Well, I leave here tomorrow. This past week was packed with all kinds of peeps here for all of the fairs. My friend Francesca Fuchs came up from Houston for a few days to witness the mayhem, and fun was had by all. Of all of the fairs, the Armory Show was the best, although that's not saying too much. A fair's a fair's a fair. Even the best work would look better if it were hung on the outside on the pier; there's just no romance in those rows of stupid booths. Maybe if we were allowed to shoot at balloons with pop guns or throw ping pong balls at bowls of water so that we might take home one of the goldfish that came in them. Maybe if we could just stroll around gingerly licking at a wad of cotton candy. Ah, now that's my idea of a fair. Fuck, if the Pulse fair had just a funnel cake or two, the fact that their stopped-up trailer restrooms, and comically bad performance art would have been forgivable.
The fair that people were talking about, and that we trotted over to 34th street to take in, however, was the Volta fair. It was probably one of the worst things I've ever seen. Granted, it took place in a swanky office space, and it had beautiful, sweet-smelling restrooms and plenty of foam cubes to sit on when you got tired, but I swear I did not see one thing that was decent. The galleries at the Volta, unlike the other fairs, did not place out a sampling of its various artists' wares; instead, each gallery put on a solo show by a single artist. It sounded like a great idea, but the choices the galleries made on who to show was appalling. There wasn't one single interesting thing going on in there, which was just bizarre. How could so many galleries from around the world get it together so that they ALL showed something bad? Mind-boggling. We should get these folks on foreign affairs.
At least at the other fairs you saw an interesting piece here and there. I was in shock. But at least they didn't charge $30 like they did at the Armory. That would have set me off. I'm sure of it.
There was other stuff going on. Scope was at Lincoln Center this year. And there was something called the Bridge Art Fair that sounded a bit promising but which I lacked the energy to attend. Everything starts looking the same after a while. You get eyeball burn.
This is my last post, at least until I get to Houston and find something to snarl about.
