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I checked out 2 shows at the biggest art event in New York - here were the highlightshttps://www.businessinsider.in/destinations/i-checked-out-2-shows-at-the-biggest-art-event-in-new-york-here-were-the-highlights/slidelist/57522646.cms2017-03-07T22:14:11+05:30

I checked out 2 shows at the biggest art event in New York - here were the highlights

Mar 7, 2017, 22:14 IST

I arrived at NADA, which was held in an unassuming building in Manhattan. NADA has been one of my favorite fairs to attend in the past, and it tends to be younger and more cutting-edge. NADA felt a little different this year, as it had a new time, new location, and a new collaborator in Kickstarter.

Once inside, I checked in.

Then it was time to check out some gallery booths.

Super Dakota was one of the first galleries that caught my attention. These pieces by artist Chris Dorland are printed on aluminum and made using broken scanners. As a tech person, I tend to be drawn to tech-heavy art.

Tech art was easy to find. Siebren Versteeg's tech-heavy exhibition featured algorithmically generated paintings based on live CNN data (displayed both on the vertical screen and in a virtual gallery on the other screen).

It was able to tell I was photographing it.

Los Angeles gallery Moran Bondaroff showed video and VR work by Jacolby Satterwhite. This booth was packed the entire time I was there.

The Yours Mine & Ours booth was another crowd favorite. It featured a mechanical typing alien by artist Jeremy Couillard. This alien was in a chat room with another alien as part of a concurrent exhibition by him at the gallery's permanent Lower East Side space.

This colorful booth featured work by artists Bill Jenkins and Justin Morin, unconventionally displayed covering each others' work.

I also chatted with Sean Carney, outreach director for "New York's freest art school," BHQFU.

Later, I headed to the Armory Show, which was a pretty strong contrast to NADA. It took place in a massive, brightly lit space at Pier 92/94. It has bigger galleries than NADA and even bigger artworks. Armory felt like a bizarre no-holds-barred completion between galleries to grab your attention.

These works show the scale of the art at Armory.

This massive, hovering monolith by Studio Drift was a great example of art for spectacle's sake at Armory. It was a sight to behold. Where else can you see a cement block large enough to hold a car floating effortlessly in the air?

At the Artsy/Microsoft booth I got to try Microsoft's HoloLens, their new augmented reality headset. The piece shown was also by Pace Gallery's Studio Drift, and featured more floating blocks.

Reflective surfaces and neon text were everywhere. As Instagram becomes more and more of a catalyst for art sales, galleries opportunistically take this into consideration with their programming by showcasing selfie-conducive or otherwise Instagram-likely works.

This concave colored mirror is by Anish Kapoor. Kapoor is famously disdained by other artists for being the only artist allowed to use the world's blackest material.

"Piano Piano" by Matteo Negri offered yet another selfie opportunity.

Highly Instagrammable light artist James Turrell at Kayne Griffin Corcoran was another crowd favorite.

At the end of the fair, I found a familiar face. Conceptual Photoshopper Josh Citarella showed a massive triptych imagining the artist as the "freelancer of the future" — a prepper/creative professional hybrid in his apartment in flooded, dystopian New York.

On the way out, I stumbled on some unique works that were my favorite of either fair. Artist Patrick Jacobs had several nature dioramas viewable through thick, circular windows that gave a sort of fish eye lens effect, totally obfuscating the scale of the scene on the other side.

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