This weekend, the international think-outside-the-easel traveling art fair, Nomad, is making its first ever stop in the United States, but instead of hitting The Broad in Los Angeles or any number of vaunted spots in Manhattan, its first purposeful pit-stop will be here, at the Watermill Center ((39 Water Mill Town Road, Water Mill, 631-726-4628) from Thursday, June 25 to Sunday June 28. And while its brevity is one reason to hop to it, it’s the art and artful design featured that’s the best motivation to get moving to Water Mill.
A kind of collective of moving galleries meant to inspire conversation about art, design and culture, and what those things mean in the world, it’s almost impossible to describe this fever-dream of a collective, founded by Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte.
What began in 1992 as an idea for a more boutique-focused exhibition of art and design has grown into a traveling compendium of how those things influence culture and our conversations about it — and its very restless nature seems to also be the ingredient that helps to feed those very things.
The Hamptons stop follows previous displays in St. Moritz, Capri, Monaco and Venice. While there are numerous activations going on around the South Fork, the main event at the Watermill Center will feature a mutlitude of designers, artists and the collections of like-minded galleries from multidisciplinary artist Sébastien Léon, whose work in sculptural furniture and sculpture plays with the concepts of past and present, illusion and reality; the contemporary furniture, lighting and fine art of Todd Merrill Studio with the work of artist-designers such as Kiki Goti and Markus Haase; and artist and Watermill Center founder Bob Wilson.
Some of the featured works at Nomad Hamptons, from left to right: artist Sébastien Léon’s “Echoes of Our Dreams”; from Todd Merrill’s collection, glass sculpture by Kiki Goti and modern credenza by Markus Haase; “Breakfast Chair” by Bob Wilson. (Photos courtesy of Nomad Circle)
The also features works from Gallery Fumi, The Future Perfect, Robilant, Maison Gerard, Leila Heller Gallery, Object & Thing, and Mathieu Lehanneur and others. In addition to the weekend-long exhibition at the Watermill Center, there are a series of private experiences that will also be dotting the region as well, including a tour of sculptor John Chamberlain’s estate on Shelter Island.
“The Watermill Center is one of those rare places where architecture, landscape, and artistic experimentation come together with extraordinary coherence,” Bellavance-Lecompte said in a statement to the press. “For Nomad, it offers an opportunity to present art and design in direct dialogue with a site whose identity is inseparable from creativity, research, and exchange.”
