NEW YORK, NY.- VOLTA, the Basel-based art fair for new and emerging art is back in New York for Armory Arts Week at its central location at 7W 34th street. A perfect complement to its sister fair, The Armory Show, VOLTA NY will showcase 78 solo artist presentations, inspired by this year's curatorial theme, "Age of Anxiety," a reflection of our present moment, located in the city where our financial drama was born and is being played out.
In addition to its primary exhibition, VOLTA NY announces several additional special projects that further its tradition of highlighting local working artists-unrepresented by exhibiting galleriesthat will take place in and around its midtown home as well as other locations.
A collaboration between VOLTA NY, Sketch Gallery, London, and the Tribeca and Soho Grand hotels, the film and installation project A New Stance for Tomorrow, curated by Victoria Brooks & Natalie Kovacs, moves from inside VOLTA NY's midtown elevators to various locations inside New York's famed Tribeca Grand Hotel, located at 2 Avenue of the Americas and Church Street. Concentrating on alternative visions and innovations by artists, designers and filmmakers from the 1950s to now, A New Stance for Tomorrow includes screenings, site-specific design, sound art and performative installation. The film programme, on view in the Tribeca Grand's screening room, includes work by Adrian Blackwell, Byron Broadbent, Michel de Broin, Charles & Ray Eames, Tim Etchells, Sylvie Fleury, Noam Gonick & Luis Jacob, Claire Hooper, Pierre Joseph & Philippe Parreno, Yves Klein, Oswaldo Macia, Simon Martin, Mathieu Mercier, Alain Resnais, Pia Rönicke, Robert Stadler, Mika Taanila, and Andrea Zittel. In the Sanctum visitors can view The Wild Flowers of Manitoba by Noam Gonick and Luis Jacob, a geodesic dome structure that functions as theater, screening room and performance space.
VOLTA NY is also announced that -in collaboration with Creative Time -it will host a film shoot and installation on its exhibition floor by the artist collaborative the Bruce High Quality Foundation. A section of a larger film the Bruce High Quality Foundation will debut with Creative Time at its annual exhibition at New York's Governor's Island, the film will explore the connections between crazed zombies and the contemporary art world.
The Bruce High Quality Foundation was created to foster an alternative to everything. The New Yorkbased art collective and foundation is dedicated to the preservation of the legacy of the late social sculptor, Bruce High Quality. Offering "amateur solutions" for "professional problems," their previous projects include the Brucennial, 2008; a retrospective at the Susan Inglett Gallery; and a series of musical vignettes entitled Cats on Broadway, 2007.
Also on the premises of VOLTA NY, Grolsch, the fair's official beer sponsor, has provided VOLTA with an art bar installation conceived of and designed by the artist David Kramer. A performance by the artist will take place on Saturday March 7th at 4 pm, in the lounge/restaurant area of the 11th Floor of 7W 34th Street.
Other VOLTA NY projects include the sculpture Colección Whitney, a work by New York-based artist Trong Nguyen. A replica of medieval stocks which saw use in New York City to punish criminals publicly, the Vietnamese artist encourages visitors to spend time in his corrective device for the purposes of regaining control of the act of looking and to question the power relationships between the viewer and the object of art. Both the work's title and its given name ("stocks" and "Whitney") also ask us to consider how the financial crisis, banks and public and private collections create hierarchies for art objects and artists. The sculpture, originally intended for the lobby of 7W has-even before its exhibition-caused a minor scandal with its intimations of "torture"; it has now been moved onto VOLTA NY's main exhibition space on the 11th floor.
On a lighter note, the collaborative group Sweet Tooth of the Tiger, led by contemporary artist and pastry chef Tara Strickstein, presents Suck-it!, a performative work in which sweets will be given out to visitors, artists and dealers. Highlighting the ceremonial nature of food exchange, Tara and experimental chef Adam Danforth, will explore innovative flavor pairings combined with a unique sense of social ritual based on certain art theory precepts and also reflecting on their individual studio practices. STT organizer Tracy Candido uses the public sphere as a place for eating, feeding, and talking with your mouth full, providing a "sugar high" to further spur on active dialogue and conversation.
Together with its sister fair, The Armory Show, VOLTA NY will be one of the brightest lights at Armory Arts Week. Both fairs will be connected via a bus shuttle and have mutually-acknowledged VIP and OPEN FORUM Talks Programs that will be hosted at both sites
