The Fountain Art Fair is a grungier, relaxed antidote to the more upscale Armory Show. The fair has its roots in Williamsburg and connections to Miami but for the third consecutive year, the exhibits were staged on the aging light ship, The Frying Pan, docked on the Hudson at West 26th Street. The Frying Pan has been set up with temporary walls, a tent roof, a bar, and heat, and one walks across a rail bridge and up a gangplank to enter. It took me a while to get accustomed to the slow rocking motion of the ship on the river (one artist, who has now spent a number of continuous days on board, reported dizziness).

Fountain brings together a kindred but diverse collection of exhibitors from Brooklyn and farther afield. What unites them is a passion for expression, immediacy, and meaning that relies on established visual motifs and not on theory. The result is unkempt, unpolished, and direct. Most of the work tends to elude commodification, though at least some of the dealers and artists are consciously trying to develop a financial basis to continue their work—even if many of the artifacts are ephemeral.

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Williamsburg will soon lose two more of its beloved galleries. The Hogar Collective, which has graced Grand Street for the last eight years, is set to close shop at the end of February, and Capricious Space will lock its gates for good in mid-March. Both galleries say goodbye with group shows of their artists.

What does the future hold for these institutions? Todd Rosenbaum of The Hogar Collective told the WG that he plans to concentrate on his own art for a few months and then open a new gallery “somewhere in New York City.” Capricious will live on as a magazine, book publisher, and vagabond curatorial project.
 

When Mikal Hameed opened up 99% Gallery and Art Center in Williamsburg in June 2010, it took off, presenting seven shows in six months showcasing prominent underground artists to large crowds, all while becoming the latest de facto haunt for Brooklyn’s cultural extroverts. By December, almost as swiftly as it emerged, 99% Gallery was closed. In half a year, Hameed launched and shuttered the promising business he built from scratch, lost his family, became the victim of possible embezzlement, and was forced to negotiate just to keep a roof over his head.

“I never tried to look at it [the art world] traditionally,” Hameed says in the unassuming Clinton Hill railroad apartment he moved to last December. His art pieces and commercial product prototypes take up nearly every inch of wall space. The apartment is also his studio, since he was forced to abandon the space he built up at 99 N. 10th St. in a contentious saga between Hameed, his former landlord John Mayer, and Vice Magazine Publishing.

The 99% Gallery Hameed started there was certainly unconventional; its first show in June 2010 was a fund-raiser for the space itself. The gallery charged $5 admission and patrons could bid in silent auctions on work from lots of notable figures in the street art and pop surrealist move-ments. Despite the cover charge the event was packed, and pieces sold.

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Andrew Ohanesian doesn’t just create art; he creates art that passes for reality. The 30-year-old Bushwick transplant—when he isn’t working at his “day job” as studio manager for NYC-based new media artist Jon Kessler—is busy in his studio (site of such detritus as a working stove, piles of raw lumber, a man-sized safe, and dismembered mannequins), plotting out how to best create his next, accurately textured, convincingly lit, art installation that feels, looks, and smells so real, it blurs the boundaries between art and life.

“Mandies” was a fully working, fully-stocked (Bud on tap!) bar that he installed last fall at Bushwick’s art gallery-cum-boutique ARCH Collective. (You’d sit on the bar stool, admire wall-to-wall wood paneling, drink to your heart’s content, then step out into the bright lights of the gallery and wonder how in the hell you got there.)

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Nina Lola Bachhuber can glean a lot of evocation out of just a couple materials. In her rectangular banners, or “flags,” currently at Momenta Art, those materials are silky acetate fabric and human hair. Though uniform in dimension and color (all works in the show are black), each flag possesses a unique personality through the use of strategic cuts and woven hair. A few resemble dresses with fur trim. Others are more animalistic, evincing horse manes and rodent tails. The creepiest pieces, however, have got to be the ones that look like the backs of human heads—pigtails, ponytails, combed coifs—all of which could be scalps removed from schoolgirls. The flags are like tribal insignia for esoteric neuroses.

At the center of the exhibition sits a sculpture that further instills the idea of primal urges. Two beasts perch on tree branches and square off as if preparing to do battle. These twin creatures are made of calfskin masks the size and shape of human heads, with shoulder-length curly hair and steer horns protruding from the mouth area. They evoke sadomasochism as well as some dark sacred ritual. Monochromatic and bleak, “Nachtschatten” raises questions of mortality, femininity, instinct, and allegiance. Like Joseph Beuys before her, Bachhuber finds sacrosanct energy in organic materials. Unlike Beuys, her work is pristine and under control.

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