The month of May in New York is nothing short of a combined marathon-sprint for the art industry. Fairs are popping up all over Manhattan, auctions are yielding conspicuous displays of excess wealth and galleries are staging buzzworthy exhibitions to attract the crowds. The nights are filled with dinners, parties, panels and everything in between. While Miami Art Week typically consists of one long week of events, New York’s May counterpart seemingly never ends. It started last week on the 10th with the opening of Future Fair and SPRING/BREAK, followed by Independent Art Fair and The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) on the 11th and 12th.
Future Fair was a standout of Art Week Part One. The young fair brought endless abstraction and bold curatorial decisions. A standout was Trotter & Sholer’s booth presented with Melhop Gallery, which paired colorful, mixed-media paintings by Alex Stern with equally vibrant cotton embroidery on canvas by Stewart Francis Easton. The two bodies of work complemented each other in a way that made it hard to believe their practices weren’t previously intertwined. Though working in different mediums, the parallel colors, shapes and textures made each piece visually stronger and more dynamic—a remarkable reminder of the power of good curating and one of the few presentations that still sticks out a week later.
