There is nothing quite like the solo spot to punctuate the barn sale stream of consciousness of an art fair. This year’s installment of The Art Show, the ADAA fair at the Park Avenue Armory, boasts several single-artist booths, and three particularly striking examples are of major living women artists: Dorothea Rockburne at Greenberg Van Doren, Suzan Frecon at David Zwirner, and Jennifer Bartlett at Locks (this last a four-decade survey with the addition of a few pieces by other artists, including Louise Bourgeois, her model house within a cage artfully echoing Bartlett’s obsession with simple structures and the grid). Rockburne’s streamlined display was dominated by Mozart and Mozart Upside Down and Backward (1985-86), an essay in geometry and movement. Primary shapes of feisty, lustrous hue and animated, agitated texture recall hermetic Cubism in the retina-teasing traffic they generate between transparency and shadow. DAVID COHEN
The Art Show continues at the Park Avenue Armory, Park Avenue at 67th Street, through March 11.
Dorothea Rockburne, Mozart and Mozart Upside Down and Backward, 1985-6. Oil on shaped canvas, 89 x 115 5/8 x 4 inches. Courtesy of Greenberg Van Doren Gallery
print