The Armory Show recently announced its full programming for the upcoming 30th-anniversary edition in September, and one of the highlights will be the fair’s renewed partnership with the U.S. Open. Now in its third iteration, the U.S. Open x Armory collaboration will showcase the work of artists from underrepresented backgrounds at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center starting during U.S. Open Fan Week.
Among the selected projects is an installation by Mexican artist Claudia Peña Salinas presented by Embajada, which will revive in a contemporary key the symbolism of Aztec and Mayan mythology. Other works include a reflection on the sense of memory embodied in a bronze-casted sculpture by Taiwanese-Canadian artist An Te Liu titled Venus Redux (2018), presented by Blouin Division (Montreal), and a piece titled Runner (2021) by Tomokazu Matsuyama presented by Kavi Gupta (Chicago). Meanwhile, artist Eva Robart’s work directly references the games. Presented by Ruttkowski;68 (Cologne, Düsseldorf, New York, Paris), her Fantasy of Happiness (2022) includes in its structure discarded tennis balls caught in the chain-link of a reclaimed gate—a metaphor for a psychological state or a visual exemplification of the principle of entropy, perhaps?
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These won’t be the only works presented around the city, showcasing the fair’s ambition to interact with New York City’s public spaces to reach a broader audience. Artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons, who recently had an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, will present a powerful performance in two iterations in September and October titled Procession of Angels for Radical Love and Unity, 2024, as part of an initiative organized and supported by Madison Square Park Conservancy in partnership with Harlem Art Park. The procession will involve artists, musicians, poets and the public walking together through the streets of Manhattan, making stops at sites significant to Black, Cuban and Cuban American communities across the city to celebrate the value of community gathering and trauma sharing and envisions a more inclusive future by tracing the steps of the past.
A performance by Oliver Herring, presented by Bank (Shanghai), will pay homage to visionary queer icons who died prematurely. A new work by David Salle will be presented in Times Square as part of the Midnight Moment project, with support from Times Square Arts, Lehmann Maupin (New York, Seoul, London, Hong Kong) and Gladstone Gallery (New York, Los Angeles, Brussels, Rome, Seoul). And in partnership with the Armory Show, the female-led Project for Empty Space is organizing a mobile exhibition titled Body Freedom for Every (body) to create awareness of the individual and collective intersecting themes of reproductive justice, Queer liberation and Trans joy.
Rounding out the program, Armory Live will host a series of conversations featuring a stellar lineup of artists like Sanford Biggers, Dominique Fung and Nicholas Galanin in conversation with Eugenie Tsai. A talk on innovation in New York’s cultural landscape will take place between Mariët Westermann, director at the Guggenheim Museum; Stefanie Hessler, director of the Swiss Institute; Sohrab Mohebbi, curator-at-large at SculptureCenter and Marko Gluhaich from Frieze magazine. Finally, artists Oliver Herring, Jeanne Silverthrone and Jimmy Wright will chat with Robyn Farrell, senior curator at The Kitchen and curator of the 2024 Focus section.
The Armory Show will take place September 5-8 at the Javits Center, New York City.
