Untitled Art Announces Programming for it’s 13th Editon Fair
Image: Ibrahim El-Salahi, Pain Relief Canvas. Courtesy of Vigo Gallery.
Untitled Art unveils a program of curated Special Projects, performances, and panel discussions for their 2024 edition. This year’s programming aligns with the focus of “East Meets West,” bringing together artists, galleries, non-profit organizations, and industry leaders to highlight the diverse cultural voices shaping the global art landscape today.
The 13th edition’s curatorial programming is led by Executive Director Clara Andrade and Artistic Director-At-Large Omar López-Chahoud, with the participation of guest curators Kathy Huang, independent curator and Managing Director, Art Advisory and Special Projects at Jeffrey Deitch, New York, and Jungmin Cho, founder and director of art space WHITE NOISE, Seoul.
This year’s Special Projects sector is curated by Omar López-Chahoud and presented throughout the fair. Focusing on historical and emerging perspectives, highlights include:
Ibrahim El-Salahi
Presented by Vigo Gallery
Vigo Gallery (London, United Kingdom) brings to the fair Pain Relief, 2016, by Sudanese artist Ibrahim El-Salahi. Since 2016, El-Salahi has created this extraordinary body of drawings and canvases from the back of medicine packets and envelopes in the comfort of an armchair, refusing to let physical restriction from his sciatica, Parkinson’s and chronic back pain limit his production. This presentation constitutes a seminal event as the first time that El-Salahi’s Pain Relief canvases have been exhibited in the United States.
Reynier Leyva Novo
Presented by El Apartamento
El Apartamento (La Habana, Cuba / Madrid, Spain) presents Reynier Leyva Novo’sFederal Cleaning, 2024, a series of dust meticulously arranged on adhesive paper to create a visual archive of impermanence. The dust, collected from the surfaces of emblematic federal buildings and monuments such as the White House and the Washington Monument, becomes a powerful metaphor for the inevitable decay and transformation of even the most enduring institutions. The project, completed during Novo’s Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in Washington, D.C., in May and June 2024, challenges the idea of enduring power, emphasizing that even the strongest symbols of authority are ultimately subject to the inexorable forces of time and transformation.
Judy Pfaff
Presented by Cristin Tierney Gallery
Cristin Tierney Gallery (New York, NY) presents Judy Pfaff’s El Patio, 1988, created during a pivotal decade in her career. In the 1980s, Pfaff received significant accolades, including a National Endowment for the Arts award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Known for pushing the boundaries of avant-garde practice, Pfaff continues to reinvent her distinctive visual language, incorporating unconventional combinations of materials and creating large-scale installations that transform their surroundings. El Patio exemplifies her approach, combining a vibrant palette, sweeping diagonal lines, and a playfully off-kilter sense of balance that invites exploration. Pfaff has exhibited at prominent institutions such as The National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Whitney Biennials (1981 and 1987), Venice Biennale (1982), MoMA, Brooklyn Museum, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
Image: Monika Buch, "Untitled," 1988. Courtesy of Rafael Ortiz Gallery.
Equipo 57 and Monika Buch
Presented by Rafael Ortiz Gallery
Rafael Ortiz Gallery (Seville, Madrid, Spain), presents Concrete and Spatial Views, merging the collective work by Equipo 57 (Córdoba, Spain, 1957- Bern, Switzerland, 1962) with the artist Monika Buch (Valencia, Spain, 1936). The overflowing power of Equipo 57's works and Monika Buch's delicacy of form and color interact with each other. The confrontation of these works creates a dynamic relationship between two important European artists who hold the key to geometry and concretism.
Izhar Patkin
Presented by JUPITER
Presented by JUPITER (Miami, FL / New York, NY), Izhar Patkin’s 1990 sculpture, Palagonia, fluxes Bernini’s 1652 altarpiece marble depiction of St. Teresa at the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome with the 1749 grotesques by Francesco Ferdinando II Gravina at the Villa Palagonia in Sicily - a sight Goethe described as filled with “elements of madness,” and as a monstrous expression of the unconscious. Palagonia debuted at Holly Solomon Gallery in 1990 and has since been exhibited at Castello di Rivara, Turin, Italy, 1991, and MASS MoCA, 2014, among others.
Ralph Iwamoto
Presented by Hollis Taggart
Ralph Iwamoto’s series Geometric Paintings, spanning from 1965 to 1975, adds historical depth to Hollis Taggart’s (New York, NY) presentation of a transoceanic dialogue. Iwamoto, who witnessed the bombing of Pearl Harbor as a teenager, created work that synthesized the geometric abstraction of Cubism, Surrealist motifs, and flat, planar characteristics of traditional Japanese art. While working as a guard at the Museum of Modern Art, Iwamoto formed close friendships with artists Sol LeWitt, Robert Ryman, and Dan Flavin, who would later go on to become the core group of the Minimalism movement. Ralph Iwamoto has exhibited widely nationally and internationally, and his work is currently on view in the exhibition Home of the Tigers: McKinley High and Modern Art at the Honolulu Museum of Art through January 12, 2025.
Images: Ralph Iwanmoto, "Trail," 1972; "Trip," 1976. Courtesy of Hollis Taggart.
contain and mend
Presented by Transmitter
Transmitter (Brooklyn, NY) presents contain and mend, a group exhibition by artists Tra My Nguyen, Leila Seyedzadeh, Trần Thảo Miên, Shaheer Zazai, Defne Tutus, Duy Hoà and Z.T. Nguyễn. Drawing inspiration from postcolonial theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha to challenge traditional categories of “East” or “Asian,” and referencing the fluid nature of identity, the works on display will rotate over the course of the fair. Through textile-driven works that center the human body and its relationships to physical environments, the presentation embraces the excess material that evades neat dichotomies and dualisms implicit in the endless attempts to separate humanity from one another. All presenting artists hail from the Asian diaspora, highlighting recent works from emerging international artists that emphasize the instability of geographic, ethnic, and nationalist categories.
dach&zephir
Presented by Atlantic Arthouse
Atlantic Arthouse (Miami, FL / Bermuda) present an installation by dach&zephir titled, In between rèpriz and konpozisyon: a place for Caribbean cultures and communities, to be produced during their artist residency at Fountainhead Residency in November 2024, supported by Atlantic Arthouse and La Station Culturelle. By combining textile, collage, and various art & design objects taking their roots in Caribbean tradition, the installation invites viewers to examine the cross-fertilization of Caribbean culture, highlighting how Indian and Chinese communities that play a central role in contemporary Caribbean societies are often disregarded as a part of the region's cultural identity.
