The most surprising thing for me, though this is based solely of my lack of experience of Armory shows was the amount of old work for sale at the fair. It seemed like every second stall had a few Robert Mapplethorpe photos up for grabs. Of course it is the preserve of the other more alternative fairs like Pulse and Scope to concentrate solely on younger, less established artists, but it is still surprising to see so many established artists like Damien Hirst being represented by work that is 10 years old or more.
The fair is also dominated, understandably enough, by product orientated art and of this, illustrations and drawings were certainly to the forefront.
It is of course apparent from even a cursory trawl through galleries in Chelsea and Williamsburg that drawing is the achingly hip art-form of the moment. And I must confess to being for the most part unimpressed by such work, especially the more colorful, busy work that apes the obsessional detail of outsider artists like Madge Gill or Martin Ramirez. The drawing on show here seem to lean broadly in two directions - geometrics and cartoon. David Zwirner Gallery unveiled their prize scoop - a series of works by Robert Crumb, but there was also the stylistically looser, yet more self-conscious work of Michael Cline at the Daniel Reich Gallery. Peres Projects from Los Angeles had work by John Kleckner (above)- technically impressive but somewhat vacuous. Claims situating him in a mannerist tradition are well and good but his work reminds me of nothing so much as 1970's prog rock album covers - things best forgotten.
A more adolescent and angsty style (also hip commodities at the moment) can be seen in the pastels of Moyna Flannigan at the Sara Meltzer Gallery. At their best they have a grotesque, exaggerated feel akin to the paintings of John Currin, while at their worst they are like illustrations to a smutty version of 'Alice In Wonderland'.
Examples of the more geometrically inclined works could be seen at Pierogi Gallery.
Michael Schall's graphite on paper drawings (below) are, again, impressive but somewhat empty upon sustained examination. His imagined worlds are actually surprisingly unimaginative, bearing strong marks of a kind of David Lynchian industrial chic, but cleaned and sanitized to such an extent that the drawings undermine their own internal logic. These are stuctures devoid of any human touch and as such lose all sense of either foreboding or aspiration that might otherwise have been attached to such images.
Of all the drawings I saw, those that appealed most to me were the works of Markus Amm at The Breeder Gallery. Their simplicity and clarity are an antidote to the more over wrought work of his contemporaries.
However, since then I have seen a larger body of his work of his online and it is apparent that his drawings in color lean towards an increasing content. Nonetheless these too manage to work against the odds.
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