Seattle Art Fair 2019

The Frye Art Museum in Seattle has added four new works to its collection. The acquisition is part of a two-year partnership with the Seattle Art Fair, which awarded the institution a total of $50,000 in support of the expansion of its contemporary art holdings. “We are again grateful to the Seattle Art Fair for the opportunity to broaden and diversify the Frye’s contemporary collection with works by this extraordinary group of artists, said museum director and CEO Joseph Rosa.

From the fair’s fifth edition, which was presented by AIG, the institution purchased works from four Pacific Northwest galleries, including a work-on-paper by Jeffry Mitchell (PDX CONTEMPORARY ART), a multimedia piece by Ko Kirk Yamahira (Russo Lee Gallery), a drawing by Mary Ann Peters (James Harris Gallery) and a painting by Anthony White (Greg Kucera Gallery).

One northwest exhibitor that returned to the fold for 2019 is the Portland-based Russo & Lee Gallery. According to the gallery’s owner, Martha A. Lee, sales were strong this year, pulling in deals that ranged from $1,200 to $18,000. When asked about the fair’s future, Lee insisted that it was too early to say whether or not the fair was “going to be a ‘regional node.’”

I would have chosen a mix of realist, painterly paintings and textural or textile abstract wall works. Erik Hall’s dreamily-rendered Cypress tree at Hall-Spassov Gallery and Gloria De Arcangelis’ pensive Muse at Woodside/Braseth Gallery, both of Seattle, are expert examples of the former. Look to Evan Nesbit’s bright yellow burlap with paint squishing through the weave at James Harris Gallery (also of Seattle) and Ko Kirk Yamahira’s canvas where the center has been unwoven, leaving the strands to bow hammock-like in the center at Portland’s Russo Lee for the latter.

These were small but sick—I'm a sucker for colored plexiglass. The Portland-based artist was super playful in an accessible way. No cheap thrills here. I'm most used to seeing his work in two dimensional, watercolor form, but his style's translation to sculpture worked perfectly.