Here Are 9 Affordable Works We Love at the Portal Fair on Governor’s Island, New York’s Least Pretentious Art Fair

Labor Day weekend marks the start of the newly rechristened art
fair Portal: Governors Island, the
free annual event that takes over the deteriorating brick mansions
that once housed officers on New York’s Governors Island, a quirky
historic destination that has recently expanded its offerings
to include glamping and an oyster bar.

Long before well-heeled art collectors were boarding the ferry
for Frieze on Randall’s, the Governors Island Art Fair, as Portal
was previously called, was New York City’s first island-based art
fair, founded in 2008 by the art nonprofit 4heads, run by Antony Zito, Nicole Laemmle,
and Jack Robinson. Now returning for its 12th year, the fair
may have a new name, but its dedication to engaging an audience
outside of the art world cognoscenti remains unchanged.

The 4heads team has garnered a reputation for fostering the
careers of emerging artists, and offering a refreshing antidote to
the market-driven New York art world. At Portal, works are largely
affordable and the bulk of the profits go directly to artists It
also offers a chance to encounter art in an unconventional
environment. Here, the traditional white cube is replaced by
kitchens, bedrooms, and other residential spaces.

There’s also public art on the lawns, including the largest Will
Kurtz dog sculpture I’ve ever seen, ingeniously crafted from
plastic bags, rather than the artist’s usual newspaper.

Portal, which is the name of two related fairs in Manhattan and
will be the brand of all 4head’s endeavors going forward, recently
signed a three-year agreement to continue on Governors Island’s
Colonels Row, though there is some talk of making it a traveling
affair in the future.

Without further ado, here are some of our favorite picks for art
on offer for $10,000 or less at Portal.

Miggy
Buck, Rapunzel, $7,000

A massive red chain spilling across the red lawn, Miggy
Buck’s Rapunzel was inspired by the artist’s three
years working in a foundry, though it’s made from wood, not
metal. “I have of a love that ’70s steel work of a lot of
strong I-beam things by male artists,” Buck told artnet News. “I
wanted to soften it, making it a women’s hand.”

Taezoo Park, Distance
Sensor, $1,750

“I’m combining abandoned technology and new technology,” Taezoo
Park said of his scavenged electronic sculptures. Equipped with
sensors, they buzz and light up as you walk by—and it’s a jarring
experience—but they are also surprisingly elegant art objects in
their own right.

Anne
Muntges, Titched In, $10,000

My favorite works at the fair tended to lean toward artists who
draw inspiration from the architecture. Anne Muntges literally drew
all over her space, painting the walls white and meticulously
covering nearly every surface—floor and ceiling not included—with
black acrylic paint hatch marks. The delicate black-and-white line
work made it feel a little bit like you were stepping into an
Edward Gorey drawing. Muntes
will custom design an entire room in this style, while the
individual components are priced at $200 to $800.

Gail M. Boykewich, Goldfinch,
$2,000

Gail M. Boykewich has created a cheerful installation of
paintings and papier-mâché sculptures in one of the
Colonels Row kitchens, covering the backsplash with astroturf and
the counters with large green leaves. The effect is that of
transporting the space to some kind of Surrealist tropical getaway,
imbuing the scene with a sense of magical realism. The artist’s
sculptures start at just $70, with paintings ranging from $275 to
$2,000.

Sophie Gamand, “The End of Love” series,
$1,300 each

Sophie Gamand’s portraits of the much-maligned pit bull aim to
rehabilitate the breed’s reputation by posing shelter pitt bulls
from around the country in floral crowns—and went slightly viral last
year. Here, she’s displayed them with sculptural arrangements
of fake flowers, as well as a print-out featuring biographies about
each of her subjects.

Jiwon Rhie, Flower Dogs,
$300

If you like dogs and flowers, and also mechanical toys, you’ll
adore these adorable floral robots, which have adorably invaded a
Governors Island kitchen. These little pups are charming and weird
in the best kind of way.

Xiaoyue Liu, Where Did All the
Squirrels Go?, $2,850 per video

Xiaoyue Liu has created a series of lovely, lonely vignettes in
her Where Did All the Squirrels Go?, a set of three
animated videos that incorporate both 2-D illustration and 3-D
animation. Conceived of more as a trio of “moving paintings” than
short films, and displayed in what look like gilded frames, the
works feel like something out of a modern-day fairytale.

Eleisha Grant, Pain Is Pain, $2,750

Eleisha Grant’s extremely topical Pain Is Pain
speaks to the ongoing opioid epidemic in a heartrending
installation of the artist’s bedroom. The sheets are printed with
larger-than-life descriptions of drugs and their side effects, with
a seemingly impossible quantity of empty pill bottles—each
prescribed to Grant herself—stashed around the room in overflowing
containers. A large poster of a young Judy Garland, who died of a
barbiturate overdose, serves as a reminder of past victims of
addiction.

Lori Nelson, Bigger Than This
Town, $2,700

Lori Nelson’s delightful, feminist-tinged canvases read like
sweet fairy tales with a strange, unsettling twist. “A lot of my
work has cryptids or sort of monster people—the other or the
outside,” Nelson, who also helps organize the fair, told artnet
News. “This can represent another facet of the self.”

Honorable Mention: Bobby Anspach, Place for
Continuous Eye Contact, $120,000

One of the most unique experiences I have ever had at an art
fair, Bobby Anspach’s Place for Continuous Eye
Contact uses a profusion of colored pom poms paired with
shifting colored LED lights and a score commissioned by composer
Eluvium to create a bizarrely transportive optical experience. Once
inside, all you can see is the eye of the person across from you
and the field of pom poms surrounding you, which magically seems to
come to life, pulsating and undulating.

“I spent about a year of my life on meditation retreats and
studied a little bit of neuroscience,” Anspach told artnet News.
The artist readily admits his price point is on a different scale
than the rest of the fair: “I doubt anybody else is charging this
much!” But it just might be worth it.

Portal Governors Island is on view at Governors Island,
Colonels Row, Saturdays and Sundays August 31–September 29,
2019.

The post Here Are 9 Affordable Works We Love at the Portal
Fair on Governor’s Island, New York’s Least Pretentious Art
Fair appeared first on artnet News.