Spring/Break Artwork Present has returned to the labyrinthine workplaces of 625 Madison Avenue for its twelfth version, slicing by way of the blue-chip pomp of Armory Week with its signature taste of shaggy DIY. For the truthful’s 2023 iteration, titled !WILD CARD!, collaborating curators picked from the 11 Spring/Break themes of yesteryear, updating well-trod ideas with brand-new artists. That includes greater than 120 exhibitors and special-project stands, this yr’s rollout additionally boasts an Artist Highlight part, the place artists submitted on to founders Ambre Kelly and Andrew Gori for a spot in a centralised salon-style present.
!WILD CARD! feels much less feral than it does frenetic, an experiential mainstay of the blaring Spring/Break model—artists should take care of the chequered flooring, fluorescent lighting and cubicular mazes of Ralph Lauren’s former headquarters, so standing out from the group proves no small feat. Whereas the entire anticipated table-top ceramics and bawdy figural work abound at !WILD CARD!, it’s in mild moments of vulnerability and felt, genuine weirdness that the truthful’s indie intentions really shine.
Stand 1065 would possibly initially appear unassuming to passersby, however curator Meghan Doherty’s TechTerra assortment, which highlights the squishy intersection of biology and synthetics, takes a slick, contemporary method to 2013’s theme, New Mysticism. The Brooklyn-based artist KC Crow Maddux layers the graphic glibness of laser-cut resin with the poignancy of abstracted nude images—a prayerful, flux-foward nod to the maker’s trans identification. (“It’s very layered, very inside,” Doherty notes.)
KC Crow Maddux, Vessel III, 2022 ($2,600) Courtesy the artist through Spring/Break
Alongside Maddux’s work cling Elise Thompson’s dreamy acrylic shadow-boxes, which incorporate glass beads, paper and vinyl to psychologically fraught impact, haunting and entrancing the viewer in equal measure.
Elise Thompson, Crawl, 2021 ($4,500) Courtesy the artist through Spring/Break
On the identical flooring, at stand 1058, Miami’s Modern Artwork Trendy Challenge Gallery, or CAMP, takes on the 2020 theme of In Extra by way of the “overwhelming imbalance between gendered gazes” in its Freaks of Nature presentation, which incorporates a nightmarish suite of small oil-and-polymer work on wooden by the New Jersey-based artist RJ Calabrese. “These are very concerned; they take him nearly a yr to make,” says Chloe Fabien, director of communications for CAMP. “Among the parts are embedded, a few of it’s painted, there are parts glued on. He has a violent streak to his work.” These tiny, horrific illustrations imbue surreal tableaux with a folksy frankness and sly, pseudo-religious aptitude.
RJ Calabrese, Bunker Room IV, 2023 (not on the market) Courtesy the artist through Spring/Break
Loads of different artists meld humour and concern of their !WILD CARD! works, however New York Metropolis-based curator Lingfei Ren expands that fusion into female poetics together with her choices at stand 1127, tucked away towards a again wall on the eleventh flooring. The Tel Aviv-born artist Yuli Aloni Primor has contributed a stark, beautiful flooring sculpture, Madison (2019), that updates the intimate impact of feminist icons like Eva Hesse or Kiki Smith for a brand new period. As a headless fiberglass torso makes an attempt to flee her sinking plinth, the load of artwork historical past and the presence of the viewer appear to arrest her efforts mid-movement.
Yuli Aloni Primor, Madison, 2019 ($17,000) Courtesy the artist through Spring/Break
Only some ft away cling a sequence of spare, hazy work (by the Chinese language-born, New York Metropolis-based artist Katinka Huang), which articulate the rageful isolation of girlhood in only a few gestures.
Katinka Huang, Untitled, 2022 ($400) Courtesy the artist through Spring/Break
Winsome ornament at all times discover buy (actually) at Spring/Break, and this yr is not any exception. At stand 1157, the Brooklyn-based artist and welder Mary Gagler delights together with her cravenly opulent Fabergé Omelets, bejeweled ceramic dishes that glint and glimmer with grotesque immediacy.
Mary Gagler, Fabergé Omelet (Yellow), 2023 ($950) Courtesy the artist through Spring/Break
At stand 1010, Jen Dwyer, one other small-scale sculptor, gives irreverent ceramic wall hangings that lend a heartfelt attraction to their brightly colored anthropomorphism.
Jen Dwyer, Morning Ritual No. 2, 2023 ($2,000) Courtesy the artist through Spring/Break
Dwyer’s cautious development and winking sense of enjoyable completely encapsulate the spirit of Spring/Break—scrappy, self-sufficient and deliciously off-kilter.
!WILD CARD! is on view by way of 11 September at 625 Madison Avenue, New York
