Host intro: The Armory Show is back in town. The annual, international exhibition of contemporary art will host over 200 galleries this week, making it one of the largest shows in the country. But over the last decade, a pair of art fairs have grown up around the Armory Show, each offering a different alternative. Maddy Foley has more.
FOLEY1: Amanda Uribe’s booth at the Independent Art Fair is dominated by a CVS receipt. You know the ones. But bigger. Much bigger.
URIBE1
And the receipt sort of highlights all these intimate things that people buy that we don’t necessarily share with people. She has Goya chickpeas and Goya black beans and she has plantains. (0:13)
FOLEY2: Uribe is the owner of a nomadic art space, called LatchKey. Her booth is one of 64 packed into a renovated warehouse on the Lower East Side. It’s her first time showing here at the Independent.
URIBE2
I think Independent looks at what is happening in the art world and gives platforms to people or galleries that are not necessarily your typical exhibition, artist roster. They really take chances. (0:16)
Foley 3: Since 2010, the Independent Art Fair has opened alongside the famed Armory Show. Throughout those years, the Independent’s goal has remained the same: showcase emerging galleries who haven’t yet caught the eye of New York’s high-end collectors.
FOLEY 5: Across town, in Tribeca, there’s another fair, with a difference sense of what it means to be “independent.”
FOLEY 6: Clio is a fair for artists who don’t have gallery representation, or choose to represent themselves.
TERRANOVA1
It means that it’s not your common gallery settings… art lovers are going to come to this kind of fair and feel more intimate, talking to the artist.
FOLEY 6: Eduardo Terranova is an artist and an architect. It’s *his* first time showing at *Clio,* in yet another renovated warehouse. He’s representing himself. His two paintings hang on a back wall of the fair, underneath a skylight. One looks like a big, glamorous sun.
TERRANOVA2
My art is glittery, so it needs light. But at the same time, it artworks that diffuse light.
FOLEY 7: At Clio, the goal is a dialogue, a direct conversation between artist and art appreciator. Elenia Minot says, that’s the reason why, season after season, Clio comes back to New York.
MINOT1
Coming here, to show their works, find connections and contacts, and deal directly with the art collector, without going through a gallery.
FOLEY 8: But not every artist showing at Clio is self-represented. Marion Cadet, who paints monochrome oil portraits in big, graphic strokes, has worked with several galleries in Europe. All she needs, she says, is some autonomy.
CADET1
I don’t think there’s a difference between being an independent person and working with a gallery, because I think we can work together and I can remain independent the moment that I don’t work with only one gallery, I don’t have the feeling that I work for someone. If I still work for myself, in any way, I can work with anyone else to promote it.
FOLEY 9: The Armory Show, the Independent Art Fair *and* The Clio Fair are all running through the weekend. By Monday, they’ll be all packed up and gone.
Maddy Foley, Uptown Radio.
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