Tuesday
What could be a more lavish venue than a ballroom to christen the fair week? Performa Biennial said “none” and gathered everyone at the Fifth Avenue Hotel’s palatial ballroom to stage a performance by American artist Diane Severin Nguyen. While the institution’s curator-in-chief Job Piston was maneuvering around the packed house on hosting duty, I ran into Wendy Olsoff of P·P·O·W. She started the “OG” of all groundbreaking galleries with Penny Pilkington at a shabby East Village storefront some four decades ago. Now, the Tribeca powerhouse is co-run by Wendy’s daughter Eden Deering. Dare I say it at the expense of my youthful veneer: Eden was in high school when I interned at P·P·O·W in 2009. Now a full-blown adult, she tells me that Nguyen will be in her summer group show, titled after a Lana Del Rey song, Hope Is a Dangerous Thing. “I imagined the show like a dream girl band,” she quipped. Nguyen’s performance echoed this vibe with a nod to ‘90s pop and the activist spirit of Vietnam War era protest chants.
With a packed day ahead, I was still eating up on the energy that I refueled at the breakfast Illy had organized earlier at Soho restaurant King to mark their new Art Collection with Colombian abstract painter Sol Calero. Through the least tourist-laden streets of lower midtown, I arrived at Karma’s party at swanky steakhouse Dynamo Room inside *no, you are not hallucinating* Madison Square Garden. Everyone was there to honour the painter of liquid splashy abstractions, Peter Bradley. After my failed attempt to blow Karma publicist Katherine Wisniewski’s whistle necklace, I found solace in a dirty martini and felt buzzed by the dancing lights and fun company – among them Terence Trouillot of Frieze magazine, Artsy’s Casey Lesser, and none other than the iconic New York painter, Tabboo!
Downtown, Pace Gallery had picked the elegant if-you-know-you-know wine bar Elvis to celebrate Alicja Kwade’s new show which features trippy, tubular clock sculptures. Time inside the teeny Euro-chic bar was stretched slowly with some oozy grilled cheeses and a chat with the gallery’s Talia Trauner and Amelia Redgrift, and a Berlin art advisor friend Noelia Gaite-Gallardo.
Wednesday
The Frieze vernissage was at its peak when I ran into my friend writer Jen Piejko who had schlepped from L.A. for the week. Hungry to get stuck into my art fair aisle marathon, I suggested she reconvene later at Frieze’s toast for media at Dobel’s booth on the top of The Shed and embarked on my schmoozing march. Across the aisles, I was like a moth to a flame to Hannah Levy’s solo booth with Casey Kaplan. Five unpredictably-formed tingling sculptures of skinny stainless steel skeletons creepily caressed sluggish blobs of glass. A similar eerie sheen also lured me to Pace’s booth with Lynda Benglis’ new white tombasil or Everdur bronze sculptures of deconstructed tires. It must have been something about the masterful alchemy of ruggudness and sleekness that I was hungry for, because I also paused at Jeff Koons’ polychrome musician Hulk sculptures (each at around £2.3M) at Gagosian. Then, I followed the sweet sounds that emanated from James Cohan’s booth where Tuan Andrew Nguyen had repurposed unexploded military supplies from Vietnam’s Quảng Trị region – which is still the largest aerial bombardment site in history – into Alexander Calder-esque sonic sculptures. I also didn’t skip Ruinart’s own “cheers” moment for painter Sam Falls who stayed at their vineyard in the Champagne region to produce a series of romantically-abstract paintings for their booth.
After Frieze, I ventured out to Brooklyn Heights (a shorter trip than you might think) for Sarah Rustin’s birthday bash at painter Natalie Frank’s scenic apartment. The beloved head of Thaddaeus Ropac’s communications team had gathered a nice huddle of London-meets-New York crowd, like the Delfina Art Foundation’s Sarah Philp and New York magazine’s Rachel Corbett. The spring’s scorchingly orange sunset sank into the spiky Manhattan skyline as I realised I had just sat down for the first time that day. But there’s no sleep for the wicked and no excuse to shelve my imitation self-assured Cher walk in Moonstruck. I swanned through the same streets as her en route to the subway for the concrete jungle of Manhattan where real estate nightmares are made of.
Back in Manhattan, art membership club The Cultivist celebrated its 10th birthday with a boxing ring which they mounted under the Prince George Ballroom’s ornate ceiling. In lieu of floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee, however, artists like Shaun Leonardo, Hiba Schahbaz, and Caleb Hahne Quintana flexed their artistic muscles to a group who was there to play the role of the boxing game judge which included legendary painter Judith Bernstein. In Tribeca, Will Cotton’s lofty studio was in dual celebration mode for his new show of powdery siren paintings at Templon gallery in Chelsea and Art Production Fund’s public project at Rockefeller Center which puts his pop culture-famous images of cowboys riding unicorns and decadent cakes inside the Art Deco marvel’s glass vitrines. Cotton’s Siamese cat both roamed and avoided the crowd which included Anna Weyant. From there, Casey and I rushed for NADA’s rooftop party at Public Hotel like a couple of Cinderellas at 11:59 pm. We were greeted by a serpent of a queue, Luckily, Eric Gleason of Kasmin gallery and the Cultural Counsel team joined forces to skyrocket us to the top floor with some communications magic. Up there, we soaked up the scene-stealing nocturnal Manhattan skyline, with two ever-fun party guests, Helen Edwards of Christie’s and Artsy’s Arun Kakar.
Thursday
No sleep, no problem. TEFAF sprang in full bloom at the Park Avenue Armory, metaphorically and literally with thousands of purple allium flowers suspended from the ceiling. I spotted Ashley Olsen and Marc Jacobs window-shopping antiques and ran into my good friend Camille Okhio of Elle Decor. She asked me to snap a few pics of her between the beautifully-woven Ruth Asawa sculptures at David Zwirner’s booth. While I was Steven Klein-ing, my partner in life and crime Ross took photos of me taking Camille’s photo.
On the train downtown, Ross and I stumbled upon, among tired 9-to-5 straphangers, Mathieu Borysevicz of Shanghai’s BANK gallery which now has a pilot New York space in SoHo. We compared the night’s calendars: he was gallery-hopping in Chelsea while we were heading to the bar-clad Lower East side. At the Hotel on Rivington’s penthouse, the performance artist Millie Brown and her sister Beckielou had us sit around a massive plant-covered table for a multi-sensory feast which they called Photosymphony. Through lush leaves of the tablescape poking into my vegan risotto, I could still see the ICA San Diego director Andrew Utt whom I met in Rio de Janeiro a few years ago (we even jogged on Copacabana!) With the brave decision to skip the dessert, we rushed to the final hour of the multi-host party at Chinatown’s wood-clad moody bar The River. Delfina Foundation, P·P·O·W, London’s Public Gallery and Portland gallery ILY2 had all invited their own contacts which yielded a vibrantly packed soirée. Through the sardine-can crowd, I saw writer friend Annabel Keenan who has a book coming out about the art world and climate activism. Once the clock hit 11 pm, Ross and I hailed a cab à la Carrie Bradshaw to Jean’s where Gagosian had a red-lit bash to celebrate none other than Takashi Murakami. Grabbing fellow writer and East Village fixture Rachel Small, we entered the opulent venue which was filled with a mix of those committed to the DJ’s ‘80s beats and others who opted for the safe zone of the bar. We, of course, were devoted to both to benefit from the Negronis and the conversation from ARTnews reporter Daniel Cassady and Diana Ross. A fundamental rule I impose onto myself for these weeks is to never compromise.
Friday
The final day was slow and rainy, but, like the teary-eyed smiley emoji, I was determined to push through —who could say no to Miu Miu and Goshka Macuga? The luxurious house of twistedly preppy attire had tapped the Polish artist for the second iteration of their absorbing installation, Tales & Tellers, which launched during Art Basel Paris. Here, they filled an industrial train station-like building in Hudson Yards with actors re-staging scenes from films which Miu Miu has commissioned to women directors over the last 14 years. With champagne in hand, we dodged a chic skateboarder and watched two women elegantly wrestling. As a cute bonus, we ran into the Londoner writer friend Amah-Rose Abrams with whom I have shared many transcontinental adventures.
After a quick chat with one of my New York besties, Ann Binlot, about our collective next moves for the night, Ross and I stomped through Chelsea towards the Standard Hotel in Meatpacking. In another multi-host fair, MoMA’s Black Arts Council, Art Noir, Frieze, and Dobel had amassed a substantial crowd at the hotel’s third floor, sandwiched between the High Line and the Hudson River. DJ Tara and Nick Hakim filled the room while I caught up with the High Line curator Constanza Valenzuela and Frieze’s own Morenike Graham-Douglas. A tough decision: go home or hop onto the next bash with our eyelids drooping with the week’s social ambition. The eyelids won and we headed home after a slimy New York slice.