This Year’s Armory Show Will Feature a Slowly Crashing Car and a Naked Woman In a Cage

Romina de Novellis, The Cage.
Photo: Courtesy the Armory Show.

Details of what we can expect at this year’s Armory Show in New York are beginning to emerge, and from what we’ve learned, we’re looking forward to the weeks to come. Several galleries will feature special time-based projects at the fair in March, with the most intriguing contribution coming from Paris’s Galerie Alberta Pane.

As part of the gallery’s partnership with New York-based art-meets-dessert organization Kreëmart, Italian performance artist Romina de Novellis will be locked naked in a cage with 500 white roses during the VIP preview. Over the course of several hours, she will weave the flowers into a structure with which to conceal herself. In addition, she will proffer “caramelized flowers contained in a glass sphere” to the crowd through a small opening in the cage, according to an Armory spokesperson.

“The wall of roses will prevent the audience from seeing her constantly and will protect her from the eyes outside the cage,” reads a set of instructions for the performance. “What will remain at the end of the performance is the trace of a gesture, memory of a woman’s presence…”

Jonathan Schipper, Slow Motion Car Crash. Photo: Courtesy The Armory Show.

But fear not if you find yourself shut out of the VIP preview. Throughout the fair, Brooklyn’s Pierogi gallery will show Jonathan Schipper’s Slow Motion Car Crash, a “choreographed collision” timed to occur during the five-day fair. The project was first presented in in 2012 over the course of a month at the UV Festival in Newcastle upon Tyne in England.

New York’s Sean Kelly Gallery has partnered with Havana-based artist collective Los Carpinteros, who will present Clavo tres, a massive new sculpture that resembles a rusted nail, which compliments the industrial backdrop of Pier 94.