Frieze NY

Frieze NY Sales

May 7, 2012 by Marion Maneker

Artinfo’s Shane Ferro stalked the stalls and took some names:

Cheim & Read: sold several Jenny Holzer pieces — an LED sign for $175,000, a bench for $100,000, as well as a work via JPEG — as well as aChantal Joffe painting for $65,000, a Louise Fishman work for $125,000, and a Bill Jensen for $25,000.

Victoria Miro sold several recent works “in the low to mid-six figures” by Yayoi Kusama

James Cohan, who sold a number of pieces by Berlin-based Simon Evans for $30,000 to $75,000 by early afternoon.

Metro Pictures: Robert Longo’s large, black-and-white close-up drawing of a waving American flag sold for $425,000 and a Cindy Sherman film still sold for $950,000.

Casey Kaplan: sold out a solo show of Garth Weiser’s large, bright abstractions ($35,000-45,000 each).

Andrea Rosen: mounted a solo room of paintings and wall collages by Elliott Hundley, all sold for $85,000, and an accompanying room of quieter work by Wolfgang Tillmans and Aaron Barrow.

Sprueth Magers: sold one of Jenny Holzer’s new paintings for $175,000 and a bright red Rosemarie Trockel wool sculpture that looked like a large, anthropomorphized rug for £75,000 ($121,410). The gallery also sold several pieces for £18,000 ($29,138) by the German artist Aster Klien

Katya Kazakina has this gallery report on Bloomberg:

James Fuentes: sold 30 of the works, ranging from $2,300 for a drawing to $45,000 for a group of 72 paintings.

Hauser & Wirth: Paul McCarthy’s “White Snow Dwarf, Sleepy #1 (Midget),” which had an asking price of $950,000; Phyllida Barlow’s sculpture, featuring concrete, cement and plaster piled up on a yellow bean bag, for $65,000; Matthew Day Jackson’s bronze-and-steel slumped figure, “Seated not defeated (Chief Bigfoot),” for $195,000.

David Kordansky Gallery: Sold out his booth of colorful abstract paintings by Jon Pestoni, with prices ranging from $14,000 to $22,000.

Bureau: Justin Matherly’s haunting cast-concrete sculpture based on the Greek statue “Laocoon and His Sons,” for $35,000.

Luettgenmeijer: Three “Treif collage” paintings by American artist Ryan McLaughlin, depicting non-kosher foods like lobster and ham in semi-abstract style, priced at $7,500 each.

Mitchell-Innes & Nash: A cube sculpture by Sarah Braman for $20,000; Amanda Ross-Ho’s oversized brooch with two gold tragedy masks linked by two gold chains for $40,000.

Regina gallery: Six black-and- white photographs by Nikolay Bakharev from the period 1978-85, depicting gaunt bathers, for $3,000 each.

Sikkema Jenkins Co: a 5-by-9-foot collaged photograph “Washington Crossing the Delaware” by Vik Muniz, for $45,000.

The LA Times’s Jori Finkel also had these details:

David Kordansky Gallery: sold the nine available paintings by Jon Pestoni for $14,000 to $22,000, based mainly on jpegs, after announcing its representation but before the fair even opened.

Andrea Rosen: Elliott Hundley. eight works for $85,000 each early on. “We informed people before the fair, but for the most part people like to see them in person.”

Take Ninagawa: 10 “painting-collages” by the versatile Japanese artist Shinro Ohtake, which sold around $20,000 each. By the end of the first day all but one had sold; the last was on hold, she said.

Sales Report: Frieze New York Makes a Convincing Case for Itself With an Opening Burst of Business (Artinfo)

Ruffalo Fries Sausages, Mack, Marron Try N.Y. Frieze Fair (Bloomberg)

London’s Frieze art fair debuts New York edition (Los Angeles Times)

If You Build It, They Will Come (Frieze New York)

May 5, 2012 by Elena Soboleva

Elena Soboleva (@elenasoboleva) is a New York gallerist and an art-world observer who can be spotted at openings around the city.

Airy, open and with the effortless elegance of good design, the inaugural Frieze New York opened for the VIP preview last Wednesday, living up to months of speculation and hype. Those who braved the spans of water and roundabout transportation to arrive at Randall’s Island were not disappointed and most found the complimentary ferry service and shuttle bus quite agreeable. Drawing serious collectors and curators alike, the fair was extremely well-received with a list of major sales quickly putting the dealers in the black. As the enthusiastic Maria Baibakova, of Baibakov Art Projects raved, Frieze was “so fresh, clean, and open. Too many objects to mention, but my assessment in two words is: Wow, finally!”

The design of the tent – (so ubiquitous it spawned its own twitter account @FriezeTent) navigated around the problem of hierarchies of communal space. The larger galleries were evenly distributed and anchored both ends, while the central part featured smaller spaces without feeling cluttered. The vast wall space and soaring ceilings escalated everything to scale of grandeur and made the venue ideal for exhibiting large sculptural objects, minimalist readymades and monochromatic canvases as Lisson Gallery, David Zwirner and Gagosian (respectively) demonstrated. The European rigor and open space kept the booths curatorially sound, avoiding the Miami in-your-face loudness. Though most were impressed with the space, there was a bit of nostalgia, and Paddy Johnson of Artfagcity mused that “the number of white walls at Frieze is a little overwhelming.”

The Frieze organizers deserve top marks for food, with popular establishments such as The Fat Radish, Standard Biergarten, Roberta’s Pizza and Frankies Spuntino opening up joins which ran alongside the main length of the tent. The realization that feeding sophisticated collectors two day old sushi was not satisfactory must have sunk in and one couldn’t spot boxed maki or shrink-wrapped sandwiches anywhere in sight. This obvious evolution had everyone talking, with Observer’s Andrew Russeth dedicating an article to where to eat and Artinfo’s Benjamin Sutton writing that though it was “too early to report on art sales, the food from Frankies Spuntino and The Fat Radish is selling fast!”

As for the art itself, the sales were strong with galleries such as Casey Kaplan and Andrea Rosen reporting to be nearly sold out in the first day. This was evident throughout and by the time the Vernissage rolled around many dealers were taking it easy and leaving the booths to secondary staff as they snuck off for food.

Opening day notables at the fair included collectors Don and Mera Rubell, Alberto Mugrabi, Stavros Niarchos and Andre Balazs as well as Simon de Pury, Urs Fischer, Glenn Lowry, Klaus Biesenbach, Pharrell Williams, Stefano Tonchi and Mark Ruffalo.

How Frieze will change the landscape of New York art fairs remains to be seen, with Armory and ADAA holding their ground for March 2013, but surely it has set the bar and created a major shift which must play out in the course of next year.