The Seattle Art Fair, presented by AIG, has announced the exhibitor list and on-site programming for its fifth edition. From Aug. 1 through Aug. 4, the Seattle Art Fair will host daily talks, special projects, and performances, in addition to nearly 100 galleries from around the world.
“This milestone year is a testament to the region’s vested interest in the arts and the world’s embrace of Seattle as a viable, diverse art capital,” said Max Fishko, Seattle Art Fair director. “We are proud to share the exhibitor list for the Seattle Art Fair’s fifth edition.”
“The Seattle Art Fair turns five this year. We are so pleased to have been involved since its inception,” said James Harris of James Harris Gallery, Seattle Art Fair dealer committee member and 2019 exhibitor. “Each year the fair has gotten more and more engaging for the Seattle audience. It is exciting to be a part of this celebration of the arts.”
For a second year, curator Nato Thompson returns to the Seattle Art Fair as artistic director. This year’s programming will explore themes of curiosity and wonder, featuring music, tech, natural history and artificial intelligence. Read Thompson’s curatorial statement here.
“The programming at the Seattle Art Fair this year is eclectically topical,” Thompson said.
“We were inspired by the Wunderkammers, cabinets of curiosity from the 16th century that displayed artifacts garnered and pilfered from across the seven seas,” he added. “This program ideally takes the spirit of interdisciplinary, intersectionality and the post-human as touchstones for a 21st century version.”
Programming participants include Bigert & Bergström, Gregory Blackstock, Center for PostNatural History, Molly Crabapple, Stephanie Dinkins, Bread Face, Mark Gibson, Patricia Piccinini, Nadia Hironaka & Matthew Suib.
2019 SEATTLE ART FAIR EXHIBITOR LIST
ACA Galleries, New York
Alvarez Gallery, Stamford
Art Ventures Gallery, Menlo Park
Artêria Gallery, Bromont
Axiom Contemporary, Santa Monica
Barney Savage Gallery, New York
BLANK SPACE, New York
Caviar20, Toronto
Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles
CHIC EVOLUTION IN ART, Atlanta
Chosun Art Gallery, Seoul
Connect Contemporary, Atlanta
Davidson Gallery, New York
Diane Rosenstein Gallery, Los Angeles
Dolan / Maxwell, Philadelphia
Electrum Art Gallery, New York
Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland
Emmanuelle G. Contemporary Art, Greenwich
Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco
ex-chamber museum, Tokyo
Feheley Fine Arts, Toronto
Forum Gallery, New York
FP Contemporary, Los Angeles
Fremin Gallery, New York
Gail Severn Gallery, Ketchum / Sun Valley
Galerie PICI, Seoul
Gallery 110, Seattle
Gallery Jones, Vancouver
Gallery Poulsen, Copenhagen
Gallery Repost, Kyoto | London
Gallery Tableau, Seoul
Gerald Peters Gallery, New York
Gerald Peters Gallery Sante Fe, Sante Fe
Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle
Hall Spassov Gallery, Seattle
Hampson Gallery, St. Petersburg
Harris Harvey Gallery, Seattle
Hashimoto Contemporary, San Francisco | New York
Havoc Gallery, Burlington
Heather Gaudio Fine Art, New Canaan
HEXTON | modern + contemporary, Chicago | Aspen
i.e. gallery, Edison
J. Rinehart Gallery, Seattle
Jason Haam, Seoul
James Harris Gallery, Seattle
JD Malat Gallery, London
Jeffrey Thomas Fine Art, Portland
Jill George Gallery, London
John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis
Joshua Liner Gallery, New York
Khankhalaev Gallery, Moscow
KOKI ARTS, Tokyo
Kuckei + Kuckei, Berlin
Linda Hodges Gallery, Seattle
Long-Sharp Gallery, Indianapolis | New York
Lynn Hanson Gallery, Seattle
Marloe Gallery, Brooklyn
Maybaum Gallery, San Francisco
Melissa Morgan Fine Art, Palm Desert
Miles McEnery Gallery, New York
Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami
Muriel Guépin Gallery, New York
Nil Gallery, Paris
Ohshima Fine Art, Tokyo
Okay Spark, Norfolk
Opera Gallery, New York
Over the Influence, Los Angeles | Hong Kong
Pan American Art Projects, Miami
Patricia Rovzar Gallery, Seattle
Paul Thiebaud Gallery, San Francisco
PDX CONTEMPORARY ART, Portland
Peter Robertson Gallery, Edmonton
Phylogeny Contemporary, Seattle
projects+ gallery, St. Louis
Quantum Contemporary Art, London
Rebecca Hossack, London
Rhythm Art, Taipei City
Roppongi Gallery, Cebu
Russo Lee Gallery, Portland
Ryan James Fine Arts, Seattle
Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley
SEASON, Seattle
SEIZAN Gallery, New York | Tokyo
Shift Gallery, Seattle
Simyo Gallery, Seoul
Smith & Vallee Gallery, Edison
Somerville Manning Gallery, Wilmington
Spanierman Modern, Miami
STOA Gallery, Malaga
Stoney Road Press, Dublin
Studio 103 Gallery, Seattle
The Roger Project, New York
THE SPACE, Redmond
Thierry Goldberg, New York
Timothy Yarger Fine Art, Beverly Hills
Todd Merrill Studio, New York
Tong Fine Art, Kirkland
Traver Gallery, Seattle
Uprise Art, New York
Upsilon Gallery, New York
Vin Gallery, Hồ Chí Minh
VIVIANEART, Calgary
Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York
Winston Wächter Fine Art, New York | Seattle
Woodside/Braseth Gallery, Seattle
Yufuku Gallery, Tokyo
YUKI-SIS, Tokyo
ZINC contemporary, Seattle
SEATTLE ART FAIR PROGRAMMING HIGHLIGHTS
ASMR WITH BREAD FACE
Visitors will be invited to perform as Bread Face, the international social media sensation known for smashing her face in bread and her ASMR performances.
In her interactive installation featuring baked goods the public will be encouraged to play with the bread in whichever way they feel compelled. The final product will then be on display throughout the installation.
STEPHANIE DINKINS’S INTERACTIVE AI ROBOT
Transmedia artist Stephanie Dinkins will present Not The Only One (N’TOO), a voice-interactive AI robot designed to address the needs and reflect the ideals of African American people who are drastically underrepresented in the tech community.
The AI storyteller is trained based on data supplied by three generations of women from one family. Visitors are invited to talk to the sculpture and participate in its evolving knowledge.
INCUBATOR FOR EARTHQUAKES
Artist duo Bigert & Bergström, known for their large-scale installations that address the intersection of humanity, nature and technology, will present Incubator for Earthquakes, a kinetic sculpture of a rattling china set on a dinner table that mimics an earthquake.
FULL PROGRAM
Gregory Blackstock
The Boxers, The World War II Lavochkins Russian Fighters, Colorful Egg Pattern Favorites to Go For and The U.S. Amercan Palaces – Historic
Presented with Greg Kucera Gallery
Gregory Blackstock is a self-taught autistic artist who made his living washing dishes at Seattle’s Washington Athletic Club for decades. Now at 72, he has become an international figure in art, known for his time-consuming drawings ranging from canines to planes to historic homes. The four banners that will be displayed at Seattle Art Fair demonstrate Blackstock’s ongoing interest in the categorization and depiction of a range of folkloric, vernacular, and natural history subjects.
Center for PostNatural History
In 2008 artist Richard Pell opened The Center for PostNatural History (CPNH) an alternative museum located in Pittsburgh. The museum’s focus is to:
1. Study the origins, habitats and evolution of organisms that have been intentionally and heritably altered by humans.
2. Record the influence of human culture on evolution.
For the presentation at the fair, the CPNH presents a series of stereoscopic anaglyph photographs of specimens from their collection. These creatures are a collection of specimens whose genetic material have been altered by humans. Three-dimensional glasses will be available for you to view the works.
Stephanie Dinkins
Not The Only One (N’TOO)
Stephanie Dinkins is a transmedia artist who creates platforms for dialogue about artificial intelligence (AI) as it intersects race, gender, aging, and our future histories. She is particularly driven to work with communities of color to co-create more inclusive, fair and ethical artificial intelligent ecosystems.
For the Seattle Art Fair, Dinkins will present Not The Only One (N’TOO), a multigenerational memoir of one black American family told from the “mind” of an artificial intelligence with evolving intellect. It is a voice-interactive AI designed, trained, and aligned with the needs and ideals of black and brown people who are drastically underrepresented in the tech sector. The AI storyteller is trained on data supplied by three generations of women from one family, but the story is told from the first person perspective of the AI. Fair visitors are invited to talk to the sculpture and participate in its evolving knowledge.
Bread Face
Self Facing
Bread Face is the international social media sensation known for smashing her face in bread. Performance art for the social media age, her sensuous bizarre actions have become a touchstone for a fast growing culture genre on the internet known as Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR). Her interactive installation, Self Facing, will feature baked goods created for the Seattle Art Fair. The public will be encouraged to play with the bread in whatever tactile way they feel compelled. The altered baked good will then be on display. This installation touches on themes ongoing in the evolving oeuvre of the ASMR internet sensation including somatic materials, domesticity and of course, voyeurism.
Bigert & Bergström
Incubator for Earthquakes
Bigert & Bergström is an artist duo living and working in Stockholm, Sweden. Through their career, Bigert & Bergström have produced and created art ranging from large-scale installations to public works, sculptures and film projects. Often with a conceptual edge, the core of their work is at the intersection between humanity, nature and technology. Incubator for Earthquakes is a kinetic dinner table sculpture and vibrating motor. From time to time the dinner table is subjected to an earthquake and the china begins to rattle even more vigorously.
Patricia Piccinini
The Bond and The Loafers
Presented with Hosfelt Gallery
Patricia Piccinini is an Australian artist who works in a variety of media including painting, video, sounds and predominately sculpture. She is interested in the relationship between the artificial and the natural environment, as well as relationships within families and between strangers. As part of Seattle Art Fair, Piccinini will be presenting two anthropomorphic sculptures made predominately of silicone and hair.
Hironaka & Suib
Vanitas MMXVIII
Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib employ the tools and conventions of moving-image culture to offer counter-mythical visions of our contemporary world. Hironaka & Suib continue the centuries-old genre of still life painting, vanitas, in their massive video projection Vanitas MMXVlll. Here, common still-life motifs are completely unmoored from their tabletop arrangement. Bruised, molding and half-eaten fruit, broken glass and mirror, wilting flowers and skulls tumble slowly upwards. Vanitas MMXVlll destabilizes the traditional still-life subjects to reflect our current cultural moment, where formerly stable institutions that once embodied shared values are undermined while pride and avarice have been elevated to virtues.
Live Editions
Featuring artists Mark Gibson and Molly Crabapple
The Seattle Art Fair will present Live Editions, a pop-up printing facility within the fair. Two national artists, Mark Gibson and Molly Crabapple, and two local artists who will be announced at a later date will have their artwork printed on-site for a limited edition giveaway available exclusively during Seattle Art Fair.
Talk: Contemporary Curating
Hear from three experts on the field of curating as they discuss models for exhibitions and institutions that they find interesting, and what this means for the future. Larry Ossei-Mensah, senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Paula Marincola, executive director of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, and Rita Gonzalez, head of contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Talk: Artificial Intelligence / Artificial Life
This talk puts into conversation two artists, Richard Pell and Stephanie Dinkins, whose work questions and interrogates the assumptions of what is natural as well as what the political underpinnings of the technological shifts in shaping what constitutes life. Whether the logical of capitalism or the fault-lines of race, the construction of the natural as well as what constitutes intelligence are foregrounded in an important critique of the technological revolutions occurring daily.
Talk: The Kids Panel
This experimental panel allows the audience to receive a report back from the Seattle Art Fair from the mouths of the next generation of art enthusiasts. Moderated by Frye Art Museum Director/CEO Joseph Rosa, this panel will feature children ages 9-12 who arrive at the panel equipped with their favorite art works ready for discussion.
Talk: Stillness & Liveness in Choreography
Co-presented by Base and On the Boards
This talk will center around Morgan Thorson’s work Still Life that uses the gallery space as a container for an endurance-based dance work that at times functions like a slow moving still life and at other times resembles an ensemble dance installation. Thorson will be in conversation with On the Boards’ Artistic Director and Curator, Rachel Cook and Base co-founder and Choreographer, Dayna Hanson.
2019 SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Collectors Preview
Thursday, Aug. 1, 3:30 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Opening Night Preview
Thursday, Aug. 1, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Fair Hours
Friday, Aug. 2, 11 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Saturday, Aug. 3, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Sunday, Aug. 4, 11 a.m. – 6 pm.
Performances will take place during the Opening Night Preview and Fair Hours. Talks will take place during Fair Hours within the Christie’s Theater.
LOCATION
CenturyLink Field Event Center
1000 Occidental Ave S, Seattle
ABOUT SEATTLE ART FAIR
The Seattle Art Fair, presented by AIG, is a one-of-a-kind destination for the best in modern and contemporary art and a showcase for the vibrant arts community of the Pacific Northwest. Based in Seattle, a city as renowned for its natural beauty as its cultural landscape, the fair brings together the region’s strong collector base; local, national, and international galleries; area museums and institutions; and an array of innovative public programming.
Founded in 2015 by Paul G. Allen, the Seattle Art Fair is produced by Vulcan Arts + Entertainment, and Art Market Productions.
This story was previously published in Seattle Weekly.
