TEFAF New York Spring 2017 Booth 14
A brutalist yet minimalist and futuristic setting for a powerful art selection...all in concrete, mirror and light lines in authentic Betak manner!
–Alexandre de Betak
In the overcrowded annual art fair agenda, it is not often that a truthfully distinctive opening, such as the inaugural TEFAF New York Spring, presents itself.
Having been privileged by the TEFAF committee to be selected to exhibit at the “Colonel’s Room” - one of the larger ground-floor “Period Rooms” at the historical landmark of the Park Avenue Armory - it will give Galerie Gmurzynska not only a stand out position at the fair, but it also allowed us to create a truly unique stand installation.
The installation has been envisioned by no other than the celebrated designer, scenographer and creative director Alexandre de Betak, who has created shows for fashion’s greatest such as Dior, Celine, Hermes, Calvin Klein, Michael Kors, Diane Von Furstenberg, Rodarte, The Row among many others. Moreover, Betak is known for his various art collaborations having worked with important institutions such as MOCA, LA; MOCA, Shanghai; MUDE Lisboa; Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris; Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, Rome and Palais d’Iéna, Paris.
Spanning a 100-year period, the 20th century masters to be shown by Galerie Gmurzynska, have been the gallery’s focus throughout its over 50-year history.
Galerie Gmurzynska’s specially curated art presentations with creative luminaries such as Karl Lagerfeld, Zaha Hadid, Richard Meier, Claude Picasso, Germano Celant among many others lead a long way back and unite discourses of classic modern avant-gardes with scholarship and carefully prepared showcases as part of a Gesamtkunstwerk. Major works span the over 50 year scholarly engagement with different artistic schools ranging from masters of the Russian avant-garde and classic modern masters like Alexander Rodchenko, Kazimir Malevich, Joan Miró, Fernand Légerand Wifredo Lam to the neo avant-garde and post-war artists like Yves Klein, Robert Indiana and Tom Wesselmann.
Establishing new perspectives on these grand works, Alexandre de Betak considered a new vision of art experience, where the representation synthesizes new techniques of seeing masterpieces of art. While today publicity and reproductions are championed over various channels like social media – nothing can be like the experience of the original work of art and the cultural authority it exudes.
John Berger, who recently passed away and revolutionized art-theory with his seminal work the “Ways of Seeing”, famously put it: “The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe”.
Juxtaposing these major avant-garde masterworks and augmenting the gallery’s stand through various lines and selected architectural details, this aesthetic experience of looking at art will link it back to the works’ pure visual desirability.
Galerie Gmurzynska at TEFAF New York Spring 2017 | Booth 14
Park Avenue Armoury, New York, USA
May 4 – 8, 2017