We’re collecting reactions to last week’s #Rank event at the Seven Art Fair. Did you attend? Lead an event? Stumble upon it? Watch the livestream or follow it via Twitter? Which ever way you noticed it or tuned in, I want you to share your comments or story for a post later this week as we reflect on what it was all about.
SUBMIT YOUR COMMENTARY HERE
We already warned you, so it should be no surprise that Paul Steen’s art world-ized open source video game based on Assault Cube, but injected with 150 of the “most important living artists” according to Artfacts.net, is awesome.
In his virtual world you can roam PS1 or the Istanbul Biennial or at a Jeff Wall show at the Kunstwerk in Berlin gunning down famous artist to win the game. This isn’t a kumbaya game, people. You need to kill to win.
But I have to admit that there’s nothing more fulfilling than reading “Damien Hirst fragged Jasper John.” Download the “Art Assault” modification here: paulsteen.se/aa.html And enjoy!
The buzz before Miami was that Seven Art Fair was going to be one to watch and that is certainly the case.
This indie fair of seven galleries with solid programs — and some art stars among them — have created a wonderful little side fair that has a well-organized area for video works (which is both inviting and well spaced), a space for the #Rank event (which we’ve mentioned before), rooms for work by various artists to talk to one another (some better than others), but most importantly an attempt to collide gallery stables to see what they could come up with together (most notably on one wall covered salon style with pieces from the whole constellation of “Seven” artists).
Did all the artists fit perfectly together? No, but this is an art fair and not a curated exhibition. It was good to see some galleries try something that felt interesting and less commercial than the run-of-the-mill art fairs.
If you, like so many art-worlders, are heading to the Miami art fairs next week, chances are you may be feeling a little grimy. Why? Not because of the humidity, but maybe because of the exploitative economic interactions and hierarchies on display at US’s biggest art shopping mall. The antidote to all this is #Rank, an event organized by artists William Powhida and Jen Dalton in collaboration with the Edward Winkleman Gallery, which will be park at the Seven art fair. #Rank will critique the blatant displays of wealth and status and the stratification of the art world through panels, artist projects and lectures. The details of #Rank were until recently unclear aside from a call for proposals, but now Powhida and Dalton have started announcing their artist projects, and they sound great. Here’s a preview of 5 projects that I find particularly interesting.
Featuring two decades of interdisciplinary art along with new work created in response to the ongoing Women’s Rights Movement in Iran, the exhibition is on view in Hartford, Connecticut.
