Allora and Calzadilla, Lakes, Rivers, Ponds, and Streams, 2013. Installation view: Independent Projects, New York, 2014. Copyright Allora and Calzadilla. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.

These apparently innocuous watercolor paintings are based on photographs of watercoolers inside heavyweight financial institutions in New York City (among them, Credit Suisse, Barclays, and Morgan Stanley). To get the images, the artists reached out to employees and persuaded them to send over pictures, guerilla style, of their office watercoolers. Referencing physical water, the name of the series also insinuates the potential of cumulative, burgeoning forces. As so many casual office chats can grow into influential actions, streams and ponds grow into rivers and lakes.

Nina Beier, Tileables, Handy Breaking Origin Plunge and Tileables, Mass Dry Pharmaceutical Plunge, 2014. Installation view: Independent Projects, New York, 2014. Courtesy Croy Nielsen, Berlin. Photo: Dawn Blackman.

Dannish artist Nina Beier created a series of sculptures that are essentially a pastiche of Internet stock imagery. For example, Beier recreated an image of a tiny hammer plunging into water that fills a wine glass, and the tile pattern on the pink display platforms comes from an image bank that sells pictures imitating different surfaces.

Yves Klein, Sculpture Tactile,1957/2014. Installation view: Independent Projects, New York, 2014. Courtesy Dominique Lévy Gallery.

In 1957, Yves Klein created a prototype (pictured on the left) for Sculpture Tactile with a written description of how it was to function: There is a box with a hole—viewers stick their hands in the hole and feel around the inside. "He wrote in his journal entry [on display in the installation] that he had this idea, but the Paris art world was yet not ready for it," says curator Begum Yasar. "He was such a perfectionist; he was waiting for the right moment and right context to publicly exhibit it." However, Klein died five years later at the young age of 34, so Dominique Lévy's booth at Independent is the first full realization of his work. We won't spoil the contents of the box, but when all is said and...felt, it might be the most lifelike sculpture ever devised.

Haroon Mirza, Access Boot, 2014. Installation view. Courtesy Lisson Gallery. 

British artist Haroon Mirza composed a full dance-track for his site-specific installation of Access Boot at Independent Projects. "All the sounds are being generated by various electrical devices," Lisson Gallery's Louise Hayward says. "When lights come on, the sound of the frequency going through the lights is amplified. That's what you are hearing." The work draws inspiration from Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot, a film about German submarines during World War II, and Access, a '90s acid house single by DJs Misjah and Tim. 

Stefan Brüggemann, Headlines and Last Lines in the Movies, 2014. Installation view: Independent Projects, New York, 2014. Courtesy of the artist and Parra & Romero, Madrid/Ibiza.

The night before the fair opened, artist Stefan Brüggemann covered an entire wall with blank canvases. In the course of a few hours he spray-painted them with evocative and contradictory phrases like, "Obama's unprecedented attack on Israel," "Well nobody is perfect," and "Here I am, Hollywood!" "It seems to be riffing on the headlines pulled from the news and the conflicting messages we get from a 24-hour news cycle," Higgs says. "It's creating a cacophony drawn from the events of the day." 

Graham Collins, Shaped Painting VI, 2014, spray enamel on canvas, reclaimed wood, glass and window tint, 32 x 57 1/2 inches. Courtesy the artist and The Journal Gallery.

Though comparatively subtle, Graham Collins's pieces were whispered by a few viewers to be among the best work to see at Independent Projects. The artist creates them by spray painting canvases and then framing them with repurposed wood and tinted glass. "They at once comment on the history of the monochrome, and add to the dialogue, as the paintings within the work take a back seat," gallerist Michael Nevin says.

David Medalla, Cloud Canyons, 1964-2014. Installation view: Independent Projects, New York, 2014. Courtesy Venus Over Manhattan. 

Each day of Independent Projects, late arrivals will have the advantage in witnessing David Medalla's Cloud Canyons in its full, bubbling glory. Before it's switched on, the piece appears to be plain plastic pillars. However, the pillars have motors inside that create foam from a special solution designed to withstand a gallery environment. After long enough, the "clouds" will begin to amass and spill over the edges, though they'll quickly evaporate. "It's a kinetic auto-creative art that's meant to be experiential and fleeting," Venus Over Manhattan's Sara Hantman says. "It's constantly forming and dissipating at the same time."

Medalla, who is considered an heir to early modernists like Man Ray and Marcel DuChamp, has been staging Cloud Canyons since the 1960s. It was inspired by cooking with coconut milk, a tradition in the Philippines, where Medalla was born.

Piotr Uklański, Untitled (Nightflight to Venus) (detail), 2014, agate, coal, bismuth, chrysophase, electroplated gold thread, and embroidery floss on velvet, 23 3/8 x 23 3/8 x 3/14 inches. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.


With a solo show at Dallas Contemporary on view now and one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art opening this spring, artist Piotr Uklański has reached the zenith of a career in which he's covered everything from photography to performance to films. At Independent Projects, Gagosian is showing a series of new works titled "New Age" paintings. These feature naturally occuring solid materials, from gemstones and crystals to meteorites and fossils, sewn meticulously onto velvet. 

June Hamper, Untitled (cat), 2003. Courtesy of the artist and White Columns.

June Hamper did not take up pottery until her early fifties, and her son, artist Billy Childish, recalls her husband (his father), initally calling the hobby her second childhood. "Over the years many pots have been lost and broken and the shards lie scattered about her garden," Childish shares. "I've endeavored to save a few good examples, and some of those are showing today." Hamper's pieces were previously shown at White Columns's "The Cat Show" exhibition in the summer of 2013.

Marie Angeletti, Joker, 2014, 1:13 Looped HD video on monitor. Edition of 3 + 2 AP. © the artist, courtesy Carlos / Ishikawa, London.

Joker depicts a street performer in character, strolling a sidewalk in Los Angeles and posing with people for money. Artist Marie Angeletti offsets the dynamic as she points a video camera at him. Throughout the minute and 13 seconds, his discomfort becomes clear as he attempts to ignore the camera, yet glimpses periodically, looking annoyed, in Angeletti's direction.