A booth within a booth: such is the premise of the Kabinett sector, offering concisely curated exhibitions by 29 galleries within the fair. Among this year’s presentations, visitors will find stunning new work as well as rarely seen or rediscovered artistic practices from the art world’s margins. We shed light on seven of them.
Jimmy DeSana (b. 1949, Detroit – d. 1990, New York)
Presented by P.P.O.W, New York
A pivotal figure of the New York downtown scene of the 1970s and 1980s, Jimmy DeSana captured the era’s spirit in his photographs. He carefully staged images inspired by BDSM culture with a surreal touch and took portraits of cultural icons like Yoko Ono, David Byrne, and Debbie Harry. In the Kabinett sector, a selection of vintage prints from two of his most iconic bodies of work, ‘101 Nudes’ (1972) and ‘Suburban’ (1979–1985), will be on display. Having died of AIDS in 1990, the resurgence of DeSana’s oeuvre ‘could not come at a more opportune moment’, notes art historian William J. Simmons, as it ‘is exemplary of new outlets for reconstituting the Pictures Generation with Queer modes of vision and critique’.