A Vibrant Comeback Show with New Additions – Urban Art & Antiques

We don’t have any experience with the Seattle Art Fair prior, but the 2023 edition was said to be a comeback show. If so, that speed of recovery was on full display this year as 25 additional galleries joined the fair at the Lumen Event Center. A steady crowd Friday seemed to have been dwarfed by reports of a packed hall on opening night Thursday.  

Being relational is a common theme at the fair and it is hard to miss Tori Karpenko’s sculpture based on reclaimed wood. Standing 22 feet tall, it commands visitors attention like a monument to the destruction they’ve helped cause. Hollowed in the middle, perhaps from a fire, the tree’s massive roots spread out like serpentines. It would not fit in many homes but that is ok. Not every piece is meant for a transaction on site; but they all must compete for the limited resources here. Mind you, it is not the budget, but the amount of attention that any visitor can afford to give to a piece of artwork or a gallery booth. Traver Gallery is undoubtably pleased that such a large installation can tower over thousands of works at the fair.  

Local galleries are going full force to embrace the hometown shows. A few pioneer square neighbors like Greg Kucera Gallery, Gallery 110, and Foster/White Gallery are even closer at the fair. At Foster/White Gallery, visitors are encouraged to touch the stone sculpture by Will Robinson – an exception that makes abstract works more tangible. Robinson sources locally and luckily granite is abundant in Washington State. They beg to be caressed, as their forms, being dynamic and pliable, go to battle with the very nature of hard stone.

Another Pioneer Square gallery is a first-timer. Taswira brings black art to the center of the state. The Casspir Project includes both a military vehicle, completely covered in shimmering glass beads, and an installation space. At its booth, several large portraits by Olumide Oresegun suggest a sense of fashion glamour, but with restraint to make sitters relatable. Interestingly, the gallery featured a panel discussion right after the fair was closed on Friday. When we passed by, it was quite packed.

Most galleries feature a sample of artists they represent. That makes Perve Galeria unique, as it brings a solo exhibition for Joal Artur da Silva, a Portuguese expat who has lived in Vancouver since the 1990s. As a key figure of the surrealist movement in Portugal, Silva had not had a chance to show his work in the U.S, until the Seattle Art Fair. Tucked into a corner of the building, the booth extends even further to the collector’s lounge, with works spanning more than six decades. In particular, I was fascinated by his early sculpture which plays with linear forms, sharp angles and negative spaces. Distinctive and affirmative, the solo show feels refreshing, despite many pieces of work being more than four decades old. This work makes other art somehow a version of something else.

Portland, as the closest metro to Seattle, supplied many galleries, or talents, in the case of Traver Gallery. Born in Seattle, Jef Gunn lives in Portland today. His large work “Near Shores and Far Shores” embraces an outer wall for Traver Gallery. Despite the title, the landscape is rather abstract. Objects float through the space in varied shades of blue. The layered surface is both ephemeral and timeless, as if the change is happening and has always been. It is hard to think of a more exquisite way of encapsulating the ebb and flow of Puget Sound.

Waterstone Gallery of Portland exhibited for the first time.  The artists-run co-op has one advantage – The booth is staffed by artists whose works are on the wall, connecting directly with collectors from the host city.

Nearby, we met Harry Schneider and Paul Mullowney from Mullowney Printing Company. We have yet to visit their print shop in Portland, but it was already our third time we met through different fairs. 

It was a magic moment when Paul pulled out a large linoleum print by Narsiso Martinez.  A few years ago we first encountered Martinez’s work at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, in which the material itself (produce boxes) and their signs delivered a subtle but timely message on behalf of those field laborers who are otherwise invisible.

In the new print, “Lady Injustice” looks inconspicuously small, under an American flag spanning the whole width of six feet. The undulating stripes echo the burning sky in Twilight in the Wilderness by Frederic Edwin Church. Orchard workers are almost buried in the background, with their silhouette highlighted from cutting into linoleum.

We were also introduced to Stephanie Syjugo’s prints. At first, we did not understand the context. Who would crumple photogravure prints and mount them as is? Paul shared with us that a Syjugo exhibition is on at the Frye Art Museum. A visit the following morning was an eye-opening experience; not only did we understand why photos depicting Filipinos from the 1904 St Louis World Fair were a testament of position of power, which, in the case of photography, stay unseen; but also we were exposed to more of her work.  

The most surprising booth is from the Corning Museum of Glass, physically located thousands of miles away from the Pacific Northwest. But Seattle has a deep connection with contemporary  glass making through Dale Chihuly, a Tacoma native who also founded the Pilchuck Glass School just north of Seattle. We have come to know the museum when researching antiques glassware. At the fair, the museum installed artworks from a few contemporary artists who have pushed the boundary and enriched the vocabulary of glass art.  It also helps that the glittered balloon-looking glass by Matthew Szösz is cheery and celebratory. They put everyone in a good mood. 

Of course for many people, fairs are experiences and a chance for relationship building. We did have a few physical takeaways, a card printed at a display by Partners in Print and a magazine about contemporary glass given by the Corning Museum of Glass. Unfortunately we left them both at a nearby restaurant. We like to think, newly discovered, they have set someone on an unexpected venture into the world of art.