From auction to fair: Roman Abramovich brings Basel to life

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ART BASEL DAILY EDITION WEDNESDAY 4 JUNE 2008
From auction to fair: Roman
Abramovich brings Basel to life
Chelsea FC owner joins Brad Pitt and Sheikh Saud Al-Thani at vernissage
Billionaire businessman and owner
of Chelsea Football Club Roman
Abramovich and his partner Daria
“Dasha” Zhukova caused a tremendous stir—more even than superstar actor Brad Pitt—when they
arrived at Art Basel yesterday.
This is believed to be the couple’s first appearance at an art
fair, and came less than a month
after Mr Abramovich spent
$120m at the spring New York
auctions on a Francis Bacon and
a Lucian Freud.
Also spotted at the fair was
Sheikh Saud Al-Thani, cousin
of the Emir of Qatar, who is a
contemporary art collector although better known for his
previous collecting on behalf
of the Museum of Islamic Art
in Doha.
Dealers were thrilled by the
presence of Mr Abramovich and
Ms Zhukova, until now only
known to buy at auction. “I was
pleased to see him, looking at
things very seriously,” said David
Juda, (2.0/G1) of London’s Annely
Juda Fine Art. “Some other collectors only go to auction.”
A trio of Alberto Giacometti
bronzes
at
Krugier’s stand (2.0/B4)
are believed to have
caught Mr Abramovich’s eye. The largest
of the three, Femme
Abramovich (above) spent
time yesterday admiring this
Giacometti priced at $14m
de Venise I, 1956, is priced at
$14m, while the smaller 1958
Femme Debout is priced at $8m.
He is believed to be “seriously
considering” a purchase, according to a source. Giacometti was
one of the stars of the recent New
York contemporary sales when a
sculpture fetched a record $27.5m
at Christie’s on 6 May. Mr
Abramovich also paused to admire
works by Marc
Chagall and
Alexej von
Jawlensky
at Galerie
Thomas (2.0/
P2).
His pres-
First view of Barceló’s “crazy” UN ceiling
Spanish artist Miquel Barceló’s
extraordinary art installation for
Room 20 in the United Nation’s
Council of Human Rights in
Geneva—which he has called “the
Sistine Chapel of the 21st
century”—was shown to a select
group of Spanish government
officals this morning to celebrate
its completion. “It’s like an
enormous grotto,” Tobias Mueller,
director of Galerie Bruno
Bischofberger, which exclusively
represents Barceló, told The Art
Newspaper at Art Basel, stressing
the “crazy” dimensions of the 41metre wide dome which he saw in
progress. “He used a lot of paint.” The work has been created using a
special pigmented resin, pumped through a tube at a rate of 3,000
litres a minute. Meanwhile, Mr Mueller said the gallery sold several
Barceló works at its stand (2.0/J1) on Tuesday, including Avec Escargot
Central, 2006, which is valued in the €350,000-€400,000 range
Roland Lloyd Parry
ence provided a welcome burst of
confidence for dealers faced with
fewer American collectors. “With
the strong euro and weak dollar,
Americans, even the rich ones, are
complaining for the first time,”
said New York collector and
banker Gilbert Harrison, chairman
of Financo.
Donald Bryant, who owns works
by Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly
and Willem de Kooning, said finding value today requires selectivity.
“The secondary market prices are
out of control,” says Mr Bryant.
“With the primary market you are
more likely to get a real price.”
The divide between gallery and
auction prices has accelerated in recent years, boosted by new collectors. As auction prices have soared,
retail art shopping can look like a
bargain. PaceWildenstein had a
painting by Chinese artist Zhang
Xiaogang, which sold for under
$1m, according to the gallery’s
Susan Dunne. His record price at
auction, for an older work, is $6.1m.
“The big collectors come to Basel
because they know they are going to
be seeing great art,” said Sam Keller,
the former Art Basel director, now
head of the Fondation Beyeler. “But
if you have a relationship with the
dealer, you may well be able to buy
that art cheaper than on the secondary auction market.”
Ms Zhukova plans to open the
Center for Contemporary Culture
Moscow in September. She will
mount international contemporary
art exhibitions in an 85,000 sq. foot
industrial 1927 bus garage designed
by a noted constructivist architect.
Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst, a former
Gagosian director who has been
hired to manage the centre’s programmes, escorted the couple
through the fair.
Mr Abramovich’s interest
ranged from the organic and
edgy—a $70,000 snake-like sculpture by Brazilian artist Ernesto
Neto at Galerie Max Hetzler
(2.0/Q2)—to a Picasso drawing at
Acquavella Galleries. (2.0/R1).
Having paid a record $33.6m for
Freud’s Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, 1995, at Christie’s in New
York last month, Mr Abramovich
also priced the Freud paintings on
offer at Acquavella.
Sheikh Saud Al-Thani
With the Euro 2008 football
championship arriving in Basel on
Saturday, some dealers who missed
Mr Abramovich regretted the
missed opportunity—and not only
his buying power. “I wish I’d
known he was here,” said dealer
Roland Augustine of Luhring Augustine (2.0/P4). “I would have
tried to get soccer tickets.”
Lindsay Pollock
Additional reporting by
Bettina Krogemann
Basel art gallery forced to shut show
as tournament kicks off
The Kunsthaus Baselland has been
forced to close its four exhibitions
early—before the Art Basel public
weekend—because they clash with
the kick-off of Euro 2008 in the
neighbouring St Jakob-Park Stadium. This means that today is the
last chance for art lovers to see
solo shows by leading contemporary artists Gavin Turk, Thomas
Baumann, Dan Perjovschi and Stefan Burger.
“We are in the stadium’s “security zone A,” explained Sabine
Schaschl, the director of the Kunsthaus Baselland, “so it’s impossible
to get people through on the day of
the game.” Although the match between Switzerland and the Czech
Republic is not until Saturday 7
June, Ms Schaschl is emptying the
gallery of its contents tomorrow because of concerns for its safety
should there be any violence. “We
had a very bad experience a few
years ago when there was a game.
When some of the fans didn’t like
Sent off: Kunsthaus Baselland will be empty during Euro 2008
the outcome, they smashed one of
our windows and destroyed a work
of art,” she said.
“Because this match is such a
special thing, no one knows what is
going to happen. We don’t want to
take any chances,” Ms Schaschl
said, adding that the museum’s insurance company is not prepared to
offer cover in the case of “hooliganism problems”.
A number of Art Basel attendees
will no doubt be making their way
to the Herzog & de Meuron-designed St Jakob-Park to watch the
match, which kicks off at 6pm.
Those without tickets can watch the
match on a big screen in the city
centre supplied by Art Basel.
Louisa Buck
J Gavin Turk talks to The Art Newspaper
about football, fairs and art on p4.
CONTEMPO RARY ART
AUCTIONS
29 & 30 JUNE
2008
LONDON
+44 20 7318 4010 www.phillipsdepury.com
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 4 JUNE 2008
2
Diary
Who you gonna call?
Thrashing around
Even the ghosts are VIPs in Art
Basel. The artist Dane Mitchell
has summoned one to the fair—
the spirit of Anna Göldi, the last
woman to be executed as a witch
in Switzerland in 1732. The poor
woman’s spirit is allegedly
wandering the stand of Starkwhite
(A17, Art Statements). But fairgoers need not be afraid of Basel
Haunting (Anna Göldi), 2008. Her
restless spirit is contained by steel
partitioning which Mitchell,
supervised by a living witch, has
sprinkled with a magical powder.
A private collector from New
Zealand has expressed interest in
the eerie installation priced at
€40,000. Whether Basel Haunting
travels well Down Under rather
depends on Ms Göldi, though.
Wild card
Photo by Katherine Hardy
It’s only rock ’n’ roll
The aisles of Art Basel are paved
with diamonds, well, one anyway,
if you can only find it hidden in a
pile of convincing Chinese fakes.
This year’s Cartier Award winner
Wilfred Prieto’s installation One,
2008, at Galería Nogueras
Blanchard (A26) is made from
around 30 million worthless
stones and one genuine rock. For
one visitor, temptation proved
irresistible—he drove his
wheelchair at top speed into the
pile. A few spins later security
intervened but not before the
rogue art lover had demolished
the diamante pile, laughing
hysterically all the while. The
vandal’s explanation for his
destructive dance was that the
promises the gift of eternal life,
inviting participants to recline
inside the structure and have their
age miraculously reduced. This
should be a sure-fire hit with art
lovers in search of an injection of
extra youth beyond the Botox
needle. According to the artist’s
London dealer Paul Hedge, a spell
under the sails also does wonders
for post-Basel party hangovers.
When asked if anything at Art Basel had taken his fancy, the diminutive and deeply dishy superstar Brad Pitt would only gaze deep into
his Art Newspaper interlocutor’s eyes and divulge that: “I’ve seen
lots that I like, but right now, I’m just looking.” Before skipping off,
the trilby-hatted one was later spotted gazing long and deeply at a
Carroll Dunham painting on White Cube’s stand (2.1/E5)—so who
knows, with Dunham showing new work this summer at legendary
collector Pauline Karpidas’ space on the Greek island of Hydra,
maybe once the next batch of babes are born, globe-trotting
Brangelina and their brood may enjoy a Hellenic sojourn?
work did not have a “don’t touch”
sign affixed. Fortunately, Prieto
was able to recreate the work of
high bling priced at €45,000.
Go Cy go
With major shows about to open
at Tate Modern and the Prado,
you’d think that Gagosian
(2.0/G2) would have at least one
piece by artist of the moment Cy
Twombly—but there is not a
Twombly to be seen on Larry’s
stand. Perhaps there’s a clue in a
recent and rare interview in the
UK newspaper The Guardian, in
which the normally reticent artist
confesses to Tate director,
Nicholas Serota: “When I work, I
work very fast, but preparing the
work can take any length of time.
It can even be a year.” The speedy
artist must be in a pre-prep rather
than painterly mode.
Published by
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“Why write? Go out
and buy art! You can
make $2,000,
$100,000, $200,000
—drop all this
journalism and go
make some real
money”
—New York traderdealer David
Mugrabi to The Art
Newspaper team
The Art Newspaper, Art Basel Daily Edition
Group Editorial Director: Anna Somers Cocks
Managing Director: James Knox
Editor: Jane Morris
Deputy Editors: Javier Pes, Gareth Harris, Helen Stoilas
Senior Copy Editor: Iain Millar
Production Editor: Eyal Lavi
Designer: Emma Goodman
Picture Editor: William Oliver
Listings Editor: Emily Sharpe
Reporters: Georgina Adam, Lindsay Pollock,
Brook Mason, Louisa Buck, Mark Clintberg,
Melanie Gerlis, Bettina Krogemann, Roland Lloyd Parry
Basel death-metal band, Dark
Moon, no shrinking violets for a
challenge, were game when the
Portuguese artist João Onofre
invited them to try out his Boxed
Sized Die, a sonic endurance test
found in Art Unlimited (B9). The
metal cube is mercifully
soundproofed. Dark Moon
managed a credible seven minutes
yesterday before emerging,
somewhat ashen and dripping with
sweat. “I think I might buy one for
my teenage son to play his horrible
music in,” a collector was heard to
say, soto voce. “It’s the only way
he might keep the noise down.”
You’ve filled in the forms. Paid the
fee. Curated a killer booth. But still
can’t get your foot through the
doors of the biggest art fairs? Help
may now be at hand in the form of
Brooklyn-based artist Cory
Arcangel whose project for this
October’s Frieze fair involves
intervening directly in the
minefield that is the gallery
selection process. Never mind that
Basel is now a done deal, if you
are one of the 300 or so
unsuccessful applicants for the
next really big fair on the calendar,
Blow the Botox
The one-man collective, Bob and
Roberta Smith has created a jaunty
windmill for his solo project found
in the Voltahalle. It’s the latest
version of the artist’s proposal for
the contemporary art competition
to site a work on Trafalgar
Square’s fourth plinth in London.
(The winning work from a shortlist of six will be announced on 23
June.) The Basel windmill
Photographer: Katherine Hardy
Project Manager: Patrick Kelly
Head of Sales US: Caitlin Miller
Head of Sales UK: Louise Hamlin
Advertising Executives: Sara Bissen,
Ben Tomlinson, Julia Michalska
Frieze, this week you may find that
you have after all been granted a
booth in the hallowed Regent’s
Park big top, and a free one at that.
Taking his inspiration from Roald
Dahl’s Willy Wonka, Arcangel has
hidden a golden ticket in one of a
host of chocolate bars that have
been mailed to each and every one
of this year’s Frieze refuseniks,
and the gallery that gets the ticket
gets the booth, where they can
show whom- or whatever they
choose. Both Frieze and Arcangel
are eager to stress that the
confidentiality of the galleries has
been carefully protected, and that
the artist has no idea to whom the
letters are being sent or which
randomly selected gallery will be
the lucky recipient of the golden
ticket. However, come October all
will be revealed as the winner will
be clearly identified by the Frieze
Project sign hanging on their
booth. But will the gallery in
question have the confidence to
flaunt their former reject status, or
will they decide to save face and
forgo the freebie, leaving an empty
booth containing nothing but a
framed gold ticket as a symbol of
our achingly image-conscious era?
Printed by Baz Druck Zentrum, Basel
©2008 The Art Newspaper Ltd. All rights reserved. No part
of this newspaper may be reproduced without written
consent of copyright proprietor. The Art Newspaper is not
responsible for statements expressed in the signed articles
and interviews. While every care is taken by the publishers,
the contents of advertisements are the responsibility of the
individual advertisers.
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Nicholas Hlobo
William Kentridge
Vivienne Koorland
Santu Mofokeng
Berni Searle
Guy Tillim
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Curated by Tamar Garb
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THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 4 JUNE 2008
4
Buyers play safe
Blue-chip artists generate the strongest sales
Report
Art Basel preview
The 39th edition of Art Basel
opened yesterday with the familiar
surge of visitors including film
director Sofia Coppola, who
compared the scrum to a “mosh
pit” as she waited to get in.
Major
collectors
Howard
Rachofsky of Dallas, Peter Brant,
the Rubells of Miami, Frank
Cohen, Anita
Zabludowicz,
Rudolph Udo Scharpff, as well as
Agnes Gund president emerita of
the MoMA board of trustees,
Roger Sant, chair of the
Smithsonian Board of Regents,
Sheena Wagstaff, chief curator at
Tate Modern, Alain Seban,
president of Paris’s Centre
Pompidou and Sandy Heller who
advises Steve Cohen and other
hedge fund managers were all
trawling the aisles. But the greatest
fuss was generated by the presence
of the London-based Russian
billionaire Roman Abramovich
and Hollywood actors Brad Pitt
and Owen Wilson (see p1).
Despite the excitement created
by the stars, many dealers said that
buyers were banking on blue-chip
works of art. And mindful of the
turmoil in the financial markets,
dealers also played safe, bringing
established artists to Basel.
“Generally I feel that works on
offer at the fair are quite conservative and predictable, not very
adventurous; this is Basel, it’s solid
and high quality,” said Glenn Scott
Wright of Victoria Miro (2.1/T1).
Among the early keynote sales
were a 1999 Richard Prince joke
painting, Untitled (Publicity), at
Gagosian (2.0/G2) tagged at $2m
and Rothko’s exquisite, yellowand-red Untitled, 1968, which sold
to a European collector for around
$5.5m at Van de Weghe (2.0/T5).
Mr Van de Weghe also sold a
$750,000 Lichtenstein sculpture, a
$2.9m Basquiat and a $550,000
Duane Hanson cowboy.
Within minutes of the opening
Michael Werner (2.0/G3) had sold
a work by Jean Fautrier (about
€1.5m), a Sigmar Polke, Untitled,
2007 (just under €1m) and a piece
by James Lee Byars for the same
price, to collectors from Europe
and the US. “So far, the uncertain
economy has had no effect on
sales,” said Marianne Karabelnik
of Arndt & Partner (2.1/B7) who
quickly placed Wim Delvoye’s The
Gothic Tower, 2008, with an
Indian collector for €280,000.
“Everyone was concerned about
Americans not coming but our first
two sales were to trustees of
important US museums,” said
Adam Sheffer of Cheim & Read
(2.0/B1): two recent casts of midcentury Louise Bourgeois sculptures priced at $1.2m (Untitled and
Figure qui Apporte le Pain). Both
are expected to be donated to the
unnamed institutions.
While major US buyers were
present, some dealers noticed a
drop-off in American visitors. “It’s
an off year for art in Europe, as
there is no Venice Biennale this
year,” said Peter Boris of
PaceWildenstein (2.0/E1). But
their absence was not denting
sales: “The quality is much better
than last year and I don’t see any
cracks in the market,” said the US
collector Tim Nye. “Last year my
sales were in the $1.5m range, but
this year it’s nearer $5m-$6m,”
said Mr Van de Weghe.
Not everyone was happy with
the higher prices. Leading Warhol
dealer Alberto Mugrabi decided
against a $900,000 Warhol Brillo
box at Richard Gray (2.0/S1)
because, he said, it was “out of
my budget”.
Georgina Adam
An artist’s view: Gavin Turk
Gavin Turk first made his name in
1993 with a waxwork self-portrait
in the guise of Sid Vicious posed in
the stance of Elvis Presley as
immortalised by Andy Warhol. The
former YBA now has an
international reputation with a solo
show at Kunsthaus Baselland,
which closes this evening.
The Art Newspaper: It must be
frustrating that your show had
to end because the Kunsthaus is
near the football stadium where
the European Cup starts on
Saturday and there were
security concerns.
Gavin Turk: It’s very annoying,
especially as England isn’t even
taking part.
TAN: The title of the show was
“Burnt Out”. Was this in any way
a comment on the current bonfire
of the art market vanities?
GT: I’m not doing it on purpose
but I could be doing it subconsciously.
TAN: What do you feel about the
current state of the market?
GT: I do feel quite jaded about it.
I realise that it is really important
to sell your work as part of the
process of getting it shown, but I
think I all too often find that when
I am in that market industry space
that some of the ideas and the joy
of it is being taken away.
TAN: It’s often said that art
fairs are bad places for artists.
Do you agree?
GT: Why do they say that?
Because the artist is going to get
distracted and probably going to
get quite depressed. But why are
they getting depressed? If the
galleries are saying that the artists
shouldn’t come, and if they are
worried that the artists are going to
get depressed then does that not
mean that possibly they are doing
something wrong?
TAN: You have recently stopped
working with White Cube, after
some 15 years with the gallery.
GT: We are just working on a
project-by-project basis for the
time being. I’m still working with
Sean Kelly in New York with
Ursula Krinzinger in Vienna and
having other conversations with
other galleries. I can’t really give
any more detail at the moment, as
it’s still a bit delicate.
TAN: How does it feel to be
showing in a public space at the
same time as Art Basel?
GT: The Kunsthaus Basselland is a
real, local, working art space
where students and artists and
people who are more interested in
the local scene will go as well. It
isn’t a grand Schaulager-like,
show-off institution. I like the fact
that it’s not huge and it’s different
to the art fair context. You’re
entering into a different part of
Basel, you’re entering into Baselland, which is apparently
something quite different and
distinct from Basel-city.
TAN: The Kunsthaus has a stand
at the Liste art fair. Will the
work there be for sale?
GT: I’m going to put a [golden]
apple core sculpture in there, just
as a teaser. Blink and you’ll miss it.
TAN: At an art fair the subtext is
always commercial, in all its
sections, even Art Unlimited.
GT: [Art] Unlimited is wonderful
[and] wonderfully limited by the
fact that it is completely associated
with the fair. You can’t show your
work in Unlimited if are not
represented by a gallery, which is
being represented in the fair—so if
you don’t have gallery representation then you can’t be included.
Interview by Louisa Buck
Sigmar Polke, Untitled, 2007
Christian Schwarm, a 36-year-old
art collector and owner of a PRfirm in Stuttgart, plans to launch a
website at Art Basel which rates
commercial galleries under the
headings
“hot”,
“reliable”,
“pleasant”, “established” and
“recommended”.
The website is aimed at young
collectors, who will be able to use
the site to share information, and
look at ratings of galleries ranging
from Tokyo to Paris and London.
Mr Schwarm expects the site to
include field reports by collectors.
It has received support from
Wilhelm Schürmann, one of
Germany’s most famous collectors
of contemporary art. Based in Aixla-Chapelle, Mr Schürmann is a
friend of Mr Schwarm and has
invested some money in the
project, which has thus far cost
nearly €1m. At first, users can
register for free, but later on Mr
Schwarm plans to charge an annual
subscription fee of between €100
and €200.
Mr Schwarm wants to offer his
clients an independent opinion of
the galleries listed. “If you are a
young collector, it is often difficult
to find the right gallery,” he
explained and says he is convinced
his rating system will prove
popular. The exhibitors at Art Basel
and Liste will be listed on the site:
www.independent-collectors.com.
Bettina Krogemann
Photo: Viktor Kolibal
Collector launches website to rate dealers
Gavin Turk, Burnt Out, 2008
DESIGN MIAMI/BASEL June 3rd-5th
“A homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey
and Solaris”
Information and Catalogue +1 212 980 8861 www.ikepod.com
À 3 À4 À 5 À June 2008
Open daily 11.00h–19.00h
Markthalle Basel,
Switzerland
The global forum for collecting,
exhibiting, discussing and creating design
For more information
Call +1 305 572 0866
Email [email protected]
www.designmiami.com
Design & Art Direction À MadeThought
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THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 4 JUNE 2008
7
Satellite fairs
Scope: Soft selling, straight out of the box
Photo: Katherine Hardy
There’s nothing new about soft
openings of art fairs, but Scope’s
are elastic to breaking point. The
fair’s first “preview” was on
Sunday afternoon, catching most
of the exhibiting galleries on the
hop. A special “art train” with 50
collectors on board arrived to find
much of the art still in its packing
cases, with gallery staff frantically
hanging and nailing around
collectors such as Beth DeWoody
and the Horts. It seemed that fair
director Alexis Hubshman wasn’t
joking when he described the event
as a “screw and view”.
However, at least some of the 82
exhibitors at Scope were ready to
meet and greet two days in advance
of the fair’s official opening
yesterday. Mike Weiss Gallery (227)
was among them. “It really wasn’t
so bad. We were selling in
shorts and t-shirts,”
said Mr Weiss. “We
can’t complain,”
added gallery
director Helene
Necroto, who
said
that
collectors were
turning
up
unexpectedly on
Monday too—
after security
tape was up
for the night. The Israeli artist, Yigal
Ozeri, sold especially well: five
paintings of a virginal nude woman
reclining. One, Untitled: Priscilla in
the Cloud Forest, 2008, sold for
$50,000 to a US collector.
Ludovic Bois of Chinese
Contemporary (108) was pleased to
have sold Zhang Dali’s AK-47,
2008, for €30,000 to a collector
from Greece, but seemed unconvinced that premature openings
worked in practice when most
stands are virtually bare. “[Collectors] think they’ve done Scope,”
he said, “but will they come back?”
It was true that sales seemed as
patchy as a soft, and rather cuddly
sculpture, Coffee Donkey, 2008, by
Berlin-based British artist Stephen
Wilks not yet sold for €12,000.
That wasn’t because its exhibitor
was caught napping. Berlin dealer
Kai Hilgemann (311) made
sure his stand was installed
early. The beast of burden
made of coffee sacks was
awaiting its Sancho Panza,
though Mr Hilgemann
said he’d had interest in
two cityscapes by the
artist Peter Ruehle priced
at €6,000 each.
Scope 2008 has moved
to a new home in a smart
tent, or “pavilion” as Mr
Hubshman prefers to call it,
in Basel’s gritty industrial
zone. The fairs in the area
(Scope,
Volta
and
Bâlelatina) are keen to
rebrand the docks as the
Rhine Arts District. Scope’s
new venue gave the fair a
facelift, and extra space to play
with, though this only
emphasised the scarcity of
browsers. This could, of
course, have been
Stephen Wilks,
Coffee Donkey, 2008
due to the rival attraction of Art
Basel’s first day vernissage.
There were a few eye-catching
pieces. Peering through a hole in a
chipboard partition was a strangely
familiar figure. Tall, bearded and
dressed in Taliban chic, the
gentleman was a dead ringer for the
world’s most wanted: Osama Bin
Ladin. Here I Am, 2006, an edition
of three sculptural lookalikes by
Chinese duo Sun Yuan and Peng Yu
could be yours for €110,000,
courtesy of Ethan Cohen Fine Arts
of New York (127). But collectors
will have to wait for “Osama’s”
fake Kalashnikov to arrive. It was
seized in Russia, where it had been
on show, on its way to Basel.
Javier Pes
Peng Yu & Sun Yuan, Here I Am,
2006, €110,000
Bâlelatina: Cool start for Basel’s “Hot Art” fair
Despite its new branding as the
“Hot Art” fair, Bâlelatina had a
rather lukewarm opening yesterday
afternoon, with few galleries
reporting sales. One of the exceptions was the New York gallery
Freight + Volume (D1), which sold
Michael Scoggins’s I Heart
Chewy, 2007, at the VIP opening
Monday evening to a French
collector. The wall-size drawing,
which looks like a page ripped
from a giant child’s notebook, was
priced at $9,000 (€5,800).
Once again, the organisers have
invited contemporary dealers not
specialising in Latin American or
Spanish art, including Monique
Meloche from Chicago, Galerie
Vernon from Prague and PierreFrançois Ouellette from Montréal.
This gives the fair a fresh, emerging
feel, with many of the artists
showing aged under 35 and a sense
Scoggins’s I Heart Chewy, 2007
of fun and experimentation in much
of the work.
But the real strength lies in the
Latin American and Hispanic art on
view. Miami gallery Pan American
Art Projects (C7) has organised an
impressive solo show of Argentine
artist León Ferrari, including works
from the late 1970s and recent
pieces, such as Conversation, 2007,
a sculptural installation consisting
of three, pink, amorphous foam
figures sitting in a group. The work,
from the artist’s collection, is priced
at over €500,000, making it easily
one of the most expensive works at
the fair, where last week’s auction
records for Latin American art
appear not to have driven up
prices—at least not yet. With Spain
chosen as the “guest country” this
year, nearly half of the 30 exhibitors
were Iberian, including Vigo gallery
Ad Hoc (B6), which has a
wonderful selection of Manuel
Ocampo collages on offer, such as
the weirdly comic Primordial,
2006, priced at €12,000.
Helen Stoilas
RAVINDER REDDY
At The Economist Plaza
July 25 - October 4, 2008
25 St. James’s Street, London SW1H 1HG
In association with the Contemporary Art Society
At Grosvenor Vadehra
July 25 - August 15, 2008
21 Ryder Street, London SW1Y 6PX
Tel +44 (0)20 7484 7979, Fax +44 (0)20 7484 7980
www.grosvenorgallery.com
THIS PAGE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY UBS
The UBS Art Collection premiers in Asia
Art is for the spirit! was the title
of the exhibition featuring works
from The UBS Art collection in
Tokyo at the eminent Mori
Museum. The exhibition, which
attracted
around
197,000
visitors, ran from 2 February
until 6 April of this year. It
constitutes a further step in the
establishment of partnerships
with internationally renowned
cultural institutions, a route
which UBS has followed for
some years now. The Mori
Museum (MAM) takes its place
in the ranks of outstanding
cultural institutions such as
MoMA, Fondation Beyeler, Tate
Modern, The Art Gallery of New
South Wales and the National
Gallery of Victoria.
Featuring over 160 works,
among
them
paintings,
photographs, drawings and
videos, it was the biggest
museum show in the exhibition
history of The UBS Art
Collection to-date.
In order to introduce the
visitors to this corporate
collection a special form of
presentation was chosen. The
works were all presented in an
office context. Just like in UBS
offices there were groups of
chairs and desks. People could
take a seat in one of the chairs to
view videos. Computers were
installed on an enormous desk
over 20 metres long, and these
allowed visitors to access texts
which gave information about
the exhibition. In this office
setting visitors could admire
works by artists such as Andy
Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, JeanMichel
Basquiat,
Gerhard
Richter,
Andreas
Gursky,
Nobuyoshi Araki, Yasumasa
Morimura, Hiroshi Sugimoto,
Ryuji Miyamoto and Naoya
Hatakeyama.
Here the visitors obtained an
idea of how a corporate
collection comes into being –
works of art are purchased in
order to adorn offices and areas
accessible
to
customers,
generally, as is the case with
UBS, at the onset of an artist’s
career. In time the “character” of
a
collection
emerges,
encompassing numerous artists
and genres from a timespan of
over 30 years.
In the year of the 2008
Olympic Games works from The
UBS Art Collection will be on
show in China. Currently the
Shanghai Art Museum is hosting
an
exhibition
entitled
“Memories for Tomorrow”;
opening on 5 June it will run
until 20 July 2008. On 26
September a further exhibition
will be opening at the National
Museum of Art in Beijing.
Special
cultural
and
art
programmes tailored to the
respective museums and their
visitors were developed, in order
to make the features of an art
collection owned by a private
company accessible to the public
at large. Despite the fact that
contemporary Chinese art has
already found its way into the
Western world, contemporary
art is nowhere near as well
established with the Chinese
population as it is in the West.
This is bound to change in the
near future, as there is not a single
new programme for urban
development in China which does
not include art in some way, be it in
the shape of concert halls or
museums.
With three large scale exhibitions
The UBS Art Collection in the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
in 2008, all of them in Asia, UBS
would once more like to emphasise
the particular significance of this
market for its business activities. We
are very happy that we can provide
our clients, our employees, and
Memories for Tomorrow: Works from The UBS Art Collection.
www.ubs.com/artcollection
© UBS 2008. All rights reserved.
everyone who takes an active
interest in cultural matters, with a
closer understanding of a
corporate
collection
which
includes contemporary gems from
more than three decades.
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 4 JUNE 2008
9
Public Art Projects
Tobias Rehberger: one man’s
memory is another man’s art
Roxy Paine: getting
back to his roots
Man-made elements collide with nature in New York-born artist Roxy
Paine’s latest work, Inversion, 2008
(Galerie Jablonka, 2.0/T1), a treelike form turned upside down that
balances precariously on its limbs.
Paine explains his quandary: “As an
engineering problem, it is a reversal
of the structural challenges that I
must deal with for a ‘right side up’
tree. Here, many fine branches must
support a huge weight above.”
Paine has, since 1999, made several stainless steel sculptures based
on various species of tree, reproducing branches and roots that spin out
into the surrounding area. The 12.8
metre-tall sculpture on show at Art
Basel is made out of more than
7,000 metal elements. “It could be
read as being emblematic of, and a
monument to, how much we have
altered the natural world. It could
also be read as a meditation on humanity’s need to distil…every entity
into its component parts and then restructure [them].” The work, on sale
for $1.4m but unsold as we went to
press, will go on show in the exhibition “Freedom: American Sculpture” at The Hague Sculpture centre
(15 June-31 August).
Esslingen-born artist Tobias Rehberger has established a reputation
for making challenging multi-media
works which combine architecture,
design, cinema and fashion. His
painted black sculpture of a boat
with orange appendages, Gu Mo Ni
Ma Da, 2006 (Friedrich Petzel
Gallery, 2.1/R2), looks like it has
crash-landed in the Messeplatz.
Rehberger collaborated with the
Danish-Vietnamese artist Dahn Vo to
create the striking mahogany wood
and metal vessel, on sale for
€220,000 (unsold as we went to
press). After the fall of Saigon, Vo’s
family fled for the US by sea but
their boat was picked up by a Danish
tanker. The sculpture is based on Vo’s
recollections. A gallery spokesman
insisted that “Rehberger remains the
sole public author of this piece.” He
does, after all, enjoy exploring the
concept of authorship in his work.
Isa Genzken:
heavy petal
star
All pictures by Katherine Hardy
The symbol of the rose has featured
in German artist Isa Genzken’s
work since 1993. Her sculpture
Rose II, 2008 (€750,000, David
Zwirner, 2.0/R4) brings to mind
ideas of love, beauty and transience,
but the eight-metre high, enamelled
stainless steel work sprouting from
the Messeplatz is both threatening
and welcoming. The flower is in full
bloom outside Art Unlimited, its silver thorns and leaves topped with a
garish set of peach-coloured petals.
The first piece in the series, Rose I,
1993-97, is another public sculpture, again of a single long-stemmed
rose, which is located in Leipzig’s
museum district.
According to the gallery, the
work has been sold to a “private
[collector] but will be installed publicly” (possibly either to a private
foundation space or a collector who
will loan the work to a museum).
Genzken recently unveiled a set
of architectural proposals for a series of buildings “with a social purpose” to be erected at Ground Zero
in New York.
Luca Vitone: coming round
the mountain
A contemporary Italian artist pays
homage to a 19th-century compatriot with The Eyes of Segantini,
2007. Milan-based Luca Vitone
has reproduced the studio built by
the artist Giovanni Segantini
(1858-99) behind his house in
Maloja, in south-east Switzerland,
in 1886. Segantini, known for his
contribution to divisionism (the
practice of separating colour into
individual dots), proposed to create an immense panorama of the
Engadine alpine valley but failed
to complete the oversized wall
painting before his death. Vitone
picks up the thread with an abstract
drawing of the mountain silhouette of the Engadine running
around the inside of his
wooden atelier. A
spokeswoman
for
Galleria Emi Fontana
(2.1/U1), which is selling the work at
€150,000, said that
“Vitone’s work explores the way places
are identified through
cultural production.”
All reports by
Gareth Harris
Fernand Léger. Paris – New York
1.6. – 7.9. 2008
VENICE – From Canaletto and Turner to Monet
28.9.2008 – 25.1. 2009
FONDATION BEYELER
Baselstrasse 101, CH-4125 Riehen/Basel
Daily 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Wednesday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., www.beyeler.com
Opening Hours during Art |39|Basel: June 4 – 8, 2008, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
THE ART NEWSPAPER ART BASEL DAILY EDITION 4 JUNE 2008
10
Listings Basel
Fairs
Messeplatz 10
Some 300 dealers selling work by
2,000 contemporary artists.
+41 058 200 20 20
www.artbasel.com
Bâlelatina Hot Art
Brasilea Kulturhaus
4-8 June, noon-9pm
Over 30 international galleries showing
artists with links to Latin American art.
Westquai 39, Dreilandereck
www.hot-art-fair.com
Design Miami/Basel
Markthalle Basel
4-5 June, 11am-7pm
Fair featuring dealers exhibiting contemporary and historical design.
Viaduktstrasse 10
+41 061 685 94 98
www.designmiami.com/basel
4-8 June, 10am-5pm
Augustinergasse 2
+41 061 266 55 00
www.nmb.bs.ch
© 2008 The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala Florence
Art Basel
Halls 1 and 2, Messe Basel
4-8 June, 11am-7pm
Léger’s La grande Julie, 1945
The Solo Project
Voltahalle
4 June, 1pm-8pm; 5-7 June, 11am8pm; 8 June, 11am-6pm
The debut of this fair that seeks to “enhance the contemporary art experience
by presenting a more in depth view of
each artists work”.
Voltastrasse 27
www.the-solo-project.com
Liste 08
Werkraum Warteck PP
4-8 June, 1pm-9pm
Basel’s “Young Art Fair” promotes
emerging artists and young galleries.
Volta 4
Ultra Brag
4-7 June, noon-8pm
Intended to “bridge the gap between
Basel’s pre-existing fairs”, Volta features work by emerging artists.
Burgweg 15
+41 061 692 20 21
www.liste.ch
Südquaistrasse 55
+41 061 322 12 70
www.voltashow.com
Print Basel
Halls of Volkshaus Restaurant
4-7 June, 10am-8pm; 8 June,
10am-6pm
Fair includes modern classic pieces
by artists such as Jonathan Borofsky
and Banksy.
Non-commercial
Rebgasse 12
+41 061 311 44 70
www.printbasel.ch
Scope Basel
Scope Pavilion
4-7 June, 10am-8pm;
8 June, 10am-6pm
Contemporary fair making its second
appearance in Basel in a new pavilion
on the Rhine.
Uferstrasse 80
+41 043 336 50 10
www.scope-art.com
Fernand Léger: Paris,
New York and Sarah Morris
Fondation Beyeler
4-8 June, 9am-8pm
Baselstrasse 101
+ 41 061 645 97 00
www.beyeler.com
Andrea Zittel, Monika
Sosnowska 1:1
Schaulager
4 June, noon-6pm; 5-8 June,
10am-6pm
Ahmet Ögüt and Aleana Egan
Kunsthalle Basel
4 June, 10am-10pm; 5-8 June,
10am-8pm;
Steinenberg 7
+41 061 206 99 00
www.kunsthallebasel.ch
Gavin Turk, Thomas
Baumann, Dan Perjovschi
and Stefan Burger
Kunsthaus Baselland
4 June, 2pm-8pm
St. Jakob-Strasse 170
+41 061 312 83 88
www.kunsthausbaselland.ch
Robert Delaunay, Soutine and
Modernism and Robert Therrien
Kunstmuseum Basel
4 June, 9am-8pm; 5 June, 9am-5pm;
6-8 June, 9am-6pm
St. Alban-Graben 16
+ 41 061 206 62 62
www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch
Focus: Olafur Eliasson
and Above-the-Fold
Museum für Gegenwartskunst
4 June, 9am-8pm; 5 June, 9am-5pm;
6-8 June, 9am-6pm
St. Alban-Rheinweg 60
061 206 62 62
www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch
P.S. Pavel Schmidt
and Art Machines, Machine Art
Museum Tinguely
4-8 June, 11am-7pm
Paul Sacher-Anlage 2
+41 061 681 93 20
www.tinguely.ch
Ruchfeldstrasse 19
061 335 32 32
www.schaulager.org
Dubai Next: Face of the 21st
Century and Living Under
the Crescent Moon: Domestic
Cultures in the Arab World
Vitra Design Museum
4 June, 10am-11pm;
5-8 June, 10am-6pm
Hyungkoo Lee: Animatus
Natural History Museum
Fire Station, Charles-Eames-Strasse 1
+ 49 (0)7621 702 3200
www.design-museum.de
.SCULPTURE.ORG.UK
PREVIEW 11–12 OCTOBER 20081−8
EILÍS O’CONNELL BIOMORPHIA
WWW.SCULPTURE.ORG.UK
Today’s events
Art Lobby
Art Unlimited, Hall 1, Messe Basel
A programme of discussions and
presentations.
noon-1pm, Teaching the Future,
discussion with director of Portikus
in Frankfurt, Daniel Birnbaum, and
Tom Eccles, director of Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies.
1pm-2pm, Middle Eastern Art: the
Latest of the Emerging Art Markets,
panel discussion with Ali Yussef
Khandra, editor of Canvas Magazine, Saleh Barakat, founder of
Beruit gallery, Agial Art, Rose Issa,
curator and art critic and Kuwaitbased journalist Sheikha Lulu M.
Al-Saba.
2pm-3pm, Artist Talk, a conversation
between Cuban-born, Los Angelesbased artist Jorge Pardo and Puerto
Rico-based collector César Reyes.
3pm-4pm, Book Launch for Sound
Unbound: Sampling Digital Music
and Culture by Paul Miller aka
DJ Spooky.
4pm-5pm, Re-sampling Ornament, a
talk relating to the current show at the
Swiss Architecture Museum (SAM)
by curator Oliver Domeisen and SAM
director Francesca Ferguson.
5pm-6pm, Interplay: Art and Fashion in Magazines, a discussion between Massimo Torrigiani, editor of
Rodeo magazine, and Joerg Koch,
editor of culture magazine, 032c.
6pm-7pm, Ten New Things About
the 2008 Art Market, Josh Baer,
writer and publisher of Baerfaxt ,
discusses the art market.
Art Club
Campari Bar, Kunsthalle Basel
11pm-3am, Steinenberg 7
House, club and classics from the 70s
to the present mixed by DJ Hendrix.
Scope Opening Night Party
Das Schiff
9pm-late, Westquaistrasse 19
Scope and Modart magazine host a
party celebrating the opening of the
Scope fair.
Art Basel Conversations
Hall 1, Messe Basel
10am-11:30am
An artist talk with American conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner and Los
Angeles-based artist Jorge Pardo.
Opening Reception
Kunstforum Baloise,
Baloise-Gruppe
7pm-9pm, Aeschengraben 21
A public reception for the opening of
a solo exhibition of Israeli-born,
Berlin based artist Keren Cutter.
Design Talks
Markthalle Media Lounge
6pm-7pm, Viaduktstrasse 10
Cincinnati Art Museum director
Aaron Betsky continues yersterday’s
discussion on radical art, architecture and design with a new guest,
Italian designer and architect
Alessandro Mendini.
The Rise and Rise
of Alternative Art Fairs
Scope Pavilion
3pm-5pm, Uferstrasse 80
Sarah Douglas, staff writer for Art +
Auction magazine, moderates a talk
on the growing number of alternative art fairs.
Art Film
Stadtkino Basel
10pm, Steinenberg 7
A screening of nine short films including Tim Blue’s “Water’s Memory” and Manon de Boer’s “Presto”
and “A-Z” by Manfred Kutter.
Art On Stage
Theater Basel
8pm-9pm, Theaterplatz
In “Drama Queens”, by Berlin-based
art duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar
Dragset, live actors are replaced by a
series of famous 20th-century sculptures. The event is curated by Jens
Hoffmann, director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in
San Francisco.
registered charity number 1015088
24 June - 28 September 2008
www.museodelprado.es
Sponsored by:
Art awakens new ways of seeing the world. At UBS, we are proud to be in our 15th year as the main
sponsor of Art Basel, the world’s leading international art show. Sharing new perspectives with people
is one of the purposes of art. We believe in making that possible both through the sponsorship of
important events and through our own UBS Art Collection.
© UBS 2008. All rights reserved.