Our Favorite Finds From the First-Ever Virtual Frieze Art Fair

For those in the art world, the loss of a physical Frieze means the loss of a key moment for discovery, commerce, and networking. But for those of us with no skin in the game, the virtual viewing room offers some very real benefits — like being able to browse, and read the backstory of, pieces we might have missed in the chaos of the fair, or being able to grab the exact images we want for this roundup.
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Design, and Its Attendant Signs of Domestic Life, Ruled at the Spring Art Fairs

Design, and its attendant signs of domestic life, played an even more outsized role than normal at last week's art shows in New York. At many galleries, it seemed that the booth furniture might drown out the works themselves, as with the ombré pieces on view at Peres Projects, or the erstwhile neon pink RO/LU benches at Parker Gallery. The best booth of the week by far, though, was by the London-based gallery Lyndsey Ingram, who handed over its design and curation to Georgie Hopton. Hopton in turn tapped her husband Gary Hume to share the joint booth, then kitted it out like a real home, complete with ruffled baseboards anchoring each color-blocked wall.
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This Barcelona Studio Asked a Painter to Choose the Colors of Its New Chair

When Gerrit Rietveld designed his famed Red and Blue Chair in 1917, it wasn't red and blue at all, but plain, unstained beech wood. Only six years later, after his De Stijl collaborator Bart van der Leck suggested he add bright colors, did Rietveld create the version that went on to make history. The same is true, in a way, of the Barcelona studio AOO's Chair 8, whose colors were envisioned by painter Claudia Valsells for a recent collaborative exhibition in Spain.
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Patricia Treib’s Paintings Are Abstract, But Rooted in the World of Objects

In Brooklyn-based painter Patricia Treib’s expansive abstract canvases, frothy pastels and opulent jewel tones abut daring and clever interventions of palette — a sudden wash of matte elephant gray against a translucent seafoam green, or a block of deep mahogany propping up a pale blue stain. Her paintings are a pleasure to take in, with a healthy dose of art history and a deep interest in the world of material objects as well as the physical properties of paint.
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The Mesmerizing Color-Field Paintings — Both Digital and Canvas — of Artist Ana Montiel

Questions about the nature of perception ­— the what, why, and how of consciousness ­— have been driving the work of Mexico-based artist Ana Montiel lately. And while any definitive answers to such age-old puzzles remain elusive, Montiel's work provides a kind of aesthetic response, making those mysteries both visual and material. There’s a mesmeric, meditative quality to her canvas and digitally-created color field paintings, reminiscent of the Light & Space art of the '60s and '70s.
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Week of June 4, 2018

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: limited-edition prints by one of our favorite up-and-coming painters, a new line of large-scale planters inspired by Julius Schulman's Case Study House photos, and a solo show of sculptures by Carol Bove (above).
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Week of April 30, 2018

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: It may be Frieze week but some of the coolest works can be found in smaller galleries around town. Plus, how to refresh your house for spring, the coolest color-coded museum in Copenhagen, and the $10,000 table that's currently at the top of our wishlist.
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At Morgan Lehman, Two Artists Exploring the Slippery Nature of Spatial Perception

Seeing the work of photographer Erin O'Keefe and painter Matt Kleberg side by side, it’s as if they are of one mind: the brightest orangey reds, the richest teals and greens, and the textured yellows; the crisp angles, the unexpected shapes, and the lively abstractions. Their current collaboration, a two-person exhibition titled Ecstatic Vernacular on view at Morgan Lehman in New York until May 19, is a conversation between the artists and their differing mediums.
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The Best Things We Saw at NADA, The Armory, and Independent

Design is ingrained in us so deeply, it even affects our taste in art; at this week's art fairs in New York, we were consistently drawn to things like plywood sculptures, powder-coated metal wall hangings, antiquity-inspired ceramics, degradé textile panels, the fact that fave artist Mattea Perrotta TURNED A PAINTING INTO A RUG, and, of course, Katie Stout lamps — i.e. things that wouldn't be totally out of place at a design show.
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One of the Art World’s Biggest Rising Stars is Inspired by Design

Less than a month after we spotted a stunning unknown painting on the walls of Kai Avent-deLeon's Brooklyn brownstone in 2015, we popped into L.A.'s MAMA gallery for a random visit and instantly recognized that we were surrounded by the work of the very same artist, Mattea Perrotta. It was either kismet or an intense case of Baader-Meinhof, but what's certainly no coincidence — because we're constantly drawn to the work of artists who do — is that Perrotta finds some of her inspiration in design.
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