A few of the locals intermingled with the art world of New York City and Miami in the huge Barn-like building of Basilica Hudson on the outskirts of the town where NADA held its 2012 Hudson art fair. The vibe is relaxed — detached from the frenzied energy of New York art gatherings — stirring genuine curiosity about the objects that lay throughout the Main Hall.
Unlike conventional art fairs this fair did not have booth walls to interrupt the space and did not have a mish-mash of work for visitors to try to make sense of. Instead, each gallery was confined to exhibit only one artwork shared the same free flowing smells of damp grass air as their neighbor exhibitors. This open format afforded the 32 artworks on exhibition enough space to be circumnavigated easily, sparking focused curiosity and a encouraging a deeper investigation of each piece. In addition, because Basilica Hudson is a historical building no one is allowed to use the walls, which interrupted a conventional hanging and moved the exhibition quite literally center stage. Many of the artists where challenged to take the opportunity to create an artwork specifically for the occasion, which meant the work for the most part shared in common a consideration of materials within a sculptural or installation format: from Christy Gast‘s burlap flag-like sculpture to Mike Hein’s palm tree in plastic acrylic encasing to Borden Capalino’s wittily titled “Stage Door Johnny” — a Plasticine covered plastic cat box atop an overturned and semi-dismantled chaise. Refreshingly the fair came together as a cohesive exhibition.
More on Hyperallergic at: http://hyperallergic.com/55011/nada-hudson-2012/