Michael Workman

New York, the center of the art world, found its annual Armory Show (www.thearmoryshow.com) in open competition this year with the center of the art-fair world at Art Basel Miami Beach, which takes place every year in December. That fact gave New Yorkers something to grumble about, and walking the aisles at Piers 90 and 92, it was impossible not to overhear this conversation over and over again between dealers, critics and artists. It's a gripe familiar to all Chicagoans. Dethroned though New York may have been, this year's art-fair season was a centrifuge of amazing energy and spectacular art.

The Armory Show was supplemented this year by no less than four additional fairs: ~scope (www.scope-art.com)--in its first-ever booth incarnation, Pulse (www.pulse-art.com), DiVa (www.divafair.com) and the insurgent last-minute Fountain show (www.fountainexhibit.com). Taken together, these shows presented works by nearly 350 galleries from around the globe. Fountain, the least in size among them, was thrown in an abandoned FedEx building that the organizers managed to get use of only a matter of days before the show and, consequently, did not include any Chicago galleries. Strategically located down on Twelfth Avenue from the piers, it was a welcome respite from the main event's capacity crowds of 3,000 people per. Fountain fit in well amongst the street vendors hawking their wares or handing out "scientific studies" of the art world.

At Armory, the mere three Chicago galleries in attendance--Rhona Hoffman, Donald Young and Kavi Gupta--seemed to disappear in the fray. More than fifty percent of the exhibitors were European galleries, more than thirty percent were New Yorkers and a slim ten percent was left for domestic United States, including Chicago. Taking those percentages into account, it's a healthy figure that Chicago managed to land three spaces, but poor in terms of the totals overall. And in terms of the quality of the work shown, it'd be hard to place any of these three above the least of the Armory exhibitors, which includes twentysomething powerhouses like Los Angeles' Black Dragon Society, China Art Objects or even Chelsea's Zach Feuer Gallery (LFL). Gupta comes closest, perhaps, to escaping from accusations of playing it safe. But could any Chicago gallery honestly claim the status of a Matthew Marks Gallery?

Chicago galleries didn't fare all that much better at the smaller fairs, Pulse and ~scope. Kasia Kay and Wendy Cooper managed a presence at the former and Monique Meloche was alone amongst the Midwesterners at the latter. These fairs had their own growing pains too. Rumors spread that forklifts had been left running inside the building for too long at ~scope, prompting the fire marshals to consider closing the show down entirely and lowering the boom on the press preview for certain. The show went on, but there was plenty of grumbling amongst exhibitors that their shows weren't going to get written about. And the fire trucks returned on Friday night to make sure organizers were counting heads at the door (they weren't). Pulse must have been anticipating a cool day because at one point the temperature inside soared to a sizzling eighty-five degrees, making it impossible to stroll five feet without dripping sweat.

Needless to say, it's disappointing to face the hard fact that a total of only six Chicago galleries managed entrance into the second-largest art-fair event in the United States. It's hard to swallow other than as evidence of a bunker mentality that afflicts the city. How do we expect our art to reach the world? If our reputation as an international art center suffers, it's mostly to do with a marked inability to reach for more, to extend the effort beyond serving as a mostly regional outlet. That said, Chicago artists themselves were everywhere present, in galleries from Brooklyn to Paris, a hopeful sign for the future.

(2006-03-14)

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