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BARELY FAIR is pleased to present SPOTLIGHT PROGRAM 2024. An extension of our in-person fair,  SPOTLIGHT introduces the galleries and artists exhibiting at our fair.

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SPOTLIGHT page will update with new artist profiles on a regular basis between now and the fair's Vernissage on April 12th. Follow us on instagram to be notified of program updates.

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BARELY FAIR is operated by Julius Caesar, an artist-run project space in Chicago. Established in 2008, the non-profit project space has an ever-evolving group of artists as co-directors. They are Josh Dihle, Tony Lewis, Roland Miller, and Kate Sierzputowski at present.

Al Svoboda

april april is an art and poetry program founded by Patrick Bova and Lucas Regazzi in 2021. The gallery represents and exhibits a comprehensive range of practices with an artist-driven curatorial sensibility. From 2021-2024, april april operated as a project space in the front room of the founders' apartment in Brooklyn, New York. In the fall, april april will begin operating out of a storefront in the Regent Square neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Al Svoboda

For Barely Fair 2024, april april presents an installation in miniature by Al Svoboda. Titled "Proposition (grayscale)," the booth comprises a sequence of monochromatic planks in a leaning formation, held between two walls. The room-scale painting offers an image within the architecture in response to the limits it mechanizes as support. When viewed from the front wall’s doorway, a grayscale descends its shape, expressing Svoboda’s interest in modernist technique as a kind of physical exaltation. His formal inquiry reads awe-like, finding new intimacy with the atmosphere, grazing its boundaries to elude them.

Al Svoboda (b. 1991, Syracuse, New York) lives and works in New York, NY. Negotiating between painting and sculpture, Svoboda's practice considers function as raw material, studio as found object, and storage as a shape of thought. He received his BFA from Syracuse University and is currently an MFA candidate at School of Visual Arts in New York. Recent solo and two-person presentations include Weatherproof, Chicago, with Ben K. Voss (2023), and NADA New York with april april (2023). Selected group shows include 57W57 Arts, New York, NY (2024); Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown, NY (2023); Wieoftnoch, Karlsruhe, Germany (2022). Upcoming solo presentations include Barely Fair, Chicago and april april.

April April - Al Svoboda

Al Svoboda. centered proposition, 2023. Ink, oil on canvas. 21 x 24 inches. Image courtesy the gallery and the artist.

P.A.D. is an art exhibition space in historic SoHo (South of Houston) Arts District in New York City. It reflects the bustling economy of artists making, selling and promoting their artworks on the street year-round, weather permitting. The aim of the space is to platform small and editioned works by artists that are interested in embracing new contexts for exhibiting.

Blakey Bessire

Blakey Bessire

Blakey Bessire (b. 1998) lives and works between New York City and Maine. They are a writer, birth worker, designer and researcher currently pursuing an MFA from Columbia University.

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Blakey Bessire, From “The Place Inside the Smoke,” 2021, written in collaboration with Irena Haiduk, for the Initiative for Trade Aesthetics (ITA), a collaboration between Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen and the oral corporation Yugoexport.

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Blakey Bessire, Artist Headshot, "portrait," image courtesy the artist.

Maissa Delano

Marissa Delano

Marissa Delano (b.1991) is a self-taught artist and writer based in New York. She holds a B.A. in Literature from Hunter College. Her work utilizes an array of materials drawn from the notion of ‘availabism.’ Themes of desire, the toxic nuclear family and sexual deviance often appear in her work. Recent exhibitions include NADA Foreland (NY, 2023,) P.A.D. (NY, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2018,) Walter’s (NY, 2021,) Department of Reflection (Miami, 2021,) Plank Road (NY, 2020,) New Museum’s New INC (NY, 2020,) Special Special (NY, 2020,) Serving the People (NY, 2020,) and 182 Ave. C (NY, 2019.) Her writing has appeared in Topical Cream and Serving the People’s blog. In 2017 she founded Big Fat Baby (BFB) as an outlet for collaboration across divergent creative practices. BFB remains an experimental site for ready-made, wearable objects highlighting the work of queer artists.

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Marissa Delano, 2023, Accidental anal with sister, engraving on mirror coaster, 4 inches x 4 inches

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Marissa Delano, Artist-in-Studio 📷 Annie Forrest (@annieforrest.world)

Caroline Partamian

Caroline Partamian

Caroline Partamian is a sound and visual artist influenced by her training in dance. She works closely with the concept of abreaction – the extraction of dormant memory stored within a muscle, resurfaced through physical movement, of which an individual was previously unaware. By focusing on the process rather than anticipated result, her work encourages what can be revealed when one becomes conscious of their kinetic movement in the process of creation. Her work has taken on the form of compositions, graphic notations, sound environments, books, video, and more. She has shown work at ISSUE Project Room, BoxoPROJECTS, Marfa Open, Wassaic Project, Otion Front, Flux Factory, Anthology Film Archives, Babycastles, Compound Yucca Valley, and more. She co-founded Other Desert Radio, an experimental community-based radio station in the high desert. She also runs a small publishing press, Weird Babes, in the form of zines and prints featuring artists' and her own works-in-progress and experiments. She is also the co-founder of the Armenian Creatives group who celebrate the multiplicity of diasporic histories and modes of navigating identities via gatherings and publications.

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Caroline Partamian, self-portrait with crt monitor, 2017, courtesy the artist.

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Caroline Partamian, Khaz Inspired Notation, Risograph print with black ink on newsprint, 2021, Edition of 10, 8.5 x 11”.

Ben Siekierski

Ben Siekierski

Ben Siekierski (b. 1995) is an artist living and working in Austin Texas. In 2018 Ben graduated from The Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design with a degree in Fine Arts. Ben's work has been exhibited Internationally and featured in YNGSPC, Horst und Edeltraut.

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Ben Siekierski, Artist-in-Studio

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Ben Siekierski, Emerald Tablet, 2024, resin, plastic trees 12 x 16 x 3 in.

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