2008 Armory Show
Joe did a write-up of the 2008 Armory Show for Theme Magazine. It went something like this.
The Armory Show, New York
March 27-30, 2008
Hedi Slimane’s hyper-glossy acrylic-coated photographs of disco balls unintentionally reflecting the back-lit logo of a Pepsi machine offer an apt synopsis of the 2008 Armory Show—a slick, well-executed amalgamation of art and commerce. The work on display is not all surface, though. A few notable installations include Jenny Holzer’s pristinely machined LED displays at Cheim & Read, Ori Gersht’s photographs of exploding “still-life” vases at Angles Gallery, Joseph Kosuth’s etymology of the word “light” rendered in white neon at Sean Kelly Gallery and Natascha Sadr Haghighian’s defiant hammer-and-nails installation at Johann Konig Gallery. For the last piece, Haghighian, a Berlin-based artist known for her confrontations with the tropes of art institutionally identification and approval, responded to an invitation from her gallery to produce a piece for the Armory Show by hammering hundreds of nails into a wall to form the words “I Can’t Work Like This.” Yes, there’s a touch of irony in that statement.
We’re glad to see that a few of Beijing’s most prominent galleries have made the trip to New York for the fair as well. Galleria Continua is showing a lustrous purple orb by Anish Kapoor that was on display in Beijing this winter, while Galerie Urs Meile has several pieces from Beijing art-star Ai Weiwei at its booth. Another Beijing-based art fair staple, Cao Fei, is represented by New York’s Lombard-Freid Projects, which is showing “RMB City,” a 6-minute single channel video shot in Second Life in which Cao appears to mock the rapid, oft ill-advised development taking place in China’s urban centers.
One more project that caught our attention is Maix Mayer’s documentation of an abandoned resort development in Sanzhi, Taiwan. The space-age architecture captured in advanced disrepair has sci-fi written all over it, but is actually a product of Taiwan’s economic meltdown in 1990 coupled with it’s sub-tropic climate. Check Flickr for some gorgeous photo sets from others who have passed through Sanzhi.
Hedi Slimane
Natascha Sadr Haghighian
Jenny Holzer
Joseph Kosuth
Ai Wei Wei