The Armory Show 2018 | New York

The Armory Show 2018 in New York is where most of the biggest names in the gallery business are putting their assets on show this week.

In the extensive Galleries section, the selections on display try to intrigue different kinds of collectors, by balancing out more eye-catching artwork with notorious names (possibly re-drawn or re-valued from the past), and searching to prove their insight in upward trends and promising talent.

Riccardo Baruzzi: Porta Pittura di Charlie Brown nel bosco (2017)
P420 Gallery (Bologna)

The most recent trends can be sometimes summarized in terms of medium – with the newest media being more «material» than virtual, which doesn’t mean a-technological; nevertheless, the remarkable examples of hand-woven textile work on show are many.

William Kentridge: South Polar Regions (2016), hand-woven tapestry
Lia Rumma gallery (Naples)

Younger galleries (no more than ten years old) make up the Presents section, where solo-artist and dual-artist presentations allow for a chance to present emerging art-makers and to engage the viewers with more focused curatorial approaches.

Ebecho Muslimova at Maria Bernheim (Zurich)
Presents section

Remarkably, groups that have been underrepresented and discriminated against, and that have been speaking up lately – in particular, women internationally, and African-Americans in the US – have a much stronger presence this year, not unlike the other art fairs held this week in New York.

Mary Sibande: Cry Havoc (2014)
Platform / presented by Gallery MOMO (Johannesburg)

A closer curatorial stance is taken with the Focus and Platform sections.
Similarly to the Armory Presents section, the Focus section is devoted to galleries with solo or dual-artist presentations, chosen yearly by an appointed curator – for this Armory Show 2018 it’s Gabriel Ritter – “through a selection of new or rarely seen work by today’s most relevant and compelling artists.”
The Platform section, now in its second edition – entitled The Contingent and curated by Jen Mergel – stages features 15 large-scale site-responsive projects, some of which are commissions.

The Armory Show 2018 is held at Piers 92 and 94 in New York, March 8-11, 2018

GALLERIES Section

PRESENTS Section

FOCUS Section

PLATFORM Section