Good evening! This month always brings a plethora of fresh works by artists presented in galleries and art fair booths around Manhattan. This newsletter edition focuses on artists currently on view in galleries; the next edition will focus on selections from the fairs.
I am also delighted to share that this time last year, my newsletter featured artists whose works are now retailing for more than double and whose works have been placed in strong collections, public institutions and museums.
As always, please do not hesitate to reach out if you would like to go to an art fair or a gallery walk around town. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the below!
Pro Art Fair Tip: if you take a photo of an artwork on a booth, the next photo you take should always be the caption or gallery name so we know where to find the work. Thank you in advance for not DMing me caption-less photos.
MADELINE HOLLANDER
Vessel Hopscotch #2 (Steps 1 - 18), 2023
Watercolor from water sourced from natural spring beneath the Met, ink, and graphite on archival paper
Artwork: 30 x 22 inches (76.2 x 56 cm)
Framed: 33 x 25 1/2 inches (84 x 65 cm)
$5,500
MADELINE HOLLANDER
Hydro Parade: Costume Study #3, 2023
Watercolor from water sourced from natural spring beneath the Met, ink, and graphite on archival paper
Artwork: 18 x 24 in (45.7 x 61 cm)
Framed: 20 7/8 x 26 3/4 in (53 x 68 cm)
$5,000
“These works on paper spring from the artist’s research and preparation for Hydro Parade, a performance series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art which will run concurrently to the exhibition in June. Each watercolor is produced using water sourced from the natural spring beneath the museum, which runs alongside the Old Croton Aqueduct, the waterway that once supplied New York City.
Hollander’s research-based practice culminates in a series of records— choreography, video, installation, and notational drawings—exploring the oft-imperceptible movement within various systems and the actors they interpolate…
Together, the watercolors provide a depiction of Hydro Parade as a series of notations, maps, and costume design studies. In the Vessel Hopscotch series, mirrored outlines of the Met’s 18th century porcelain vessels, taken from the museum’s wall label maps, act as potential charts for movement, a game of perpetual hopscotch.” - Bortolami Gallery Press Release
DANA LOK
Hands, 2022
Oil and acrylic on paper
14 7/8 x 11 1/8 inches (37.8 x 28.3 cm)
$6,000 + frame
“My paintings and drawings are driven by my wonder at the enchanted interaction between material and content, surface and image, signs and the things they represent. I treat speech, representation, knowledge and the passage of time as activities that happen on a stage, not unlike tricks in a magic show. Some of my paintings give you a peek at the production from the side, or a view before the show begins. – Dana Lok”
SARAH AWAD
Yet to be titled, 2023
Oil and vinyl on canvas
Appx: 38 x 42 inches (96.5 x 106.7 cm)
$13,000
“Awad’s recent paintings prominently depict figures that scale themselves to occupy their respective fields of canvas. Elongated and doubled, these dynamic bodies feel unmistakably sculptural as they approach a scale twice that of their viewers.
Importantly, these figures emerge from abstracted grounds, forcing space into their surroundings. What begin as bold geometric washes become prompts for the teasing out of anatomy, faces, and appendages. The resulting paintings house fragmented bodies that navigate pictorial space.” - Night Gallery Press Release
KEVIN SABO
Promegranite Promenade, 2023
Acrylic, pencil, and oil pastel on canvas
40 x 30 inches (101.6 x 76.2 cm)
$4,200
KEVIN SABO
Oui Oui, Baby, 2023
Acrylic, pencil, and oil pastel on canvas
20 x 16 inches (50.8 x 40.6 cm)
$2,000
“He brings his signature ladies in their chic drag outfits, accessorized with their Yorkies, martini glasses, flowers, butterflies, and dragonflies. As a celebration of queer joy, Sabo’s work is not blind positivity.
The queer community is keenly aware of the many anti-LGBTQ+ laws being introduced and passed into state and local governments that garner national attention, like in Tennessee, Texas, and Florida, aiming to ban queer expressions, like drag. In the 2023 legislative session alone, the ACLU tracked eleven bills that were passed into law in six states. In Virginia, where Sabo lives in Richmond, a city known for being the inviting safe haven for queer folk, the state’s new Republican governor is introducing guidelines to restrict the rights of trans students. As the former capital of the Confederacy, Richmond exists in contradictory states.
Sabo creates his sassy, celebratory queens under these complex conditions…Sabo refuses to let the toxic political rhetoric in Virginia to impact his love for Richmond. Created at a time of increased attacks from the far right on the trans community in many states of the US, Sabo’s work confronts the right with the inconvenient truth of queer vitality. By representing queer joy in lightheartedness and recognizing the attacks that his community faces in subtle nods, his paintings are steadfast assertions that LGBTQ+ lives thrive despite the growing challenges. They are seen and they are heard.” - Kates-Ferri Projects Press Release
HOLLY COULIS
Corner Lemon, Floating Lemon, 2023
Gouache on Arches paper
18 x 23 3/4 inches (45.72 x 60.33 cm)
$5,500 + frame
HOLLY COULIS
Wavy Dish Still Life, 2023
Gouache on Arches paper
18 x 23 3/4 inches (45.72 x 60.33 cm)
$5,500 + frame
“The artist has consistently grounded abstraction in the still life genre, populating her canvases with traditional subjects such as fruit, vessels, or kitchen items arranged on table tops. In the newest works these familiar forms have broken from their stillness entirely. Brushstrokes fly around the canvas in wholly animated movements of texture, color, and line. Space is pushed sideways and collapsed in on itself as relationships between tones weave in and out of foreground and background, creating a dynamic visual puzzle.” - Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery Press Release