Armory Week is a beast. After experiencing a non-stop visual bombardment of incredible artworks from around the world for three solid days, my eyes needed a rest. But once the art hangover subsided, I was surprised by the clarity I felt surrounding some of my favorite pieces.  A few were immediate hits, while others were slow burns I found myself mulling over long after the fairs ended. That being said, I wanted to share with you some of the artists who captured my attention, brought something new to the table, and prompted my weary eyes to un-glaze during this year's Armory Week. – Elizabeth Devlin, Boston Contributor

Tim Kent | Of Numberless Pleasures, 2013, oil on canvas, 100 x 60 in, presented by Slag Gallery, NY at VOLTA, courtesy of private collection

There is a notable heaviness present in the galleries of Cheim & Read’s Pat Steir show currently on view in New York. The weightiness is evoked not by any darkness, but by the unique paint application the artist employs in her large-scale canvases, in which she lets gravity dictate the way paint falls, spills, and spatters across the expansive surfaces. Sidestepping any didactic elements in her particular style of feminist practice, Steir instead employs an approach to painting that makes metaphoric references to the leaks, seepages and flows of the female body, seeking to draw out allusions to something that is more random, intuitive, and created by chance circumstances. Rejecting the traditional use of a brush to apply paint, Steir also stands against the myth of the male-artist-as-genius in her choice to abstain from the decisive action of placing paint on surface. Instead, the artist has devised a non-traditional approach, choosing to pour thinned paint from the top of her canvases while they’re vertically mounted on the wall.

Pat Steir installation view, Cheim & Read, New York.

Finally, from my trip to NYC this weekend, my visit to the Whitney. I'm no critic, that is for sure. I have opinions but I'm not in a position to tell you what's good and what's bad. I can only show you what I liked, and highlight some pieces for you in case you can't make it. However, I will say that I found the Biennial a bit overcrowded with work. There was just too much. I think less is more, but look at some of the installation shots and see if you agree. Oh, and it was almost 80 degrees on the 4th floor, and I have evidence, so if you come across a shot of a thermostat, that wasn't a work of art. - Andrew Katz, Associate Publisher

Check out all of the photos that I took of the Whitney Biennial on our Flickr page.

Molly Zuckerman-Hartung (NAP #95)

Yesterday I posted pics from the Armory Show, and I hope you enjoyed them. Today I bring you shots from the Volta Show, one of my favorite fairs around. So many great artists, but these are some of my favorites...Take a look, maybe you'll see something you like. Tomorrow...Whitney Biennial. - Andrew Katz, Associate Publisher

Check out the photos on our Flickr Page! 

Alfred Steiner | Poulsen, Copenhagen

Back from New York and combing through hundreds of pictures. If you didn't make it to the Armory Show this year, or if you're looking for a refresher, check out my pics! Obviously, not everything, but things that caught my eye while browsing the fair. The images are on our Flickr page.

In the next few days I'll post some images from my trip over to the Volta Fair and Whitney Biennial.

Enjoy!

- Andrew Katz, Associate Publisher

It is a big week in the New York art world as six art fairs come to town, including The Armory Show and The ADAA Art Show, and the 2014 installment of the Whitney Biennial opens. Art dealers know an opportunity when they see one, so don’t be surprised to see a number of Biennial artists well represented in the various art fairs. I want to congratulate two New American Paintings’ alumni, past cover artist Keith Mayerson and Chicago-based Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, on their inclusion in this very painter friendly Biennial. Both are also currently featured in commercial gallery shows at Derek Eller Gallery in New York City and Corbett vs. Dempsey, respectively.

There are close to three-dozen NAP alumni on view around the country. In Los Angeles, Ben Weiner continues to impress with his painterly chops. His just opened show at Mark Moore Gallery includes stunning examples of his large-scale photorealist/abstract images, as well as a new series of small-scale works made with some interesting materials. Right nearby in Culver City are Brian Porray’s show at Western Project, and a soon-to-open solo of work by 2013 MFA Annual artist and Yale grad, Evan Nesbit. Four extremely talented LA-based NAP alumni are currently having solo shows in New York City, including Lisa Sanditz at CRG Gallery, Iva Gueorguieva at Ameringer | McEnery| Yohe, Sarah Cain at Galerie Lelong, and the young and already in demand Brenna Youngblood at Jack Tilton Gallery (Youngblood will be the focus of an exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis later this year).

Some months seem to favor mid-career and established artists, but emerging talent is on view everywhere in March. In Chicago, William J. O’Brien, who works in a range of media, from ceramics to painting, opens a show of new work at Shane Campbell Gallery (the artist is currently having his first comprehensive museum survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago). In San Francisco, Altman Sigel is presenting the delicate paintings of the Japanese artist, Shinpei Kusanagi. In Minneapolis, the young and on-the-move David Petersen Gallery is exhibiting new paintings by hometown emerging artist, Scott Nedrelow.

Jordan Kantor. Courtesy of Churner and Churner, New York City.

I don’t even know where to begin with New York City. Shows by emerging artists that I am excited about include: Ethan Cook at American Contemporary, Jordan Kantor at Churner and Churner, Mika Tajima at Eleven Rivington, Rose Marcus at Eli Ping, Gabriel Hartley at Foxy Production, Liam Everett at On Stellar Rays, Donelle Woolford at Wallspace, and Lauren Silva at Zieher Smith. One of our favorites at NAP, Summer Wheat, opens a show at the Lower East Side space, Pocket Utopia, on March 16^th, and will also be the focus of a solo booth presentation with Samson at the Nada New York art fair in May. - Steven Zevitas, Publisher

We trace history in a similar way we trace source. The significance of certain symbols have a sense of time to them, which is neither part of the object, nor a prescription onto the object – but an affect of belonging, in a condensed perspective, from a certain point in time. This is how a lot of subjects in pre-modern painting history operate. However, how we are able to codify and redact certain elements in this history as belonging to a stylized moment is always overthrown by quotation. Styles are recycled, borrowed, and misplaced within a linear timeline – as if painters were forever throwing the images within the current object they are painting into the cannon of the past by sampling tropes and motifs of another time.

Conor Backman is a versatile painter who is able to engage with this cannon, while still existing very much in the present. The sense of time in his paintings belongs to various moments at once, carrying the significance of pre-modern subjects that once operated as symbols, the preoccupation with flatness as a form discovered with modernism, and the post-modern all-over appropriation that works its way into how we deal with mediated space through a different, more contemporary lens of painting. Like most artists whose work I discover, I first accessed Backman’s work online. His work can also be viewed in person in Fruits/Flowers/Appliances, currently on view at LVL3. Below is the record of a series of conversations we had on ideas of flatness, painting as trade, trompe l’oeil, and levels of mediation and reduction in representational painting. – Stephanie Cristello, Chicago Contributor

Conor Backman | limonaia, oil on canvas and black plexiglass in artist’s frame, 18”x24”, 2013

One of the privileges of working for a contemporary art fair whose focus is solo-artist projects is the opportunity to see a range of works by artists from all over, be they from Bushwick or Berlin. This could mean their newest series or a multiyear survey of their oeuvre, sort of like a mini retrospective staged within their exhibiting gallery's booth. 

View more shots from VOLTA NY 2013 by clicking here.

As in years past, VOLTA NY features a plethora of artists working with paint. The range is fantastic, and I think indicative of contemporary trends within the medium: angular figures and aggressively colorful compositions in a New Objectivity vein from very young, non-German artists including Anna Navasardian (Armenian but New York-based, showing with Galerie Andreas Binder, Munich) and Pawel Sliwinski (Polish, showing with Beers Contemporary, London); representational works in thick, gestural impasto, both in Kim Dorland's grand, en plein air style (Angell Gallery, Toronto), and in Bobby Mathieson's intimately scaled portraiture (Lyons Wier Gallery, New York); and abstraction both super-reductive (like Clare Grill, showing with FRED.GIAMPIETRO, New Haven) and cosmically colorful (Jennifer Lefort, showing with Patrick Mikhail Contemporary, Ottawa); plus every conceivable style in between. - Brian Fee, Austin Contributor

I let the cat out of the bag a little early with this piece. It was supposed to be released today on the NAP/BLOG and it was posted earlier than expected on The Huffington Post. Over the weekend I received dozens of emails, calls and Facebook comments - I am going to respond to all of them in good time – and the piece was viewed by more than 25,000 individuals on the Huff Po. A heartfelt thanks for all the great feedback. The response demonstrates that the issues addressed in the article/rant are on the minds of a lot of people. I look forward to continuing the dialog. - Steven Zevitas, Publisher

I had a Jerry Maguire moment last night. I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to write. The following thoughts are a bit of a ramble – a sketch really – and I leave it to others to expand on the dialogue. If I had a business manager, I’d probably be told that for someone who makes part of their living as an art dealer, putting these words “out there” is not a particularly bright move. If I had a boss, he might fire me. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, I don’t have either.

In her 2011 exhibition What Looks Back at New York gallery Sikkema Jenkins & Co., Josephine Halvorson enlivened inanimate industrial objects and surfaces, spellbinding this art-lover and writer. Now that she's got our attention, Halvorson returns with a tightly cropped and edited grouping of eleven canvases, each thrusting its subject up close and personal. Her structures are no longer content to be ignored or forgotten: in Facings, they assert themselves. — Brian Fee, Austin contributor

Josephine Halvorson | Heat 1, 2013, Oil on linen, 10 x 15 inches. Image courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York