Ever the intrepid event, the fair has moved once again this year, taking over a full two floors of 625 Madison Avenue between 58th and 59th Streets, right in the heart of the city. The fair’s curatorial focus this year, IN EXCESS, was an intriguing concept, offering any number of jumping points for the artists on hand. Massive installations and hulks of material were the order of the day, like Michael A. Robinson‘s enormous cluster of utilitarian lights, bathing the surrounding space in a gentle glow, while in another space, artist Super Future Kid had built a dream-like world, filling the space with clusters of clouds and colorful pieces. Other works relied on historical allusions to periods of historical excess, harking back to the gilded age, pre-revolution France, and more, like Victoria-Idongesit Udondian‘s pieces, which translated similar epochs into a strangely evocative environment. By contrast, artist Kate Klingbeil’s transmutation of the bizarre stylings of Thomas Kinkade made for another entry on the idea of excess, one relying on the idea of a world beyond the bounds of traditional modes of practice, and the visual excess of the ornamental and banal.
Osamu Kobayashi’s featured in Whitewall