With cramped spaces and budgets, New Yorkers float about one of the nation’s most creative cities art-curious but art-less. If you are anything like us, it may all have started with a deep interest in not starving in your 20s. Back then, galleries and emerging art events offered both aesthetic and actual nourishment in the form of free passed finger foods. Then, one day, you find yourself actually admiring the pieces on the wall in between bites and you realize that the bread is quite stale and the art exciting. A new hunger awakens–that someday you too will own a Basquiat (shoutout to our fellow Boricua) or a Yoshitomo Nara. Any stroll around the city, with its ever-changing murals, launches you into reveries of what it would be like to plaster your own walls with creative genius. Intrigued, you venture into any of the city’s Quintessential art fairs, spaces that both tantalize the sense and shock the spirit. No need to name names here. We know the kind–the ones were you walk around averting eye contact not because you are a jerk but because you simply can’t afford to even look at an art rep or salesperson lest they try to talk to you into buying piece X at the modicum price of a Williamsburg condo.
Hazy Mae – “The Rose Graden” – 2017. Catch her at Superfine!
Enter Superfine! The Fair, an art-fair by Alex Mitow, Director & Co-Founder (an entrepreneur who has been our partner in crime in a few other endeavors) and James Miille, Curator & Co-Founder (a brilliant photographer) that bucks tradition with its transparent, welcoming, accessible art fair model. More a temporary, welcoming art community for emerging contemporary art than a typical art fair, Superfine! is the place you go to if you want to discover real, meaningful art, and to connect directly with artists and their representatives. In a nutshell, it’s the place to go to if you are a real New Yorker who wants to actually buy art. One of the most gratifying aspects of Superfine! The Fair Is how it nurtures and encourages budding collectors to collect and seasoned collectors to collect the new. Last edition alone Superfine’s bar manager, wall contractor and publicists (that’s us) walked out with their very first piece…or 4 (*cough* us *cough*). Alex and James are quite vocal about their commitment to transforming the art fair model, to building a better and more inclusive art market. In a recent interview to Quiet Lunch, they shared,
“Diverse art by diverse living contemporary artists in a commercial setting without being outwardly commercial. We want people to feel like they can buy art.”
Dolly Faibyshev – “Pretty Flamingo”
It’s a testament to Superfine!’s unique inclusive formula that the fair appeals to women and other groups often underrepresented by the art world. In fact, 70% of those presenting at this year’s fair are women artists. Superfine! The Fair opens today, May 2nd, 2018 at 459 West 14th Street and runs until May 6th, 2018. Featuring a full daily and nightly program including a Dim Sum Collectors’ Dinner and a Queens of Contemporary Art – Women Artists of Today private tour led by yours truly — #LalaboyPR.
Join us for our Queens of Contemporary Art tour. RSVP – lalaboy@lalaboypr.com.
The fair will present 1,200+ works of art of a full roster of 78 global exhibitors including progressive galleries, curators, and independent artists with work that will feed your soul, fit in your apartment, and leave you with enough money to support your favorite charity. And even there, Superfine! Has you covered as each edition partners with a local nonprofit to support the community. In this NYC edition they’ve partnered with the Lower Eastside Girls Club to present an in-fair exhibition of work created by some of the young (teenaged) artists at the club and host a “Girls Night Out (For Art!)” benefit supporting the Girls Club’s art programming. Check out the video below of their collaboration.
Theirs is a new art fair model for a new world and a new market–a model we stand by and proudly support. Get your tickets here.
#SuperfineWorld | #SuperfineNYC | #ArtForAll