VOLTA Art Fair

I attended VOLTA’s public vernissage last Wednesday. It was my first time spending an extended period of time at an art fair and actually thinking about whether I would buy a piece of work or not. Here are the three artworks that I found most interesting:

Kenpei YUNDE’s paintings had an intriguing texture and tactile quality to them. I was immediately drawn to take a closer look. He repeats the process of glazing and scraping layers of oil paint on top of each other to create a sculpture-like surface. The first layers are always in colors of soil, resulting in an earthy and natural look for all of the paintings. Learning about his art process made me appreciate his work more, as they are the harvested product of a whole year’s care and growth.

~$3,000

Yong Chul Kim’s works stood out to me with astounding technical skills in painting and lighting. I especially liked the realistic drawings fused with fantastic elements that give a fluid and elusive feel to the overall piece. I stood in front of his paintings for a long time, analyzing the paint strokes at times and simply appreciating the imagery at others.

~$10,000

Safarani sisters’ video-paintings, which use video projection to map moving images onto a series of paintings, were simply beautiful. The scenes captured subtle movements of the wind in the curtain, sunlight, and the dancer perfectly. The twin sisters’ portraiture of each other was executed extremely well with technologies familiar to us here at ITP.

~$6,000

If I had to buy one piece, it would be Kenpei YUNDE’s work. I would love to own one of those pieces and leisurely study the texture of the painting. From my observation, many of the artworks that I saw at the fair seemed to be either “pretty” or 3-dimensional. Eye-catching colors, “grammable” content, and illusions gained traction from many people, though I tended to focus more on the concepts behind the artworks.