Always Be An Emerging Artist: Scope and Fountain NYC Art Fairs

Art Fair madness in New York has ended. I visited two fairs yesterday, both of which are lesser know compared to The Armory Show and Volta. Scope was very clean and professional looking while Fountain Art Fair raw, "do it yourself" feel. Both shows exhibited a variety of work from home and abroad. Yet in my opinion neither show was worth the entrance fee.

Pop-Street-Art was the big winner at both shows. There were many galleries exhibiting work in this vein. The Corey Helford Gallery is the epitome of this trend. I'll be honest here... I detest art like this. It's not creative, instead it's "totally cool dude". Simply combine images of Pop culture with a traditional fine art theme or medium, add some perversion and passive aggressiveness, and pronto! But hey, I suppose someone has to do this kind of work... and I don't know, maybe they feel sincerely compelled to do so.

Eric Joyner

Corey Helford Gallery

Chad Wys

The other big winner at Scope was Video Art. You could see a lot of paintings and/or framed 2-d wall pieces with moving images. Marck and Gregory Scott lead the way.... Troy Abbott's work also used the combination of small video screens in his art. At first I was enthralled with the work, like a kid in a candy store. But after awhile I didn't care so much for being entertained and instead wanted to "feel" something and contemplate simple, "nothing-special" kind of work.