All photos: ART iT
Open to the public from Oct 14-17 in London, this year’s Frieze Art Fair was a more sober affair than years past, with fewer visitors from the US and some continental collectors apparently electing to skip the Channel crossing in favor of attending France’s FIAC art fair in Paris, which held its vernissage on Oct 20. Nevertheless, participating galleries reported strong sales and noted the increased presence of new collectors from countries and regions including Russia, Turkey and the Middle East.
Local galleries brought out their best wares. Having just relocated to a new space on Oct 6, Sadie Coles HQ featured artists including Ugo Rondinone, Wilhelm Sasnal and John Currin, selling almost the entire booth by the time of the fair opening and earning the Champagne Pommery-sponsored Frieze Art Fair Stand Prize for good measure. Another Londoner, Thomas Dane, featured works by American Glenn Ligon, slated for a solo exhibition at New York’s Whitney Museum in March 2011, with the painting Figure #49 (2010) going to a European collector for 125,000 dollars.
Glenn Ligon – Figure #49 (2010), coal dust on canvas, 152.4 x 121.9 cm.
Meanwhile, Thaddaeus Ropac, with branches in Paris and Salzburg, found an American buyer for Georg Baselitz’s 400,000 euro painting Ahmung ohne Schatten (2010), while Cologne’s Gisela Capitain recorded among its sales the sculptural piece Maintance (2010) by Karla Black – who is slated to represent Scotland at the next Venice Biennale – priced at a relatively affordable 8,000 pounds,
Nana Funo – A letter from the artist (2010), acrylic, dye, gesso on canvas.
From Japan, Tokyo’s Tomio Koyama devoted his booth to emerging artist Nana Funo, born in 1984, with the large-scale painting A letter from the artist (2010) quickly selling to a local collector for 21,500 dollars. By fair’s end, Koyama had found homes for almost all the works on display.
In light of continued economic downturn, galleries seemed pleased with the sales of even only a few works. However, they also appeared to be orienting their displays toward the market by focusing on works of more collectible scale and material, leading to grumbles of disappointment from curators looking to add to institutional collections.
Overall, the market in London gravitated toward works by emerging artists with lower prices but high potential ceilings on one end of the spectrum, and works by established, critically esteemed artists with expensive but stable prices on the other end. Compared with previous years, there were fewer sold-out booths within the first days of the fair, and collectors spent more time weighing the balance the prices and values of the works they were considering. With a weakening dollar, it was no surprise that most of the buyers this year came from England and Europe.
Frieze Art Fair 2010 Photo Report