Online art fairs may have been consigned to memory since the post-Covid surge back to in-person events but they can still play a significant role — particularly for galleries lower down the food chain.
Data from the winter edition of Artsy’s Foundations fair, which closed on February 14, brought compelling results for some of its 135 small and emerging galleries, which offered work priced between $300 and $6,300. At these levels, “I can imagine it is more difficult to participate in major [in-person] fairs,” says Alex Forbes, Artsy’s vice-president of galleries and fairs.
Artsy provides an online channel for dozens of physical fairs each year, but it reports that this month’s Foundations registered the highest traffic of all, with 136,281 visitors (next in the rankings was the Chicago Expo). The Foundations galleries reported average growth in ecommerce sales of one-third compared with the equivalent two-week period last year (before the fair existed), with a dramatic rise in inquiries for some artists.
These included Savannah Marie Harris, shown by London’s Harlesden High Street; Harris was the winner of the first Artsy Foundations Prize, meaning that her work is on show on a digital billboard in New York’s Times Square until February 25.
Artsy does not charge an additional fee to its galleries to participate in Foundations — they already pay a monthly membership to the marketplace and, depending on their plan, then give Artsy a 3-19 per cent commission on ecommerce sales, Forbes confirms.
Christie’s is poised to break the auction record for American painter Brice Marden, who died last year, when his two-part “Event” (2004-07) comes up for sale in New York in May, estimated at $30mn-$50mn. Marden’s existing public record is $30.9mn, made in 2020 for a work from the same series, which has just three diptychs (the third is in Paris’s Centre Pompidou).
“Event”, which has an auction house guarantee, has been in the same private collection since it was finished and has never been seen publicly since, says Sara Friedlander, Christie’s deputy chair. The work gets its first outing in Dubai February 26-March 8, to overlap with the Art Dubai fair.
Consignments are also still coming in for the London sales season, which opens at Sotheby’s on March 6. For this evening sale, the auction house will offer three works from a collection of 20th-century art estimated between £6.8mn and £9.4mn and dominated by Francis Bacon’s “Study of George Dyer” (1970, £5mn-£7mn, guaranteed by Sotheby’s). A further eight works from the same collection will be offered during its day sale on March 7.
Galerie Michael Werner is opening new spaces in Los Angeles and Athens in May, adding to its locations in Berlin, New York and London. The Los Angeles gallery will be in a former nail salon off Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and comes with a “beautiful courtyard garden”, says gallery co-owner Gordon VeneKlasen.
Courtney Treut, most recently at Sean Kelly in LA, has been hired as director, while programming for the courtyard will be organised by LA gallerist Hannah Hoffman.
The LA gallery opens with a pairing of 19th-century French artist Pierre Puvis de Chavannes with recent work by German painter Markus Lüpertz. As VeneKlasen says, “It’s an unusual show for LA”, where Puvis de Chavannes in particular is not that well known.
In Athens, the gallery opens with three exhibition rooms in an apartment near the Museum of Cycladic Art. The initial plan is to be “semi-private” with two shows per year and otherwise by appointment.
Thaddaeus Ropac now represents Joan Snyder and marks its signing with a recent work for its booth at Frieze Los Angeles, “Even a Melon Field” (2020-23, $210,000).
Ropac will work alongside New York’s Canada gallery in its representation and plans a large-scale exhibition in its London space in November, with a focus on new works. The American artist incorporates materials such as flowers, straw and thread into her generally abstract work and, aged 83, has recently experienced a surge in public prices. Her auction record of $478,800 was set last year, with “The Stripper” (1973), estimated at $80,000-$120,000.
Separately, Mexico City and New York gallery Kurimanzutto will represent the estate of John Giorno (1936-2019) in the Americas, working alongside three other galleries. Kurimanzutto plans a solo exhibition of the artist, also a poet and activist, in its New York gallery from March 7. This will focus on Giorno’s lesser-known Buddhist practice and, the gallery confirms, include a guided meditation. The show is organised by Anthony Huberman, who took over as artistic director of the estate — now known as Giorno Poetry Systems — last year.
Artists have donated to Together We Thrive, an exhibition of 26 works to raise funds for the Cultural Leaders Programme, a collaboration between Sotheby’s Institute of Art and the charity Culture&.
Their project was formed in 2022 to diversify leadership through education in an art world that can still favour nepotism and good fortune. The institute has waived its tuition fees for three UK-based students per year, for three years, to join its MA programmes in London — which cost up to £28,900 each, including a field study bursary. Alongside this, Culture& provides the much-needed living-wage assistance, set at £25,000 per student.
The exhibition, at Cromwell Place until Sunday, is to support the latter, with work by artists including Peter Liversidge, Boo Saville and Hurvin Anderson, secured by Gallery OCA. Errol Francis, chief executive and artistic director of Culture&, supplies one of his own photos, of himself posing as a security guard in a museum. Works have not been individually priced but are available as raffle prizes, with donations starting at £25. All works can be seen at galleryoca.com and the raffle is open beyond the exhibition, until March 4, via cutureand.org.
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