Adam McEwen‘s project, I Am Curious Yellow, radiated from Nicole Klagsbrun’s booth due to the artist’s boundless, but contemplative, use of the color yellow. McEwen chose to work with yellow because of the color’s ability to be vile and unpleasant, but also soothing and cheerful. His solo installation at Armory consisted of carefully selected objects placed alongside loaded imagery; jerry cans, a large yellow swastika, and several over-sized obituaries beneath glass, written for world champion runner Caster Semenya, were on display. Everything, even the carpet in the booth, was saturated in lemon yellow, with some white areas, and beaming in the bright lights of the fair.

McEwen has written pre-need obituaries for living celebrities before, employing traditional newspaper format with impressive impact (the artist used to write actual obituaries for London’s Daily Telegraph). Other past projects include his pencil on graph paper text message series. For these pieces, he copied the content and screen appearance of texts from his Nokia phone onto paper and presented the paper replicas of the digital missives in graphite frames.

Also in New York, The New Museum opened an exhibition curated by Jeff Koons on March 3rd, Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection, which will remain on view until June 6, 2010. The New Museum, and others, offered discounts to visitors during Armory Arts Week.

Among several concurrent art fairs taking place throughout the city last week, Independent generated a great amount of intrigue. Founded by New York gallerist Elizabeth Dee and Dareen Flook of Hotel in London, and held at X Initiative in Chelsea, Independent presented 40 galleries and was less regimented than the Armory Show.  Independent‘s website declares “Hybrid Forum Comes to New York for Art Fair Week.”

Artists Space (New York), Michael Werner Gallery (Berlin | New York), and mitterrand+sanz (Zurich), were among the participants whose collaboration and presence were requested via personal invitation from the founders. This not only differed from the exhibitor application process at the Armory Show, it suggested a re-evaluation of the art fair mode. Elizabeth Dee also had a booth at Armory for her gallery.

This week marks the beginning of the 2008 New York art fairs (complete list). The most notable of them, The Armory Show, features 150 of the world’s top contemporary art galleries showcasing the latest in today’s artwork. The show historically dates to 1913, where the first International Art Fair took place in New York’s 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue between 25th and 26th Streets. The vintage fair marked the first time in history that an American audience caught a glimpse at “Modern” art, which was predominately being made in Europe at the time. The Bridge Art Fair New York (which will take place in Chelsea) is an independent expose that runs in Berlin, London, and Miami simultaneously with the other fairs in those cities. Bridge is popular among up-and-coming art buyers, because they strive to cost-effectively sell the works of both established and emerging artists. Pulse: New York offers an alternative to the typical art fair. While approximately sixty galleries will be exhibiting their best artists and works, a number of performances, installations, multimedia and happenings are also scheduled as part of the “Impulse” segment where the winning artist receives a $1500 cash prize. Frere Independent, a not-for-profit arts organization whose mission is to provide artist awareness has organized two special additions to this year’s fair agenda: DiVA, which is the first fair dedicated to digital and video artwork and Pool Art Fair, a “meeting ground” for collectors, dealers, and the general public to view works by emerging artists who have yet to gain gallery representation which will take place in the rooms of the infamous Hotel Chelsea.

Most of the fair festivities commence on Thursday, March 27th and will continue until Sunday, March 30th.