In an effort to avoid potential exposure on the subway to the new virus in town, I rode my bicycle from Bushwick across the Williamsburg bridge and up the Hudson River trail to Pier 90. I wondered if media-driven fear might have thinned the crowd, but New York’s classic fair seemed alive and well, with crowds of VIP and Press filing in to see this year’s offerings.

As soon as I got my lanyard to enter, I studied the map and located the booth for Albertz Benda, towards the back of Pier 90 near the VIP lounge. On three walls the gallery had a solo presentation of Timothy Curtis’s memorial installation called Alive-N-Well.

Timothy Curtis Albertz Benda

I had the pleasure of meeting Timothy last October at the opening for the Pencil is Key—an exhibition by incarcerated artists at the Drawing Center. Chatting with Timothy we realized that we are studio neighbors, and when we finally got around to a studio visit, he was working on this amazing project: a memorial to the loss of his family members—a personal Guernica of the opioid crisis and the corruption of our prison system. Behind the massive canvases featuring bicycles (symbols of freedom), pill bottles, a failing heart, and prison spaces, the booth debuts Timothy’s inkblots, which became a fascination to him, when they were used as a tool of psychological evaluation in prison. This is the highlight and "must see" of the Armory Show.

In addition to Timothy’s solo booth, I also enjoyed the presentations at Zürcher Gallery with Kyle Staver and Matt Bollinger, as well as Yossi Milo featuring Doron Langberg and Sarah Anne Johnson. Of previous Armory Fairs that I have visited, I must say there seems to be an increasing presence of both painting and figurative work. In the slide show are a few of my favorites from the visit, biased, of course, by my own obsessions with painting and the tradition of depicting the human form in art. David Molesky

The Armory Show opens to the public tomorrow, March 7, 2020, and is on view through March 8, 2020.