Volta NY Provides Cohesive Contemporary Experience

     Seeming oddly out of the way in Soho, once the nexus of the contemporary art world, Volta NY offered a mostly focused presentation at its annual satellite fair during Armory art week in New York City.

     It was also the only fair in the city this week that attracted South Fork dealers: Halsey Mckay Gallery from East Hampton and Sara Nightingale Gallery from Water Mill. The fair was invitational and restricted to solo shows. 

     The some 90 booths sprawled over two floors and were particularly cohesive on the first floor. There, Halsey Mckay showed Joseph Hart, a Brooklyn-based painter who shared works on paper built-up and constructed works on paper, embellished with thick white painted grounds with collaged found bits of paper and his own linear marks and digressions. There were also abstract works on canvas that were assertive, but thoughtful in their explorations of form and gesture.

     Ms. Nightingale's booth was devoted to Ross Watts, whom she paired with Peter Sabbeth in an exhibition last fall. The works on view in the booth were similar in theme to those in the show. His sculptural pieces reference the continuing obsolescence of books, recasting them as objects of reflection and beauty or potent talismans. In the booth he was also showing black and white paintings with serial geometric patterns.

     The fair remains on view through Sunday at 82 Mercer Street.