Special Projects and Benefit Programs, Showcase and Affiliate Events Announced for the Inaugural VERGE Art Fair New York

VERGE ART FAIR
New York 2010
4-7 March
The Dylan Hotel
52 East 41st Street
(Between Madison and Park Avenues)

VERGE emerging art fair is proud to announce an extraordinary list of programs for its inaugural New York fair, March 4-7, coinciding with The Armory Show. VERGE is THE source for emerging art during Armory Arts Week, located a short six block stroll from The Armory sister fair, VOLTA, and one block from the landmark Grand Central Terminal. Representing seven countries, VERGE is the only art fair exclusively devoted to emerging art in Manhattan and throughout the New York art fair scene. Come meet us for our inaugural effort.

SPECIAL PROJECTS

Artist Meeting Art Machine(SM)

The Artist Meeting Art Machine(SM) is a hacked together custom fine art dispensing device inspired by self service kiosks, Japanese automats, slot machines, ATM?s, juke boxes, shopping malls and carnival games. The Art Machine(SM) creates a fun and accessible means for the public to engage with original 21st century avant-garde artwork and acquire it at recession level pricing. Artist Meeting is able to do this through intentionally undervaluing its products, cutting out the middle-man and automating the process of valuation, choice and the art of the sale. The Art Machine(SM) creates a subtle critique on capitalism and the art world and changes the art buying experience for the viewer. It is an art market hack.

The Art Machine(SM) will dispense an assortment of custom made objects and drawings via a $20 token operated system of mechanical and digital modules embedded in a 10 x 8 foot transparent plastic wall. The Art Machine(SM) process will randomly alternate between a drawing module and object module dispensing various AM art objects such as AM t-shirts and underwear, DIY intervention kits, AM 'Zines, photo books, digital prints, and other small artworks and ephemera the member artists have created for this project including over 300 feet of collaborative mixed media drawing.

Artists Meeting is an international, semi-anonymous arts collective based in New York City. Begun in 2006, as a research project and experiment in collaboration and the creative process, Artists Meeting has participated numerous events including; Conflux, Pulse Miami, Dokfest, the Dumbo Arts Festival and Postmasters Gallery. Artists Meeting members have exhibited their work in many major museums around the world including; MoMA, The Whitney Museum, Jeu du Paume, SF MoMA, Musée D'Art Contemporain de Marseille, The Walker Art Center, Musée D'art, Contemporain de Lyon, PS1, The State Hermitage Museum and MCA Chicago.

Organized by Lee Wells, IFAC Arts

NURTUREart

For Verge New York, acclaimed not-for-profit NURTUREart will present several projects in public spaces throughout the Dylan Hotel by artists including works by Dan Carlson, Greg Lindquist, Suzanne Strobe and Joy Curtis. A special video screening program will also be presented in the conference room of the Dylan with works by Peter Dobil, Shanna Moutlon and Alexa Horochowski.

ABOUT NURTUREART
In 1997, George J. Robinson founded NURTUREart Nonprofit Inc. to realize his vision of an organization dedicated to helping emerging artists. He began by mounting guerilla exhibitions in donated spaces whenever and wherever possible, starting a slide registry in a filing cabinet in his Washington Heights apartment. As the Artists’ Registry grew exhibits took place in all corners of the city from the United Nations and Citibank to empty Lower East Side storefronts. In 2003 NURTUREart opened a gallery space of its own in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, creating the exciting opportunity for a full season of exhibitions by collaborating emerging curators and artists from the registry. In 2006 NURTUREart found a bigger and better permanent home on Grand Street in East Williamsburg and long time volunteer and trustee Karen Marston took the helm as Executive Director, and in 2007 Benjamin Evans joined the team as Gallery Director. With the help of many dedicated volunteers NURTUREart has grown into the dynamic organization it is today, playing a vital role in the cutting-edge emerging art community.

Sculpture Space

Utica-based Sculpture Space will present several projects for Verge New York in the public spaces of the Dylan Hotel, including works by Adam Smith, Marc-Anthony Polizzi and Hong Seon Jang.

ABOUT SCULPTURE SPACE
Sculpture Space is unique in North America for its support of sculptors, both those who come to Utica, New York, as residency participants and those who continue after their residencies as working artists. The organization selects 20 artists each year for two-month residencies and has helped to advance the careers of more than 400 national and international artists since 1976. A non-profit organization with a 30-year record of success, Sculpture Space also offers the public a valuable opportunity to meet innovative artists and to learn about contemporary sculpture. As a unique cultural resource, Sculpture Space promotes interaction between national and international visiting artists and the local community throughout Utica and the surrounding region.

BENEFIT PROGRAMS

ASMPNY Doctors Without Borders for Haiti Fundraiser

The American Society of Media Photographers will stage a fundraiser for Haiti relief, with all proceeds to benefit Doctors Without Borders, curated by Elizabeth Avedon. More than 100 prints donated by ASMP members will be on sale for $100 each at a booth donated by the Verge Art Fair and 100% of all sales go directly to Doctors Without Borders. Work available from John Dolan, Aaron Lee Fineman, Deborah Gilbert, Robert Hooman, Michelle Kawka, Salem Krieger, Stephen Mallon, Cynthia Matthews, Philip Mauro, Margaret McCarthy, Viviane Moos, Clayton Price, Susan May Tell, Gilberto Tadday, and more! Click here for more information on Doctors Without Borders' relief efforts in Haiti.

For more information on the fundraiser, please email Stephen Mallon or call (917)554-3871; or email Susan May Tell or call (917)733-6553.

Verge VIP Dylan Penthouse Party and Fundraiser for Hudson Guild

Closed to the public. Verge New York will host a special silent auction fundraiser for the Chelsea-based Hudson Guild. VIP guests, Verge exhibitors and guests will enjoy an evening of food and drink while helping to support one of Manhattan's mainstay social service organizations. For additional information on the works to be presented and to support Hudson Guild, please contact them at 212-760-9800.

Founded in 1895, Hudson Guild is a community organization focused on Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. Through a variety of programs and services, including after-school care, professional counseling and community arts, the Guild seeks to empower individuals and families in economic need to achieve their highest potential. Last year, the Guild provided services to more than 14,000 people in five program areas: Children and Youth Services, Adult Services, Arts Programming, Community Building and Mental Health. Click here for more information on Hudson Guild.

THE ARTS AT HUDSON GUILD
The Guild’s Arts Program helps make Chelsea a vibrant and cohesive community, where diversity and self-expression flourish among all age groups. The Guild provides opportunities for the underserved in our community to both see and create art – i.e., to experience art created by professionals and to create art on their own. Participants in Adult, Children, and Teen Services programming both participate in and attend live performances and receive gallery tours.

Zachary Fabri, still from Hortabágy. Courtesy Rush Arts.

Zachary Fabri Video Installations

At the Verge VIP Penthouse party, a selection of works by Zachary Fabri will be presented. This selection of work is a collection of three different videos that all relate to “cultural burden.” From a personal view and also from a larger global perspective, this theme of culture is investigated through landscape, news media and abstract oddity.

Emerging Artist-Edition Verge Tote by Claudia Lara

Chicago-based artist Claudia Lara has produced a limited edition Verge tote bag for the inaugural Verge NYC fair. Lara is currently Co-Lead artist at After School Matters teaching for the Printmaking Arts & Multimedia Media Arts. programs. When she is not teaching she enjoys working on pieces that combine her illustration skills with screen printing, collage and typography.

SHOWCASE PROGRAMS & AFFILIATES

Brooklyn Round-Up
Verge New York will showcase the extraordinary talent and innovation of Brooklyn with a list of participating galleries, artists and organizations including ANTIDOTE, Pierogi, Front Room Gallery, Slate Gallery, Alice Chilton Grace Gallery, Mighty Tanaka, Gitana Rosa Gallery, MS Projects, Corridor Gallery and NURTUREart. In addition, Verge has partnered with the Williamsburg Gallery Association, WAGMAG, and SITE fest Bushwick to highlight affiliate off-site events that provide visitors and patrons of emerging art a host of activities throughout the week across Brooklyn's sprawling art communities.

Williamsburg Gallery Association events
Saturday, March 6, from 6-10pm, Verge co-sponsors the annual WGA Williamsburg Night art walk and after-party. Participating galleries, including Like the Spice, Slate Gallery, Capricious Space, Pierogi, and others will stay open late into the evening to give collectors a chance to visit these energetic art spaces. Afterward, join Verge and the WGA at Hope Lounge, 10 Hope Street between Havemeyer and Roebling, to celebrate the RAW Guide release and with an after-party that starts at 11pm.

SITE fest Bushwick
Join VERGE and Arts In Bushwick on Friday and Saturday, March 6 and 7, 1pm-9pm for SITE Fest, a two-day interdisciplinary event highlighting the diversity of performance in Bushwick. Now in its second year, SITE arose in response to the amazing outpouring of live art that Arts in Bushwick receives every year for BETA Spaces and Open Studios. Encompassing and blending a variety of forms including theater, dance, and music, SITE investigates the Bushwick neighborhood as an unfolding collaborative performance enacted in urban space.

SITE Fest will open with a party at Bushwick’s Beauty Bar on Friday, March 5 (9pm – 4am), and conclude with an after-party at Page Not Found on Sunday, March 7 (7pm – 12am). Please click here for further information on SITE Fest Bushwick, or contact Chloë Bass at performance@artsinbushwick.org.

ABOUT VERGE
Verge is an international platform for the most exciting and interesting in new and emerging art. Verge exists to establish boundaries of the extraordinary as a counter to the natural compulsion towards stagnation in the way art is evaluated and delivered to the public. Staying true to this necessary state for the advancement of art requires a sustained focus on the best new ideas and practices of those marginal or newly emerging to international art audiences. The satisfaction of this fixed requirement for a healthy and competitive artistic culture is at the core of Verge as an international exposition of the highest quality artistic production and the galleries, museums and audiences who sustain it.

ABOUT THE DYLAN HOTEL
Located in the former home of the New York Chemists Club, built in 1903, the Dylan is a lavish environment in which to showcase the best in new and emerging art. Dylan's interiors, by Jeffrey Beers of Jeffrey Beers International, mark a deliberate departure from both the too stark and overly hip designs currently prevalent in the high-end boutique hotel market. Interior design features include rich jewel-toned fabrics, Carrara marble sinks and American walnut fixtures and furnishings. The 11 foot ceilings in each guest room and suite not only complement the design, but offer a feeling of spaciousness not found in the average New York City hotel. Beers has created a timeless look for the property that redefines opulence for a new age while preserving the landmark-quality architecture of the 1903 Beaux-Arts structure. Room service is provided by the popular Benjamin Steakhouse at the Dylan Hotel for breakfast and dinner.

Adam Parker Smith, Untitled (player piano), 2010. Burnt hand-built wooden player piano. This charred and dilapidated hand-built player piano continues to play despite it's condition. Music written and recorded by Nathan Parker Smith. Courtesy Sculpture Space.

Shanna Moulton, still from “Whispering Pines #4,” 2007. Courtesy NURTUREart.

Peter Dobil, Bloodbreather, 2008. Courtesy NURTUREart.

Alexa Horochowski, Run Barbara (3:50), 2008, footage from Night of the Living Dead directed by George A. Romero, 1968. Courtesy NURTUREart.


Suzanne Strobe, You Knocked My Teeth Out, wood, mason line, dimensions variable. Courtesy NURTUREart.

Greg Lindquist, Stela, cement board, wood, cement, 2009. H: 5' W 17" D 17" each/dimensions variable as installation. Courtesy NURTUREart.

Hong Seon Jang, Rainbow forest, 2010. 50x 43X 23 inches, Bar Stirrers, Trafic cone, Hot glue, wire, Paper Tube. Courtesy Sculpture Space.

VERGE ART FAIR NYC
The Dylan Hotel
52 East 41st Street
New York, USA
 
www.vergeartfair.com
 
Tel: +1-312-612-2270

PROFESSIONAL PREVIEW
Thursday, March 4, 2010, Noon to 6:00 pm

PLEASE NOTE: Admission to the Professional Preview is given to press and VIP (Verge, and both Armory Show and Volta cards are accepted) cardholders only. The Opening Night Preview is for those cardholders and for paid public admission.

OPENING NIGHT PREVIEW RECEPTION
Thursday, March 4, 2010, 6:00 to 10:00 pm

PUBLIC HOURS:
Friday & Saturday, 5 - 6 March, Noon to 8 pm
Sunday, 7 March, Noon to 6 pm

TICKETS AT THE DOOR
Opening night preview: $20
General admission: $10, $5 for students and seniors

OPENING NIGHT PREVIEW RECEPTION PROGRAMS
Thursday, December 3, 2009, 6:00 to 10:00 pm


RECENT VERGE MEDIA IN BRIEF:

THE ART NEWSPAPER
Verge receives a mention in two new Art Newspaper articles: the first, a roundup of this year's Armory Week fairs and a second, with an analysis of why satellite fairs are "recession proof."

NYCGO
Verge Art Fair was recently profiled on NYCGO.com, New York City’s official marketing, tourism and partnership organization.

ARTNET
Verge recently was given a news item on Artnet.com as one of the new fairs premiering during Armory Show.

ARTSLANT
Verge was recently added to ArtSlant New York, an online, city-by-city profiling service of the best in art buzz and events.

PRESS INQUIRIES
+1-312-612-2270
Request a press pass

A Press Packet has also been made available for download with an print-quality, high-res image archive and materials for use by media and can be downloaded here from the VERGE Press center.

INTERVIEW REQUESTS
Edouard Steinhauer, Artistic Director for VERGE, is available for interviews. Please forward all interview requests to:

Anna-Maria Cerniglia
VIP & Media Relations
press@vergeartfair.com
+1-312-612-2270

Press intern: Patricia Gabel
VIP intern: Andrea Sparr-Jaswa
Exhibitor Services intern: Robin Juan

FREE ADMISSION for Facebook fans!
Become a fan of VERGE on Facebook and download a pass for free admission! Be the first to receive updates and special invites, join us on Twitter!

VIP REQUESTS PLEASE NOTE: All further VIP requests will no longer include admission to the VIP Reception. The Verge VIP Reception event is currently at maximum capacity, and name-check admission is required. This event is not open to the public. Additionally, all new VIP requests are for Will Call only. 

Verge Goes Live With Artlog!
Visitors to Verge are invited to participate in the Verge Artlog Twitter feed aggregator service, Artlog Live! All Verge visitors are invited to Tweet or SMS their comments and read the live updates on events throughout Miami at live.artlog.com.

Text message vergenewyork + a message to 41411
Post to Twitter with the #vergenewyork hashtag

Twitter Verge direct! Visit the Verge Twitter page and join for real-time updates direct from the fair!

About Artlog Live
Available 24/7, Artlog Live lets folks discuss their experiences at all the art fairs in real-time via the web, SMS (text messaging) and Twitter, and will also provide up-to-date information on fair events, fair hours and parties throughout New York.

VERGE SUPPORTS WAGMAG

5TH ANNUAL WAGMAG BENEFIT 2010
Advanced Viewing: Thursday March 4th from 6-8pm during the DUMBO First Thursday event. March 5-7, from 1-6pm; March 12, from 1-6pm and March 13, from 1-4pm

Reception and Raffle of work March 13th, from 6-8pm
Admission is $10, tickets for the artwork drawing are $175 till March 10th, after which $200

Tickets are available on-site, during the advanced viewing and online at: wagmag.org.

WAGMAG is pleased to present its Fifth annual benefit to support its mission to promote the arts in Brooklyn. WAGMAG, a Brooklyn Art Guide is a 501c nonprofit, and the only Brooklyn art guide that chronicles the art activities of galleries and art events in Brooklyn, non-fee based on a monthly basis. WAGMAG lists galleries free of charge so it can be all inclusive and show the fullest vision of what the galleries in Brooklyn are doing. Our annual benefit is crucial to the survival of WAGMAG, and a great way to see the varied nature of art that is being created and represented in Brooklyn.

All galleries included in WAGMAG are have been invited to participate in this exhibition, as well as some prominent artists from the area. The resulting exhibition will not only generate much needed funding for WAGMAG but also reflect the spirit and personality of the Brooklyn art community. 

This is a great event for art lovers in the area, with approximately 100 pieces of artwork generously donated by local galleries and artists for the raffle during the event evening, Saturday March 13, 2010 from 6-8pm. There will be a much festive atmosphere with food, drinks sponsored by Pernod absinthe and the Brooklyn Brewery (must be over 21). 

Where: 81 Front Street in DUMBO, Brooklyn.
Advanced raffle tickets - $175
Tickets purchased after March 10th - $200
Each raffle ticket guarantees an artwork. Artwork will be selected on the benefit evening by a raffle-style drawing, that determines the order in which ticketholders make their selection.

All proceeds will go towards the operation and production of WAGMAG. Your donation helps us continue and we appreciate your support!