Tulee Hall, Eves’ Mime Ménage, 2019. Two-channel video (color, sound): oil, acrylic, and collage on board; acrylic, resin, papier-mâché, aquarium pebbles, wood, metal, carpet. Courtesy of the artist and Maccarone West, Los Angeles
January 28, 2020 (New York) – The Armory Show announced today the artists and galleries participating in Platform, the curated section of the fair staging large-scale artworks and installations across Piers 90 and 94. The 2020 edition of Platform is organized by Anne Ellegood, the recently appointed Executive Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Platform features work by Charlie Billingham (presented by Morán Morán), Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg (presented by Tanya Bonakdar Gallery), Trulee Hall (presented by Maccarone West), Edward and Nancy Kienholz (presented by L.A. Louver), Christine Wang (presented by Night Gallery), Marnie Weber (presented by Simon Lee Gallery), and Summer Wheat (presented by Shulamit Nazarian).
This year’s Platform section, entitled Brutal Truths, considers how genres of satire, caricature, and the grotesque have endured through time—and are being taken up by contemporary artists as sharp tools of social critique. At a global moment of heightened sociopolitical unrest, artists’ keen observations and sharp wit serve to illuminate the perils of critical social issues and to encourage civic engagement. The 2020 Platform presentations impart a dose of levity while simultaneously underscoring the need for artists to have the ability to interpret recent cultural and political events in their work in a free and unfettered manner. This year’s projects argue for art as a catalyst for public discourse, and offer viewpoints that utilize humor, exaggeration, and the outlandish to emphasize the urgency of the issues they highlight.
“For centuries, artists have acted as incisive social critics, and there seems to be no better time to call attention to contemporary artists who draw upon these traditions with fresh insight and formal ingenuity. Given the current, deeply partisan political climate; the gamesmanship and unpredictability of international relations; an impeachment trial of the president underway; and what will surely be the least civil presidential campaign in American history on the horizon, it seems a perfect moment to focus on this theme,” remarks 2020 Platform curator Anne Ellegood. “I’m excited about the range of projects that will be included in the Platform section, from an important, large-scale sculpture from the 1980s by Ed and Nancy Kienholz called The Caddy Court that asks tough questions about the power of the Supreme Court, to the surreal and humorous social critique offered by works of several young artists.”
Including a range of mediums — painting, sculpture, wall murals, and video — the projects are arranged across both piers, activating diverse spaces throughout the fair with humor and dynamism, and presenting hard truths about the current state of affairs.
Presentation details
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (New York, Los Angeles) will present Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg’s This Is Heaven (2019), a video work by the collaborative duo that explores themes of lust, greed, and personal evolution and regression. The surreal landscapes and visceral characters in Djurberg and Berg’s films at once seduce and disgust the viewer. Their practice explores the shadows of the human subconscious in an effort to challenge perceived moralities. This installation will include sculpture, stop-motion film, and sound to create an immersive experience that speaks to the emotional tension, sexual impulse, and violence inherent in us all. Location: adjacent to Champagne Lounge, Pier 94.
The 2020 Town Square will feature Edward and Nancy Kienholz’s revered installation The Caddy Court (1986-1987), presented by L.A. Louver (Los Angeles). The pair are known for their assemblage installations that comment on sexism, abuse of power, and racial violence in bold and often disturbing ways. In The Caddy Court, the artists utilize a 1978 Cadillac complete with an interior cabinet of curiosities that includes taxidermy, historic books, an American flag, and a gavel. Intended by the artists to travel the country imitating the original function of the US Supreme Court, which traveled from state to state operating as a circuit court, there could not be a more potent time for this work to be experienced and considered widely, as the Supreme Court currently faces one of its most controversial benches and consequential dockets in memory. Location: Town Square, Pier 94.
Morán Morán (Los Angeles) will present a new installation of stenciled wall paintings along with several figurative paintings hung on top by British artist Charlie Billingham. In the tradition of William Hogarth and other great British satirists, Billingham’s work reinterprets satirical prints of the late 18th- and early 19th- century through a contemporary lens. His figures are disassociated from their original context and take on a sublime narrative of their own. Billingham’s specific attention to coloration and texture, paired with the gestural hand apparent in the work, allows the figures to billow and flow across the canvas. Location: East End, Pier 94.
In the works SexyTime Rock Variations and Eves’ Mime Ménage (both 2019), Trulee Hall crafts a multimedia, absurdist installation where claymation, CGI, and live-action film is accompanied by painting and sculpture that repeat and mirror motifs like the hyper sexualization of the female body and the intersection of the fantastical and the grotesque. Presented by Maccarone West (Los Angeles), this installation explores the uncanny and the ludicrous inherent in heteronormative gender roles. Location: West End, Pier 94.
Queens-based artist Summer Wheat will debut a 16-foot-long painting titled Sand Castles designed specifically for The Armory Show 2020. The work depicts a community of women in acts of labor and leisure; a beach scene featuring women bathing, fishing, cracking crabs, swatting flies, sunbathing, and eating strawberries. Wheat allows acrylic paint to ooze through fine wire mesh, causing figures to emerge and dance upon lush, fiber-like surfaces that coalesce into a type of heroic history painting. Presented by Shulamit Nazarian (Los Angeles), Wheat’s mural-like painting critiques the ways in which women’s labor is often unacknowledged or given lesser status, and elevates the quotidian experiences of woman and their ability to collaborate and rely upon one another. Location: Entrance of VIP Lounge, Pier 90.
Marnie Weber has explored the realms of the grotesque, carnivalesque, and absurd in narrative sculptural tableau, paintings, collage, and performance since the 1990s. Creating fantastical landscapes, her work references mythological traditions while simultaneously taking up topical themes, resulting in a mode that has been described as “contemporary grotesque.” Weber will present two sculptures as part of the Platform section, Log Lady & Dirt Bunny (2009) and Pig Host sculpture (2009), both of which feature animal-human hybrids that probe the darker sides of human behavior. Presented by Simon Lee Gallery (London, New York, Hong Kong). Location: Champagne Lounge, Pier 94.
San Francisco-based painter Christine Wang’s bold and raucous “Meme Paintings” will also be included in Platform. Combining often-appropriated images and overlaying with text, Wang takes up a wide range of subjects—from women’s rage to the inexcusable denial of the realities of climate change—in her highly satirical and disturbingly funny paintings. Presented by Night Gallery (Los Angeles). Location: Center, Pier 90.
About Anne Ellegood
Anne Ellegood has been Executive Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA), since September 2019. Previously, she was Senior Curator at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, from 2009-2019; Curator of Contemporary Art at the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; and Associate Curator at the New Museum, New York. Recent exhibitions include the Hammer’s biennial of Los Angeles artists, Made in L.A. 2018, the first North American Jimmie Durham retrospective (2017); and Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology (2014). Ellegood has organized numerous solo shows, including those on Diana Al-Hadid, Eric Baudelaire, Kevin Beasley, Shannon Ebner, Latifa Echakhch, Charles Gaines, Yunhee Min, John Outterbridge, Tschabalala Self, Frances Upritchard, and many others.
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NOTES TO EDITORS
The Armory Show
The Armory Show is New York City’s essential art fair, and a leading cultural destination for discovering and collecting the world’s most important 20th- and 21st-century art. Staged on Manhattan’s Piers 90 and 94, The Armory Show features presentations by leading international galleries, innovative artist commissions, and dynamic public programs. Since its founding in 1994, The Armory Show has served as a nexus for the international art world, inspiring dialogue, discovery, and patronage in the visual arts.
Fair Dates
VIP Preview Day (by invitation only)
Wednesday, March 4, 2020
Public Days
Thursday, March 5–Sunday, March 8, 2020
Hours
Thursday, March 5, 12—8PM
Friday, March 6, 12—8PM
Saturday, March 7, 12—7PM
Sunday, March 8, 12—6PM