The Armory Show, NYC 2015 (Part 5 Finalé) + FOOD: Deviled Crab Salad

The Los Angeles-based painter, Amir Nikravan, fuses the logic of painting, photography, and sculpture onto one deceptively flat plane. Using negative space he creates a positive, colorized, representation of an object. His photorealistic 2-D ‘still life’ paintings looking like the original 3-D object.

ART

The Armory Show

Part V (FINALE)

New York 2015

Art representing: 

"This moment in time!"

Living artists and contemporary galleries from around the world, at the Armory Show 2015, NYC.

This last posting of art from the Armory Show, 2015, looks closely at a few of this year's more interesting artists. It's hard to create a "WOW" factor in the art market today, with so much art constantly being shown through galleries and all of the Art Fairs around the world. Although many artists caught our attention this year, these few had something that was both interesting and different.

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Amir Nikravan -- Taking the title from the Photoshop command that collapses all visible layers into one conglomerate layer, "Merge Visible" the paintings are constructed through the physical enactment of this directive. Materials ranging from paint to rocks are built up in layers via repetitive gestures until a temporary sculpture emerges. The sculpture is covered in fabric which is vacuum-formed into every crevice, then spray painted to capture the real topography. Finally, Nikravan removes the fabric and destroys the original sculpture - stretching the painted cloth over aluminum, creating what he calls a "performance painting". The resulting paintings embrace a disconnect between sight and touch. The artworks look like a 3-D image, but the surfaces reveal themselves to be flat. The viewer encounters a painting, not of an object, but a 2-D replica that steals the visual appearance of the original object, the temporary construction.

(Editor's Note: Even up close, in front of the paintings, your mind believes these works are three dimensional, but the canvases, when viewed from the side, are completely flat.)

Amir Nikravan, "Merge Visible", 2014 Painting Series,
3-D illusion from 2-D paint on canvas
Various Small Fires Gallery, Los Angeles

Amir Nikravan, "Merge Visible", 2014 Painting Series, 
3-D illusion from 2-D paint on canvas
Various Small Fires Gallery, Los Angeles

Amir Nikravan, "Merge Visible", 2014 Painting Series, 
3-D illusion from 2-D paint on canvas
Various Small Fires Gallery, Los Angeles

Amir Nikravan, "Merge Visible", 2014 Painting Series, 
3-D illusion from 2-D paint on canvas
Various Small Fires Gallery, Los Angeles

Amir Nikravan, "Merge Visible", 2014 Painting Series, 
3-D illusion from 2-D paint on canvas
Various Small Fires Gallery, Los Angeles

Amir Nikravan, "Merge Visible", 2014 Painting Series, 
3-D illusion from 2-D paint on canvas
Various Small Fires Gallery, Los Angeles

Amir Nikravan, "Merge Visible", 2014 Painting Series, 
3-D illusion from 2-D paint on canvas
Various Small Fires Gallery, Los Angeles

Amir Nikravan, "Merge Visible", 2014 Painting Series, 
3-D illusion from 2-D paint on canvas
Various Small Fires Gallery, Los Angeles

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Ben Murray, painterly artworks, oil on canvas  -- Many collectors still want painterly oil on canvas "paintings". Across the US and around the world, MFA programs create artists who are great painters in traditional techniques, but canvases of this nature are rare at the Armory Show. This is true of most major contemporary and international art fairs, today. Conceptual works in all media, digital photography, sculpture, video, documented performance, installations and more simple, graphic paintings rule the day.

Ben Murray, oil on canvas, Moniquemeloche, Chicago

Ben Murray, oil on canvas
Moniquemeloche, Chicago

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Hayv Kahraman’s work grapples with the marginal spaces between Western and Middle Eastern culture, aesthetics and concepts of gender through her personal history as an Iraqi émigré to Europe and ultimately the US. Her paintings elegantly recall Japanese style calligraphy, Italian Renaissance painting and illuminated Arab manuscripts, though the subjects are deeply and psychologically brutal. Her work calls back to these Western and Middle Eastern art histories, but her aesthetic, as an immigrant, belongs to neither. 

In a recent, New York Times article about her exhibition Extimacy, she says “Having these women violently detaching their limbs, for me, is very reminiscent of the psyche of a refugee, and that sense of detachment you have from your land that you’ve had to leave behind. That’s the idea of the diasporic women, who are fragmented, or cyborgs almost. They’ve had to give up part of themselves.”

Hayv Kahraman, "Hapool Meshkhoor" 2015, 
oil on linen, Jack Shainman Gallery

Hayv Kahraman, (detail) "Hapool Meshkhoor" 2015, oil on linen, Jack Shainman Gallery

Hayv Kahraman, (detail) "Hapool Meshkhoor" 2015,
oil on linen, Jack Shainman Gallery

Hayv Kahraman, (detail) "Hapool Meshkhoor" 2015, 
oil on linen, Jack Shainman Gallery

Hayv Kahraman, (detail) "Hapool Meshkhoor" 2015, oil on linen, Jack Shainman Gallery

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Jon Rafman creates these sculptures using a digital printer as a part of his process. 3-D printing is still very new and there are a few artworks at most art fairs using the technique. This approach offers so much potential for the future of sculpture and it will be interesting to see it develop.

Jon Rafman b. 1981, Quebec, Canada,  Education: M.F.A. School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Film, Video and New Media, 2006-2008 

Jon Rafman, Manifolds series, 2015,
Photopolymer, resin, pigment (3-d print),
25" tall, Zach Feuer, NY

Jon Rafman, Manifolds series, 2015, 
Photopolymer, resin, pigment (3-d print), 
26" tall, Zach Feuer, NY

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Brandon Ballengée takes Audubon-style nature prints, featuring now extinct animal species, cuts-out the lost creatures and frames the results. The species, which were all alive during the 1800s, are now represented as blank spaces filled only by the color of the walls on which the print hangs and by the shadows cast by the missing image. Installation at Ronald Feldman booth.

Brandon Ballengée’s ‘Frameworks of Absence’ (2006–ongoing),
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NY

RIP Imperial Woodpecker", Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NY

Brandon Ballengée’s ‘Frameworks of Absence’ (2006–ongoing),
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NY

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Zipora Fried’s is best known for her large-scale drawings, characterized by a rigorous physical process and dense accumulation of medium, generating monumental works up to 30 feet in length. The intensity of this practice influences her sculpture that requires a similarly additive process. Fried employs an unexpected approach to her materials, mixing the historical and nostalgic influences with the futuristic.

Regardless of media, deft gestures and a palpable psychological mood permeate all of Fried’s work. The viewer senses the inner world of the artist lies beneath their sumptuous surfaces, yet veils of secrecy and mystery undermine any specific or personal narrative, reflecting instead a dark and beautiful mirror into our collective pathos.

Zipora Fried (solo booth), sculpture: "Jojo", 2015, 

wood, baseball bats, gold mirror, 

79" x 52" x 32"

On Stellar Rays

Zipora Fried 

(in the background),

 "Jojo", 2015, 

wood, bats, gold mirror, 

79" x 52" x 32"

On Stellar Rays booth

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Berta Fischer’s sculptures are abstract and reductive poetry. The edges are glowing line drawings and there is a remarkably light in all of the transparent shapes and their shadows. Her work appears to be the sum of material and form. Fischer uses synthetic materials like PVC and acrylic glass, still her compositions seem organic and natural. The colors are fluorescent yellow, blue, red, green and orange, and light-up the space they reside.

BERTA FISCHER at Fuentes Gallery: Born 1973, Dusseldorf, Germany, lives and works in Berlin.

Berta Fischer, Color Plexiglas, 2014, James Fuentes Gallery

Berta Fischer, Color Plexiglas, 2014, James Fuentes Gallery

Berta Fischer, Color Plexiglas, 2014, James Fuentes Gallery

Berta Fischer, Color Plexiglas, 2014,
James Fuentes Gallery

Berta Fischer, Color Plexiglas, 2014,
James Fuentes Gallery

Berta Fischer, Color Plexiglas, 2014,
James Fuentes Gallery

Berta Fischer, Color Plexiglas, 2014,
James Fuentes Gallery

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Armory Arts Week 2015

March 3-8

New York City

Another Armory Arts Week ends in NYC, but art in New York City is a ongoing whirlwind of gallery and museum shows. No one person can ever take it all in.

If you missed the Armory Show, the NYC Art Fairs will continue, with The Affordable Art Fair just around the corner and the giant Frieze Art Fair Week happening May 14 - 17, 2015.

Armory Arts Week ends.

Editorial Commentary:

The take away from seeing all of the art at this year's Armory Arts Week:

The artistic theory behind the image or object defines art today and creates the value aesthetically and within the art world/market! In reality, this has always been true - all art is perception! There is value in beauty, perfect presentation, talented technique, time and certain mediums, but those pale in comparison to the "intellectual concept" of each work of art.
- partially based on writings of Arthur Danto

Our comments on Ben Murray's painterly artworks, oil on canvas, earlier in this article: 

Many collectors still want painterly oil on canvas "paintings". Across the US and around the world, MFA programs create artists who are great painters in traditional techniques, but canvases of this nature are rare at the Armory Show. This is true of most of the major art fairs, today. Conceptual works in all media, digital photography, sculpture, video, documented performance, installations and more simple, graphic paintings rule the day.

Pluralism has been suggested to describe the art of the 21st century, but in reality no styles or -isms truly define these times. Riding at the top of the art world today are only individual artists, some working in several styles, who have one thing in common, they have become famous. When we look at the contemporary culture of the world, fame is the most important factor in so many areas: Chefs, Entertainment, Politics, Law, Architecture, Entrepreneurship, and now it seems to be driving the Art World.  

FOOD

Deviled
Crab Salad

It is wonderful to indulge the sweetness of fresh crab meat. This recipe uses crab, fresh eggs and chopped red onion mixed with a mustard and yogurt cream for a luncheon treat.

INGREDIENTS

12 onces fresh crab meat (or frozen, thawed)

2 hard-cooked eggs, chopped

2 teaspoons chopped parsley

1/4 cup minced red onion

4 teaspoons Dijon mustard

1/2 cup Dilled Sauce*

2 lettuce leaves per serving

12 yellow grape tomatoes, quartered

1 lemon wedge per serving

Salt & Pepper to taste

* Dill Sauce: 

Combine 1/2 cup Mayonnaise with 1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill, mix well.

DIRECTIONS

Pic over the fresh crab meat for shells, (even frozen has some). Try not to shred the meat too much. If you use crab legs, cut the meat with a medium chop. Put all of the ingredients, except the lettuce, tomatoes and lemon, into a bowl and mix gently. Add Salt & Pepper to taste. Place some lettuce on four separate plates, spoon in one quarter of the crab salad onto the lettuce and top with the tomatoes and a lemon wedge on the side to garnish. (If not served immediately, cover and refregerate. Any remaining salad should also be stored in the fridge.)

Until Later,

Jack

ARTSnFOOD, is an online publication dedicated to The Pursuit of Happiness through the Arts, and Food ™ All rights reserved. Concept, Original Art, Text & Photographs are © Copyright 2015 Jack A. Atkinson under all International intellectual property and copyright laws. Any gallery, event, museum, fair or festival photographs were taken with permission of the event and the galleries. Images © individual artists, fabricators, respective owners or assignees.