The Armory Show 2022: Javits Center, New York, NY

VIP PREVIEW

Thursday, September 8 | 12–8 PM

PUBLIC DATES

Friday, September 9 | 12–8 PM

Saturday, September 10 | 12–7 PM

Sunday, September 11 | 12–6 PM

Booth 214 | Javits Center | 429 11th Ave, New York, NY

For the 2022 Armory Show in New York, Kavi Gupta presents a selection of new and historically important works by a diverse, intergenerational group of artists, including James Little, Tomokazu Matsuyama, Mary Sibande, Devan Shimoyama, Suchitra Mattai, Beverly Fishman, Esmaa Mohamoud, Allana Clarke, Deborah Kass, Kour Pour, José Lerma, Jaime Muñoz, Alisa Sikelianos-Carter, Miya Ando, Su Su, Michi Meko, and Sherman Beck

Kavi Gupta amplifies voices of diverse and underrepresented artists to expand the canon of art history. These influential artists are redefining the vanguard of contemporary visual culture.

ARMORY OFF-SITE

Tomokazu Matsuyama, Dancer, 2021. Stainless steel, 132 x 156 x 156 in.

In conjunction with The Armory Show’s renowned public art program, Armory Off-Site, Kavi Gupta is proud to debut Tomokazu Matsuyama’s ambitious public sculpture Dancer, premiering during the fair in Manhattan’s iconic Flatiron Plaza. Dancer’s sinuous, mirrored-steel limbs undulate in joyous abandonment while reflecting a glittering jungle of whirling colors and forms. The sculpture by long-time New York-based artist Tomokazu Matsuyama (“Matsu” to friends) freezes an enraptured figure in a moment of radical freedom familiar to anyone who has ever cut loose and boogied, sambaed, waltzed, tangoed, Geta'd, rhumbaed, fancy-danced, kwassa kwassa'd or hustled. Matsu’s artworks express the “global us,” a multitudinous reality reflective of today's nomadic diaspora. He hopes we will all recognize ourselves in his uncanny visual language, if not from our memories then from our aspirations or dreams.

PLATFORM

 Mary Sibande, Ascension of the Purple Figure, 2016. Fiberglass, resin, fabric, and steel on painted wood plinth, 111 3/4 x 39 3/4 x 39 3/4 in

Additionally Mary Sibande's work, Ascension of the Purple Figure, will be on view as part of Platform, The Armory Show's section dedicated to large-scale installations and site-specific works under the theme of Monumental Change. 

As a gesture toward monumentalizing herself, with this sculpture we see Sophie, artist Mary Sibande's avatar, stepping up onto a pedestal. She wears a purple Victorian-style dress that recalls the aesthetics of the British Colonial Empire. Representing this persona’s purple phase, the color addresses the spirit of constructive resistance encapsulated by the Purple Rain protests in South Africa during apartheid, during which authorities sprayed protestors with purple ink from water cannons, intent on marking them and making them easier to arrest. Hundreds were indeed rounded up and jailed, yet protestors commandeered one of the cannons and turned it on the governing party’s legislative offices. After the riot, graffiti around the city foretold, “The purple shall govern.” Purple is also a reference to clergy and royalty, two authoritarian forces in colonial Africa. Here, Sophie has adorned herself in purple garb, as she ascends with dignity into her new role. Beneath her purple clothing, we can see hints of her next phase, the red phase. For Sibande, red expresses the contemporary frustrations of Black South Africans, a chromatic choice stemming from the Zulu aphorism, “ie ukwatile uphenduke inja ebomvu,” meaning “he is angry, he turned into a red dog.” The artist not only addresses the many faces of herself and Sophie in this work, but also the complex personhoods of all African women who continue to create worlds and narratives outside of the canon of Western Imperialism.