Daunted by the Sprawling Armory Show? Try These 13 Certified Winners.

September is busy for the art world in New York. Hometown galleries open their most important shows, and a cluster of fairs bring together collectors and galleries from around the world. The Armory Show, which gathers more than 200 exhibitors from 35 countries at the Javits Center from , is the largest, and it remains an unparalleled opportunity to sample the global art scene.

But while dealers and artists alike may believe in art for art's sake, they also have to make it work as a business. And that business, at the moment, is wobbly. Though it remains enormous, this year's Armory fair, the second since its acquisition by Frieze, is slightly smaller than last year's, and it's really anyone's guess whether collectors will buy. So it's no surprise that most of the galleries approached this year's Armory conservatively, reaching for brightly colored, easily approachable art in well-worn 20th-century genres that will translate to Instagram. (There are also many dead artists, whose markets and perch on art history may seem more reliable.)

 

.................... Evita Tezeno's hand-painted paper collages have an unexpected ease. Though their patterns are busy, and their compositions complex - one shows seven young people of color emerging from a double feature, two with real buttons glued to their chests - the artist, a 65-year-old native of Port Arthur, Texas, has an impeccable sense of balance and takes unmistakable pleasure in her work. Like Orkideh Torabi, whose charming dye-on-canvas scenes are showing with the Tehran gallery SARAI (P46), Tezeno has taken a well-traveled approach to painting and made it her own.