Art Dubai 2009 – who sold what to whom? 15 galleries talk to Art Radar

MIDDLE EAST ART FAIR

Which artists were favourites? 15 exhibitor galleries talk to Art Radar in the final day of the fair about sales, attendance and some new collector trends.

Summary:

• Middle Eastern collectors showing first signs of interest in East Asian art
• Pieces in the price range US$20-30000 sell best
• Sales down compared with last year; booths have mixed results
• More art fair visitors from institutions
• Russian collector base changing

Set out below is a round-up of comments from a selection of galleries participating in the fair.

Triumph Gallery – Russia

Ruth Addison: “The fair is going OK rather than fast in terms of sales but it is great in terms of contacts and opportunities. Some of our artists have been invited on residencies. We did not expect too much because of 1) the recession 2) Russian artists are new to the Middle East and 3) this is the first time for Triumph at the fair. Most interest has been shown in AES+F.”

Aidan Gallery – Russia

Aidan Salakhova, Director: “Sales have been slower, much as we expected. We have sold 2-3 pieces. We may come back next year but we don’t plan to attend any art fairs in the next 5-6 months. We were the first private gallery in the USSR when we opened 17 yeas ago. In Russia now there is so much change happening to the local collector base, many people are losing money and other new collectors who are making money – perhaps from the government – are entering the market and replacing them. Our aim is to survive the next couple of years and wait for the market to settle”

Grosvenor Gallery London

Connor Macklin “The fair has been better than expected for us. The mood is different this year but we have made sales in the range of US$2,000 to US$100,000 per piece”.

Haunch of Venison – London, Berlin, Zurich, New York

Adrian Sutton, Senior Sales Director “We have had a successful fair. We have sold one piece and are close with two other pieces and if they come off, sales ( of Indian artist Jitish Kallat and Wim Wenders ) will be over a quarter of a million US dollars in total.”

October Gallery London

Elizabeth Lalouschek Artistic Director: “We have found that there has been more interest in larger works. We have sold 10 works with prices varying from US$2,500 to US$90,000 including two El Anatsui works. This fair we have noticed more of an international attendance and more museum directors than in previous years. Perhaps this is because the art fair is being held at the same time as the Sharjah Biennale.”

El Anatsui at October Gallery

Mario Mauroner Vienna Austria

“This is our third time here and it has been very quiet. Most interest has been shown in Barthelmy Toguo from Cameroon. We did well at Bologna and Arco so Art Dubai has been disappointing . But we set up in 1972 and have survived recessions dating back to the 1973 oil crisis so I don’t doubt we will survive this too.”

Galerie Kashya Hildebrand  Switzerland

Kashya Hildebrand “This is our third trip and we are very happy because members of the Royal Family have bought Asian art for the first time – a Korean artist….a major development.

There is a also a group of serious Dubai-based Iranian collectors who come to the fair. They take their purchases very seriously, pore over the pieces, ask lots of questions and return each day. Last year this group also began to buy Asian art for the first time which is very exciting.”

Korean artist Ran Hwang purchased by Royal Family

Galerie Volker Diehl Moscow, Berlin

Monica F. Eulitz International Director:  “The fair has been very well attended and we have seen buyers from the entire Gulf region this year not just local participants. We have sold a few pieces in the US$20,000-30,000 range.”

 Kalfayan Galleries  Greece

Roupen Kalfayan: ” Sales have been so-so but it has been wonderful for contacts. Business is slower than last year. This is our second year.. We have had a lot of interest in the Syrian photographer Hrair Sarkissianwho will be exhibiting at the Istanbul Biennale. He started to receive attention from collectors last year and we have placed his work with European collectors at the fair this year. Also Tarek Al Ghoussein.”

B21 Dubai

Tessa de Caters: “We have made some sales and the video and digital Iranian artist Leila Pazooki has been receiving attention.

Pyo Gallery  Korean

Jeong Yim Gho, Chief curator “It is slow compared with last year. Last year was pretty good but not this year though we have made a few sales in the US$20-30,000 range” Most interest was shown in Park, Sung-Tae.

Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul

Kim Jyon director “This is our first visit and sales have not been good. U Fan has sold and there has been a lot of interest in Lee Lee Nam but no sales yet of this artist’s work.”

Aicon GalleryNew York, Palo Alto, London

“Sales are reasonable but much slower than last year”

Bodhi Art Mumbai

Puneet Shah Asst Gallery Manager: “It has been slow fair for us. We have made no sales. The artist which has attracted most attention is Subodh Gupta.

Edwynn Houk Gallery New York  US

Edwynn Houk “This is our first year and we have made a good beginning. We have sold 6 pieces, all photographs by Lalla Essaydi. We have found that Western artists seem to have less resonance with local collectors this year but perhaps interest will develop over time. We would like to come back to Art Dubai”

Related categories: art fairs, Middle Eastern art, collector news

Related posts:

• Review round-up Saatchi Middle East show Unveiled: which artists are critic favourites? March 2009
• ARCO Madrid 2009 news round up – galleries drop out, public funding prop provided Feb 2009
• Which artists from Asia are in the Pompidou centre? – Dec 2008 – Iranian and Iraqi artists have been added recently
• The Dubai art market and its future – Nation, Guardian – Nov 2008

Subscribe to Art Radar Asia for art fair news

Advertisement

Guide to art scene Tel Aviv, Israel – New York Times

Ori Gersht Blow Up Detail

 

 

ART CITY ISRAEL

While Jerusalem is home to Israel’s major museums, Tel Aviv is its contemporary arts capital. It is a livelier, more progressive city, where young artists live, work and show their wares in more than 30 contemporary galleries, a third of which opened in the last two years.

Unlike art hubs like Berlin or even Dubai, Tel Aviv still feels intimate and undiscovered says The New York Times . Moreover, the emerging art displays a strength and seriousness that is undoubtedly informed by Israel’s entrenched contradictions and intractable conflicts. Art in this beachside city, it seems, stands for something.

“In Tel Aviv, it feels like every conversation, gesture, project and event has a sense of meaning to it that I’ve never felt in such concentration elsewhere,” said Shamim Momin, a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, who visited Tel Aviv for Art TLV. “Yet at the same time this place feels remarkably joyful and — dare I say — decadently laid back.”

But one thing the city’s art boosters are not laid back about is their plan to make Tel Aviv’s art scene, and Israeli artists in general, known to the world. Art TLV, started by a cadre of art dealers and curators, including Irit Sommer, Rivka Saker, Yehudit Shapira Haviv and Shifra Shalit-Intrator, was a rigorous five-day marathon that included lectures, openings, dinners, museum and home tours, private screenings and hourlong jaunts to Jerusalem.

MANY galleries are clustered along Rothschild Boulevard, Tel Aviv’s most elegant street, lined with Bauhaus buildings, banks and the former mansions of the city’s founders. Running down the middle is a shaded pedestrian path dotted with tiny cafes and boules courts where old men play. As the art events got under way, it became a veritable runway for gallery-hopping curators and collectors.

A steady stream made its way to galleries like the Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, a narrow two-story space on a palm-lined side street known for provocative and often amusing works, mostly by Israeli artists. On exhibit were a series of lushly colored photographs and time-lapse video still lifes by an Israeli, Ori Gersht.

But Tel Aviv’s sunny and casual art scene, like everything else in Israel, is tempered by Middle Eastern politics and bloodshed. Only four years ago, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a cheese shop near the intersection of Rambam and Hacarmel Streets, less than a mile from the galleries, killing three and injuring more than 30.

That peculiar way of life — a laidback Mediterranean vibe salted with an ever-present fear of violence — infuses the best of Tel Aviv’s contemporary art. At Dvir Gallery in the city’s north, large-scale photographs by Pavel Wolberg, a Russian-born photojournalist who lives in Tel Aviv, depict masked Palestinian youths with slingshots, Orthodox Jewish weddings and tense and often poignant interactions between Jews and Muslims. His images are defiant scenes of a young nation struggling to contain contradictions and honor traditions.

Other darlings of the Tel Aviv contemporary art scene include Rona Yefman and the sculptor Ariel Schlesinger. One could see Ms. Yefman’s grainy video “Pippi Longstocking, the Strongest Girl in the World, at Abu Dis,” which depicts a red-braided girl dressed as Pippi Longstocking beating on the wall that divides Israel and the Palestinian territories. The video is pitch-perfect in its razor-edged absurdity and was among the most talked-about works that week.

Mr. Schlesinger, an Israeli who lives in Berlin and shows with Dvir Gallery, makes absurdist sculptures like “Bubble Machine,” a messy if poetic scaffold of wood, wire, a drill and whirring metal parts. It’s a useless appliance whose sole purpose is to emit a bubble that drops, every few seconds, onto a searing grill. On impact the bubble bursts into flames, only to be repeated again in a vicious circle that evokes the combustible politics of the Middle East.

Similarly, the country’s nascent contemporary art institutions are both high-minded and risk-taking. The Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, once a dusty cultural center and war memorial on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, is now a serious art venue art with a socio-political bent. Its curator, Dalia Levin, champions Israeli artists like Sigalit Landau, who infamously videotaped herself bloodying her naked body with a Hula Hoop fashioned out of barbed wire.

During Art TLV, a new art fair, the London-based curator Andrew Renton brought a smattering of art cognoscenti to Israel for the first time. Many attended the opening night party for “Open Plan Living,” Mr. Renton’s sprawling group show at the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art, part of the Tel Aviv Museum and widely considered the city’s most prestigious art venue.

See

• complete article in New York Times including travel details
• artTLV website
• more about Israeli art

Stay up to date – subscribe to Art Radar Asia