. El otro reloj (detail), 1957. Gouache on cardboard, 14 5/8 × 9 7/16 inches (37.1 × 24 cm). Courtesy Gallery Wendi Norris

Remedios Varo (Spanish, 1908–1963), Homo rodans, 1959–1959. Image: Artnet

One of the most fascinating pair exhibitions is at the Wendi Norris Gallery booth where Remedios Varo and Leonara Carrington are placed in conversation with each other. Both women, originally from Europe, traveled to Mexico City and settled there in the 1940s. Though they never worked in studio together, they were close friends and the themes of surrealism, migration, feminism, spirituality and biomorphic shapes permeate both of their works.

Homo Rodans, a spindly seahorse-shaped sculpture, constructed by Varo out of chicken, turkey and fish bones, is being offered exclusively to museum institutions along with a beautifully illustrated manuscript of the story that Varo wrote about this surrealist figure.

Milton Avery was a giant of American Abstract Expressionism and was even considered the American Matisse, but what many don't know is that artistic talent ran in his family. His wife, Sally Michel Avery, was also a supreme colorist, as was their daughter March Avery. Sean Cavanaugh, March's son, has continued the family tradition into the 21st century with his zoomed-in landscape works in oil. The Yares Art booth brings together works by these four family members, where one can see connecting threads in the themes of rich color, abstracted form and the beauty of the natural world.

March Avery Cavanaugh, Wittenberg Fields, 1996, Oil on canvas, 34 x 50 inches. Image: Yares Art

Jordan Nassar, the moon was looking elsewhere, 2019, Hand Embroidered Cotton on Jobelan, 52 x 36.5 Inches (detail).

Palestinian artist Jordan Nassar was inspired by tatreez, the traditional Palestinian craft of embroidery, an art found in an antique dress that Nassar discovered. All of the works in his series Night at the James Cohan booth are crafted from hand-embroidered cotton on black Jobelan fabric that depict landscape scenes that are meant to reflect the imagined versions of his native Palestine.

Abstract watercolorist and painter John Marin was considered one of the foremost American artists during his time and his provoking perspectives on both city and coastline in watercolor have endured in popularity. Dividing his time between his native New Jersey and the rocky coast of Maine, Marin was equipped with a discerning eye for a complementary color palette and a rapid geometric brushstroke that is visually arresting. For their booth, Mendoni-Schoelkopf compiled a selection of Marin's works that showcase his view of the developing American city in the early 20th century and abstracted compositions of his beloved Maine.

Locks Gallery booth featuring Edna Andrade's art. Image courtesy of Locks Gallery.

Locks Gallery booth celebrates the punchy Op art of Edna Andrade, whose paintings, drawings and wallpapers captivate with hypnotic patterns and geometric shapes in vibrant colors. Andrade, whose career in art spanned nearly 60 years, was based in Philadelphia and was a friend of Anni Albers, who inspired Andrade's own forays into Bauhaus design and art.

Jeffrey Gibson, POWER FULL BECAUSE WE'RE DIFFERENT, 2020. Acrylic on canvas, glass beads and artificial sinew inset into wood frame. At the Sikkema Jenkins & Co booth. Image: Kira Reinke

Awarded with a MacArthur Grant in 2019, Jeffrey Gibson's multimedia beaded works inspired by his Native American heritage have become the stars of international fairs. Sikkema Jenkins' solo exhibit of Jeffrey Gibsons' beaded panels fuse Native American craft and geometric beading patterns with phrases like "Power Full Because We're Different" and "Give More Than You Take."

The Jeffrey Loria booth presenting Picasso. Image: Kira Reinke

In homage to Picasso, Jeffrey H. Loria & Co. presents a spectacular exhibit that displays a diverse swath of Picasso's oeuvre, from a beautiful portrait drawing titled Buste de femme to a petite and colorful abstract painting.

On now through Sunday, March 1, the ADAA Art Show is a must-visit event this weekend for any appreciator of the arts. As Tony Meier, head of Anthony Meier Fine Arts and an ADAA board member, says, "The Art Show has soul, it has style, a sense of personality and a regal feel that is very different from other fairs." We couldn't agree more, so come see for yourself.