See Monster

     Despite a reported increase in "fair fatigue" among dealers and collectors and a warm sunny day outside, the Armory Show packed the piers on Saturday with long lines to get in and crowded aisles and booths all afternoon.

     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.

     The Bruce High Quality Foundation's final Brucennial, a biannual event timed to the Whitney Museum of American Art's Biennial exhibition, is devoted only to women, this year in its final iteration. 

     Although there were rumors that some men submitted under female names, there was enough sheer quantity to earn the anonymous group a record for the largest female exhibition.

     Representing the South Fork were artists such as Marilyn Church, who is known for her courtroom drawings, but is also an accomplished abstract painter, as well as Lola Montes Schabel and B

     Li-lan, an artist who has had a studio in Springs since the 1970s, celebrated the publication of a monograph, "The Art of Li-lan: A World Achieved" with text by Carter Ratcliff, a poet and art critic for Art in America, on Thursday night at the Rizzoli book store on 57th Street in Manhattan.

     The Watermill Center was the scene of a durational performance by Temporary Distortion on Saturday afternoon and evening. The New York City based performance group is in residence at the center and working on a new piece, My Voice Has an Echo in It.”

     Lasting six hours, the audience was invited to come in for parts of it or the entire piece. It was the first time the group had performed all six hours. They will tour France with the piece later this year.

     While a discussion in an East Hampton community newspaper blog of the relevance of an Italian movement from the early part of the 20th century that has little to do with New York, let alone the East End, may be off-topic, it is still one worth offering.

     The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has given over its vast spiral to the fullest examination of Futurism ever presented outside of Italy. Opening on Feb.

     If it wasn't for the boots, scarves, furs, and hats on display at Tripoli Gallery on Saturday night, one might have thought it was August again from the warm and sunny art on the walls.

     Darius Yektai, taking a break from the dark and brooding works he is known for, spent two weeks in Umbria last summer, traispsing around Montecastello di Vibio with paints and canvases on his back to recapture his love and the essense of painting. 

     Although he studied art in Paris and took several trips out of town to view collections, he said on Saturday he had never made

     On Thursday night, intrepid East End artists made it into New York City to celebrate an opening of their work.

     Harper's Books jetted west this weekend to participate in the L.A. Art Book Fair presented by Printed Matter at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in Los Angeles.

     In addition to paintings and photographs by Elizabeth Huey and Doug Rickard, the East Hampton art and photography book dealer brought rare volumes of artist books and ephermera by or related to Robert Frank,  Pablo Picasso, Kara Walker, Keizo Kitajima, Nobuyoshi Araki, and many others.

     

    If, given the harsh weather conditions of the past few weeks, you might have missed Richard Serra’s installations of new sculpture at two Gagosian Gallery sites in Chelsea, you are in luck.

    The snow may have called off last week's opening reception of the show "Dealer's Choice" at Kathryn Markel Gallery last weekend, but it didn't stop some, like April Gornik, from popping in on Jan. 4 to see what Arlene Bujese was up to in the space on Main Street in Bridgehampton. 

    Ms. Bujese said on Friday in the gallery that she met Ms. Markel at an opening last summer and she offered her the space during the month of January.

     If you find yourself in Southampton for an errand or an escape, it would be worthwhile to duck into Tripoli Gallery on Jobs Lane for a mid-winter art break. 

   One of the few galleries west of here to be maintaining winter hours, it will keep its current show "The Worlds We Create," which opened on Thanksgiving, up through Martin Luther King Day.

   The exhibition features Jonathan Beer, Melanie J. Moczarski, Aakash Nihalani, and Nick Weber in what are practically separate showings except for Mr. Beer and Mr. Nihalani. Ms.