The Affordable Art Fair NYC will return to the Metropolitan Pavilion to kick off the fair’s spring 2018 edition from March 22 through March 25, with its signature Private View opening event on March 21 from 6pm-9pm. More than 70 local, national and international galleries will showcase artworks from more than 300 emerging, mid-career and established artists. With two fair editions held annually, Affordable Art Fair NYC offers visitors the opportunity to browse original contemporary paintings, sculptures, photographs and prints ranging from $100 to $10,000.
The Affordable Art Fair is the perfect opportunity for new and young collectors to purchase artwork at an affordable price. We’ve chosen ten works under $1,000 that you can expect to see at this year’s fair.
Artist: Sinziana Velicescu
Artwork: Koreatown Los Angeles, 2016
Gallery: Uprise Art
What to know: The photograph shows a detail of St. Basil Catholic Church in Koreatown, designed by AC Martin & Assoc. and was built in the late 60s. Velicescu told AZ, “I just happened upon this building without knowing about it previously, despite having lived in LA my whole life. It was a lovely find for me and educational experience as I’m always trying to find unusual and overlooked architecture around Los Angeles. The St. Basil’s Church is definitely a building I’d recommend any architecture aficionado to visit for its stark brutalist look that provides a modern touch to the historical Wilshire Blvd, known most famously for its art deco buildings. ”
Artist: Cristina Gayarre
Artwork: Morenita, 2016
Gallery: standArte
What to know: The artwork is made with pieces of paper instead of paint as she normally does. After the success of her editions of Pelirrojas she decided to continue with the same figures, but using different materials. Instead of changing the image, she decided to change her technique.
Artist: Gee Gee Collins
Artwork: History in Full Color
Gallery: Lilac Gallery
What to know: This piece is mixed media and spray paint on heavyweight paper. “History in Full Color” series is a celebration of color throughout history. Collins told AZ, “I start each painting without a preconceived idea of the outcome. Painting intuitively allowing each color and line to dictate the next. As the colors and lines combine and layer, I work to find balance and harmony. There is a point in which the last mark or color is layered and the story is complete.”
Artist: Bonnie and Clyde
Artwork: Ice Cream Plaza
Gallery: Liberty and Gas Gallery
What to know: Ice Cream Plaza incorporates a series photographs taken by the artist amassed from a trip to Havana. It’s inspired by the socialist ice cream industry within Castro’s Cuba, and by Coppelia, the capital’s ‘ice cream cathedral.’ Bonnie and Clyde have collaged together images from Plaza Viego with strips of beautiful, soft, ice cream colours peppered with white sprinkle shapes in a graphic nod to the frozen delight. An off-kilter, black and white tiled floor streaks across the center of the print to summon the feel of a kitchen or parlor and to create Bonnie and Clyde’s surreal and dizzying vision of Cuba’s crumbling, yet elegant and spirited capital city.
Artist: Joe Webb
Artwork: The Big Splash Diamond Dust
Gallery: JEALOUS
What to know: Webb uses vintage magazines and printed ephemera that he has collected to create simple but elegant handmade collages. After many years of working on computers as a graphic artist, Joe turned his back on technology and started making ‘analogue’ collages. The artist uses found imagery and a pair of scissors; there’s no googling for material and no Photoshop to resize, adjust or undo.There’s an element of serendipity in finding images that work together that can’t be replicated in the digital world. He wanted to get back to basics so set himself a simple rule of working from just two images; it’s interesting to find what narratives appear when two conflicting ideas are juxtaposed.
Artist: Elizabeth Waggett
Artwork: For Lovers
Gallery: galerie Barrou Planquart
What to know: This piece was created for the Waggett’s first solo show in NYC and was the first piece to sell from the show. The piece was inspired by a line from ‘Friends’ the sitcom,“He’s her Lobster,” implying that lobsters mate for life (which they don’t), but became a symbol of love to those of that era. The gold symbolizes the value we place on the lobster as a delicacy when its true value is as a crucial part of our ecosystem. Waggett told AZ, “The two lobsters are an exact mirror image of one another, suggesting what we see in others we see in ourselves, what we put into life we get out of life, if we show love, we are loved back. I hope this artwork will bring the happiness of feeling loved, while also opening the conversation of how we can all do better in loving one another and our planet.”
Artist: Samantha Williams-Chapelsky
Artwork: I will leave the light on, 2017
Gallery: Feral Fine Art
What to know: This painting is on birch panel and using a pigment called Phthalo Green Yellow Shade that almost has a phosphorescent quality, which allows the piece to glow in certain lights. This is a relatively small piece (24” x 24”) and yet it incorporates 3 cups of acrylic texture. The piece is inspired by the night landscape of northern Alberta, this piece faintly references the luminescent quality of the Northern Lights. The artist told AZ, “I am to capture the moment and a particular emotion with opposing textural applications. This piece explores a moment of finding a path within a sea of darkness.”
Artist: James Sparshatt
Artwork: Te veo, 2003
Gallery: Capital Culture Gallery
Artist: Apostles Chantzaras
Artwork: The Bathers
Gallery: DECORAZONgallery
Artwork: The series by Apostles Chantzaras titled “The Bathers” is all about the deep blue, and the feeling of expansiveness. The piece emanates sun-kissed bliss, happiness, and playing under the sun. “Fos,” the Greek word for light, is paramount to Chantzaras’ artwork.
Artist: Rosie Turnbull
Artwork: Adobe Village 1
Gallery: Inart Gallery
What to know: “Adobe Village 1 was part of a series of small en Pleinair works from a painting trip the artist took in October 2017 with other artists to Morocco. This was painted in the small village called Tamtottouchte. Adobe Village 1 was drawn in pastel in front of the subject, and then painted over with gouache. It is in this process that the work shifts from a mere architectural representation of place into a more painterly evocation, using memory, and allows the artist to reimagine the scene, changing and playing with tones until it transforms into something else that has become independent, with its own entity.” The artist said in a statement to Art Zealous.
We are offering tickets to the Affordable Art Fair to select readers. Email info@artzealous.com with the subject line “Count me in for the Affordable Art Fair!” Limited tickets available.
top photo // courtesy of Affordable Art Fair
