In troubled times, artists turn to tradition for succor. That seems to be the position of this year’s Armory Show, where much of the best work on view takes inspiration from the past while updating it in novel ways to fit a turbulent present.
The annual art fair, which this year features presentations from more than 230 exhibitors, faces an uncertain future itself. Two years ago it was acquired by Frieze, one of two conglomerates (the other being Art Basel) that stage numerous fairs across the globe, and there has been speculation about what direction the London outfit plans for it. The art market continues to struggle, as a lackluster auction season and a rash of recent high-profile gallery closures attest. Market uncertainties, lingering inflation and an ever-shifting tariff landscape complicate things in an area that deals in large transactions among an international clientele.
While these factors weigh more heavily on the overarching art market than on artists themselves, they nonetheless feel the pressure of lagging sales—several gallerists I spoke with on the first day were anxious about slow uptake among collectors. And given global conflicts, political turmoil, environmental disasters and more, creators have plenty of stressors to channel into their work.
Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu’s ‘Magical Door.’ PHOTO: SAPAR CONTEMPORARY
The Mongolian artist Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu, showing at Sapar Contemporary, tackles modern worries about technology in her paintings, which incorporate zurag (a 20th-century Mongol style), Tibetan Buddhist imagery and elements of Asian miniature painting. In one, a woman in traditional Mongolian attire balances on a digital scale as she stares at a phone held aloft by a selfie stick. In another, a pair of individuals, in similar garb, flank a sky-like void and don virtual-reality headsets.
Turning away from the tech-saturated present, at RoFa Projects, Kukuli Velarde explores the colonial past of her native Peru through paintings and pre-Columbian-inspired ceramics. A humanoid shape, made of clay and curled into a fetal position, mirrors Inca mummies known as illapas, many of which were taken by foreigners as exotic artifacts for personal collections or anthropological museums. Her version is adorned with classical symbols and braids of the artist’s hair, creating an intimate, physical connection to history, while the sleek, modernist surface of the sculpture brings it into the current day.
Santiago Yahuarcani’s ‘Escudo de Chamán.’ PHOTO: CRISIS GALLERY
Also embracing indigenous traditions is Santiago Yahuarcani, shown by Crisis. He paints scenes from the mythology and folk tales of his Aimeni clan (the White Heron clan) of the Uitoto Nation of northern Amazonia. These densely illustrated scenes—on sheets of llanchama parchment, made from the bark of a native tree—are rich in flora and fauna that figure in the stories. They’re also rich in humor, like the snake’s body coiled around a jar of ayahuasca, its head the grimacing face of a man who is clearly struggling with his psychedelic journey.
Doowon Lee ‘Doowon’s Gimyeong Jeoljido.’ PHOTO: ACA GALLERIES
Humor is present, too, in the work of Doowon Lee at ACA Galleries. Drawing on his recent experiences in Pakistan, he enlisted his mother, who has a background in fashion, to sew textile panels for his paintings, which feature colorful scenes from his travels. Frowning frogs, glowering tigers and twittering birds make up the whimsical menagerie of his works, several of which also contain calligraphy as a nod to his father, who practiced the art form.
Similarly autobiographical details can be found in the paintings of Tesfaye Urgessa at Saatchi Yates. The Ethiopian-born artist’s singular style blends that country’s iconography with elements of Western figuration and hints of Cubism to create arresting compositions of densely packed bodies that freeze motion and drama within their frames. Simple scenarios—a teacher trying to wrangle pupils, figures bending over to view a small picture—are elevated to almost religious scenes thanks to his virtuoso staging.
TARWUK’s ‘MRTISKLAAH_tnemevoM_dna_dnuoS_gnisicrexE_rof_erutcurtS_cisaB_eht_si_ereH.’ PHOTO: WHITE CUBE
The Croatian-born, New York-based duo who work as TARWUK are exhibited by White Cube. Much of their work echoes previous movements in their homeland—a three-quarters portrait of an inquisitive man draws from the New Objectivity of the early 20th century. Embraced by the region’s naïve art movement, it was championed as a democratic artistic project by collectives such as the Earth Group. Another painting finds a dozen people gathered together in a historic building, and while there are no religious symbols to be found, the arrangement and styling recall a fresco in a church.
Elisabeth Perrault’s ’Ces géants qui se nourrissent de soleil.’ PHOTO: CARVALHO
It’s a surprisingly strong year at Armory, where laudable art outpaces available column inches, but I’d be remiss not to briefly acknowledge a few other notable presentations. Elisabeth Perrault’s room-size wilting sunflowers at Carvalho joined strength and delicacy, life and death, in a high-wire act of perfectly executed balance. RF. Alvarez’s scenes, at Martha’s, of nightlife in and around central Texas offered a surprising mashup of rough western individualism and collective queer celebration. At Reservoir, Richard Mudariki’s series “The Great Bantu Migration” creatively drew from Jacob Lawrence’s similarly named African-American series to tell the story of Zimbabwean history in South Africa. And Karina Sharif’s lights at Gallery 495, made of ceramic and paper pulp, playfully riffed on material and function, even if the presentation would have been a better fit for the fair’s new section dedicated to arts and design.
On that front, laurels should also be awarded to Kyla McMillan, the director of this year’s event. Several changes, including a curated sector dedicated to the American South (an overlooked region in contemporary art) and the choice to integrate solo presentations into the main area of the fair, made this one of the most rewarding and approachable Armorys in recent memory. It shows that even in hard times, art is still bursting with possibility.
The Armory Show
Javits Center, through Sept. 7
