VOLTA NY
March 7–10, 2013
Hours: Thursday 2–8pm,
Friday–Saturday 11–8pm,
Sunday 11–6pm
New location: 82MERCER
Entrance at 76 Mercer Street
(between Spring and Broome Streets)
New York, NY 10013
VOLTA NY marks its downtown debut at 82MERCER in SoHo for the exclusively solo-artist fair’s sixth edition. 94 galleries, spanning 6 continents and spotlighting artists from 38 nations, present a dynamic survey of the most innovative and salient contemporary art positions across two floors of the Mercer Street venue.
A diverse contingent of exhibitors put the kunst in this SoHo loft’s halle, including Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill (Graz), spotlighting multimedia maestro Poklong Anading, a featured artist in No Country, the first UBS Global MAP show at the Guggenheim; Beatriz Esguerra Art (Bogotá), showing paperlike rolled ceramics by Carol Young; Philadelphia’s Gallery Joe, presenting minimalist color-field watercolors by Nicole Phungrasamee Fein (participant in multiple contemporary watercolor group exhibitions in 2012); Christian Larsen (Stockholm), featuring East-West vanitas by recent Kunst Universität Linz graduate Haruko Maeda; Marx & Zavattero (San Francisco), unveiling idyllic landscapes by Arngunnur Ýr, ahead of a major exhibition at Àrnes Art Museum in her native Iceland; Montreal’s galerie antoine ertaskiran, featuring a timely sociopolitical array by Dominique Blain (her classic installation Missa celebrated the first anniversary of Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ Pavilion of Quebec and Canadian Art last autumn, joining Blain’s permanent installation Mirabilia); and Skoto Gallery (New York), showing reclaimed-media figurative sculpture from Nigerian-born, Brooklyn-based artist Osaretin Ighile.
A strong international contingent beyond the United States and Western Europe is indicative of VOLTA NY‘s global aim. BRUNDYN + GONSALVES (Cape Town) presents young Johannesburg-based Mohau Modisakeng, whose photography was featured in New York’s Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts’ curatorial series NEWSFEED: Anonymity & Social Media in African Revolutions and Beyond; GE Galería (Monterrey, Mexico) spotlights Vargas-Suarez Universal‘s graphically rendered, cosmic oil and enamel paintings; Popopstudios International Center for the Visual Arts (Nassau, Bahamas) features mixed-media works by Heino Schmid, who participated in Three Moments, the Caribbean Pavilion at the 2010 Liverpool Biennial; Tokyo’s MA2 Gallery unveils a colorful installation of 2012 Takashimaya Art Award winner Kyotaro Hakamata‘s shaped-acrylic figures; and INDA Galéria (Budapest) shows multimedia dynamo Balázs Kicsiny, who followed a major solo exhibition at the Hungarian National Gallery with last spring’s Killing Time at the Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis.
Several exhibitors stage site-specific projects in addition to their booth presentations. On 82MERCER’s ground floor, Halsey McKay Gallery (East Hampton) contrasts Timothy Bergstrom‘s mixed-media Glound canvases with resin and Plexiglas sculptures by David Kennedy Cutler, echoing his industrial Greenpoint neighborhood. Upstairs, HilgerBROTKunsthalle (Vienna) positions the installation Grounds for Standing and Understanding by Babak Golkar (who was shortlisted for The Victoria and Albert Museum’s Jameel Prize) adjacent to abstracted urban scenes by their showcase artist Miha Štrukelj, Slovenia’s representing artist in the 2009 Venice Biennale. Plus, Daniel Rothbart (Galerie Depardieu, Nice) unveils his performance Invisible Ablutions on Saturday afternoon at the fair. He collaborates with Brooklyn-based choreographer Jessica Harris, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation’s 2012 Graduate Arts Scholarship recipient, who manifests a temporary emotional context to Rothbart’s sculptural vessels in a meditative, task-driven dance.
Solo projects from notable and emerging international artists advance VOLTA‘s original mandate for a tightly focused program that fosters a dynamic gaze into the current art climate and salient contemporary positions—regardless of the artist’s or gallery’s age. VOLTA NY complements the exciting program of art presented by its sister fair, The Armory Show, with shared VIP access, plus direct shuttles connecting both fairs. Additionally, VOLTA NY gratefully acknowledges its 2013 Primary Hotel Partner, The James New York.
A full list of artists and galleries, plus visiting hours and access information, can be found by visiting our website.
About VOLTA
VOLTA was founded in Basel in 2005 by dealers Kavi Gupta (Chicago), Ulrich Voges (Frankfurt) and Friedrich Loock (Berlin). The ninth edition in Basel, VOLTA9, will coincide with Basel Art Week and will be held from June 10 to 15, 2013.