Mar 14, 20193 min read

The Best 10 Artworks At Armory Show, 2019

We got the chance to visit Armory Show this year, we have been very impressed and decided to create our own list of favorite artworks.

10. Jago (Frosinone, 1987)

Memoria di sé, 2015

Memoria di sé, («Memory of self»): “The face I was sculpting, which was mine, seemed incomplete. I opened the stone, releasing the image of my memory, an image of incorruptible purity…”

9. A Gentil Carioca – Rio De Janeiro

Arjan Martins

Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1960, Arjan Martins began his artistic studies in the 1990s at the School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage where he developed the pictorial technique, through which he now addresses issues of the African diaspora and Afro-Atlantic migrations that occurred in the period colonial Brazilian. The work of Arjan Martins approaches the theme of the african diaspora and the afro-atlantic migrations that occurred during the time of the brazilian colonial period. At his works the artist elaborates cartographic paintings, in which the migratory routes takes the shape of big caravels, sextants and terrestrial globes, as if they we’re carrying all the weight of the deported slaves. The images of the imigrants and the african descendents are fundamental part of the repertoire of the artist, displaying them at everyday actions, since their arrival at the continent until the actual days.

8. Ai Weiwei,

Zodiac, 2018

Te Gallery Jeffrey Deitchis exhibiting 12 portraits of zodiac animals, playfully created out of hundreds of lego tiles. both installations relate to ai’s use of accumulations, the collection of tens of thousands of individual elements that inspire awe at the sheer human effort involved in a work’s creation.

7. Marc Selwyn Fine Art, 2008

Mel Bochner

Blah, blah Blah 2018

Mel Bochner, who is famous for his paintings that incorporate words, began experimenting with the phrase “Blah Blah Blah” in 2008. For Bochner, the saying was “the black hole of language,” as “Blah Blah Blah” could mean nearly anything when used in conversation. On one hand, the expression signals intimacy—those who know each other well can use “Blah Blah Blah” as shorthand, as if those conversing can read each other’s minds in that moment. On the other hand, the phrase “Blah Blah Blah” can be entirely meaningless. Bochner explains, “We live in a world that is oversaturated with empty language—small talk, tweets, texts, leet speak, chit-chat, pop-up ads, telephone-answering messages (‘your call is important to us…’), warnings on medicine bottles (‘if you have an erection lasting more than four hours…’).

6. Hoon Kwak, Korean artist, born 1941

Halaayt

Acrilic on canvas. 2018

5. Raimonds Staprans 1926,

An italian Sunset Mug, 2018

Raimonds Staprans – the father of abstract realism, was born in Latvia and immigrated to America, now living in California. Cutted Composition and very colorful polite, know for abstract imagery-still life painting

4. Robert Lazzarini

O43, 2018

Silkscreen on Canvas

Lazzarini's paintings combine appropriated media photos of the actress Sharon Tate with optical patterning, suggesting the refusal of vision as an analogy for limitations of mamory and recall.

Tate was famously married to Roman Polanski and gruesomely murdered in 1969 by the Manson Familly. She becomes an architype of physical beauty and the physical manner of her death.

3. Joseth rodriguez, photograthy

Spanish Harlem: EI Barrio in the 80's, 2017

When Brooklyn-raised photographer Joseph Rodriguez first debuted his body of work shot in Spanish Harlem in the 1980s, it changed the face of documentary photography. Grit, elegy, celebration, pride, lurking cataclysm—all embedded in the portrait of a place and the people. Now, three decades later, Rodriguez and powerHouse Books are revisiting that groundbreaking series: unearthing huge new caches of images, and re-editing and showcasing the body of work in a beautiful, deluxe monograph, reframing the project as one that pushed beyond documentary into the realm of fine art. Over 30 years since the project began, Spanish Harlem: El Barrio in the 80s finally brings this unparalleled endeavor to fruition.