NADA Art Fair Reminiscence

Entrance of NADA.

A few weeks ago, located at Pier 39 of Basketball City, was the fifth annual hosting of New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA). The eclectic art fair showcased paintings, drawings, sculpture, video, and installations from all over the world. This four day affair brought in an unique array of possibilities to art lovers, artists, and collectors, an opportunity to witness the new, the upcoming, the contemporary landscapes.

Hamish, a painter who uses bright colors, whimsical narrative, and handwritten text in his paintings couldn't make it.

Thierry Goldberg displayed a Tschabalala Self solo presentation. Self's large scale fragmented pieces on stitched textile with intricate drawing and painting homages, contained bold colors and patterns tied together.

Samson Projects presented a heavy arsenal of African, Latino, and Asian descendant artists specializing in conceptual inventive spaces, humanly existence of marginalized bodies and marginalized body narratives, and bringing certain iconographic images to light.

"Untitled," Henry Taylor, acrylic on cardboard.

Top left is: "Hands in," Tala Madani, oil on canvas, 2005 and "Upon Arrival," Toyin Ojih Odutola, charcoal on board, 2015. Bottom: "Hush Our Silence (from Exit Art)," Carrie Mae Weems, chromogenic print, 2003.

"Bull Wall," Ted Gray, photographic print and found antique frame, 2014.

"Mama Goma, Gemena, DR Congo," Deana Lawson, inkjet print mounted on Sintra, 2014.

"ReneeMonsterSoul Culture," Renee Cox, digital print matted and framed, 2015.

"Chance," Whitfield Lovell, iris print with hand collaged playing cards, 2002.

"Nina #2," Rico Gatson, photograph and colored pencil on paper, 2015.

Close up.

"Black Lives Matter," William Villalongo, acrylic, paper, and velvet on wood flocking, 2015.

"Notes from Tervuren," Radcliffe Bailey, gouache, collage, and ink on sheet music, 2013.

"Untitled (Afro Pick 3 Peace)," Rashid Johnson, spray paint on paper, 2003.

Lyles & King featured Mira Schor's oil on linen language paintings.

Flesh.

Raw.

Trace.

Lincoln Center shared a small crop of artists including Lorna Simpson.

Lorna Simpson.

Philadelphia's own project based gallery Marginal Utility curated an eye opening fascination spectacle. A rocky like rectangular structure framed an Ashley Wick animation, a subtly noted painting by Gahee Park featured mixed patterns and awkward sensuality watched by a cat, and a rustic designed Scott Kip sculpture spinning round and round on its kinetic energy.

Dave Carrow's object collection sculpture from Marginal Utility's space.

Close up of jars filled with varied objects such as buttons and marbles.

Abigail DeVille's plaster head adorned with pink and black hair rollers and an 80's palette rainbow above on canvas.

Along the trail, other discoveries peeked interests.

These teeth jutted out of this olive green, strangely rendered mouth in a provocative context. With jagged and smooth edges, vital negative gaps between, and bits of brown and green slightly marring the whiteness, this glossy sheen sculpture was quite riveting.

Specific colors, specific patterns, specific shapes whispered to soul.

This masked profile portrait drawing on torn notebook paper 

NADA's "Best In Show" honors went to Oklahoma native Summer Wheat. She is a cutting edge painter who applies acrylic on the canvas and pushes it through the other side to invent compressed texture. Three dimensional effect then transforms the painting into a mirror of fiber optic art, bringing sculptural quality. It's similar also to a textile rug, but with a hard plastic touch that contradicts the visually compelling optic illusion.

"Birds in Trees," acrylic on aluminum mesh, 2016.

Top: "Two Branches," "Banana Fingers," and "Hand." Bottom center: "Grooming." All acrylic on aluminum mesh, 2016.

Overall, the NADA experience encompassed the art world, filling wide six basketball court space into a effervescent bubble of tall, white, folding cubicle walls. Each individual gallery gave a glimpse of works new and old, a taste of resonating history and post-modernism contemporary. There wasn't some earth shattering prophecy about art's glorious future or its impending dooms and failures.
Yet the air seemed fresh and static simultaneously, letting suspense dance hauntingly around curious passersby. And that concludes tasty, delicious art buffet-- the tantalizing bites to hold close one's own perception of this grand affair on Pier 39.