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What to See at The Armory Show — 9 Striking Design Installations to Catch at New York's Biggest Art Fair
By Gilda Bruno,
3 days ago
A new chapter has just begun for The Armory Show, New York City's largest art fair, which returns to Manhattan's Javits Center for the fourth consecutive year today through Sunday, September 8. Now part of the London and New York-based contemporary art media and events publisher Frieze, the influential showcase's 30th edition marks its debut under the leadership of the newly appointed Fair Director, Kyla McMillan. As global and disruptive as it has ever been, this year's Armory Show gathers an inspiring selection of galleries from around the world, representing over 235 creative platforms and 35 different countries across its Galleries, Solo, Focus, Presents, Platform, and Not-for-Profit sections.
With interdisciplinary talks scattered throughout its 3-day run and an off-site initiative bringing performance works, site-specific installations, and monumental sculptures across the city, including at US Open, the event immerses visitors in New York's cultural turmoil, predicting future trends and spotlighting the best — and the next — of today's artists. To help you navigate its extensive art and design exhibition program, I have selected 9 experimental design projects whose playfully inventive aesthetic will amuse the art lover, the home decorator, and the casual flaneur alike. Catch them all below.
1. Armory Off-Site
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Eva Robarts, Fantasy of Happiness, 2022 (Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and Ruttkowski;68. ) Image 2 of 4
An Te Liu, Venus Redux, 2018 (Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and Blouin Division) Image 3 of 4
Tomokazu Matsuyama, Runner, 2021 (Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta) Image 4 of 4
Claudia Peña Salinas, Tetl Mirror I, 2024 (Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and EMBAJADA, San Juan)
The fourth iteration of The Armory Show's Off-Site program gives New Yorkers the opportunity to catch performative works and activations, site-specific installations, and large-scale sculptures right on the streets of New York, opening up its curatorial offering to passersby.
My favorites from this initiative include Canadian artist An Te Liu's abstract bronze sculpture Venus Redux (2018), which beautifully reinterprets the concepts of strength and beauty explored in classical Greek sculpture; Japanese visual artist Tomakazu Matsuyama's shiny three-dimensional piece Runner (2021), whose silhouette reveals countless imperceptible details from a different angle, and is a metaphor for the subjectivity of the human gaze; mixed-media artist Eva Robarts' melancholic Fantasy of Happiness (2022) — a play on "memory, history, and cultural forces" where discarded, pastel-shaded tennis balls and a reclaimed gate are mounted together to symbolize the recklessness of childhood; and Mexican multidisciplinary artist Claudia Peña Salinas' enigmatic portal Tetl Mirror I (2024), where she incorporates objects and minerals collected in her native country into a sculpture that "unites ancestral beliefs with modern and minimalist lines".
PLATFORM
The Armory Show's Platform section brings together large-scale installations and site-specific works examining the connections between personal histories and larger cultural narratives.
2. Baró Galeria: Joana Vasconcelos
The set for Dior's Fall/Winter 2023 runway show created by artist Joana Vasconcelos (Image credit: Courtesy of Dior)
Presented by Palma-based gallery Baró Galeria, Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos's otherworldly textile sculpture is an absolute must-see at this year's fair. First unveiled during Dior's Fall/Winter 23-24 collection fashion show as a colossal, floating installation haunting the Parisian runway, this impressive piece is entirely shaped out of Christian Dior archive fabrics, LED lights, and hand-made crochet. Informed by an heroine from Norse mythology, the work's woven nature references the historically pivotal role of women within the textile industry, opening "a dialogue between high-fashion and the domestic realm of artisanal craft".
3. Goya Contemporary: Joyce J. Scott
Joyce J. Scott, Garden Ensconced , 2024 (Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and Goya Contemporary Gallery)
I am always in awe of artists who manage to convey strong messages through brightly colored, eye-catching work — and James J. Scott is no exception. At The Armory Show, the African-American polymath (yes, she is an artist, sculptor, quilter, performer, installation artist, and print-maker, as well as working as a lecturer and educator) presents an evocative tapestry with a subtle meaning. Realized with countless threads of vibrant fabric, Garden Ensconced (2024) captivates viewers by placing them in front of a myriad of cell-shaped eyes and mysterious creatures. For Scott, who grew up in a family of makers that turned to the crafting of functional objects as a "form of resistance to enslavement, sharecropping, migration, and segregation", each one of her works and the faces contained in it amplify the histories of her ancestors. Her practice manifests an "interplay of materials, memory, spirit, and truth-telling".
4. Tern Gallery: Anina Major
(Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and Tern Gallery)
Bahamas-born, US-based Anina Major re-appropriates straw-plaiting techniques inherited from her straw-market vendor grandmother to examine identity and the place she occupies in the world. Showcased by Nassau's Tern Gallery, her wooden installation explores the role of local street markets as a platform for economic and cultural exchange; particularly between individuals hailing from different backgrounds. Resembling a stall, Major's three-dimensional contribution will host live plants, video, and her meticulously crafted ceramics. Referencing the varying degree of goods and infrastructures available to different Bahamian marketplaces — as well as their proximity to water — the piece stands as a metaphor for her migration from an island to mainland US.
PRESENTS
The Armory Show's Presents section highlights emerging galleries that are no more than ten years old.
5. PROXYCO: Diana Sofia Lozano
Diana Sofia Lozano, Diematism , 2022 (Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and PROXYCO)
Colombian artist Diana Sofia Lozano's spirited botanical sculptures reminded me of handblown Murano glass chandeliers, and while her inspirations might not have anything to do with the storied Venetian craft, her work is truly fascinating.
Spotlighted within PROXYCO's group exhibition at The Armory Show, her Chinese dragon-like Diematism (2022) combines resin, clay, dyed wool, resin, fabric, acrylic, and mirror fragments into a spirited composition. The NYC creative's vision is just as complex as her skillful reworking of mediums: drawing on lab-engineered botanical hybrids that merge "the naturally occurring, genetically modified, and the imagined", she uses them as metaphors for identity construction and its societal performance across gender, sexuality, and politics. Lozano thinks that, much like in the animal world, certain plants are classified as stronger than others. She compares the vegetal and the human worlds to expose "the boundaries of colonial identificatory practices and geopolitical borders".
6. MURMURS
Roksana Pirouzmand, The Past Seeps Through the Present , 2022 (Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and MURMURS)
Part of the Los Angeles experimental art platform MURMURS' collective exhibition at The Armory Show, Iranian artist Roksana Pirouzmand's The Past Seeps Through the Present has got a cinematic essence to it that hooked me instantly. It got me thinking about that scene from Michel Gondry's 2004 drama film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind where protagonists Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet sit indoors on a rain-drenched couch. Don't ask me why — it just did.
Looking closely, you can see that the installation has a deconstructed, terracotta body in it; half resting on a mid-century modern couch, half hovering above it. To me, the artwork speaks about the cyclicality of life and the things, and people, that linger on even when we can no longer see them. What do you see?
7. KDR: Ana Won
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Ana Won, Visions of the wind, 2024 (Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and KDR) Image 2 of 2
Ana Won, The immortality of affections, 2024 (Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and KDR)
I am absolutely in love with these wooden and painting works by Argentinian artist Ana Won, and I could easily see them work as whimsical additions to every home decorator's wall art collection — and certainly to my own. Part of her Immortality of affections series, these reveal the "magical and alchemical spiritual approach" to both art and life that informs all of her work. Raised in a Catholic household, Won's stunningly aesthetic pieces bear clear references to Christian faith (as you can see in the rosary-like beads of Visions of the wind ), as well as reflecting her fascination with Argentina's pre-historical caverns and native northwestern Tucumán culture. At once beautiful, fun, and functional, this collection is imbued with a childlike energy, manifesting Won's urge for creative expression at its most authentic and uncontrolled.
FOCUS
The Armory Show's Focus section gathers solo and dual artist presentations focused on the intersection of environmental issues and personal and political climates, as well as pondering their interaction with race and gender.
8. WHATIFTHEWORLD
Chris Soal, More Than I Could Tell You , 2024 (Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and WHATIFTHEWORLD)
Sometimes there's no "deep" explanation to liking certain artworks; you are just drawn to them because they are weird, unusual, and fun. That's what attracted me to the textural and sensory practice of rising South African artist Chris Soal, and particularly to the More Than I Could Tell You fuzzy sculpture he's bringing to The Armory in WHATIFTHEWORLD's group show.
Suspended between softness and spikiness, nature and acrylic, this curious piece emphasizes Soal's ability to charge abstraction with a relatable, life-like feel. Staring at its organic shape, one immediately feels like touching it to understand what it is made of — and is left wondering how that'd be. Largely informed by the intricate history of his homeland, Soal employs sculpture to question our relationship to our surroundings, each other, and nature as a whole.
GALLERIES
The Armory Show's Galleries section is the core of the art fair, presenting solo and dual artist exhibitions and themes from acclaimed international galleries.
9. Vistamare
Claudia Comte, Leo (wooden cactus) , 2022 (Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and Vistamare)
On display within Venetian art and design gallery Vistamare's group exhibition at The Armory Show, Claudia Comte's Leo (wooden cactus) was just too cute not to include in this roundup. But it only takes a quick glance at her hypnotic portfolio to realize how much the Swiss artist has to bring to the table besides the contagious aesthetic of her objects. Seamlessly juggling site-specific installation, painting, and sculpture, she looks to the world's biomorphic forms to unleash the history and memory trapped in them through her creations. Stemming from a mixture manual, industrial, and technological techniques, Comte's amusing objects "pay testament to the intelligence and transformative capacities of the ecological world".
The Armory Show is open at Javitz Center, New York, through September 8
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