Announcing Details of the 2021 Artistic Program

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—Independent New York is pleased to announce the artistic program for this year’s edition, selected by founding curatorial advisor Matthew Higgs and co-produced in collaboration with leading galleries, non-profits and museums worldwide. Over one hundred artists, forty solo and dual artist presentations, and several activations have been commissioned especially for this year’s fair.

Embracing a hybrid model and digital opportunities for storytelling, the fair will launch its first ever OVR platform, which will run from September 9-26. Home to over 50 exclusive editorial features, half of the new content has been produced in house exclusively for the platform. Over the coming weeks, Independent will be launching the interviews, artist takeovers, videos, talks and podcasts for each of this edition’s exhibitors, along with never-before-seen performances and an inside look at artists working in their studios.

A list of presentations follows below.

Pat Adams and Mariel Capanna | Adams and Ollman and Alexandre Gallery*
Adams and Ollman and Alexandre Gallery will present an intergenerational, dual-artist presentation with works by Pat Adams and Mariel Capanna. With a shared interest in composition as a driving creative strategy, these two women artists communicate through their own distinct poetic languages in this landmark presentation and gallery collaboration.

Pat Adams eschews classification of the movements of her time: spanning conceptual art, color field painting and ultimately minimalism, to implement an autonomous abstract vocabulary that furthers complex metaphysical ideas in her paintings. This is a debut for Alexandre Gallery at Independent and coincides with the forthcoming opening of a new gallery space in September on the lower east side. Inspired by film and vintage photography, Mariel Capanna explores the subtleties of place and perception in her work. Exploring territories from classic films, documentaries, 35mm slideshows and home videos, Capanna employs a freestyle approach to composition and image-making.

Agustín Fernández | Mitchell Algus Gallery
The Mitchell Algus Gallery will present an exhibition of paintings by Agustín Fernández (born 1928) focusing on later work done between 1980 and his death in 2006. The Cuban artist was renowned for what The New York Times describes as an “expertly painted mix of abstraction and surrealism”. This presentation will coincide with a show of the artist’s drawings and collages at the gallery, and follows a solo exhibition at ICA Miami in 2020.

Louise Despont | Nicelle Beauchene Gallery
Louise Despont uses architectural forms to create intricate and transformational drawings on antique ledger book pages which have newly expanded to textile wall reliefs. The artist will present her first solo show in three years with Nicelle Beauchene at Independent after a period of geographical study and research. Despont, who has been working in Bali for the past five years, draws inspiration for her work from a variety of locations and sources, most recently the architecture of traditional Balinese kites, medieval alchemical illustrations, and philosophies of Eastern medicine and herbal remedies.

Jo Nigoghossian | BROADWAY*
For their first presentation at Independent, the newly founded Tribeca gallery will exhibit a series of paintings by Jo Nigoghossian, commissioned especially for this solo presentation. Nigoghossian’s uncanny still lifes feature errant eyeballs and vases teaming with fish, in mystery and memento mori. These paintings mark the beginning of a new era for the artist, who was previously known for her large-scale steel and neon sculptures. Nigoghossian will present her first solo show at BROADWAY in the coming year.

Sedrick Chisom | Matthew Brown Los Angeles*
Matthew Brown Los Angeles will present Sedrick Chisom’s first ever solo exhibition in New York. Grounded in the Afrofuturist tradition, Chisom’s dystopian paintings depict a post-apocalyptic world marred by the legacy of present-day racial stereotyping, white supremacy, and religion. In this world, first conceptualized in the artist’s screenplay, 2200, people of color have abandoned Earth in search of a better life, whilst the white people left behind have succumbed to a disease which alters the pigmentation of their skin. Chisom’s haunting paintings are, in essence, about the racialized otherness that continues to dominate Western thought. Speaking to Josh Niland for Artforum in 2020, Chisom explained: “I want the images to feel uneasy. And I want this uneasy foreboding quality to seep into the viewer.”

Xylor Jane, Mary Manning, and RJ Messineo | CANADA
CANADA will present an exhibition of new works by Xylor Jane, Mary Manning, and RJ Messineo. Xylor Jane’s highly detailed constellations draw heavily upon the systems through which we catalog time, whilst Manning’s mundane images document the beauty of the everyday and Messineo’s paintings consider the ever-changing lighting conditions as the day wears on within the artist’s Brooklyn studio. Working across painting, film photography and collage, these artists meditate on themes of human connection, the value of a day, the measurement of time, and our evolving landscape.

William Scott | Creative Growth
William Scott will present a solo exhibition of works with Creative Growth, an Oakland-based non-profit that serves artists with disabilities. Scott has practiced at Creative Growth since 1992. A self-taught artist, his highly imaginative practice draws upon both his personal history and wider African American culture to produce paintings featuring such pop icons as Prince, Oprah, and Janet Jackson. Elements of Afrofuturism are also present throughout Scott’s work, particularly in his idealized architectural renderings of San Francisco. The works ambitiously re-imagine the city as Praise Frisco, a peaceful and positive utopia reminiscent of Orbit City, home to The Jetsons. In playfully engaging with the social topography of his native city, Scott’s works raise questions of contemporary citizenship, community and culture.

Albert Leo Peil | Delmes & Zander **
A man who spent much of his professional life working odd jobs to get by, this self-taught artist passed away in 2019. Yet his estate, which contains hundreds of carefully cataloged ink drawings, suggests a more complex personal life. On the verso of many drawings he signals his epicurean interest in the outside world through scribbled, quasi-encyclopaedic lists of popular artists, actors, musicians, fashion designers, and cosmetics brands. At times, Peil even explicitly quotes elements from the world of fashion and luxury. The eyeglasses and headpieces donned by his male protagonists, for example, closely resemble the leather and plastic masks the French designer Pierre Cardin designed for his famous space age collections in the 1960s. Exclusive to the Independent OVR, this presentation marks the second time ever that these works have been shown.

Rute Merk | Downs & Ross
Contrasting sfumato brushwork with sharp lines to mimic the visuals of video games, Rute Merk makes disquieting portraits that explore the role of digital in contemporary painting practice. The artist’s presentation at Independent evolved from her critically acclaimed 2020 exhibition at Downs & Ross, SS20, for which she collaborated with Demna Gvasalia and fashion house Balenciaga. The works on show will consider the relationship between emerging forms of online self-presentation and traditional codes of portraiture. “Where Merk truly excels is in her negotiation of painting's appropriation of new modes of seeing.” William Corwin, The Brooklyn Rail.

Karla Knight | Andrew Edlin Gallery
Since the 1980s, Karla Knight has diligently worked to build an idiosyncratic visual language composed of imaginary objects, diagrams, and symbols. Though fictional, the shapes that make up her detailed work balance between ancient history and the future - at once familiar, yet otherworldly. Knight has recently advanced her personal language of scientific diagrams and cosmic symbols, and in her forthcoming presentation with Andrew Edlin Gallery she will showcase large-scale paintings, colored-pencil drawings and cloth tapestries. The presentation at Independent comes a month before the artist’s first institutional solo show opens at Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in October.

Jameson Green | Derek Eller Gallery
Jameson Green, who emerged this year, will show a highly anticipated group of new works with Derek Eller Gallery. A recent graduate of CUNY Hunter College (MFA 2019), Green’s nuanced paintings consider the perpetuation of institutionalized racism by progressive whites and the violence throughout African American history. In expressing these ideas, Green draws upon the cartoonish evil of Phillip Guston, cyclical depictions of life, death and suffering in religious Baroque art, and the work of Jacob Lawrence.

Rande Cook, Audie Murray, Marcy Friesen and Corey Bulpitt | Fazakas Gallery
Fazakas Gallery will present a selection of works by four First Nation Canadian artists representing four indigenous tribes: Corey Bulpitt (Haida), Rande Cook (Kwakwaka’wakw), Marcy Friesen (Swampy Cree), and Audie Murray (Métis). Whilst Bulpitt and Cook, who is formally trained in traditional Kwakwaka’wakw artistic endeavors, work across painting and carving, Murray and Friesen are primarily beaders. Their practices vary widely, yet the work of all four artists is firmly rooted in their respective lineages and a shared interest in the contemporary social, political, and environmental issues that face their respective communities.

Joy Feasley, Jesse Harrod, Molly Metz, Eamon Ore-Giron and Philadelphia Wireman | Fleisher/Ollman Gallery
Spanning sculpture, painting and textiles, this presentation brings together the work of five artists from diverse backgrounds working in Philadelphia and considers variations on abstraction within their work. The show will coincide with Joy Feasely’s exhibition, in collaboration with Paul Swenbeck, at Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland and follows Molly Metz’s debut solo exhibition at the gallery.

Sally J. Han | Fortnight Institute
Sally J. Han’s vibrant paintings are works of introspection that draw upon uncanny personal experiences and ironic moments in time. Meticulously attentive to detail and naturalist in her approach to painting, Han debuted to critical acclaim at Fortnight Institute in 2020 during the covid lockdown. The gallery will present four of her large-scale paintings, made especially for Independent in an ambitious solo presentation by the artist marking, for many, an opportunity to encounter her work first-hand.

Katelyn Eichwald | Fortnight Institute
In a second space, Fortnight Institute will present a distinct solo exhibition of works by Katelyn Eichwald. The artist’s intimately scaled paintings play on contrast, at once delicate yet sardonic; simultaneously serene and sinister. Eichwald’s presentation at Independent will coincide with her second solo show at the gallery.

Leilah Babirye and Gerald Jackson | Gordon Robichaux
Gordon Robichaux will present a cross generational, dual-artist presentation with works by Leilah Babirye and Gerald Jackson. Working for six decades across painting, sculpture, fashion, and performance, Gerald Jackson has maintained a strong interest in social, emotional and psychological relationships with color. Jackson’s recent critically acclaimed exhibition at White Columns showcased his artistic achievements over the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Leilah Babirye works with a range of materials, usually found on the streets of New York, to create sculptures that explore ideas of identity, sexuality, and community. Born and raised in Uganda, Babirye fled the country in 2015 as a result of anti-LGBTQI persecution and received asylum in the US in 2018 with support from the African Services Committee and the NYC Anti-Violence Project. Babirye will present monumental scale sculptures that anchor the central exhibition space at Independent.

Justine Kurland | Higher Pictures Generation*
After two decades shooting girls and women in safe spaces, beginning in 2014, the subject of celebrated photographer Justine Kurland’s most recent work is navigating feminist thought and queer issues with her own patriarchal artistic heritage. This highly anticipated solo show will serve as a mid-career survey, with works sourced from the artist’s personal library involving collage, painting and photography. The Independent presentation with her new gallery marks Kurland’s first solo presentation at a fair, and the first ever fair for the newly configured gallery. This visionary selection of new work marks a decisive shift in the practice of an artist best known for her contemplative photographs of women. Confronting issues of sexism within the cannon of photography head on, Kurland is “deinstitutionalizing” her artistic practice to “annihilate the influence of these [straight, white] men who were introduced to me through my schooling and reinforced by museums, galleries, and publications,” the artist explains to Avery Norman for Document Journal.

Peter Bradley, Thaddeus Mosley, Maja Ruznic, Tabboo! and Xiao Jiang | Karma
For Karma’s presentation at Independent, the gallery will show a selection of works by Peter Bradley, Thaddeus Mosley, Maja Ruznic, Tabboo! and Xiao Jiang. Working with acrylic gel paint, Bradley’s abstractions revel in the fundamentally emotional and performative qualities of color. Recently recognized artist Thaddeus Mosley works with a mallet, chisel, and discarded timber to fashion what he terms “sculptural improvisations”, inflected with the impromptu spirit of jazz. The eery figures and landscapes of Maja Ruznic are, in part, informed by her personal experiences of war, and living as a refugee. Multidisciplinary artist Taboo! is regarded as an iconic New York downtown figure. Xiao Jiang’s serene oil paintings draw directly from the artist’s own photographs and bring vibrant color and atmosphere to images inspired by the mountains of Jiangxi Province, in his native China.

Cory Arcangel and JODI | Lisson Gallery
Lisson Gallery will stage a major presentation by digital media pioneers JODI, (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans), and Cory Arcangel, who emerged in the 2000s as innovators of their generation. Arcangel will serve as curatorial lead. Though their work differs in many ways, the artists have been in dialogue for more than two decades and share an interest in art’s potential to exist digitally, and be distributed online, rather than exclusively within public or gallery spaces. This highly anticipated presentation will provide a comprehensive overview of the similarities and differences between their respective, pioneering practices, which ultimately contributed to the new media work we see emerging today. Set within the contemporary context of recent developments in digital art, namely the introduction of NFTs to the mainstream, the works on view at Independent will take the form of sculpture, large jumbotron screen-based works, online works that require viewers to use their mobile devices and works on vintage Apple computers.

JODI have worked with digital relics and desktop culture for decades. They were first and early to do so before the distribution of the internet, creating interactive, browser-based works that could be shared on personal computers, recording their interactions with Apple's classic Mac OS 9 operating system for live audiences in what they call “desktop performances”. Their work also considers the, sometimes irrational, behavior provoked by the abundance of data available online and the rigid rationality of computer systems. This will be a rare opportunity to see first-hand the extensive range of their work, following their last New York group presentation of MoMA’s collection on the occasion of the museum’s expansion. Arcangel occupies post-digital concerns in his multi-disciplinary practice that emerged as a leading position within his generation in the early 2000s. This presentation of new and signature work narrates technology’s impact on visual culture, with the artist presenting on various interfaces: video games, web design, and software to interrogate and recontextualize the stated purposes of these technologies.

Martha Diamond | MAGENTA PLAINS
MAGENTA PLAINS will exhibit a selection of historical works by Martha Diamond. A quintessentially New York artist, Diamond has, over the course of five decades, refined the visual language through which she articulates the forms and sensations of the city. Drawing inspiration from New Image Painting, Neo-Expressionism and New York School Abstraction, her lyrical brushstrokes accumulate to form varied, but always dynamic, cityscapes.

Chase Hall | moniquemeloche
Self-taught artist Chase Hall will present a solo exhibition of new paintings with moniquemeloche. Coffee is an integral element of his work, with the artist particularly interested in the beans’ journey from Africa to America, and the labor realities of this agrarian beverage. Hall’s process involves staining raw cotton canvases and speaking to elements of the process that reflect histories of plantation labor. The artist also experiments heavily with negative space, poignantly exposing parts of his canvas to equate the color white and cotton. Together, the works on display at Independent will invite viewers to reconsider how racial dynamics are foundational to our national viewpoint and can be put forward in visual contexts.

Keltie Ferris | Morán Morán
Morán Morán will present works by Keltie Ferris (he/him). The artist is known for works described by Jerry Saltz in Vulture as “perfect crosses between hazy 1970s Color Field painting, pixelated digital space breaking up and reforming in odd-shaped plates, and painterly abstraction”. The works on view at Independent this year, however, demonstrate the artist’s return to an earlier iteration of his visual lexicon grounded in drawing.

Hana Ward | Mrs.*
Ward’s debut solo presentation will also serve as a prelude to the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York at Mrs., opening in November 2021. Ward’s paintings touch on coming into one’s power and the space between imagination, distortion and reality. Her portraits often depict Black women navigating various layers of their consciousness. Other paintings engage questions around an increasingly obsolete urban city, or cultural relics of neighborhoods in her Los Angeles hometown. The gallery, which is based in Queens, will make their debut at Independent this year.

Ken Nevadomi | New Canons*
Founded by Maxwell Wolf, New Canons is a nomadic curatorial office based in New York.New Canonswill present the long-awaited New York debut of the reclusive and prolific Cleveland Neo-expressionist, Ken Nevadomi (b. 1939). This micro survey gathers a diverse group of paintings and works on paper by the locally celebrated artist's artist and dedicated teacher of over 50 years. Vacillating between the surreal and the banal with virtuosic skill and wry wit, these works poignantly capture the hope and pessimism that permeates the lives of the working class of an industrial American city in the 20th century. Formerly Director and Chief Curator at Red Bull Arts, New York/Detroit, Wolf curated solo presentations by Gretchen Bender and Akeem Smith previously at Independent in 2019 and 2020.

Maximilian Schubert, Mitchell Charbonneau and Scott Covert | Off Paradise*
For Off Paradise’s first presentation at Independent, the gallery will show Maximilian Schubert, Mitchell Charbonneau and Scott Covert. The exhibition will explore definitions of the body, primarily in its absence.

Long under-recognized New York artist Scott Covert is best known for works inspired by his visits to the graves of cultural icons, made throughout his travels across the United States and Europe. Maximilian Schubert’s new works are duplicitous in their nature and contradictory in their intent. Mitchell Charbonneau’s new sculptures are inspired by common tools such as chairs, stepladders and shelving; objects that can be expanded and collapsed as a function of their design. The artist’s meticulous replication of the objects’ details imbues them with a level of value, not typically associated with such utilitarian forms.

Anne Hardy | Maureen Paley **
Anne Hardy rose to prominence in the early 2000’s with large-scale photographs of her studio, carefully transformed into complex environments. In the years since, her oeuvre has expanded to include sound, film, and sculptural works, as well as immersive installations (FIELDworks). The starting point for these installations is often the discovery of objects, atmospheres or sounds collected and recorded in bypassed areas of London. Curated specifically for Independent’s OVR, this presentation will showcase a selection of works alongside an introduction to the artist, recent interviews, and excerpts from a video work.

Maija Peeples-Bright | Parker Gallery
Maija Peeples-Bright will present a survey of her work with Parker Gallery. Though a key artist on the famed Candy Store Gallery’s roster, her long-overlooked contributions to Northern California’s Funk and Nut art movements are only now being re-evaluated. This is in no small part thanks to the advocacy of a new generation of gallerists like Sam Parker. Her first monograph beautiFOAL, published by the gallery, will be launched at Independent in September.

Maysha Mohamedi and John Wesley | franklin parrasch gallery / parrasch heijnen
franklin parrasch gallery / parrasch heijnen will present an intergenerational two person show with works by Maysha Mohamedi and John Wesley. Mohamedi, who is Iranian American, completed her graduate dissertation on Wesley, providing for a new look into the great artist’s work from a broader context and perspective. Mohamedi emerged in 2020 as part of a generation of star painters living and working on the west coast. The marks that make up Mohamedi’s energetic, large-scale abstractions are made using found or created tools and body parts. By contrast Wesley’s sharp, graphic paintings straddle the line between pop art and erotic surrealism. This presentation follows Mohamedi’s highly successful debut with parrasch heijnen. The Independent presentation will mark Wesley’s first presentation in five years.

Stanislava Kovalcikova | Peres Projects
Peres Projects will present a solo exhibition of work by Stanislava Kovalcikova. The artist’s work meditates on psychological portraiture, the significance of borders, both real and imagined, and what remains inside and outside, or out of reach. Her subjects are contemporaries posed in various historical compositions and light qualities that bring forward nods to Eastern Orthodoxy and social realism. This exhibition marks artist’s New York debut, and her first presentation with the gallery.

Amy Feldman | Galerie Eva Presenhuber
Galerie Eva Presenhuber will present a solo exhibition of paintings by Amy Feldman. In limiting her palette, she places emphasis on contrast and form with her expressive and often humorous shapes disrupting the white canvas like cartoons. “The rigorous simplicity of the work embraces the fundamental elements of painting, a barebones approach of all or nothing, without revisions or second layers” Mary Jones writes in Bomb Magazine. This presentation coincides with Feldman’s solo exhibition at the gallery’s New York location.

Peter Halley | The Ranch*
Max Levai’s new gallery, The Ranch, is located on Andy Warhol’s farm in Montauk and will stage a solo exhibition of work by Peter Halley for their debut at Independent. This highly anticipated exhibition will feature previously unseen works by one of the most rigorous artists and thinkers of the last 50 years.

REGULARNORMAL*
REGULARNORMAL was founded by Danny Báez in November 2020. The gallerist and ARTNOIR co-founder noted in an interview with Ryan White for i-D Magazine that “great things and ideas flourish in the midst of a crisis” and, with this in mind, the gallery’s first-ever presentation at Independent will consider the effects of the year 2020 on the arts. Over the course of the four-day fair, REGULARNORMAL will present the work of several artists (5 works per day), including Bony Ramirez, Melissa Joseph, Na’Ye Perez and Larissa De Jesús Negrón. These works will measure only 20 x 20 inches, a direct link to the year of the pandemic, but also as means of exploring ideas of confinement, space, and distance that were omnipresent throughout this difficult time.

Nikita Gale and Thornton Dial | Reyes | Finn
Reyes | Finn will present a dual-artist presentation of two African American artists; works by Los Angeles based Nikita Gale and the late Thornton Dial (1928 – 2016). Dial’s large-scale assemblages poignantly engage with a range of American socio-political issues, including war, racism, bigotry and homelessness. Transforming discarded objects such as ropes, bones, buckets and corrugated metal into artistic materials, Dial’s works are not only visually rich, but intellectually robust and steeped in the history of the American South. Gale, who has emerged in the past decade, also works with found objects to explore the ways in which our relationships to political, social, and economic systems mirror our relationships with certain objects. Working with barricades, concrete, microphone stands, and spotlights, amongst other materials, Gale considers the ways in which space and sound are politicized.

Lidia Syroka | Ricco/Maresca Gallery
Ricco/Maresca will present Series 7, the latest group of works by Polish French artist Lidia Syroka. Syroka follows an ascetic life, living and working within the confines of her 9 x 9 ft studio, yet her intricate paper works are deeply informed by her extensive international travels, particularly her time in Asia, where she came across and explored new materials and types of paper. Within the previously unseen works at Independent this year, Syroka’s exploration of anthropomorphic themes merge cogently with abstraction. Textures subtly interact with form, and balance is achieved through visual dichotomy: transparency and opacity; the busy entanglement of paper strips and the clean space surrounding it.

Erik Parker and Ana Benaroya | ross+kramer gallery*
ross+kramer gallery will present an intergenerational dual presentation of work by Erik Parker and Ana Benaroya. Drawing in equal parts from psychedelia subculture, underground comic books and modernist painting, New York veteran painter Erik Parker will present a single, large-scale work. In contrast, 2019 Yale MFA graduate Ana Benaroya’s work explores female power and control, delving into sexuality, gender inequality, misogyny and violence against women. Gender and power are the central themes of this highly engaged intergenerational presentation, the gallery’s Independent debut.

Jorge Galindo | Vito Schnabel Gallery*
Jorge Galindo works with a range of materials to create large-scale, gestural works that draw upon elements of both painting and collage. For his presentation at Independent, the artist will show a selection of works from his recent Flower Paintings series, made between 2020 - 2021. Flowers first appeared in Galindo’s oeuvre in 2009, a result of the artist’s encounter with a floral still life by Henri Fantin-Latour that was reproduced on the cover of English band New Order’s 1983 album Power, Corruption & Lies. In the years since, Galindo has continued to push the traditional subject of still life painting into the realm of abstraction, and further conversations about post-expressionist painting.

Robert Barber | Kerry Schuss Gallery
Robert Barber was relatively unknown until a 2015 retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson showcased the breadth of his oeuvre. A solo presentation with Kerry Schuss Gallery at Independent in 2016 followed, introducing him to a wider, international audience. This year, Kerry Schuss Gallery will present a selection of Barber’s Monsoon paintings, made between 1963-64 and inspired by the rains that visit Barber's home in Tucson, AZ, each summer. Notably, these works were created within the relative isolation of Tucson, at a time when abstract painting was still widely considered radical, and a place where avant-garde art trends were previously unseen.

Mikael Lo Presti and Ann Cathrin November Høibo | STANDARD (OSLO)
STANDARD (OSLO) will present an exhibition of work by Mikael Lo Presti and Ann Cathrin November Høibo. Mikael Lo Presti’s work draws upon his Sicilian heritage, and the facts, myths and expectations interwoven into the culture. By contrast, Ann Cathrin November Høibo’s tactile tapestries combine and contrast the synthetic and the natural to explore ideas of materiality and consumerism. This presentation coincides with the launch of Mikael Lo Presti’s first monograph, published by the gallery and available to purchase at Independent this fall. 

Che Lovelace | Various Small Fires
Various Small Fires will present an exhibition of works by Che Lovelace. Based in Port of Spain, Lovelace is an established figure within Trinidad’s thriving artistic community. Drawing upon the Caribbean island’s lush greenery and cultural traditions like Mas, the world-famous annual carnival, his work explores the intersecting lives of Trinidad’s people and their surroundings. As the artist explained in an interview with Stephanie Eckardt for W Magazine, “I’m always playing around with the different ways I can represent the reality of what I’m thinking about or looking at. I’m able to discover the figure anew every single time I paint it”. This presentation follows Lovelace’s Los Angeles solo debut with the gallery in March of this year, the artist’s second-ever solo exhibition in the US.

Bosco Sodi | Axel Vervoordt Gallery*
Bosco Sodi launched his international career at Independent in 2009 with a solo presentation. Twelve years later, he returns with Axel Vervoordt Gallery to present a series of works commissioned especially for Independent. This timely “chapel” of objects, exhibited in the center of the main gallery, is part of a new and never before seen body of work that draws parallels between the uncertainty of the past year, and the similarly turbulent context within which Malevich painted his Black Square in 1915. Sodi’s new works shed light on a practice that goes beyond painting to incorporate installation, sculpture and social practices. The artist’s presentation at Independent coincides with a solo exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art.

White Columns
Founded in 1970, White Columns is New York's oldest non-profit, alternative art space. The gallery runs a robust program of exhibitions, projects, talks, screenings, and events with the aim of supporting artists who have yet to benefit from wider critical, curatorial or commercial attention. White Columns will present a series of specially commissioned editions to celebrate the organization's 50th Anniversary, including two new screen prints by Joel Mesler and Aliza Nisenbaum. The sale of these editions will help to support future exhibitions and public programs at the gallery.

Marcelle Cahn and Elodie Seguin | Galerie Jocelyn Wolff
Galerie Jocelyn Wolff will present an intergenerational exhibition of works by Marcelle Cahn and Elodie Seguin. As a member of the exclusive Cercle et Carré group of French abstractionists, Marcelle Cahn exhibited widely towards the beginning of her career in seminal exhibitions, including the 1926 Société Anoyme show at the Brooklyn Museum. Elodie Seguin’s minimalist works explore form, color, texture and space. With a shared interest in color, light and space, this two-person presentation will establish a dialogue between the artists’ work, challenging the objectivity of minimalism. The presentation also marks the (re)introduction of both artists to New York. Almost 100 years after the Société Anonyme exhibition, this will be only the second time Cahn’s work has been on view in New York and Seguin’s first New York show.

* denotes first-time exhibitors
** denotes online only presentations

In addition to the presentations, which exemplify the unique and compelling aspect of the fair, there will also be special experiences while navigating the exhibition halls. In the North Concourse, Cipriani has commissioned a series of paintings by Julian Schnabel that float in the upper regions of the 30-foot-high space as a semi-permanent installation. Another initiation is by curator Raquel Cayre, who has contributed sculptural furniture by Myles Nurse to the outdoor terrace, and invited Sam Stewart to take part in a presentation in the fair shop. Nurse is an up-and-coming Brooklyn based artist who’s multilinear, colorful tables and chairs appear “on the verge of collapse”, according to Architectural Digest. Sam Stewart is a versatile lighting designer who furthers modernism with kinetic play. Stewart’s presentation will provide a nice counterpoint to the Artforum lounge, transforming this unique area into a reading room. Karma Books will return to compliment this space with a wide selection of their own publications, along with books of artists that are showing with colleagues at the fair. Other gestures at the fair include a selection of limited-edition complimentary official Independent totes commissioned by Crozier, featuring three artists at the fair: Louise Despont, Scott Covert and Maysha Mohamedi. The Drunken Canal will also publish their Back to School issue timed with Independent. The publication, which can only be found in New York, is print-only and will have a distribution box at the fair. The Drunken Canal and the fair's official bags by featured artists will be given away while supplies last.

The 360-foot terrace that comprises the structuralist Beaux-Arts façade will house a full restaurant, bar and café by Cipriani that will be open during and after the fair’s hours for coffee, breakfast, lunch and cocktails. Fair and terrace hours are listed below for reference.

VIP Preview Day
Thursday September 9, 11am - 8pm

Public Fair Days
Friday September 10, 12 - 7pm
Saturday September 11, 12 - 7pm
Sunday September 12, 12 - 6pm

OVR Dates
September 9 – 26
https://www.independenthq.com/

Cipriani Outdoor Terrace Restaurant & Bar Hours
Thursday: 11am - 9pm
Friday: 12– 8pm
Saturday: 12 – 8pm
Sunday: 12 – 5:30pm

For more information please contact:
US inquiries: press@independenthq.com
UK + EU inquiries: sam@sam-talbot.com

Supported by: CROZIER