Six Brooklyn artists to check out at the Armory Show

The New York art world has kicked into high gear with the city's glitziest super-show, now at the Javits Center

Summer is unofficially over, and school is back in session. So, too, are the borough’s artists.

Every September, the Armory Show, New York’s hometown art fair, kicks the art world into full gear after a long summer of group exhibitions and seaside vacations. And every September, the Armory Show gets bigger and bigger. This year’s edition, topping 200 exhibiting galleries from around the world, marks their largest fair yet, on the heels of the hot news that the event has been acquired by the London-based Frieze. Who knows what changes lie in store.

Until then, this seems certain: Brooklyn artists are well-represented at the Armory Show, edition after edition. In fact, painter Matthew Hansel, who is exhibiting here on behalf of The Hole gallery, is the cover artist of the fall/winter issue of Brooklyn Magazine. Read our profile of him here. Then check out this year’s other must-see local talent, on display at the Javits Center through September 10:

Cameron Welch
For starters, in the Galleries section of the Armory Show — the art fair’s centerpiece, where leading international galleries present artists — Chelsea-based Israeli art dealer Yossi Milo is offering three massive mosaics by Indianapolis-born and Brooklyn-based hotshot Cameron Welch. These sprawling, up-to-7-feet-tall, semi-abstract scenes are pure eye candy. Faces and animals emerge from the the chaotic patterns of tiles and embedded objects, like CDs and broomsticks, whose diverse colors, patterns and textures are all entertaining on their own. Art fairs are notoriously opaque when it comes to what they’re selling, but we overheard Milo tell an interested buyer these are $45,000 a piece.

Cameron Welch’s sprawling mosaics (Scott Lynch)

A.K. Burns and Nicole Cherubini
In addition to the Galleries section, the Armory Show comprises five discrete sections. 2023 marks the introduction of their Focus section, highlighting artists who “use materials to manifest histories — whether sedimented or surfaced, place based or familial, learned or reclaimed — and to conjure specific futures.” Here, Kinderhook’s September gallery showcases a conversation between two New Yorkers: artist and educator A.K. Burns and the sculptor Nicole Cherubini, based between Catskill and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. A Washington, D.C.-based art advisor passing by their booth confessed to a longtime affinity for Cherubini’s crafted vessels. The artist herself says the beautiful benches in this show are the first truly functional objects she’s ever made. Cherubini also said she plans to spend more time in Brooklyn this season, too.

One of Nicole Cherubini’s vessels (Scott Lynch)

Helène Aylon
In the show’s Solo section, where the gallery booths are all devoted to a single artist’s story, fair attendees can discover the lesser-known, late talent Helène Aylon — courtesy of downtown Manhattan’s Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects. Aylon was born into Brooklyn’s rich Orthodox Jewish community in 1931. She married a rabbi at 18, and studied art at Brooklyn College with legendary modern artist Ad Reinhardt, who became her mentor. This showcase spans decades in Aylon’s experimental practice, from scintillating and spectral abstractions of acrylic and plexiglass on aluminum to self-portraits taken over the years before her death in 2020.

Carlos Rosales-Silva 
The Armory Show’s Presents sections holds it down for galleries that have been around for 10 years or less to share solo or dual presentations from their roster. There, Lower East Side gallery Sargent’s Daughters celebrates the vivid mixed-media symbols of El Paso-born and Brooklyn-based painter Carlos Rosales-Silva with an ode to his affinity for Mexican muralism, Latin American Modernism and his own family’s industrial, working class roots. Colorful wall accents echo modernist architecture in Casa Barragán, an inspiration for this latest body of work.

Carlos Rosales Silva (photo. by Scott Lynch)

Jean Shin 
But it is perhaps the Armory Show’s large-scale Platforms section that most embodies the real reason visitors return each fall: for the spectacle. Installations in this section are large enough that they could be public artworks, but in many instances delicate enough that they shouldn’t live outside. Brookline, Massachusetts-based gallery Praise Shadows has shared exactly such an installation by Brooklyn-based artist Jean Shin titled “Huddled Masses” where scores of obsolete cell phones and thickets of vintage phone cables evoke the elegant lines of a zen garden. “The work invites us to reflect on e-waste’s impact on the environment,” accompanying wall text reads, “and the planned obsolescence central to our consumer culture.” At least here, the Armory Show is for seeing over buying.