A fair to remember
Art Santa Fe’s 15th year
The Santa Fe trifecta, which includes the International Folk Art Market and upcoming exhibits at SITE Santa Fe, kicks off with Art Santa Fe, the annual international art fair at the Santa Fe Convention Center. This year’s fair, which runs from Friday, July 10, through Sunday, July 12, includes gallerists and dealers from Japan, Costa Rica, South Africa, and Chile, among other locations. Museum director Don Bacigalupi gives the keynote lecture on Saturday, July 11. Bruce Donnelly’s award-winning documentary on Cuban artists, Alumbrones, screens throughout the weekend. Darian Rodriguez Mederos’ portrait Estigmas (2015) is on the cover.
Every year at Art Santa Fe, visitors are treated to a host of offerings from international gallerists and dealers, some new, some returning. Now in its 15th year, the international art fair, helmed by local gallery owner Charlotte Jackson, continues to bring fresh talent to Santa Fe. For 2015, the fair features exhibitors and artwork from South Africa, Japan, Korea, Chile, Canada, Costa Rica, and the United States. Cuban artists represented by Miami-based Conde Contemporary are in attendance, as well as more than a dozen artists from South Africa, arriving under the banner Contemporary Art South Africa.
The fair runs from Friday, July 10, through Sunday, July 12, at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center. Highlights include Japanese artist Takashi Inaba’s monumental Puzzle Project, comprising individual puzzle pieces, each designed by a different artist — this year’s Project Space installation — and Los Pioneros, an installation of life-sized effigies of children by Cuban-born artist Aurora Molina, represented by Conde Contemporary. The kinetic installation is based on Molina’s experience with childhood education in communist Cuba. Also unique to the fair are two large-scale intricate tapestries by award-winning fiber artist Sola, works by multimedia Costa Rican artist Gioconda Rojas Howell, and Cubist-inspired works by John Andro Avendaño from Sammamish, Washington. First-time exhibitor Marcia Weber Art Objects, a gallery specializing in self-taught outsider art by artists such as Thornton Dial and Jimmie Lee Sudduth, is in attendance, as well as returning presenters the New Mexico Museum of Art, Albuquerque’s Park Fine Art, which brought Korean papermaking demonstrations to Art Santa Fe in years past, Japan’s Gallery Edel, and Radius Books, whose publisher David Chickey gives a talk, “Do Books Matter?” in the Coronado Room of the Convention Center on Friday at 1 p.m.
The keynote talk on Saturday evening is by newly appointed director of Chicago’s forthcoming Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Don Bacigalupi, former director of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. Filmmaker Bruce Donnelly’s documentary on contemporary Cuban artists, Alumbrones, screens on all three days of the fair. Two of the artists featured in the film will be present. Art Santa Fe is the city’s second international contemporary art expo of the season, following June’s Currents festival of new media, and offers an alternative to the fare on sale at the International Folk Art Market, which runs concurrently on Museum Hill. The Folk Art Market, Art Santa Fe, and SITE Santa Fe’s summer exhibitions, SITE 20 Years/20
Shows Summer and Unsuspected Possibilities (both of which open on July 18), form “the Santa Fe Trifecta,” offering visitors an eclectic look at colloquial, fine, and contemporary art from Santa Fe and beyond.