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VOLTA NY is thrilled to announce the exhibitors for the exclusively solo-artist fair's sixth edition, marking its downtown debut at 82MERCER in SoHo. 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.
Returning exhibitors exemplify VOLTA NY's mandate of supporting superlative talent from all generations: from the distinguished international solo museum history and Venice Biennale participation of septuagenarian Serbian artist Radomir Damnjan (showing with Federico Bianchi Contemporary Art, Milan); to young Winston Chmielinski (represented by envoy enterprises, New York), whose sensual portraiture has appeared in multiple solo exhibitions and as album artwork for local twee-pop titans The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.
Two galleries mount strong separate showcases at The Armory Show and VOLTA NY, reflecting their respective versatilities at the big fair on the piers and its younger SoHo sister. At VOLTA NY, Rena Bransten Gallery (San Francisco) stages an evocative Chinese rental reading library installation by Hung Liu, subject of three unique solo museum exhibitions in California this year; and Los Angeles' Richard Heller Gallery shows some local love with Brooklyn-based artists Amy Bennett (featured in last year's XS: Extra Small at the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Devin Troy Strother (collaborated on the Harlem Postcards Project at the Studio Museum in Harlem).
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© Poklong Anading
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 recently featured in New York's Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts' curatorial series NEWSFEED: Anonymity & Social Media in African Revolutions and Beyond; GE Galería (San Pedro Garza García, 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.
39 first-time VOLTA exhibitors help put the kunst in this SoHo loft's halle, including 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; 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.
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.
The United States' 40 representatives hail from the East and West Coasts and the nation's broad interior. Marx & Zavattero (San Francisco) features idyllic far-north landscapes by Arngunnur Ýr, ahead of a major exhibition at Àrnes Art Museum in her native Iceland; Jonathan Ferrara Gallery (New Orleans) presents collaged, mixed-media adventures from Prospect 2 Biennial artist Michael Pajon; Miami's KAVACHNINA CONTEMPORARY features emotive portraiture from Seville's Salustiano, who realized multiple Swiss solo exhibitions in 2012; Western Exhibitions (Chicago) spotlights Elijah Burgher, featured in Optotype, the first section of 2012's Skowhegan alumni exhibition at 92YTribeca; Boston's Ellen Miller Gallery shows elaborate floral “constructed drawings” on Mylar by Imi Hwangbo; and Mixed Greens' (NYC) artist Stas Orlovski participated in the contemporary project portion of LACMA's recently concluded Drawing Surrealism exhibition.
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 in June 2013.