Seattle Art Fair returns Aug. 1

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.