A showcase of big, brassy art takes over New York’s Javits Center, Thursday afternoon, September 8, 2022, with the opening of the Armory Show’s 2022 edition.
New York’s premiere contemporary art fair returns to New York’s Javits Center for the second iteration of the fair since the COVID-19 pandemic.
This year’s offering is a smorgasbord of artworks, from light and easy appetizers to entrees packed full of heavy carbs. The range of art is inundating, spreading itself over the vastness of the massive convention center. An impressive display of one of the premiere contemporary art fairs.
Walking into the fair you get a scenic preview of the fair’s hugeness, as your eyes take in the vistas in the distance. Large-scale brassy artworks hang on 10 to 12-foot-high white walls. The height matters, elevating the artworks and allowing for airy gallery display booths.
Cruising the fair’s maze of isles, you feel your head turn this way and that way, eyes being pulled in every direction. Each step presents you with another work of art to consider and evaluate. It is a circus of displayed artworks. A barrage of works attacking you from every point of view. Quality seems to be the question at hand. The types and categories of art are endless. There is so much going on from isle to isle, an inflated excess of art. At moments, a Walmart feeling looms over the crowded space. An art fair that has everything you need, in whatever style, shape, color or size you are looking for your collection, just add it to your shopping cart.
It’s hard to find the gems of art hidden amongst the vast offerings as you tour the show. If you’re shopping for art and searching for work to add to a collection or something to flush out the décor for a final room decorating project, or just the need to own something you love and can’t live without, “art”. You need a keen eye to spot the trophies. They are there and pop-up now and then as you cruise the show.
Trying to get a take on the art of the day, what is the Art-ism here? That’s a difficult question to answer, if at all. The fair is short-sided in offering a consensus which highlights the prevailing notion of contemporary today. Post-modernism still prevails. A mixed bag of ideas, ethics, and the concepts of art from artists’ minds and practices. Though within the fair the avant-garde may be hidden amongst the vast spread by dealers and galleries.
The exhibiting dealers and galleries display, and wall hangings includes everything from paintings, drawings, prints, watercolors, as well as sculptures, installations, videos, techno-media and other. There’s something for everyone who buys, collects, and decorates.
The 2022 art fair edition included 247 exhibitors from more than 30 countries. The show saw 42,000 visitors during the four-day art fair that helped to kick-off the 2022 post pandemic New York City’s fall art season.
Armory Show dealers and galleries reported strong art sales for the four-day fair with sales reaching into the millions. Sales prices ranged from thousands to hundreds of thousand, and into the millions for works. Several galleries reported they sold out their show inventor on the first day.
The fair was a treat in some respects for art lovers, buyers, collectors, or artists and it offers a fun and entertaining tour of culture and art, under an airy skylight venue in the heart of the New York’s Hudson Yards center, just blocks from New York City’s West Chelsea art gallery district.