NEW YORK.- Celebrating its tenth year in the City, SOFA NEW YORK returns to the Park Avenue Armory, June 1 – 3. 58 galleries from 10 countries present for sale one of a kind “post-craft” masterworks bridging design, decorative and fine arts. The Opening Night Preview Gala, 5:30 – 9:30 pm, May 31st at the Armory benefits the Museum of Arts & Design (MAD), New York.

Mark Lyman, Director/Founder of SOFA NEW YORK and its sister show, SOFA CHICAGO, described SOFA artworks as “premier examples of a post-craft art movement.” According to Lyman, “Post-craft art embraces the abstract and sculptural over the functional; the work has a sophisticated intellectual content with a focus on experimentation with new materials.”

Post-craft, like many art movements, can be identified by its sameness and difference with prior movements, such as the Studio Craft Movement, which is so handsomely honored in the current Metropolitan Museum of Art’s retrospective exhibition, One of A Kind: The Studio Craft Movement.

“SOFA was founded in the 1990s when aesthetic pluralism legitimized a wide variety of forms, styles and artistic intentions. Over the years, the word “craft” (a shortened version of “crafts” derived from the Arts and Crafts Movement,) increasingly failed to capture the essence of the new expressions being created from traditional materials, and from time-honored, virtuoso techniques applied to new media. And certainly, it did not do justice to the intellectually sophisticated content of the resonant artworks being produced.

As “crafts” shortened to “craft” in popular discourse, the true meaning of the word became lost. Craft properly denotes fine craftsmanship, skill—a virtuosity of process and technique, which can be applied to many creative endeavors. SOFA NEW YORK will present some premier examples of post-craft art that transcend definitions and discrete disciplines—and therein lies their beauty.”