PULSE Art Fair - Metropolitan Pavilion, NYC, May 8 -11, 2014
PULSE Art Fair - Metropolitan Pavilion, NYC, May 8 -11, 2014
by Michael Sherer
Posted: May 2014
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Since its inception in ‘05, the Pulse Art Fair has been a popular draw both here in NYC and in Miami. It’s prime mission is to allow for the discovery and acquisition of cutting-edge contemporary art, often by young artists. It’s held at the Metropolitan Pavilion, which is in the Photo District area on West 18th Street in Manhattan. There were two highlights for me, and they’re both from young Cuban artists.
One was an interactive installation called Nearness by Arlés del Rio. It was presented by Times Square Arts and the Cuban Artists Fund and was financed by The Rockefeller Brothers Fund. It was initially featured in the plazas of Times Square from July 8 - August 18, 2014. del Rio utilizes space and physical barriers to challenge participants to consider entering forbidden areas to satisfy their curiosities and desires toward it. The Times Square exhibit consisted of 17 life-sized orange sculptures, assembled from galvanized steel, iron and concrete. They’re in the form of human cutouts of various sizes, and have a silhouette like quality. Participants are able to easily to pass through the panels, which serve as a metaphor for the social, political, cultural and personal barriers that separate strata of people. The indoor art fair version consisted of a much smaller scale presentation made of black chain link fence material with the cutouts within. The concept and metaphor was the same, though.
The other highlight was a multi-faceted mosaic tile type installation by Pavel Acosta. The works came from the Zadok Gallery of Miami. They included María Teresa, Infanta of Spain and after Diego Velazquez. They’re made out of paint chips due to Acosta having very limited access to materials in Cuba at the time. They are extremely detailed and painstakingly executed. Said Acosta: “All my work revolves around stealing. In Cuba, after graduating from the Higher Institute of Art and with little access to unaffordable art materials, I stole dry paint from the crumbling city walls and the objects around me to do collages of recycled paint on paper and canvases. I wanted to survive as an artist in the same way people does in Cuba – smuggling the State resources within the black market as the way to compensate for low salaries and scarcities. I was interested in exploring the boundaries between destroying something, or committing a crime and creating, as well as the concepts of ethics and morality within my society.”
I look forward to seeing more works by these two men, and the Pulse Art Fair as a whole.