Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Extraordinary Artworks at Art Basel Unlimited 2017

Art Fairs

The 10 Most Extraordinary Artworks at Art Basel Unlimited 2017

Here are the standout pieces in this year's edition of the gargantuan art exhibition, curated once again by Gianni Jetzer.

Andrew Goldstein & Julia Halperin, June 13, 2017

Song Dong's *Through the Wall* (2016) at Art Basel Unlimited, which opened to VIPs on Monday. Photo by Julia Halperin.

With its colossal artworks, gleaming astonishments, and elegantly dressed dealers guarding darkened grottos of digital delight (i.e. screening rooms), Art Basel’s Unlimited section resembles nothing so much as Aladdin’s Cave of Wonder, where treasures pile upon treasures to overwhelming effect. This year, artnet News’ Julia Halperin and Andrew Goldstein explored the massive trove, seeking out the artistic lamps that, when inspected, yield the greatest payoffs.

JONATHAN HOROWITZ
Self-Portraits in ‘Mirror #16 (24″ diameter)’ (2015/2016)
Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

Appropriation has by now become such an established aesthetic sub-industry in contemporary art that a roomful of copied Lichtenstein mirror paintings can seem snooze-worthy, but the conceptual artist Jonathan Horowitz—known most recently for his essential Trump-golfing-amid-the-apocalypse photo—has a nifty agenda behind this installation. Distributing an image of one Lichtenstein that he found on the web, Horowitz enlisted different artists in the New York area to reprise the painting by hand, using only paints and a brush and no digital tools. The result, as you can see in these 13 paintings, is that each version is subtly different (or not so subtly, in the case of one that goes a little crazy with the dots), acting as a mirror of sorts of each artist’s indexical hand. Bad news for anyone thinking this could be a bonanza for cheap Lichtensteins: the series is only for sale as a set, at $350,000.

CHRIS BURDEN
Ode to Santos Dumont (2015)
Gagosian Gallery

The Los Angeles artist Chris Burden’s final finished artwork floats through Unlimited’s cavernous exhibition hall in a 60-degree circle like an elegant UFO on an invisible leash. The work, which took the late artist a decade to produce, is inspired by the little-known Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos Dumont. His pioneering dirigible successfully flew around the Eiffel Tower in 1901. Burden’s own feat of engineering has been seen by the public only once before, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2015. But if you want to see it in motion in Basel, you’ll have to be patient: The work’s antique motor can only run for 15 minutes at a time without overheating, and it takes an additional two and a half hours to cool down.

JOHN AKOMFRAH
The Airport (2016)
Lisson Gallery

Taking its cues from the time-traveling narrative of Stanley Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and the work of the late Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos, who was known for his languorous tracking shots, this mesmerizingly romantic three-channel film by the Ghanaian artist John Akomfrah tells a story of love and loss: an aging guitarist relives his affair with a woman in red, watching his younger self serenade her in now-desolate places in Athens (abandoned airports, gas stations, buildings) and then becoming separated from her for reasons that might involve politics (we hear chants of street protests at points) and the Piraeus, the ancient port the protagonist keeps returning to. (Akomfrah, whose earlier films have treated the slave trade and the whaling industry, views the ocean as a vast watery grave.) Filmed exclusively with Greek crew members and featuring a soundtrack by the artist himself, this absorbing work—which an accompanying text explains as “a meditation on the history of Greece and its recent financial crisis”—can be seen as a mini-documenta in and of itself, and a satisfying one.

JOHN BALDESSARI
Ear Sofa; Nose Sconces with Flowers (in Stage Setting) (2009/2017)
Marian Goodman Gallery and Sprüth Magers

Baldessari’s installation is part Salvador Dali dream sequence, part Art Deco tableau vivant. Look closely, and you’ll see some familiar shapes: the model and her pup are sitting on a sideways, oversized ear, while the white scones on the wall are, in fact, upturned noses. The installation, which takes Baldessari’s fascination with faces to an extreme, debuted at Sprüth Magers in London in 2009. At Unlimited’s VIP preview, the pooch was a Coton de Tuléar named Goliath who is an Art Basel veteran. Five years ago at the fair, “he posed on a Persian carpet for a work about life and death,” one of Goliath’s trainers told artnet News. (Further research revealed that work to be Nina Beier’s 2011 Tragedy.) Goliath, who recently completed a star turn in a commercial for the Swiss banking system, and another dog will rotate in and out of the installation throughout the fair’s run.

BORIS MIKHAILOV
Yesterday’s Sandwich (1960s-1970s)
Sprovieri

Known for his simultaneously lyrical and unsparing images of life in Soviet Russia, the Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov was long forbidden from exhibiting his work, including this early series of composite photographs that he created through darkroom ingenuity (it was the pre-distal era, after all). Featuring images of women in various stages of undress, deli meats, and slumped bureaucrats, the series conjures the tamped-down creative exuberance of another time, when such mildly idiosyncratic expressions could be seen as a threat to the established social order—as, surely, in a small way, they were.

ADRIAN PIPER
Food for the Spirit (1971–1997)
Lévy Gorvy

Most of the time, it’s hard not to roll your eyes when a dealer says that a work at an art fair is “museum quality.” But in this case, the description is legitimate. Adrian Piper’s Food for the Spirit is a landmark in the history of conceptual art. The artist created the work in the summer of 1971, when she sequestered herself in her New York loft and immersed herself in perhaps the most difficult work of philosophy ever written: Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. As time passed, she felt as if she were disappearing into the work, and took a portraits of herself reciting passages from the book as a testament to her own existence. The images—in which she can be seen getting thinner and thinner as the summer goes on—were originally included in an artist’s book in 1971; only in 1997 did Piper print the photographs as gelatin silver prints. Editions of the prints were quickly snapped up by New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Serralves Museum in Porto. The only version to remain in private hands is the first, which also comes with the original book and is priced at $2.5 million. Whoever buys it will have to be willing to lend the book to Piper’s forthcoming MoMA retrospective.

Adrian Piper’s Food for the Spirit (detail) (1971). 14 silver gelatin prints; notebook containing 14 vintage prints, pages torn from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason with handwritten annotations. Courtesy of Lévy Gorvy.

PHILIPPE PARRENO
Fraught Times: For Eleven Months of the Year It’s an Artwork and in December It’s Christmas (July) (2017)
Pilar Corrias

A funny joke taken to extreme lengths, this stainless-steel Christmas tree is the latest in a series that Philippe Parreno began making in 2008, with one made for each of the 11 months of the year in which the baby Jesus wasn’t born. Also funny? The tree costs €1.5 million.

STAN VANDERBEEK
Movie Mural (1965–1968)
The Box

Stan VanDerBeek is an artist who hasn’t quite gotten his due, and his room-size multimedia installation at Unlimited serves as an important reminder of just how much he did first. The US artist—a pioneer of what would later be called “expanded cinema”—began using computers to make art in 1965. He is a precursor to any of the many contemporary artists who create installations by projecting a mash-up of film excerpts, original footage, advertisements, and photographs onto multiple screens. (VanDerBeek started doing it in 1958.) He also has a hand in performance art history: Movie Murals like this one served as backdrops for performances by Merce Cunningham and Carolee Schneemann.

CILDO MEIRELES
Amerikkka (1991/2013)
Galerie Lelong & Co. and Galeria Luisa Strina

Meireles’s installation might win the Unlimited award for “Work That Looks the Most Like Lighthearted Instagram Bait Until You Read the Wall Label and Realize Just How Wrong You Were.” On closer inspection, the work reveals itself to be a tension-filled, even threatening twist on the American flag. That glittering gold ceiling, tilted at 45 degrees, is comprised of 40,000 hollow gold bullets set against a blue background. The floor is carpeted with 20,000 wooden white eggs carefully lined up across a red platform. The Brazilian artist conceived the work for a quincentennial exhibition on the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492, but it wasn’t produced until 2013, for his exhibition at the Reina Sofía in Madrid. The three ‘k’s in its title refer to the Klu Klux Klan.

YURI ANCARANI
The Challenge (2016)
Zero…

To make this film, the Italian artist Yuri Ancarani spent three years in Qatar immersing himself in the world of competitive falconry, a medieval pastime that denizens of the Persian Gulf have revved up with the addition of high-octane vehicles, homing devices, and other technological enhancements. If you’ve ever wondered what people (read: exclusively young men) do for fun in Qatar, the island nation now at the heart of a global terrorism-funding flareup, this film provides tantalizing clues with—in addition to footage of falconry, sometimes filmed as if through the eyes of the bird—scenes of motorcycle gangs praying on a red carpet in the desert, a pet owner showing off his beautiful predatory animals, and men gathered on a dune to watch souped-up trucks compete to carve up huge waves of sand in a sport that looks amazingly like surfing.

Art Basel in Basel is open to the public from June 15 – 18, 2017.

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Art Basel Contemporary

Andrew Goldstein

Editor-in-Chief

Julia Halperin

Executive News Editor

Why Small Galleries Do Art Fairs Even When They Don’t Make Money

Art Fairs

Art-Fair Economics: Why Small Galleries Do Art Fairs Even When They Don’t Make Money

As the middle market shrinks, many dealers are finding they can’t afford to do fairs—but they can’t afford not to, either.

Julia Halperin, June 13, 2017

Kaikai Kiki Gallery at Art Basel Hong Kong 2017. Photo courtesy of Art Basel.

Think art fairs are all about sold-out booths, comfortable shoes, and exclusive dinner invitations? Think again. For many small to mid-size galleries, fairs—like Art Basel in Basel, which opens to VIPs today—are an increasingly nail-biting gamble that involves paying hundreds of thousands of dollars up front with no guarantee of a payoff.

As the middle market shrinks, many dealers are finding they can’t afford to do fairs—but they can’t afford not to, either. “It’s very hard to estimate what the revenue will be, so a gallery’s decision to do a fair is highly uncertain,” says Olav Velthuis, a professor at the University of Amsterdam who specializes in economic sociology. “People don’t realize that fairs are loss leaders for many small galleries.”

Indeed, fairs—which multiplied from 55 worldwide in 2000 to at least 180 in 2014, according to the 2015 TEFAF art market report—pose an economic riddle for mid-market dealers. It doesn’t cost that much less money for a small gallery to participate in a major fair than a large one, but the stakes are much higher for small businesses. The potential upside, meanwhile, is far greater for large ones. (See the end of this article for a breakdown of galleries’ costs and revenue at Art Basel in Miami Beach.)

Galleries surveyed by artnet News with staff sizes ranging from five to 35 people estimated that the cost of participation in Art Basel Miami Beach—including everything from shipping to renting furniture and hosting dinners—ranged from $120,000 to over $275,000. The base cost for a booth in the fair’s main section ranges from $50,400 to $100,800, depending on the size; special sections that often host smaller galleries start at $10,000.

But small galleries, particularly those that specialize in emerging artists, also have disproportionately smaller profit margins. They are more likely to offer work priced at $10,000 than $100,000 or $1 million. “You can sell one work as David Zwirner Gallery and go home with a handsome profit, while a smaller one could sell out and barely recoup their costs,” Velthuis notes.

Art Basel in Miami Beach, 2015. Courtesy of Art Basel.

Squeeze in the Middle

This dynamic isn’t new. But the pressure on the middle market and the rising popularity of art fairs makes it more pronounced than ever. “Mainstream galleries are getting squeezed at the bottom by internet, in the middle by rising rents, and at the top by losing artists,” says Don Thompson, the author of the forthcoming book The Orange Balloon Dog: Bubbles, Turmoil and Avarice in the Contemporary Art Market.

At the same time, “the pressure to go to fairs has increased, because people are much less inclined to go to a physical space than in the past,” Velthuis says. In this year’s TEFAF report, nearly 50 percent of dealers surveyed listed the costs associated with showing at art fairs as one of their top five business concerns.

And while larger dealers often spend more money to rent a bigger booth—with some shelling out an additional six figures to have the stand designed by a celebrity production designer—smaller galleries have their own unique costs to bear. They can find themselves paying for short-term insurance that is proportionally pricier than a larger gallery’s blanket policy, and may have to hire additional temporary staff to man the booth or keep the gallery open during a fair.

Meanwhile, other costs, like airfare and shipping (which can run around $50,000), are similar regardless of the size of the business. “Transport costs are the same for a $10,000 work as a million-dollar work,” Thompson notes.

Visitors to Frieze New York at Gagosian Gallery’s Damien Hirst booth. Courtesy of Sarah Cascone.

Covering All the Bases

The risks that come with fair participation are also greater for a smaller gallery than a large one. When galleries fail to make a profit, which dealers surveyed by artnet News said can happen between 15 to 50 percent of the time, bigger businesses are also better equipped to handle the short-term blow to their bottom lines.

“Large firms are better able to absorb fairs without distorting other aspects of their business,” says the New York-based economist Benjamin Mandel. “If a big chunk of your expenses are being cornered by fixed costs of participation in art fairs, the other parts of your business pay the price, whether that’s investment in infrastructure, investment in shows, or investment in the artists.”

Mandel notes that galleries can fall victim to what economists call the “Washington apples effect.” The state of Washington, which is home to large apple farms, is more likely to export the best apples and sell mediocre ones locally. Similarly, “smaller galleries in general are going to prioritize their highest quality contributions to art fairs, while a large gallery is probably going to show a pretty representative selection of artists and work. Smaller dealers have a bigger distortion.”

Art critic Jerry Saltz at Jeffrey Deitch’s 2017
Armory Show booth, titled “The Florine Stettheimer Collapsed Time Salon.” Courtesy Sean Zanni, © Patrick McMullan.

Different Motivations

If small and mid-size galleries get the raw end of the financial deal at elite fairs, why do they continue to go? Despite the risk, occasional losses, and high cost of participation, dealers we surveyed said they still make between 20 and 60 percent of their annual sales at such events. (One dealer reported making up to $5 million at Art Basel in Miami Beach, which he called “the black Friday of the art world—when dealers get in the black for the year.”)

And even when they lose money in the short-term, most dealers agree that fairs are a worthwhile investment in a gallery’s future—and its reputation. “I think everyone would agree if you can afford it, the effort is always worthwhile—it is just in some ways a waiting game to see if and how it pays off,” says the San Francisco-based dealer Anthony Meier, who participates in around seven fairs a year. “It could be on the sell side, the buy side, a referral, or an introduction to an artist.”

Smaller dealers also stand to benefit disproportionately from showing alongside larger galleries. “If we are next to a high-powered gallery and are working with a fraction of their budget, but have the same size booth and access to the same collectors, that works out to our benefit,” says the New York-based dealer Franklin Parrasch, though he adds, “ultimately, it’s up to the booth to drive interest.”

Frieze London 2016. Photo by Linda Nylind, courtesy of Linda Nylind/Frieze.

What’s Next?

As market pressures continue to make fairs an increasingly challenging proposition for small to mid-size galleries, experts agree something will have to give.

Homa Zarghamee, an assistant professor of economics at Barnard College in New York, suggests some galleries may stop relying on brand-name fairs and transition to smaller, less expensive events like NADA or Independent. Consider that booth prices for boutique fairs can be as low as £2,000 for London’s Sunday; €4,000 for Grand Palazzo (outside Rome); and €4,200–8,200 for Paris Internationale.

“It’s going to keep becoming more segmented,” Zarghamee says. “At some point, you stop competing with Louis Vuitton if you’re the Gap. You just have a different model.”

Perhaps the most utopian—but least likely—solution, put forth by Velthuis, is for top galleries to subsidize smaller galleries’ participation (even beyond the existing special sections). “I could imagine a situation where the community and the fair organizers recognize it’s important to have a mixed ecology,” he says. “It’s just healthy for a market to have that.”

Others suggest smaller galleries will increasingly team up to split the cost of a booth. “I do think this mid-career market needs a twist or a turn, and to me that is an opportunity for people that are collegial,” says Anthony Meier, who has partnered with the Düsseldorf-based gallery Schönewald Fine Arts for Frieze Masters in London, among others.

Regardless of the solution, however, experts—including many of the dealers we interviewed, a number of which declined to be named—say that fairs have hit a saturation point. Mandel observes: “The global art market has slowed, so the rate of art fairs, I believe, will level off, and the number of fairs will probably also start to level off as well.”

In the meantime, art fairs remain a microcosm of the broader market forces squeezing the middle market. “We are in a moment of extreme concentration at the top—there are galleries that are making out like bandits, and galleries that are basically running on a dollar and a dream,” says Magda Sawon of the New York-based gallery Postmasters. “Yet the ones that make tons of money at fairs are paying the same to participate as those that lose money. That’s a proper capitalist model—you don’t expect charity—but it’s a fact.”

P.P.O.W at Frieze 2016. Photograph by Linda Nylind. Courtesy of Linda Nylind/Frieze.

Case Studies: Galleries’ Balance Sheets for Art Basel

We asked galleries of different sizes to break down their costs and revenue at Art Basel in Miami Beach. Here are their estimates.

Small gallery (5–10 staff members)

Booth rental: $75,000

Extras (lighting, furniture rental): $8,000

Flights, hotel: $20,000

Shipping: $15,000

Entertainment (hosting dinners, etc.): $10,000

Total cost: $128,000

Approximate gross sales: $2 million

Mid-size to large gallery (25–35 staff members)

Booth rental: $100,000

Extras (walls, trussing, scrim, carpet, electrical, etc.): $50,000

General operations (installation, framing, production): $30,000

Freight and shipping (including equipment and storage): $45,000

Staff travel: $30,000

Entertainment and gallery events: $20,000

Total cost: $275,000

Approximate gross sales: $5 million

Additional reporting by Eileen Kinsella.

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Art Basel Art Prices Contemporary Postwar

Julia Halperin

Too Nude for the News? Colbert on the Arbitrary Censorship of Art

Hyperallergic

Público

13/11/2015

Too Nude for the News? Colbert on the Arbitrary Censorship of Art

Modigliani's 1917 painting "Nu couché" (Reclining Nude) made headlines this week after Chinese billionaire art collector Liu Yiquan purchased it for $170.4 million, but some media outlets revealed their prudishness in their coverage of the full-frontal…﻿

Traduzir

Too Nude for the News? Colbert on the Arbitrary Censorship of Art