Intersect Aspen snowballs in strength

From the July/August 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.

Most people will know Aspen, Colorado, as a ski resort city flanked by dramatic views of the Rocky Mountains. But the city has long had a bubbling art scene, with the Aspen Institute and the Aspen Art Museum founded in 1949 and 1979 respectively, and several fairs set up since then. Intersect Aspen, founded in 2010 and held annually at Aspen Ice Garden, is now on its 15th edition and, as CEO Tim von Gal tells me, this year there are more galleries participating than ever before.

The fair, which covers art and design – art in ‘three dimensions, two dimensions and photography’, as von Gal puts it – lives up to its name in various ways, seeking a blend of mediums, schools, contemporary and 20th-century art, collectors and ordinary punters, as well as a mixture of local, national and international representation. Aspen, it goes without saying, is far from the major established art centres of, for example, New York and Los Angeles, and the fair makes a virtue of that fact by trying to ‘serve the Aspen community’. Many of the galleries and artists von Gal is most excited about this year have ties to the area, such as 212Gallery, which opened in Aspen in 2005, which is making its debut at this year’s fair with the work of Shepard Fairey, the street artist most famous for designing the ‘HOPE’ poster that became a well-known emblem of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Topher Straus, a Colorado-born digital artist who produces large, colourful prints of the landscape of his home state, is on show at Intersect with bG Gallery.

That is not to say that Intersect is a parochial fair – von Gal stresses that, though ‘we spread the net a little wider on the local side’, this is still a fair with ‘a strong balance’ – not least because, as he points out, collectors from all over the United States and beyond have second homes in the city and come to the fair to mingle and buy. It does, however, like to seek out harder-to-find corners of the art world. Even when it comes to galleries from outside Colorado, most are not those names that are all too familiar from other fairs.

Jackson Fine Art, for instance, which is based in Atlanta, Georgia, is showing photographs by the British-born, Maine-based artist Cig Harvey, who creates large-scale, often surreal tableaux. As a writer as well as an artist, Harvey embodies the ethos that the fair espouses in its name.

For all the artistic reasons that Intersect Aspen is worth visiting, there are qualities that, as von Gal puts it, ‘you can’t quantify’. Chief among those is the ‘positive energy’ that von Gal says he experienced at last year’s fair, and that he is keen to carry on cultivating. ‘It sounds like an esoteric kind of statement, but it really is one of the great differentiating factors we bring to the table.’

Roller Skates, Camden, Maine (2004), Cig Harvey. Photo: courtesy the artist/Jackson Fine Art; © the artist

Intersect Aspen is at Aspen Ice Garden from 29 July to 3 August.

Gallery highlights

Seeds of Surrealism: Women of Monsieur Ozenfant’s Academy
8 July–23 August
Richard Saltoun, London
In 1936, the French Purist painter Amédée Ozenfant founded a fine arts academy in West London – a radical institution which, though largely forgotten today, had an outsize influence on modern art. Four alumnae – Leonora Carrington, Anne Saïd, Sari Dienes and Stella Snead – are the focus of this show, which coincides with the publication of Charles Darwent’s book Monsieur Ozenfant’s Academy.

Marcel Dzama: Empress of Night
Until 8 August
David Zwirner, Los Angeles

There has always been something dream-like about the work of the Canadian artist, whose paintings are filled with fairy-tale characters and fantastical beasts. The works he has produced for this show – his 15th at David Zwirner – were painted late at night and have a fittingly nightmarish quality. Visitors can also see Dzama’s film of 2023, To live on the Moon (For Lorca) – a homage to the Spanish writer’s Surrealist screenplay Trip to the Moon (1929).

The sleep of reason produces monsters (2025), Marcel Dzama. Courtesy the artist/David Zwirner; © the artist

Two Centuries of British Drawings
and Watercolours
Until 25 July
Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, London

Landscape features heavily in this exhibition spanning the 19th and 20th centuries, including work by Turner, Sargent, Ruskin, Craxton, Grant and others. There are more surprising pieces too, among them a rare still life by Peter De Wint and a characteristically dynamic sketch by Wyndham Lewis of his dog, Tut. The exhibition is accompanied by a handsomely illustrated catalogue.

Francis Picabia – Women:
Works on Paper 1921–1946
Until 30 August
Michael Werner, Athens

Picabia was one of the 20th century’s most uncategorisable artists, frequently adopting one avant-garde movement after another. One constant, however, was his interest in depicting women, though the way he did so was, naturally, subject to change. That fact is clear from the works on display here: a selection of his drawings of friends, lovers, Hollywood stars, Roman sculptures and more.

Fairs in Focus

Knokke Art Fair
9–17 August
Grand Casino Knokke

When Knokke Art Fair held its first edition on the Flemish coast in 1976, it was as a focused antiques fair. It has since grown into a global art event, at which galleries close to home rub shoulders with ones from South Korea, China, Italy and elsewhere. The 50th edition is a chance for the fair to look back over its history, with exhibitors bringing both contemporary works and an array of 20th-century masters such as Bernard Buffet and Lucio Fontana.

CHART
28–31 August
Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen

CHART is based at a 17th-century palace complex in Copenhagen, but it is very much a city-wide event. Outside the palace and its roster of Nordic galleries, visitors can walk through the installation set up in the courtyard, pop over to the nearby amusement park Tivoli Gardens to see large-scale works by contemporary Nordic artists, and embark on one of CHART’s Art Running tours, which highlight public artworks around the capital.

From the July/August 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.