In the World of Art, there are few events that have garnered as much respect as The Armory Show, New York City’s premiere art fair and a definitive cultural destination for discovering and collecting the world’s most important 20th and 21st century artworks.
Having outgrown most traditional spaces, the massive fair spans the whole of Piers 92 & 94 and will take place on March 2nd-5th. Since its inception circa 1994, The Armory Show has served as a pinnacle for the international art world, inspiring dialogue, discovery and patronage in the visual arts. Needless to say, it plays hosts to many of the world’s most respected galleries, including one of our clients, Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery! In addition to leading international galleries, innovative artist commissions and dynamic public programs are also featured during the 4-day event which amasses over 65,000 visitors annually. Before getting a closer look at what we can expect as far as a showing from Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, it is important to understand the purpose behind which The Armory Show was founded and the impact it has had on the industry, even at its beginnings.
The New York Armory Show – The International Exhibition of Modern Art, 1913
The Armory Show as we know it today was founded by four New York gallerists – Colin de Land, Pat Hearn, Matthew Marks and Paul Morris – whose mission was to create a platform for living artists to display exclusive works of art. Then held in a cluster of rooms at the Gramercy Park Hotel and named “The Gramercy International Art Fair”, the fair was an immediate success. It was not until 1999 that homage was paid to the 1913 Exhibition held at the same location and The Armory Show was born again on 69th and Lexington. Much like the goal of the founders to provide exclusive never before seen works of art, the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art showcased works (avant-garde) by European artists previously unseen in America.
Fast forward to the early 2000s and the show continues to add to its humble beginnings including the partnership with New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). With every addition to the show over the years, critical success followed and in 2009 The Armory Show had found its new home at Piers 92 & 94. By 2014, the show comprised many elements including the “Armory Presents” portion of the event which highlights young, emerging galleries. It was at this time, Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery had the opportunity to showcase some of its most exclusive works and artists.
Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery – West 24th Street
Since its founding in 2002, Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery has made a major commitment to representing new media artists who are exploring the intersection of art and technology. The gallery’s dedication to supporting an array of innovative practices has been the catalyst for the expansion of its program to include painting and sculpture. The gallery takes an active role in securing and overseeing major public commissions for its roster of artists, including José Parlá’s 90-foot mural for One World Trade Center, Jim Campbell’s LED installation for the San Diego Airport and Ben Rubin’s interactive installation for the New York Times headquarters. As a member of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD), the gallery has a long history of dedication to exhibiting photographers with a strong socio-geographic mission, namely Canadian environmental photographer Edward Burtynsky and Amsterdam-based ethnographic photographer Jimmy Nelson. Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery also facilitates the publishing of artist monographs and organizing of international exhibitions.
In this year’s program, Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery’s booth at The Armory will be highlighting new works of artists: Edward Burtynsky, José Parlá, Jim Campbell, Yorgo Alexopoulos, Sohei Nishino, Evan Robarts & Robert Currie. While all of these artists possess an affinity for the aesthetics that places them in a league of their own, it is worth highlighting in more detail the careers behind a few of the gallery’s leading artists, Edward Burtynsky, Jose Parlá and Jim Campbell.
Edward Burtynsky, whose incisive work explores the dilemmas at the heart of our globalized world, has achieved global recognition for his photographs depicting the impact of human activity upon urban and natural environments around the globe. His photographs, sometimes elegant, sometimes haunting, hover between the worlds of painting and photography, forming a compelling global portrait that functions as an open-ended question about humanity’s past, present and future relationship with the natural world. Featured in Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery’s booth this year is one of his most recent photographs, titled Saw Mills, which documents the ravages of oil theft in the estuaries along Nigeria’s southern coast. Burtynsky has recently been featured in The New Yorker, Forbes Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal.
PHOTO: ©EDWARD BURTYNSKY, COURTESY OF NICHOLAS METIVIER GALLERY, TORONTO / HOWARD GREENBERG GALLERY AND BRYCE WOLKOWITZ GALLERY, NEW YORK
The Armory Show, 2014
José Parlá is a critically acclaimed, multidisciplinary artist in painting, large-scale murals, photography, video and sculpture. Layers of paint, gestural drawing, and found ephemera combine to evoke the histories of urban environments. Using the backdrop of world cities, he re-makes what can appear to be photorealist fragments of what he sees in the chaos and rush of the metropolis. His work reflects the ephemeral layers of walls that show a place that was, but no longer is – built over, renewed in some other configurations, in the present engaging memory and imagination with the contemporary.
His work has been exhibited at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta Georgia; The SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah College of Art & Design, Georgia; The Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York; National Young Arts Foundation, Miami, FL; Van Every/Smith Galleries, Davidson College, North Carolina; and the Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba, among others. Parlá’s work is in several public collections including, The British Museum, London, United Kingdom; The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, POLA Museum of Art, Hakone, Japan: and the National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana, Cuba.
Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery at The Armory Show, Solo Feature of Jim Campell’s Light Installations, 2016
Jim Campbell is considered one of the leading artists working today in the field of new media. A former filmmaker, Campbell moved to interactive video installations in the mid-1980s and has been working with LEDs – light emitting diodes – since 1999. His investigations with LED technology have produced immersive, illuminated, sculptural environments that vividly record and re-calibrate the presence of time in relation to light, space, and the human condition. Simultaneously shifting the viewer’s perception through works that synthesize acts of observation, reflection, and engagement in an all-encompassing pictorial realm, Campbell deconstructs these grand optical illusions by revealing the mechanisms at play.
While his earlier LED-based transformative works – primarily featuring pixelated views of fleeting activity or quotidian events – relied on video as content, Campbell’s focus has recently turned more toward materiality and process. The new works “hover on the edge of abstraction, re-abstraction and representation,” says Campbell, and investigate how perception, as a visceral phenomenon of time and memory, can be altered, filtered, or manifested through the layering of media.
It is certainly an exciting time for the gallery and its exceptional artist roster! If you’re unable to attend this year’s Armory Show, the Bryce Wolkowitz team knows how to maintain a full calendar of creative events. In fact, this Spring includes exhibitions for both Jimmy Nelson and his new works (March 11th – April 15th) and Jim Campbell (April 27th – June 17th). You may also find yourself at one of these upcoming fairs which will have a large showing from the gallery artists: AIPAD, Collective Design and Photo London!
For more information on Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, other upcoming events and the details behind The Armory Show, head over to the gallery’s website and social media platforms or consider stopping by the Gallery during its walk-in hours (Tues – Sat, 10am-6pm) at 505 W 24th St, New York, NY 10011:
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