10 Must-See Gallery Exhibitions during Armory Week 2024
Annabel Keenan
Sep 3, 2024
With the dog days of summer behind us, the art world is reemerging and looking ahead to the fall season. In New York, the so-called Armory Week anchored by The Armory Show marks this return. The week brings with it additional fairs, including Independent 20th Century, Art on Paper, and the scrappy, artist-forward SPRING/BREAK.
Taking place the first week of September, this year’s Armory Week might not be as frenzied as 2023 (when PHOTOFAIRS was also on), but there will certainly be no shortage of art around the city. At the Javits Center, The Armory Show will feature over 235 exhibitors and present a packed schedule of programs. The fair has also partnered for the third time with the U.S. Open to showcase underrepresented artists on the tennis center’s grounds. This will include Eva Robarts’s sculpture Fantasy of Happiness (2022) made of repurposed tennis balls and a chain-link gate, presented by Ruttkowski;68.
Outside the fair walls, local galleries across the city are opening exhibitions of their own, including a strong selection of solo shows featuring some of the rising stars and seasoned veterans of contemporary art. From Monica Bonvicini’s feminist installations to Hilary Pecis’s vibrant Southern Californian landscapes, here are the 10 best gallery shows to add to your Armory Week agenda.
Stephen Thorpe, “Dream House”
DIMIN
Sep. 6–Oct. 19
In “Dream House,” New York–based British painter Stephen Thorpe draws inspiration from Carl Jung’s concept of the same name, in which the home symbolizes the human psyche. In this theory, each room is seen as an extension of a different part of the mind—both the personal and the collective. Drawing inspiration from psychoanalysis, sociology, and symbolism, Thorpe blurs the lines between the real and the abstract, illustrating the tensions between the internal and external worlds.
Thorpe focuses on the corners of rooms, at times filling this narrow, intimate vantage point with vibrant imagery, such as landscapes and exotic birds. In Sacred Landscape of Inside Things (all works 2024), for example, the mid-career artist depicts a serene landscape with an expansive perspective. This forms a contrast with works like A Symbol of Solitude for the Imagination and A Place of Reasoning Between the Inside and the Outside, in which thick, expressive swathes of paint cover the walls, perhaps symbolic of the physical and psychological barriers we build around us.
