At art fairs, gallerists sometimes heed the not-so-invisible hand of the attention economy, mounting big, gauche presentations that seem designed to be photographed first and appreciated second. But spare, unflashy art can thrive at a fair, too, and the newly opened edition of Independent New York offers solid proof of that.
This year’s Independent, which opened its preview at Spring Studios in Tribeca on Thursday, is alive with energy in more than a few of its booths, but the jolts that the fair offers are largely gentle. That’s a good thing.
There are no artistic stunts and no mega-galleries at this fair, whose 77 exhibitors are predominantly mid-size operations. As has been the case in the past at Independent, which this year turns 15, the emphasis is on glossy, sleek art with an international flavor.
The fair is guilty of aesthetic conservatism—the vast majority of the work on view is painting, and much of it is fairly apolitical this time around. Then again, that’s the case for every art fair. This one, at least, has its pleasures. There’s a plethora of pieces by under-recognized and dead artists, and generally, there are few stars or market phenomena among the living, which means that there is new talent waiting to be noticed.
Adebunmi Gbadebo at Nicola Vassell Gallery
The vessels set at the center of this booth are made not from clay crafted from soil that Adebunmi Gbadebo has collected from True Blue, the site of a former plantation in South Carolina where her ancestors were once enslaved. Fired using techniques more commonly associated with Nigerian pottery, the vessels have also been affixed with hair sourced from barbershops in New York. These vessels, with their partially sunken mouths, appear soft and partially deflated, but their hardened soil renders them firm and durable, ensuring that her family’s fragile and often invisible history lingers on. Beneath one vessel, Gbadebo has placed the bones of a deer, a gesture that underlines how these vessels are essentially exhumations of the past.
