The Best Booths at New York Art Week 2022

Four fairs anchor the inaugural New York Art Week, an initiative involving galleries, museums, and auction houses that offers art lovers three boroughs’ worth of programming and exhibitions. The fairs making up the backbone of this new entry on the New York art calendar present a diverse array of works, ranging from the ancient to the hyper-contemporary, the blue chip to the cutting edge. Below are the standout booths from each.

Future Fair

Chelsea Industrial, 535 West 28th Street

Through May 7th

A high-spirited Future Fair kicked off its second IRL edition on Wednesday evening with an enthused crowd navigating the fair’s labyrinthine digs at Chelsea Industrial on West 28th Street (conveniently located a stone’s throw from the neighborhood’s galleries). The growing young fair—featuring 50 exhibitors, up from 34 last fall—is rife with pretty paintings and strange ceramics, and even a spotlight on alien furniture. Neon colors and fluffy textures are matched by an overall buoyant, welcoming ethos, which is only amplified by the fair’s tradition of pairing up galleries to share booths, and, at times, plan their presentations together.

Superposition and Rubber Factory

Booth F1

With works by Muna Malik, Ragini Bhow, and Kristoffer Ardeña

Superposition and Rubber Factory make a particularly compelling match, as both galleries chose to showcase dynamic abstractions by artists of color.

Superposition presents the latest works by Muna Malik—soft green gestural canvases marked with electric streaks of red and yellow, made from charcoal, acrylic, and pastel. Superposition founder Storm Ascher noted that just like her gallery, Malik is nomadic. Driven by research into climate change and displacement, the artist is always traveling to learn about how global warming affects different places and populations. The green works specifically (priced from $8,500 to $20,000; one had sold almost as soon as the fair opened) speak to the devastation of California wildfires, while a single, stunning cobalt blue piece responds to a recent research trip to Antarctica. “I’m loving the fact that even if she’s a Black artist, she doesn’t have to do Black figuration to prove that it’s still important what she’s talking about,” Ascher said.

Mike Tan, owner of Rubber Factory, echoed that sentiment in discussing the works of the two artists he’s showing: Kristoffer Ardeña and Ragini Bhow. “Everyone wants to support more diverse voices, but as artists of color, they want there to be a more rounded perspective of what we create,” Tan offered. “Beauty and craft, these things are domains of the master narrative—those should also be available to artists of color; they should be able to dictate what is beautiful.”

Ardeña is based in the Philippines and creates pieces from tarpaulin and house paint that are so densely layered they crack, speaking to the decay of the Earth, while also drawing on traditional Basahan rug making. Meanwhile, Bhow creates works that reflect on her experiences in the Rajasthan desert. Two canvases are shimmering constellations of blue and black—paintings made from minerals like mica, lapis, and obsidian. And whereas those intricate works seem to absorb light, nearby, her finely worked metal sheets, embedded with elaborate patterns, seem to emanate it. Bhow will open a solo show at Rubber Factory’s Lower East Side gallery on May 14th.

TERN Gallery

Booth U8

With works by April Bey, Anina Major, and Cydne Jasmin Coleby

The Bahamian TERN Gallery presents the works of three Bahamian women artists, all of whom are in various stages of gaining international reach and whose works address themes of Caribbeanness.

Anina Major presents a group of ceramic sculptures inspired by the local traditions of straw weaving; she forms her vessels and sculptures through a process that echoes that of weaving dried palm fronds. The finished works, diligently glazed to reflect light, are an ode to Major’s grandmother, a straw weaver.

Nearby, Cydne Jasmin Coleby’s dazzling collages delve into notions of self-love and self-actualization, as well as the way that Caribbean women are exoticized. And April Bey’s work, which is also featured in a current solo show at TERN, comes from the recent series “Colonial Swag,” which revolves around the artist’s imagined Afrofuturist world, Atlantica.

“The formalizing of more commercial Bahamian galleries has helped the visibility of Bahamian artists,” said TERN’s gallery manager Jodi Minnis (an artist in her own right) of the international reach being gained by Bahamian artists in the gallery’s program. “You have persons like Lavar Munroe and Tavares Strachan, who’ve been on the international circuit for quite some time, but they don’t have Bahamian representation.” Now, thanks to TERN, that’s changing.

Asya Geisberg Gallery and New Discretions

Booth F3

With works by Matthew Craven, Marjolijn de Wit, Ricardo Gonzalez, Todd Kelly, Rebecca Morgan, Katarina Riesing, Julie Schenkelberg, Brian Scott Campbell, Trish Tillman, Bob Mizer, Cary Leibowitz, Clarity Haynes, Emily Mae Smith, Gabriela Vainsencher, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Laure A. Leber, Letitia Quesenberry, Matthew Porter, Michael Bühler-Rose, Mickalene Thomas, Paul Gabrielli, and Vincent Tiley

Asya Geisberg and New Discretions teamed up to mount what might be described as a whimsical art dealer’s salon—replete with salmon-pink walls, utilitarian art objects, and a bar-turned-backroom. The gallerists’ vision not only breaks from the rows of evenly spaced paintings typically found in fair booths, but also maximizes the allotted square footage, allowing for a large and eclectic group of works to be shown at once. “We have such diverse programs, each of us, but we’ve managed to make enough connections between the two of us,” Geisberg said, “and we wouldn’t have done it without Future Fair making it happen.”

In one nook, we find a smattering of small watercolors by Rebecca Morgan, known for her satirical visions of buxom beauties, paired with a darling yet suggestive ceramic and cactus figurine by Trish Tillman. Tillman’s saloon-style doors shaped like hands, commissioned especially for the booth, are another highlight, flanking the far wall. Gems dot the spaces in between, from Bob Mizer’s 1960s photographs of playful, nearly nude young men; to a small 2014 painting by Emily Mae Smith; to a Mickalene Thomas portrait, hung above one of the artist’s striking upholstered chairs.

LatchKey Gallery, Over the Influence, and Emma Scully Gallery

Booth F2

With works by Jesse Wright, Verapat Sitipol, Hiroya Kurata, Jane Atfield, Brecht Wright Gander, and Sean Gerstley

The three galleries sharing this booth each approached the fair with a distinctive point of view—yet they work together harmoniously. LatchKey features the figurative works of Jamaican American artist Jesse Wright. “All of his work talks about the effects of migration in communities like Jamaica, where in order to survive and to thrive, a lot of times you have to leave home,” said LatchKey co-founder Amanda Uribe. Two of Wright’s paintings feature portraits of his relatives who have left home or will soon, showing the way his own family has been divided by migration.

In contrast, Over the Influence offers two takes on landscape: canvases by Verapat Sitipol, whose use of line and color give way to serene trees, fields, and bodies of water; and works by Hiroya Kurata, whose nostalgia-tinged paintings combine traditional landscape with unexpected elements of manga. The glue holding it all together is the buoyant furniture and sculpture of Emma Scully Gallery, including a delightful, six-foot-tall ceramic fruit bowl by Sean Gerstley and a cast-iron table resembling a giant gray mushroom by Charlotte Kingsnorth.

Pentimenti Gallery

Booth R1

With works by Anne Buckwalter

The Philadelphia-based Pentimenti Gallery turned over its booth to local artist Anne Buckwalter, who paints carefully orchestrated scenes that pay homage to her upbringing in Pennsylvania Dutch Country with an edge. These incredibly detailed gouaches—most of them priced between $5,000 and $6,500—are based on the rooms the artist grew up in or those of friends, though they’re enlivened with fictional tales of intimacy or subversion. One rather cheerful living room hosts a coffee table laid with a neat array of sex toys, while a pretty blue wallpapered bathroom is disrupted by a moment of privacy and a glimpse into the medicine cabinet. Scenes that initially appear sweet and endearing give way to something refreshingly unexpected.

As Pentimenti director Christine Pfister explained, the works convey that something has just happened or is about to; you feel as though you’re interrupting or have just missed out on the action. Notable, too, is Buckwalter’s freewheeling take on perspective, which breaks the rules, but in a way that’s interesting rather than bothersome. This slightly askew world, punctuated by pleasingly accurate renderings of antique and contemporary furniture alike, is endlessly engrossing.

—Casey Lesser

Independent

Spring Studios, 50 Varick Street

Through May 8

Independent has long been a darling of adventurous fairgoers. Returning for its 13th edition, this time with 67 international presentations by over 200 artists, the fair remains as strong as ever and is more than worth the trip downtown.

Bradley Ertaskiran

Floor 1, Booth 7

With works by Joseph Tisiga and Sally Tisiga

The watercolors and mixed-media works of Canadian Indigenous artist Joseph Tisiga are paired with the small beadwork pieces of his mother, Sally Tisiga, in a booth that offers an elegiac look at the past and a warning for the future. Joseph’s paintings are the stars here, imbued with the sadness inseparable from First Peoples’ histories, while also adding a dark humor to vistas that hint at manmade apocalypse. They challenge the viewer by placing them in the position of both cause of and victim to the destruction.

In one work, a figure performs a rite in a storage locker, leading us to wonder if these climate-controlled cubes where we stash our too-many possessions might be a habitat after environmental disaster. In another, a man sits, nearly naked, in a field strewn with garbage as a fire burns near a tarp, a prehistoric scene populated with detritus of the present.

The intricate beadwork of Joseph’s mother, Sally, is also worthy of attention. One particularly impressive work, The Truth Rises (2022), is a meditation on the unmarked graves recently discovered at numerous residential schools in Canada and a reminder of enduring colonial legacies.

Alison Jacques

Floor 5, Booth 22

With works by Sophie Barber

Sophie Barber’s paintings either beckon you in close or ask you to stand far back. Works tend to do that when they range in size from just over one inch to nine feet tall. These oils, priced from $2,000 to $30,000, jump from art history (a micro facsimile of Alex Katz’s Blue Umbrella), to the quotidien (copies of images the artist found while browsing the internet), to the highly personal (paintings of lovebirds, a repeated motif in Barber’s work).

The thick bunches of canvas on which she works lend the paintings a sculptural element—the smallest pieces are nearly as deep as they are wide—and reveal an artist pushing all of her materials in experimental directions. Calling these works fun might sound damning by faint praise, yet it’s anything but. Among the most joyous pieces by this extraordinarily young talent—Barber was born in 1996—are a large-scale picture of David Hockney cuddling a dachshund, and a smaller depiction of a lemon sculpted into a pig.

Kasmin

Floor 6, Booth 26

With works by vanessa german

The 11 sculptures by vanessa german on view here make you feel like you’re stepping into some extra-dimensional party as you walk through Kasmin’s booth. A squat red character with ceramic birds on its shoulders surveys the scene, bouncer-like, as a cobalt blue figure’s head nearly melts off its torso, and a bright yellow girl on a skateboard zooms by.

These humanoid assemblages—what the self-taught queer Black artist calls “power figures” or “tar babies”—are created from objects collected on her nomadic journeys. But on closer inspection, these effervescent pieces have a sense of foreboding about them, using objects weighted with complicated histories: tar, human hair, baby shoes. german takes this tension a step further, adding nonmaterial elements to the media list for each work: In addition to what is clearly seen here—“decorative resin lemons,” “oil paint stick,” “cloth”—these sculptures also contain “the sound of gunshots waking you up from sleep,” “rage,” and “a broken heart.” Not all is grim, though. Also on the lists: “freedom in the body,” “a miraculous healing,” “love.”

Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery

Floor 5, Booth 4

With works by Jennifer J. Lee

Jute, the affordable natural fiber that can be woven in coarse burlap, is far from a common surface when it comes to oil painting. But Jennifer J. Lee takes this humble fabric and spins magic with it, creating photorealistic works based on images she finds online. The handful of small paintings here (all of which sold in the $8,000 to $12,000 range) were created specifically for the fair, with an eye to placing their simple subjects in dialogue with one another while highlighting the artist’s deft technical abilities.

A drone shot from a Zillow listing seems to ooze apart as you get close to it, dissolving into green washes of color struck through with gray. A similar trick is on display in a close-up of a turkey BLT, which becomes so much pointillist noise when glimpsed too closely, a vague vertical construction when seen from afar. But as you move yourself to focus the image, it suddenly snaps together. These paintings and others—a full-frame shot of a plaid skirt, a pixelated interior—encourage this playful pas de deux between viewer and work and reward extended viewing.

REGULARNORMAL

Floor 1, Booth 4

With works by Bony Ramirez

Self-taught artist Bony Ramirez continues to paint distorted figures inspired by his time spent in the Dominican Republic as a child. While he has undoubtedly engaged with colonialism in the past, the works in this tightly focused presentation are lasered in on that history of violence and conflict.

A trio of half-length portraits of a young woman, backed by an oxidized red pattern that one might find on Delftware, is literally overlaid with sabers. On the opposite wall, a head is impaled on a spike above a pile of coconuts, blood dripping off the canvas as a crab pinches the decedent’s tongue. Also here are three of Ramirez’s sculptures, all incorporating conch shells (which are closely associated with the D.R.), which similarly emphasize trauma: Locks and chains abound, and, in one work, a shell sits atop a vase that has been pierced by a half dozen or so switchblades. These are works that are as powerful in their message as they are in their aesthetic presence.

—Brian P. Kelly

NADA New York

Pier 36, 299 South Street

Through May 8th

The New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) returns to New York after a four-year hiatus. The fair returns in good spirits at Pier 36 with much excitement driven by the return to in-person activities and engagements following the COVID-19 pandemic. Many gallerists that were present were enthusiastic about meeting, connecting, and collaborating with collectors in person.

NADA is self-described as the definitive not-for-profit art fair that foregrounds making contemporary art accessible. This makes for a spirited fair that features an eclectic mixture of emerging commercial galleries and nonprofit cultural spaces who join together to connect emerging and established collectors with on-the-rise artists. NADA reflects both the margin and the center of contemporary art practices, and remains one of the few fairs where outsider art has equal footing at the fairgrounds.

Anonymous Gallery

Booth 3.05

With works by Elliot Reed

One of Kendra Jayne Patrick’s curated spotlight booths—presented by NADA and TD Bank—is Anonymous Gallery’s solo presentation of Elliot Reed. Reed captivates audiences with a dazzling installation of Rhythm (2021), which features sleek Ducati motorcycles surrounded by stage lights and speakers. The booth is a restaging of Reed’s 2021 solo show “Rhythm” at the Kunsthaus Glarus in Switzerland. The six works from that exhibition are featured here, and include several abstract photographs, a video work, and the violently evocative 100 Knives (2021) installation, where knives are stabbed into a wall. All of the work reflects Reed’s practice of performance without the body. “The goal of the work is to give the appearance of the action that came before,” the artist told Artsy.

Anonymous Gallery delivers a museum-quality installation within the space of the fair in a presentation that is driven by communal engagement and audience interaction. This is reflected by the arduous effort needed to restage Rhythm. That included networking with local New York–based motorcycle communities and partnering with Performance Space, which loaned the lighting and sound equipment, founder and director Joseph Ian Henrikson informed Artsy. With limited size, Anonymous Gallery’s booth delivers an impressive and truly unique experience.

Patel-Brown

Booth 4.10

With works by Anique Jordan, Daniesha Nugent-Palache, Oluseye, Rajni Perera, and Shary Boyle

This Toronto-based gallery was in high spirits as it made its NADA New York debut with an impressive booth featuring a variety of artists working across sculpture, photography, and mixed media. Patel-Brown, which opened during the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, was one of the many galleries excited to meet with collectors after developing a thorough digital practice for online sales over the past two years. The gallery foregrounds works by artists of the global majority (across African, Caribbean, Indigenous, and Asian diasporic communities) working in Canada.

The eye-catching color photography by Jamaican Canadian artist Daniesha Nugent-Palache immediately attracts the viewer’s eye while walking the fairgrounds. The large-scale print You Can’t Spell Talons Without Salon (2019) features a woman’s arm in a glow-in-the-dark environment that shifts our attention from her body to her nails, jewelry, and the white bird perched on top of her elbow. The print, like her other work, which ranges from $2,400 to $4,000, uses objects related to the body to negotiate her identity rather than represent her likeness.

Across from Nugent-Palance’s work, visitors will encounter the incredible sculptural work of Nigerian Canadian artist Oluseye. His “Ploughing Liberty” series (2021), which ranges from $4,200 to $6,000, views cultural legacies of slavery and migration of Africans and Carribbeans in Canada through the prism of nationality. Oluseye does so by blending hockey sticks—often considered a beacon for white Canadian identity—with found agricultural tools to reference the historic, often overlooked labor that Black individuals have done in constructing Canadian history.

The booth was met with much excitement, with several editions of Nugent-Palance’s prints and the available work from Oluseye’s “Ploughing Liberty” series selling by midday Wednesday.

Ochi Projects

Booth 4.14

With works by Anna Valdez

Ochi Projects features a solo staging of works by Oakland-based artist Anna Valdez. The anthropologist-turned-painter takes inspiration from her studio and research practice to construct her large-scale, delightfully colorful paintings and ceramic sculptures. The works evoke the classical early 20th-century emphasis on the artist’s studio as a place of study that is found across modern works like Henri Matisse’s The Red Studio (1911). Valdez’s paintings feature her anthropological books, taxidermied birds, and her own ceramic sculptural work, which makes for an engrossing experience as the audience attempts to decipher the paintings from the multiple objects within them.

Valdez’s practice is informed by her past life as an anthropologist, where she learned to draft detailed images based on her archaeological digs, which is referenced in paintings like Magritte Inspired (2022). Gallery assistant Annabelle Liljegren expressed to Artsy the gallery’s excitement about returning to NADA with Valdez’s work, following its successful solo exhibition with the artist at its Los Angeles location last fall. Collectors at NADA mirrored the gallery’s enthusiasm for Valdez, as only three works remained for sale by midday Wednesday.

MOTHER Gallery

Booth 2.07

With works by Anders Hamilton, Alexandra Rubinstein, Bhakti Baxter, Emilie Louise Gossiaux, Jenny Morgan, Marcy Hermansader, and Zoë Buckman

Across a series of sculptures, drawings, and paintings, MOTHER Gallery’s booth offers a timely reflection on both climate collapse and women’s rights. The gallery is mirroring the politics of the artists by donating 10 percent of its profits to Planned Parenthood in light of the announcement that the Supreme Court will likely overturn Roe v. Wade this summer.

Bhakti Baxter’s abstract painting Directing Loving Energy to Wherever Healing Is Needed (2022), priced at $8,000, uses black and blue to evoke light and immediately draws the viewer into the space. The landscape drawings by Emilie Louise Gossiaux, who lost her vision in 2010, tenderly reflect her perception of what the changing seasons might look like.

The last-minute addition of Zoë Buckman’s neon sculpture sign Rave (2022) literally brightens up the booth with its red glow, as the text “Let Her Rave” vibrates across the space, whereas Anders Hamilton’s grounded sculpture series “Obelisk” (2021), individually priced at $6,000, offers beautifully detailed reflections of plant life. The booth received a welcomed response and interest from collectors, with Baxter’s work selling along with one of Hamilton’s sculptures on Wednesday.

Fragment Gallery

Booth 3.07

With works by Tim Brawner

Fragment Gallery presents a dynamic solo booth featuring artist Tim Brawner, whose acrylic paintings evoke the fantasy landscapes of both Alice in Wonderland and the Brothers Grimm. The works intentionally disarm visitors through their individual use of a vibrant, monochromatic color palette and seemingly saccharine animal creatures. A closer inspection, though, will uncover a haunted fantasyland that reflects how make-believe is often utilized to navigate troubling realities.

Evoking the style of “cutesy work,” the genre practiced by artists like Szabolcs Bozó, Brawler’s paintings bring distorted fantasy into the home. Some of the more detailed, macabre elements in works like Nyctalops (2022), priced at $4,000, may go unnoticed by visitors as they focus on the enticing dog-like creature that takes center stage. And paintings like Selfish, Little (2022), priced at $12,000, will captivate audiences with its broad brushstrokes and focus on a sphynx cat, absent from other lurking haunts in the background. Fragment Gallery was off to a strong start at the fair, with the larger pieces like Selfish, Little selling by midday Wednesday alongside a handful of the mid-size works.

—Ayanna Dozier

TEFAF New York

Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue

Through May 10th

The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) returns for its eighth New York outing, and it remains as posh as ever. After entering past lines of waiters with trays of champagne flutes standing at the ready, VIP visitors were treated to big names, eye-popping prices, and roaming oyster shuckers offering briny amuse-bouches on demand. While it may offer less adventurous work than the other fairs this week, TEFAF is still the undisputed champion when it comes to hob-nobbing and museum-quality pieces from blue-chip galleries.

Blum & Poe

Booth 305

With works by Thornton Dial

Thornton Dial, the self-taught Black artist born to a teenage mother on a former cotton plantation in 1928, gets a mini retrospective of sorts at Blum & Poe’s booth. Featured works range from the late 1980s, when Dial first began to rise to prominence, to the years just before his death in 2016.

Here we see many of the elements that defined Dial’s career: thickly layered, heavily worked canvases; assemblages of salvaged materials like rope, foam, and tin; and symbolism used to comment on everything from health to racial prejudice. Especially captivating is his early A Bird Will Always Find Food Under a Tree (1989), in which the titular creature represents Jim Crow and Black Americans’ struggle to overcome oppression. As the gallery explains in its press materials, this coded imagery “allowed him to express his desire for racial justice without risking repercussions—such as the loss of his job as a factory worker in Bessemer, AL.”

Dickinson

Booth 208

With works by Josef Albers, Alexander Archipenko, Herbert Bayer, Max Bill, Martin Blaszko, Lygia Clark, Jean Crotti, Albert Fiks, Jean Gorin, Camille Graeser, Gottfried Honegger, Mary Martin, László Moholy-Nagy, François Morellet, Aurélie Nemours, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Pape, Mauro Reggiani, Luiz Sacilotto, Victor Vasarely, and Carlo Vivarelli

With TEFAF’s high-end clientele and the accompanying potential for windfall sales, there’s a temptation for exhibitors to show their flashiest work from their biggest names, regardless of whether the art on view actually coheres together. So it’s refreshing that Dickinson has not only avoided that lure, but has staged a focused, illuminating presentation looking at the impact of the Bauhaus school in Europe and America. The booth is particularly focused on geometric abstraction, the Chicago New Bauhaus, and Concrete and Neo-Concrete art.

The small Komposition (1935) by László Moholy-Nagy (founder of the New Bauhaus); the angular Sem título (Serie Livro do Tempo) (1965) by Lygia Pape; and BI-HOLD (1958–73) by Victor Vasarely are all standouts on their own, but the most exciting part of Dickinson’s display is recognizing the inevitable connections between the myriad artists here. See how, for instance, Josef Albers’s pioneering color studies—represented at Dickinson by Study for ‘Homage to the Square: Late Silence’ (1960)—resonates with the color- and square-based experiments painted by Max Bill, better known for his design work. It could be easy to forget that this is a stall at a sales-focused fair and not an exhibition at some cultural institution—a fantastic anomaly.

Donald Ellis Gallery

Booth 373

With works by Louisa Keyser (Dat So La Lee), Kadjisdu.acxh II, Arapaho Artist B, Noh Hu Nah Wih (Chief Killer), Nokkoist (Bear’s Heart), Cedar Tree, and anonymous artists

Since its founding in 1976, Donald Ellis Gallery has established itself as the leading seller of Indigenous North American art, and its display here shows why. A stunning degikup basket made circa 1905 by Washoe artist Louisa Keyser (Dat So La Lee) centers the show. Keyser, perhaps the most important basketry artist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, developed the degikup style—wide, spherical forms built on flat bases—of which this is an especially exciting example thanks to its extremely tapered foot.

Another masterpiece on view is a late 18th-century wooden rattle carved to look like an oystercatcher, a northwest coastal shorebird, and attributed to the Tlingit Kadjisdu.axch II. The supreme delicacy of the rattle, adorned with human and animal figures and completed with an ivory beak, is breathtaking.

Also here are beautiful figurines, mostly Hopi and from the American Southwest, and striking masks, mostly Yup’ik and Inupiaq and from Alaska, as well as ledger drawings, all of which look supremely modernist when viewed through 21st-century eyes. The variety of works on view are reflected in their prices, which range from $4,500 to over $1 million. During TEFAF’s opening day, the booth made seven sales, including one in the low six figures.

Lehmann Maupin

Booth 369

With works by Teresita Fernández

Step into Lehmann Maupin’s stygian booth and you’re transported into Teresita Fernández’s vision of what the concept of “landscape” truly means. Bringing together four linked bodies of work—“Night Vision,” “Night Watch,” “Nocturnal,” and “Lynched Land”—the display is both paean to and requiem of the natural world.

At the center of the booth, the Miami-born artist’s Pendent(Lynched Land) (2022) hangs ominously, a hand-carved charcoal depiction of a palm frond that suggests human destruction wrought by climate change—whether by hurricane or confalgration—while also reminding us of the violent colonial past shared by many tropical climes. Flora crops up repeatedly throughout the other works on view by Fernández, mostly collages and mixed-media pieces that, with their dark gray and neon pink palettes, further emphasize the duality of mankind’s relationship with nature, one simultaneously pleasurable and destructive.

Leon Tovar Gallery

Booth 366

With works by Carmelo Arden Quin, Martin Blaszko, Marcelo Bonevardi, Fernando Botero, Feliza Bursztyn, Sergio Camargo, Santiago Cárdenas, Lygia Clark, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Tarsila Do Amaral, Marisol Escobar, Agustín Fernández, Gego, Mathias Goeritz, Roberto Mattam, Armando Morales, Alejandro Otero, Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar, Omar Rayo, Armando Reverón, Carlos Rojas, Francisco Salazar, Fanny Sanín, Jesús Rafael Soto, and Rufino Tamayo

Established in Bogotá in 1991 and having relocated to New York in 2002, Leon Tovar Gallery has spent over three decades lobbying for a greater appreciation of Latin American modernism. The gallery’s expansive booth continues this mission and is especially effective when it comes to the three-dimensional works on view.

Argentine-born artist Marcelo Bonevardi’s cut-out canvases create niches for his painted wood carvings, elevating the diminutive organic sculptures into saintly figures. Venezuelan artist Jesús Rafael Soto’s Op Art panel is similarly transcendent if in a way that’s more hallucinogenic than spiritual.