The 15th annual Sculpture Objects & Functional Art Fair — aka SOFA NEW YORK – opens tomorrow at the Park Avenue Armory, but the preview was tonight, and I went. It’s interesting, and I use the adjective purposefully. Only one booth really stood out.
The organizers mixed it up this year, hiring architect David Ling to create a different ambiance — and he did. Visitors enter through a white tunnel, and come upon an open area with seating and, tonight, a bar and a table of nibbles. A few booths hug the drill hall’s perimeter behind the entrance and the rest are on a grid with both vertical and horizonal aisles. White sculptural elements (floating blocks, I think they are called) are hung from the ceiling, effectively lowering it.
All of this creates a more intimately scaled space, although one dealer I spoke with said the booths are the same size as last year’s. To him, and me, they feel smaller.  He wasn’t sure he liked this feeling, but he told me he would reserve judgment until Saturday, to see how collectors felt. (He did not know I was a reporter, so I am not naming him.)
But clearly SOFA realizes that fairs are proliferating, and was trying to differentiate itself. Normally, that’s a good move for a business, so long as customers don’t rebel against it (think New Coke, if you’re old enough). I wouldn’t predict a rebellion here.
But what’s at the fair — again, it’s mixed. I saw no “masterpiece,” no breakthrough in craft, but rather a lot of very routine offerings that everyone has seen a million times before. In a few cases, people one might well imagine that they were in an upmarket gift store and, in one case of jewelry, a local crafts fair.
On the other hand, some booths offered beautifully designed, well-made pieces that I, for one, would be happy to own.  On the right above is a piece by Astrid Dahl that’s not as good as the piece at SOFA (which I could not find an image of) and on the left is a basket by Honda Syoryu — to name just two.
I recall years when SOFA seemed better.
Maybe everyone is all faired-out? Too tired from producing for so many fairs that the artists have little time to innovate and the dealers little time to guide their artists or scout new ones? SOFA is far from alone in having what is, I think, a mediocre fair this year. The Armory Show wasn’t terribly great this year either. While I thought the ADAA Art Show did shine this year, versus the past few years, other critics thought it was ho-hum.
What was the exception? A curated exhibition called Covet by the Ferrin Gallery, with Leslie Ferrin and Sienna Patti doing the organizing. They asked (I think) artists to make works inspired by a museum object. Some were excellent. I wish I could show you the giclee print an artist named Bill Wright made of four children posed like The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, by Sargent, in the Museum of Fine Arts-Boston, but in far less affluent circumstances. Giselle Hicks made the other standout — an all-white china piece that drew on A Bouquet of Flowers in a Crystal Vase by Nicholaes van Veerendael in the Met’s collection. It’s a decorative piece, no question, but beautifully made.
Which brings me back to “interesting.” That’s neither an endorsement, nor a critical blast. Whether or not you should go depends on what your expectations and standards are..
Photo Credits: Courtesy of Astrid Dahl (top) and TAI Gallery (bottom)