The 11 Best Booths at The Armory Show 2023
Interior view of The Armory Show, 2023. Photo by Vincent Tullo. Courtesy of The Armory Show.
A year shy from celebrating its 30th year, The Armory Show opened its VIP day on Thursday with over 225 galleries spread across the Javits Center in New York. Now in its third year at Javits, with its soaring ceilings and a 300,000-square-foot layout—designed by architecture firm Frederick Fisher and Partners—the space has become a familiar home for the fair. Yet what makes this particular iteration different is the recent announcement of Frieze’s acquisition of The Armory Show.
“This edition is still business as usual,” The Armory Show’s executive director Nicole Berry told Artsy. Still, the closely watched affair—and the concurrent, though much younger fair Frieze Seoul—again kick off the fall art season’s tightly packed schedule.
In New York alone, however, The Armory Show anchors an extremely busy couple of weeks, which include the opening of downtown Manhattan’s new performance venue Perelman Performing Arts Center; the inaugural PHOTOFAIRS New York, a new edition of the Shanghai-born lens-based art fair (plus concurrent, returning fairs such as Independent 20th Century, Affordable Art Fair, and Art on Paper); and numerous gallery and museum show openings. And once again this year, The Armory Show offers a grand yet contained showcase of contemporary art, from familiar blue-chip to strong emerging work, for collectors and art watchers alike.
Interior view of The Armory Show, 2023. Photo by Vincent Tullo. Courtesy of The Armory Show.
The Armory Show prides itself for being New York’s own art fair with a history of fostering careers of many local artists and galleries. A global outlook towards market trends, however, is the brand’s strong suit, one that attracts galleries from 35 countries this year. “Our identity remains unique because we encompass contemporary art on an international level—our roots are regional but our scale is global,” said Berry. “Our New York roots give us a strong cultural identity.” Art from The Armory Show stretches as far as Queens, with the fair’s collaboration with the USTA during the US Open for a second year.
The ample space offered by the Javits Center helps the fair connect with other symbolic local institutions and even host them in the fair’s programming. The five-decade-old nonprofit Artists Space joins the show this year as the sophomore recipient of the Armory Spotlight program. At its complimentary booth, the influential experimental art institution hosts painter Drake Carr’s live portrait-making sessions, titled “Housecalls.” Part performance and part portrait-making inspired by fashion illustration, the creative rituals between the artist and his subjects were attracting fairgoers on opening day.
Teresita Fernández, Island Universe 2, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin.
Such projects are possible, Berry noted, thanks to the fair’s sprawling footprint, which also gives pride of place to the annual Platform Projects, 12 large-scale artworks organized this year by Eva Respini, Vancouver Art Gallery deputy director and director of curatorial programs. Standouts from this year’s presentation, titled as “Rewriting Histories,” includes a hand-formed charcoal “stacked landscape” by the Brooklyn-based mixed-media artist Teresita Fernández, presented by Lehmann Maupin; and Vaughn Spann’s Monument (2023), presented by David Castillo Gallery, a complete environment that surrounds the viewer with the vibrant color and texture of the artist’s well-known “Marked Man” series.
Here, we share the 11 best booths from the 2023 edition of The Armory Show.
Gisela McDaniel, installation view in Pilar Corrias Gallery’s booth at The Armory Show, 2023. Photo by Nick Knight. Courtesy of Pilar Corrias Gallery.
London-based Pilar Corrias Gallery’s solo booth featuring the works of Nebraska-born painter Gisela McDaniel invites fairgoers to contemplate the emotional layers of figurative painting. The Indigenous CHamoru artist’s portraits of BIPOC women and nonbinary New Yorkers stem from McDaniel’s recent move to the city, where ideas of familiarity, community, and solitude are commonly experienced through the urban chaos. The artist’s portraits of sitters who are mostly strangers, however, assume Guam’s sacred jungles as backgrounds and are exhibited with voice recordings of each subject.
Sean Kelly Gallery
Galleries Section, Booth 114
With works by Anthony Akinbola, Dawoud Bey, James Casebere, Julian Charrière, Jose Dávila, Awol Erizku, Laurent Grasso, Candida Höfer, Callum Innes, Idris Khan, Hugo McCloud, Landon Metz, Mariko Mori, Sam Moyer, Shahzia Sikander, Janaina Tschäpe, and Kehinde Wiley
Installation view of Sean Kelly Gallery’s booth at The Armory Show, 2023. Photo by Adam Reich. Courtesy of Sean Kelly Gallery, New York/Los Angeles.
At Sean Kelly Gallery’s booth, a group presentation includes several gallery fixtures, including Awol Erizku and Shahzia Sikander. Works by these two artists nod to other art on view outside the fair.
Erizku’s first exhibition with the Chelsea gallery, titled “Delirium of Agony,” opens at Sean Kelly during the fair week, expanding the photographic artist’s practice to painting, sculpture, and works on paper.
Meanwhile, Sikander’s video work Reckoning (2020) will run on around 90 Times Square billboards, filling them with images inspired by traditional Indo-Persian and Turkish miniature paintings of fighting figures. The project is the September chapter in Times Square Arts’s monthly Midnight Moment, which sees an artist’s work displayed across Times Square for three minutes every night before midnight.
Southern Guild
Galleries Section, Booth 345
With works by Zizipho Poswa, Kamyar Bineshtarigh, Manyaku Mashilo, and Oluseye
Installation view of Southern Guild’s booth at The Armory Show, 2023. Photo by Casey Kelbaugh. Courtesy of Southern Guild.
Following the recent announcement of its upcoming expansion to Los Angeles, Cape Town’s Southern Guild lands on the East Coast not only with this dazzling four-artist booth at the fair with sculptor Zizipho Poswa, painters Kamyar Bineshtarigh and Manyaku Mashilo, and conceptual artist Oluseye—but also with Poswa’s bronze sculpture at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center at the US Open.
The abstracted bronze sculpture, titled Mam’uNoBongile (2023), replicates a local woman from the artist’s hometown in Eastern Cape, carrying a stalk of bananas over her head, like many women who contribute to the everyday economy by transporting various goods this way. Presenting the work at the stadium during a globally watched tournament amplifies the work’s message about under-appreciated female labor and overlooked elegance.
Kasmin
Galleries Section, Booth 202
With works by Diana Al-Hadid, Alma Allen, Theodora Allen, Tina Barney, William N. Copley, Cynthia Daignault, Liam Everett, Barry Flanagan, Jane Freilicher, vanessa german, Daniel Gordon, Alexander Harrison, Elliott Hundley, Claude Lalanne, Matvey Levenstein, Lyn Liu, Robert Motherwell, James Nares, Roxy Paine, Elliott Puckette, Alexis Ralaivao, George Rickey, Jan-Ole Schiemann, Bosco Sodi, Bernar Venet, and Tom Wesselman
Installation view of Kasmin’s booth at The Armory Show, 2023. Courtesy of Kasmin.
Chelsea resident Kasmin timed its announcement of signing the young Chinese artist Lyn Liu with its Armory Show presentation; a focal point of the booth is the artist’s oil-on-linen painting of a herd of sheep, titled Herd mentality-Flock (2023).
The gallery is featuring works by over 20 of its artists, including Elliot Hundley and Bosco Sodi, who each currently have solo shows at the gallery that opened this week. Other standout works include a soft, sprawling painting of a person tightening a bow over a charcoal-colored jacket by rising painter Alexis Ralaivao, whose first solo show at the gallery was held earlier this summer; and a tiny yet stunning landscape painting by Matvey Levenstein, picturing a poetic, light-filled view of Long Island’s North Fork, where he is based with his wife, fellow painter Lisa Yuskavage.
Nara Roesler
Galleries Section, Booth 201
With works by Elian Almeida, Cristina Canale, Carlito Carvalhosa, Jonathas de Andrade, Bruno Dunley, André Griffo, Isaac Julien, Lucia Koch, Fabio Miguez, Vik Muniz, Tomie Ohtake, Abraham Palatnik, Daniel Senise, Amelia Toledo, JR, and José Patrício
Installation view of Nara Roesler’s booth at The Armory Show, 2023. Photo by Charles Roussel. Courtesy of Nara Roesler.
Another gallery with an ambitious booth that pays homage to its current solo shows is Brazil’s Nara Roesler. Amid the booth’s mini group show that features various gallery staples—such as Cristina Canale, Carlito Carvalhosa, and Jonathas de Andrade—the gallery’s booth also includes José Patrício, who is having the first U.S. exhibition of his career at the gallery’s Chelsea space. In addition to the show, which spans 15 works that the Recife-based artist created between 2005 and this year, at the fair, a blue-hued geometric, hallucinatory painting made out of plastic puzzle pieces contributes to the artist’s U.S. debut.
Timothy Lai, installation view in Jack Barrett’s booth at The Armory Show, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Barrett, New York.
Tribeca’s Jack Barrett dedicates its booth to Timothy Lai, the Rhode Island–based painter known for his emotionally complex paintings that delve into the self through his use of light, earthy tones, and hints of abstraction. The paintings on view vary in scale and narrative, which Lai keeps somewhat enigmatic, with contemplative bodies trapped in allusive interiors. Isolated yet entangled, figures and dogs with distant gazes hold themselves away from the viewer. Lai’s warm brushstrokes, however, radiate compassion and sympathy for his subjects. In the large-scale Looking Out (2023), a nude couple is separated by a thin curtain and a curiosity for the outside. The woman rests her head over the window, her stare veiled by the thin shroud while the man sprawls over the carpeted floor, watching her interest in the world on the other side.
GRIMM
Galleries Section, Booth 111
With works by Tjebbe Beekman, Gabriella Boyd, Dirk Braeckman, Anthony Cudahy, Matthias Franz, Tommy Harrison, Volker Hüller, Arturo Kameya, Michael Raedecker, Matthias Weischer, and Letha Wilson
Installation view of GRIMM’s booth at The Armory Show, 2023. Courtesy of GRIMM.
GRIMM, the Amsterdam-born gallery with a Tribeca location, exhibits a suite of paintings by a group of artists from Europe and the Americas that explore psychological layers of the self. Amsterdam-based Peruvian painter Arturo Kameya’s acrylic and clay powder rendition of a headless male figure, titled Batman (2023), for example, is imbued with an eeriness, not only though the absent head but also the figure’s positioning inside a bizarre train compartment.
Brooklyn-based Anthony Cudahy’s life-size rendition of a young man from behind, titled Sebastian, before or after (2023), is veiled with a soothing mystery through the artist’s inviting color palette and the figure’s gentle but confident pose. The work, with an asking price of $55,000, sold to an American institution.
José De Jesús Rodríguez, installation view in Charles Moffett’s booth at The Armory Show, 2023. Courtesy of Charles Moffett.
Tribeca-based gallery Charles Moffett presents a solo booth dedicated to José De Jesús Rodríguez. The Brooklyn-based artist explores fresco paintings through a contemporary lens. Blending the traditional technique with oil and airbrush, he forms dreamscapes inspired by his personal memories and found images culled from print media and the internet. Between the fluidity of remembrance and the physicality of fresco, Rodriguez’s five works capture a sense of both nostalgia and mysterious joy. Two of the works, After Anne Carson and Memorial park (both 2023) sold on opening day for $18,000 and $15,000, respectively.
Jessica Silverman
Galleries Section, Booth 213
With works by Sadie Barnette, Julie Buffalohead, Judy Chicago, Theresa Chromati, David Huffman, Hayal Pozanti, Clare Rojas, Rose B. Simpson, Rupy C. Tut, Catherine Wagner, Pae White, Chelsea Ryoko Wong, and Margo Wolowiec
Installation view of Jessica Silverman’s booth at The Armory Show, 2023. Photo by Lance Brewer. Courtesy of Jessica Silverman.
A multitude of mediums is also evident in Jessica Silverman’s booth, which brings to New York a medley of its repertoire. A modest-scaled patinated bronze and clay bead earring sculpture by Rose B. Simpson, titled I Need You (2023), embodies its romantic title with a female figure hugging a baby. (Five works by Simpson sold in the opening hours of the fair.) Meanwhile, feminist icon Judy Chicago’s lightbox and stained glass sculpture and painting hybrid, Flowering Glass (2023), radiates nocturnal purple and pink hues in a form that espouses feminine corporality and natural transformation. The latter work is particularly timely as Chicago’s most comprehensive New York museum survey to date opens next month at the New Museum.
Michael Kohn Gallery
Galleries Section, Booth 215
With works by Alicia Adamerovich, Chiffon Thomas, Faris Heizer, Ilana Savdie, Hadi Alijani, Heidi Hahn, Lita Albuquerque, Li Hei Di, Nir Hod, Rosa Loy, Siji Krishnan, Shiwen Wang, and William Brickel
Installation view of Michael Kohn Gallery’s booth at The Armory Show, 2023. Courtesy of Michael Kohn Gallery.
Los Angeles’s Michael Kohn Gallery exhibits artists from both sides of the country at the fair, including mixed-media sculptures by Los Angeles–based artist Chiffon Thomas; two untitled works by the artist sold on opening day for $30,000 and $26,000, respectively. The presentation is timely as Thomas will open his first museum exhibition, “The Cavernous,” at The Aldrich Contemporary in Connecticut next week. Another highlight is a ruby-hued abstraction by the California-born, Dusseldorf-based painter Heidi Hahn, who is known for her haunting renditions of the human form.
Installation view of Patel Brown’s booth at The Armory Show, 2023. Photo by Mikhail Mishin. Courtesy of Patel Brown.
Toronto- and Montreal-based gallery Patel Brown joins the fair with a two-artist presentation of Marigold Santos and Rajni Perera. In addition to the artists’ individual works in painting, the booth also includes a striking collaborative sculpture the artists made together. Titled Efflorescence / The Way We Wake (2023), the lively, large-scale floor piece made from a range of materials—polymer clay, styrofoam, paint, metallic powder, synthetic hair, pearls, steel, aluminum, floral foam, paper, and plastic—depicts a masked woman with oozing breasts, surrounded by faux fauna. The deity-like figure is enveloped by two-dimensional works on the walls, all capturing Santos’s and Perera’s joint interests in rituals of feminine power.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Southern Guild had opened a Los Angeles outpost. The outpost will open in February 2024.
