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 all over the world this 12 months; its organisers, Artwork Market Productions, have additionally programmed a full calendar of interactive occasions and workshops, together with the return of Booksmart Truthful. This fair-within-the-fair organised in partnership with the Middle for E-book Arts champions the handmade artist’s guide and a variety of printed supplies created by artists, establishments and unbiased presses.

This 12 months’s Artwork on Paper contains a vigorous mélange of choices within the titular medium. Standouts embody tenderly crafted tabletop, plant-like sculptures by Nina Katchadourian, that are offered by Tempo Gallery, and Mary Beth Edelson’s Story Gathering Packing containers, on Accola Griefen Wonderful Artwork‘s stand, a social observe challenge from the early Nineteen Seventies that asks guests to contribute handwritten responses to prompts about identification, gender and immigration.

Some work on the truthful skirts the temporary a bit; a number of exhibitors are displaying work, ceramics and different non-paper objects. 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 infinite and authentic 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 patrons who love the genuine, intimate really feel of his items.

“I went to the New York Academy of Artwork, and my commute from my condo to high school was 40 minutes, so I sketched to move the time,” he tells The Artwork Newspaper. “I began utilizing that approach for fee work, and I might at all times do them in my sketchbooks and put up my pages on-line, after which it simply become folks saying, ‘Hey, how do I’ve that although?’ Folks wished to purchase the entire sketchbook, however there’s notes and telephone numbers and physician’s appointments and social safety numbers in there! So now I’m considering of the sketchbook as simply one other method 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 folks to what they see on-line, and I wished to supply a chunk of my studio observe”.

Sanchez’s stand is full of palm-sized notebooks pressed open underneath glass, revealing lush, jewel-like photos that commemorate 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 exterior 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 Up to date Artwork Middle, has launched its first “full-scale collaboration” with Artwork on Paper after years of partnerships, in line with Kristin DeAngelis, the senior director of technique and operations at Mana Up to date. 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 “Girl and the Tramp” on a cheeseburger, a deviously scrumptious image of teamwork incarnate.

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