New York’s Art on Paper fair draws a fuzzy line between its titular medium and everything else – The Art Newspaper

The Artwork on Paper truthful is again at Pier 36 in Decrease Manhattan for its eleventh version, which kicked off with a VIP preview on Thursday night (4 September). The medium-specific truthful options 81 exhibitors from around the globe this yr; its organisers, Artwork Market Productions, have additionally programmed a full calendar of interactive occasions and workshops, together with the return of Booksmart Honest. This fair-within-the-fair organised in partnership with the Middle for Ebook Arts champions the handmade artist’s guide and a variety of printed supplies created by artists, establishments and unbiased presses.

This yr’s Artwork on Paper includes a energetic mélange of choices within the titular medium. Standouts embody tenderly crafted tabletop, plant-like sculptures by Nina Katchadourian, that are introduced by Tempo Gallery, and Mary Beth Edelson’s Story Gathering Containers, on Accola Griefen Positive Artwork‘s stand, a social observe undertaking from the early Seventies that asks guests to contribute handwritten responses to prompts about id, gender and immigration.

Some work on the truthful skirts the transient a bit; a number of exhibitors are displaying work, ceramics and different non-paper gadgets. Throughout Thursday’s preview, one customer was overheard asking: “The place’s the paper stuff?” Nonetheless, Artwork on Paper’s coronary heart is in its distinctive give attention to the countless and unique manipulations of an historical, ever-evolving substrate.

The artist Nicolas V. Sanchez, who rose to prominence by posting his hyperrealistic ballpoint pen sketchbook drawings to his 350,000 Instagram followers, has tailored his work for consumers who love the genuine, intimate really feel of his items.

“I went to the New York Academy of Artwork, and my commute from my residence to high school was 40 minutes, so I sketched to go the time,” he tells The Artwork Newspaper. “I began utilizing that method for fee work, and I’d at all times do them in my sketchbooks and put up my pages on-line, after which it simply was individuals saying, ‘Hey, how do I’ve that although?’ Individuals needed to purchase the entire sketchbook, however there’s notes and cellphone numbers and physician’s appointments and social safety numbers in there! So now I’m pondering of the sketchbook as simply one other approach to matte and body a drawing. It’s one drawing per sketchbook, framed. I stored it within the sketchbooks as a result of it connects individuals to what they see on-line, and I needed to supply a bit of my studio observe”.

Sanchez’s stand is crammed with palm-sized notebooks pressed open below glass, revealing lush, jewel-like photographs that remember his Mexican American heritage. His renderings of cows, horses and fridge magnets act as nostalgic, devotional mementos.

On the stand of first-time exhibitor Fringe Gallery, the Seattle-born artist Rebecca Messier is displaying light geometrical abstractions that belie the modest violence of their making with a needle and thread.

“These are all hand-sewn straight into the paper,” says Allison Cannella, a director on the gallery. “It’s a really meticulous course of”. That is Messier’s first time displaying outdoors of Telluride, Colorado, the place each she and Fringe are primarily based; her debut nods to Minimalist portray, with a piercing twist.

The Monira Basis, in collaboration with Jersey Metropolis’s Mana Modern Artwork Middle, has launched its first “full-scale collaboration” with Artwork on Paper after years of partnerships, based on Kristin DeAngelis, the senior director of technique and operations at Mana Modern. Their joint stand which options artists affiliated with each organisations, together with hand-printed fake wooden panelling and houseplant cut-outs by the Brooklyn-based artist Anne Muntges, an illustrator and printmaker. “My work focuses on recreating the world as I expertise it,” says Muntges.

The Oakland, California-based Cindy Lisica Gallery is displaying frenetically bestial works by the San Francisco-based artist Andrea Bergen, whose handcut paper depictions of naughty, anarchic critters, canines, pigeons and raccoons marry precision with boundless extra. In Enjoyable Between Buns (2025), two monkeys go full “Woman and the Tramp” on a cheeseburger, a deviously scrumptious image of teamwork incarnate.

Artwork on Paper, till 7 September, Pier 36, Manhattan, New York