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Slideshow: Art Basel Sales Preview 2014


Collector Profile: Michael and Seren Shvo Buy From the Gut

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Collector Profile: Michael and Seren Shvo Buy From the Gut

For once, the developer Michael Shvo was in the market for himself. Real estate being his business, he was not about to settle for a conventional East End shingle house for his Hamptons retreat. In 2007, after touring upwards of 40 less-than-ideal properties, he lit on a listing for a modernist gem, and without pausing to negotiate, ponied up the asking price sight unseen. Appreciating its simple geometries flooded with crystalline light, he was already envisioning a backdrop for his burgeoning cache of hard-edge and Color Field painting from the 1960s.

 

“It’s a gut feeling,” says Shvo of the impulse buy, reclining in a Poul Volther sling chair in the large, open living room. “That’s how I fall in love with art, that’s how I fall in love with real estate, that’s how I fell in love with my wife. I’m very consistent.” 

Seven years on, Shvo and his wife, Seren, whom he met in Istanbul in 2009 through a mutual friend, have maxed out the house’s wall space and are populating the garden with pieces by their favorite artists: the husband-and-wife team of Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne.

All the art is set against a field of shimmering white—walls, floors, furniture. For a man who, at the height of the 2000s real-estate boom, coined the tagline “Let’s Shvo” as a way of doing business, it’s awfully serene. Paintings by Kenneth Noland and Gene Davis mingle with Harry Bertoia gongs and whimsical Lalanne fauna around a 1970s Karl Springer coffee table set with Nir Hod’s cocaine-line coasters. (“Funny story,” says Shvo. The artist, a friend, showed him an early version over dinner at New York City eatery Pastis. They left its itting on the table, which caused “a bit of a conundrum” for the waitstaff.)

“When we decorated, it was very important for us that it feel like a summer house, with the connection between interior and exterior,” he says, gesturing to the sliding glass doors that span the length of the living room and open onto a pool deck and two acres ringed by trees. “In here you have your Lalanne sheep, and out there you have 15 sheep in concrete. There’s a great continuation of the story of the art all around the property.”

Despite their connections with art cognoscenti—Shvo counts architect Peter Marino and former Sotheby’s chief auctioneer Tobias Meyer as friends—the couple work without an adviser or designer. “He has a great eye, both for art and for architecture,” says Seren.

Shvo has been collecting seriously for just over a decade, ever since he saw a pink Takashi Murakami Hiropon screen print in a Phillips preview and won it for $8,000. “When I want a piece of art, I do my best to get it and, thank God, normally succeed,” he says. The Murakami still hangs in his New York office—“We never sell,” says Shvo. His buying spree has continued steadily.

The couple follows the international art circuit, attending the main fairs in New York, London, and Miami, and shopping at jgm Galerie in Paris, Almine Rech in Brussels, Ben Brown in London and Hong Kong, and the Third Line in Dubai. During his frequent business travels, he is often in communication with specialists Robert Manley and Barrett White at Christie’s and Scott Nussbaum at Sotheby’s.

“I purchase a lot of work at auction,” he says. “It’s quite rare to get great Color Field works from a gallery; they just don’t have them. You do better at auction because unfortunately, in many cases, when someone passes away and the estate goes to auction, they become available.” One notable exception is Morris Louis’s “Alpha Kappa,” 1960, a 150-inch-wide piece that Shvo bought through the shuttered Haunch of Venison in 2010. It now anchors the dining area.

Favorite pieces like this one uncork a flow of factoids. Citing the 1985 catalogue raisonné by Diane Upright, Shvo explains, “This is actually one of the first paintings that Louis did in his ‘Unfurled’ series. Most of them are quite large. The paint he used, Magna, was made specially for him, and he mixed it with turpentine to get the stain. And his studio wasn’t this wide. He had to bend the canvas to get the paint to run down each side,” he notes, indicating the V shape. It was this kind of total recall that prompted Seren, after she moved to New York, to take additional art history classes “just to catch up with him,” she says. “He knows a lot and reads everything.”

Opposite the Louis, above the living room fireplace, pairs of dots in maroon and tangerine march down an unprimed vertical canvas, “Lalala,” 1976, by Tom Downing, a student of Josef Albers and a rather deeper cut from the Color Field catalogue. “I love Tom Downing; we have three paintings by him,” he says. “I didn’t ask who he was in the Washington color school or the hard-edge school when I bought these, but visually they all worked together and made a coherent story.”

That narrative, as one moves around the house, is one of crisp lines and punchy hues that reflect the optimism of the postwar period, as well as sunlight. A Kenneth Noland hangs above the front door; Leon Polk Smith’s lozenge-shaped “Red and Black Waves,” 1960, appears in the hall; and a pair of Paul Feeley canvases bend straight lines to curves. “All these works have a very strong architectural connection,” says Shvo as he strides into the master bedroom and points to “my favorite painting in the house,” a rare, pristine canvas by John McLaughlin in black, white, and cool concrete-gray. “He traveled to Asia and was inspired by the whole Zen approach,” says Shvo. “I love it because it’s very classic, symmetrical, clean—the same as this house.”

Beyond the Color Field works, the Shvos have a sizable collection of Pop art—pieces by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Claes Oldenburg as well as a prized Tom Wesselmann, “Mouth #8,” 1966. Many of these are on display in the Shvos’ Manhattan home, the interior of which, in contrast to their Hamptons house, is lined in dark, exotic wood that plays well with Art Deco furniture by Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, Jules Leleu, Jean Dunand, and in particular André Sornay. In total, the couple’s art and design holdings number around 330 pieces. “We try to display as much as we can,” says Shvo.

The third segment of the art collection is, without question, the Lalanne works. Shvo first encountered Les Lalanne at Ben Brown’s booth during the inaugural Art Dubai fair in 2007. “It’s a world we are very passionate about,” he says. “We have a very intimate relationship with Claude,” whom they visit in France. “Through her,” adds Seren, “we get to know the stories behind the pieces, which connects us even more.” By now the Lalanne menagerie includes the aforementioned sheep, several monkeys, two cows, Claude’s “Pomme bouche,” 1975, in the kitchen, and a large version of her “Lapin de victoire” standing sentry poolside (“very Alice in Wonderland,” says Shvo). There are other artists and works that don’t fall neatly into these categories, he adds, but “they all live happily together.”

Both of the Shvos’ homes are full of legible and luxe pieces that bring them unabashed joy. “I don’t really believe that art is something you should look at and have someone explain to you why it’s important or why it’s beautiful,” says Shvo. The son of organic chemists, he makes no bones about the fact that he left college in his native Israel. “My belief in art is that you look at it, you feel it’s beautiful, it speaks to you, and you have a connection with the piece. If I want to study it, I’ll learn, I’ll ask. But if I have to have that interaction first, in order to appreciate a piece, it’s not a piece for us.”

A gut instinct was behind his $23.5 million purchase last summer of a former Getty gas station smack in the middle of New York’s Chelsea gallery district. “The corner of 24th Street and Tenth Avenue is a Picasso, a Warhol—it’s irreplace- able, the heart of the art world; you can’t buy that again,” says Shvo. Eventually a tower will rise there, with 10 unique residences designed by Peter Marino. But last fall, in a reprise of the marketing stunts that propelled Shvo to notoriety (in addition to running 24/7 sales offices, he’s launched projects with exclusive, red-carpet parties), the site hosted occupants of a rather different stripe: Shvo’s flock of Lalanne sheep, arranged on grassy hillocks and attended 24 hours a day by security guards. The temporary installation, a partnership with dealer Paul Kasmin, was extended three times and received 1.5 million visitors over the course of its run.

“The number-one reason ‘Getty Station’ was so popular was because it was beautiful,” says Shvo. “And it was beautiful for the six-year-old kid who walked in and asked me if the grass was real, and it’s beautiful to somebody who understands the Lalannes’ original intent in creating the concrete sheep: to bring the French countryside into the urban environment, into the Parisian home. And to take that to another level, they’re Surrealist artists, and what’s more surreal than sheep grazing at a gas station in Manhattan?” Shvo has another such installation planned for a new development downtown at 100 Varick Street for Frieze Week this month.

The world of ultra-high-end real estate, which Shvo takes credit for pioneering through such projects as Giorgio Armani’s first residential commission, has much in common with the art market. “I always look at the correlation,” says Shvo, “and I truly believe art that’s unique, that’s one-of-a-kind, really has no price, the same way real estate that is unique has no price—it’s whatever someone’s willing to pay.” He pauses. “People always ask me, do you buy art as an investment? But that’s an insane question, because once you spend millions of dollars on art, clearly it’s an investment. But we’ve never bought art in order to say we’re buying it for $1 million and we think it’ll be worth $2 million tomorrow.... For me that has nothing to do with collecting art, only trading art.”

Shvo is nonplussed by the meteoric rise of young guns like Lucien Smith and Oscar Murillo at auction. The only artist he and his wife own who might be considered a member of that superhot class is Adam McEwen. He contributed the red text canvas above their bed in Manhattan that reads “Fuck you very much.” “I bought that at the Guggenheim Ball in 2006,” recalls Shvo, “and I don’t care that it’s worth 30 times as much today—I don’t want to sell it.”

“Honey, can you get the Sotheby’s sheet?” asks Shvo. Seren brings a printout of a lot from the February 13 day sale of contemporary art in London. “We had wanted to buy this piece for three years, but the edition is sold out,” he says. The C-print from Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s “A Perfect World” fashion shoot, which ran in W in September 1999, featuring a chicly clad model posed against the glass doors of the Shvos’ Hamptons house. Shvo chased it to £42,500 ($70,000), more than double the high estimate. When the prize is personal, price is no object.

Michael and Seren Shvo

VIDEO: The Duo Behind the Music of Matmos

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VIDEO: The Duo Behind the Music of Matmos

BARCELONA The electronically-generated music that is the nervous system of this past weekend's Sónar Music Festival may seem to reside on the coolest edge of tomorrow’s sounds, but most of it owes its elasticity and legitimacy to pioneers of the last century.  Blouin ARTINFO sat down in Barcelona with Matmos, a duo that has been working at it for some 20 years (alone or with other musicians, most notably Björk), and they are very smart about to whom they owe debts.  Co-composer Drew Daniel, a Shakespeare professor at Johns Hopkins University in a parallel life, cites a litany of forefathers — from the noise-to-music “Moses figure” of John Cage and the cut-and-paste sonorities of William Burroughs to the Musique Concrète tradition of the Groupe de Récherches Musicales, to the esoteric Oulipo literary movement of George Perec and Raymond Queneau.  Tzara, Pythagoras and others not often invoked at music fests blithely tumble forth as they explain their game.

Deferential to their roots they may be, but Matmos are fearless in their willingness to tread new ground, and gleefully grab onto unique, sometimes outlandish sources of sound for their hyper-collage experiments.  In a recent piece, they used a track comprised almost entirely of a recorded liposuction procedure — not despite the anxiety it caused, but to exploit it (“We like to play with hearing in an estranged way”).   The quarrelsome byplay between Drew and his partner (in music and in life), Martin Schmidt, suggests that it is as much artist-ego friction that powers their art as any harmony they can muster between them.  In fact, Daniel, a master of the pungent metaphor, nails their peers’ art and its tendency towards nerdish solitude by mentally drawing a Venn diagram between “electronic music” and “autism”. 

At their Sónar performance, they played mostly new material — avoiding “calcifying” is a serious matter for them — including a piece based on a chapter by Christian Bok in which “o” was the only vowel used.  Perversely constrained, but very Matmos.

Watch our ARTINFO video highlighting ten acts at Sónar 2014, HERE. 

Martin Schmidt of Matmos

Art Basel Kicks Off With a Big Bang of Serial Sales

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BASEL, Switzerland — The 45th edition of Art Basel, Europe’s premier modern and contemporary art fair, opened to an elite group of art world players with a big bang of serial sales, indicating the continuing strength of the global art market.

Sterling Ruby’s large-scale “BC (4805)” fabric, glue, paint, dyed canvas on panel abstraction from 2014 sold at London/Berlin Spruth Magers’s stand minutes after the 11 a.m. stampede, for $245,000.

Robert Longo’s masterful faux Ab-Ex creation, “Untitled (Pollock Composite)” from 2014, in charcoal on mounted paper and measuring 59 7/8 by 120 inches, sold for $400,000 to an American collector. “It’s amazing what he can do with charcoal,” said gallery founding partner Janelle Reiring of New York’s Metro Pictures. “He made his own Pollock.” It was one of a number of so-called “pre-sold” works that found buyers before the VIP opening, a way for first rank dealers with hotly desired works to pick and choose remotely.

There appeared to be a genuine hunger for quality, as evidenced by the modestly scaled Gerhard Richter“Abstraktes Bild” from 1997, at New York’s Dominique Levy Gallery, which sold for “north of $6 million,” according to Lock Kresler, who will run Levy’s new operation in London’s Mayfair next year. The Richter appeared in the 1987 Venice Biennale and at the artist’s solo show at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery in London in 1998. “Three or four people were seriously looking at it,” said Kresler, before one of them pulled the trigger.

The gallery also sold a 12 by 12 inch Frank Stella geometric abstraction, “Delaware Crossing” from 1961, for $1 million, as well as a major suite of eight large-scale paintings by German artist Gunther Uecker, “Weisse Bilder (White Pictures)” from 1989-92, that went to a European foundation for $5 million. Six of the eight Ueckers were staged in a cloistered room outfitted with a single bench for contemplation, that is, if anyone cared to take the time to sit and meditate. The paintings were in part an homage to the Japanese-based Gutai group and executed by the artist with his hands and feet, literally using his body as painting tools.

Art commerce was raging at New York/London Skarstedt Gallery, including a fierce and fantastic and upside down figured Georg Baselitz painting, “Edvard in Front of the Mirror (Munch)” from 1981, that sold to a European collector for $3 million. “I had three people on it,” said gallerist Per Skarstedt, “and I was surprised because Baselitz’s market is very soft, but this is a fabulous painting.”

The dealer also sold a Richard Prince joke painting, “You No Tell—I No Tell” from 1987, in acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas and measuring 56 by 48 inches, for around $2.5 million, and a freshly minted Picasso-esque George Condo painting, “Smiling Girl” from 2014, for $500,000 to a German collector. But Skarstedt’s real coup was the sale of Andy Warhol’s late and large fright-wig “Self-Portrait” from 1986 to an American collector. The asking price for the 80 by 80 inch acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas was “in the mid-30s,” according to the dealer, that is, in excess of $30 million dollars. “I can go home tonight,” joked the dealer.

There was also plenty of action at lower altitudes, as was the case at New York’s Mitchell-Innes & Nash. Alexander Liberman’s target-like “Black and Red Circle” from 1960, a 24 by 30 oil on canvas, sold in the $50,000 range; Anthony Caro’s glass, bronze, and steel “Display,” from 2011-12, went for a bit over $100,000; and among the living artists, Virginia Overton’s Arte Povera-like “Untitled” wall piece of found objects from 2014, comprised of brass and steel pipes, sling and rope, and measuring 72 by 60 by 1 inches, sold for around $25,000.

“Our very brisk early sales started off with people who know us,” said partner Lucy Mitchell-Innes.

At almost every turn or crossing of the Art Basel aisles, collectors, advisors, tire kickers, and others congregated around works or studied the fold-out maps to find their favorite galleries.

For whatever reason, a momentary lull at New York’s Paula Cooper gallery disguised the multiple sales that took place during the first few hours of the opening, led in part by dual suites of Sherri Levine’s “Nature Morte: Purple and Red Roses,” on handmade rice paper, that sold for $150,000 each. Both sets of six floral compositions went to European collectors, according to gallery director Steven Henry.

The gallery also sold abstract works by Kelley Walker, including “Untitled,” a 15 panel, pantone four-color process with acrylic ink on MDF from 2012, at $225,000, as well as a fascinating and slightly eerie Bruce Connor, “Religious Instruction” from 1990, comprised of three engraving collages, for $40,000. A brand new Tauba Auerbach, “Panes Trans/Step Ray,” an off-white geometric abstraction that can cause vertigo at close inspection, sold for around $200,000

On a larger scale, both in price and square inches, Rudolf Stingel’s grand and pink hued against a volcanic black ground abstraction, “Untitled” from 1996-97 and measuring 78 by 78 inches, sold at an asking price over $1 million.

Other standout pieces that sold almost instantly included Jim Hodges’s electric blue “Untitled (Shadow Blue/Black”) from 2014, in glass on canvas, at New York’s Barbara Gladstone Gallery, in the $700,000 range. “We sold it in the first 10 minutes of the fair,” said Robert Goff, adding that it had not been offered before the fair because “Barbara [Gladstone] doesn’t like to pre-sell.”

The gallery also sold Marisa Merz’s “Senza Titolo,” an undated landscape-like painting from circa 1980s, in the region of 300-400,000 euros. But it was possibly the Sigmar Polke at Gladstone that attracted the most attention as the other-worldly “Laterna Magica” from 1990, executed in lacquer on transparent synthetic fabric in artist frame and rather modestly scaled at 53 ¼ by 59 1/8 inches, sold somewhere between $1.3-1.6 million.

London/Sao Paulo/Hong Kong’s White Cube contributed to the rich mix of first day sales, including Julie Mehretu’s large-scale gestural painting “Mumbo Jumbo” from 2008, at $4.85 million; Damien Hirst’s “Nothing is a Problem for Me,” a medicine cabinet vitrine in glass, painted MDF, steel, aluminum, and pharmaceutical packaging and stepladder from 1992, for $6 million; and Zhang Huan’s “Grand Canal,” for $1.8 million.

If there was a first-look prize for most art transactions executed in a single day, New York/London David Zwirner appears to be a front-runner. Jeff Koons’s sparkling “Dolphin,” in mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color from 2007-13, was a big catch at 20 1/8 by 78 3/8 by 371/2 inches, selling to an Asian client for $5 million, according to David Zwirner. It is from an edition of three plus one artist proof.

The gallery also sold Richard Serra’s “Large Symmetry #5,” in paintstick on handmade paper, for $575,0000, and Luc Tuyman’s head shot portrait “DA” from 2014, [CUT: after] INSPIRED BY the Los Angeles prosecutor of Roman Polanski in the 1970s, for $750,000.

Other sales at Zwirner ranged from Gerhard Richter’s “Farbtafel (Color Chart)” enamel paint on canvas from 1966, in the region of the $2 million asking price to a powerful Bruce Nauman wax sculpture, “Andrew Head/Andrew Head Stacked” from 1990, for $3.2 million.

Though no price was released by the gallery, in deference to the work’s new owner, a stunning Ad Reinhardt canvas, “Blue Painting” from 1951-53, measuring 80 by 59 7/8 inches, sold to a European collection. An art advisor and former auction house expert with apparent knowledge of the transaction suggested the price was “north of $10 million” — if accurate, it crushes the auction record for the artist, which stands at $2.7 million.

Referring to the painting, David Zwirner said, “We’re so excited because he’s the father figure for a lot of this Minimalist thinking that comes later. It’s great to have that type of quality at the fair.” Zwirner’s stand was formerly the territory of the late and legendary art dealer Ernst Beyeler, whose eponymous Beyeler Foundation is directly across from Zwirner’s patch. “This is the old Beyeler booth,” said Zwirner, “so it really forced us to curate our own stand.”

Art Basel runs through June 22.

Art Basel Kicks Off With a Big Bang of Serial Sales
Robert Longo's "Untitled (Pollock Composite), 2014.

See Highlights From Art Basel's Feature Section

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Twenty-four galleries from 12 countries, showing works by 27 artists in all, are participating in Art Basel’s Feature section this year. Known for tightly curated solo and group shows, the section draws its share of informed viewers. “Feature at Art Basel is a wonderful way to explore the depth of an artist or specific installation,” said Steve Sacks of New York’s bitforms gallery, which has a booth here this year and also had one in 2013. “The audience that attends this fair has a higher appreciation and aptitude for these focused projects. We expect the same high level appreciation and enthusiasm Art Basel always offers.”

Bitforms focuses on artists who explore new media cultures and processes, and for Basel 2014, Sacks is showing an early example of a multi-channel video work, artist Beryl Korot’s iconic “Dachau 1974.” The note on the work explains some of the ways in which it references history, technology, and human behavior: “The installation ‘Dachau 1974’ focuses on the former concentration camp as a tourist site, as [Korot] found it in 1974. Today this piece is highly regarded in the canon of video art for its powerful framing of place and time, in addition to the installation’s technical and structural rigor. As with many artist’s videos of the 1970s, ‘Dachau 1974’ was a reaction against television.” Also on display is a drawing, titled “Dachau 1974 Graphed representation of 4-channel video work,” and black and white pictographic video notations.

Putting up a solo show of works by Walterico Caldas, which are listed in the $15,000-500,000 price range, the Brazilian gallery Raquel Arnaud can be likened to an attention-grabbing newcomer at Feature. “With a career which spans over 40 years, [Caldas’s] work is grounded in the dialectical experimentation between minimal and conceptual art seen through the destabilizing mediation of perception,” Arnaud said. “Among the several artist books Waltercio Caldas successfully published over the years, ‘Manual of Popular Science’ was probably one of the most influential in the Brazilian art scene in the past 30 years. Originally published in 1982 and recently reprinted in 2007, this little book is a crossroad of references within Caldas’s production.” On display at Basel are several pieces that were reproduced in “Manual.” While the images of some of these pieces were published in the book, until now they had never been displayed together. Arnaud views this as a great opportunity to show the works in relation to each other. Caldas, who has been represented by Arnaud since 1982, helped put the show together.

Another remarkable show comes from Italy — Galleria Raffaella Cortese is one of the few galleries at Feature that is putting up a show featuring works by two artists: photographs by Ana Mendieta and Martha Rosler. “When we discovered that Ana and Martha went together to Cuba for a journey and that Martha had a new printed series of photos related to this trip, everything came quite naturally to conceive the fair concept,” Cortese said. “Rosler’s forty photos are able to narrate a country and at the same time they embody the roots of her next photo series from the ’80s and the ’90s. As for Ana Mendieta, all the works arespecial, as she combines vintage photographs and drawings. We are also presenting the only video she made in Cuba, ‘Ochùn.’ We represent Ana and Martha’s work and it’s a pleasure and a great opportunity to give to these terrific artists more attention in the context of an art fair.”

The booths at Feature seem designed for viewers to gain a sense of the current artistic landscape of different countries and also to provide an insight into diverse artistic interpretations of reality. The curators have suggested the idea of movement and exchange. Not only does this section consider the visual relationships between artistic approaches and the spectator, but also the distinct processes of transmission that facilitate the exchange between the two.  

See Highlights From Art Basel's Feature Section
Art Basel Features 2014: Waltercio Caldas at Raquel Arnaud Gallery

Joe Nanashe’s Minimalist Altar at “Leaps Into the Void”

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Seven ladders, eight Casio keyboards, and a dozen or so blaring lights: not exactly consecrated materials for a quasi-religious experience. Yet it’s with these humble materials that Joe Nanashe has created an “agnostic allusion to spirituality,” a series of interrelated sculptures filling the downstairs space of Garis & Hahn in New York as part of the exhibition “Leaps Into the Void: Shamanism, Meditation, Transcendence, Oblivion,” on view through August 16. (The references at the fore are more art-historical than religious: the show borrows part of its name from Yves Klein’s iconic 1960 photomontage of a seemingly tragic fall.)

While the works on paper and canvas in the upstairs gallery conjure surrealistic scenes — animal-man hybrids in the work of Gwyn Joy, or psychedelic vision-quests in the mixed-media paintings of Michael Maxwell — Nanashe’s installation creates a barebones sculptural context that the artist says was inspired by everything from Mannerist paintings of the Crucifixion to the infinitely-looping drawings of M.C. Escher. On slightly raised platforms, two sets of four Casios form an interlocking square shape, the keyboards propped up on each other and sounding a single, droning note. One set handles the lower register, while the second pulses with a higher octave; the programmed sound Nanashe has chosen is “#218: Heaven,” a variety of celestial-choir effect. Next to the keyboards are two structures composed of simple stacked ladders, forming a sort of broken rainbow shape; behind them, there’s an aluminum ladder festooned with bright lighting. (The industrial-looking illuminated pillar is dubbed “Prometheus.”)

Standing in the center of the room the viewer is accosted by both the light — which splays staggered shadows on the walls and leaves a persistent afterimage if one stares too long — and the competing tonal throbbing of the dual Casio clusters. It’s not exactly a Catholic church, but there is a sense of quiet, monastic contemplation — deliberate symmetries and an inexplicable logic. “Installation art uses the same devices and interaction as religious ceremony,” Nanashe said. “There is a way you move through the space, a beginning, middle, and end. They both use symbols that are understood by insiders: obtuse imagery and knowledge. This installation is like a minimalist altar. It’s ritual stripped of religion.”

Despite its basic composition and readymade materials, the piece is embedded within an entire web of resonances for the artist. There are the ladders that appear in paintings like Rosso Fiorentino’s 1521 “Deposition,” in which a group of men ascend to retrieve Jesus’s body from the cross. The positioning of the ladders in Nanashe’s installation also bring to mind Duchamp — akin to a sculpture that might be titled “Ladder Descending a Staircase,” he said. “I like how the ladder is such a utilitarian object, that we understand completely our interaction with it and how we navigate it in the real world,” he continued. “Then, with its utility removed, it becomes something else: a metaphor for knowledge, a religious totem.”

Wandering through the piece while Nanashe made some final adjustments, I noted that it collectively looked a bit like a platform for some impending appearance, a stage set for a loaded absence. “A considerable amount of Western culture has been built around, essentially, a body that wasn’t there: They went to the tomb, and it was gone,” Nanashe said. “I’m fascinated by magicians, the disappearing act. I think there is a connection there. What, I don’t know. Maybe that’s why I make the work I make.”

Spend enough time in the downstairs space at Garis & Hahn, and Nanashe’s “minimalist altar” starts to seep into your ears and eyes. The hum of the Casios alternates between a hypnotic wash, like binaural beats, and an intimation of anxiety. “I love that moment when things flip, when the innocent quickly turns sinister, or something soothing becomes painful,” Nanashe said. “The lights, the keyboards, and the ladders become blinding, deafening, and overwhelming. I’m fascinated by that instant of recognition that something is very wrong.”  

Joe Nanashe’s Minimalist Altar at “Leaps Into the Void”
A view of Joe Nanashe's installation at Garis & Hahn.

Chapman Bros Plan Tattoo Shop, Stamp Sells for Record $9.5M, and More

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Chapman Bros Plan Tattoo Shop, Stamp Sells for Record $9.5M, and More

— Chapman Bros Plan Tattoo Parlor: Artists Jake and Dinos Chapman want to launch a tattoo parlor in their hometown of Hastings, England, but first they must raise £25,000 on the Art Fund’s new crowd-funding site. The proposed show would take place at Jerwood Gallery with the brothers applying the tattoos. “We will be seeking out the dark underbelly of Hastings, to find its seething evil,” Jake said. “And then we’re going to tickle it.” [The Guardian]

— Stamp Sale Shatters World Records: A rare 19th-century, one-cent magenta postage stamp from British colonial Guyana set a new world record when it sold for $9.5 million at Sotheby’s New York on Tuesday. In just under two minutes an anonymous collector calling in by phone snapped up the tiny stamp, which Sotheby’s had valued at $10-20 million. Supposedly the only surviving example of its kind, it was made in 1856 and has broken a world record price four times since 1922. [Art Daily]

— Delaware’s “Isabella” Falls Short at Auction: The first painting up for sale by the Delaware Art MuseumWilliam Holman Hunt’s “Isabella and the Pot of Basil,” fell short of Christie’s low estimate of $8.4 million, only achieving $4.25 million on Tuesday morning. USA Today reports that the pre-Raphaelite painting sold in two minutes and speculated that the low sale price might push the museum to sell up to four works to reach its goal of $30 million. The institution initially attempted to sell “Isabella” privately, but wasn’t offered a high enough bid. [USA Today]

— Old Institutions Get Help With Instagram: Meet photo retoucher Dave Krugman, the man who has helped institutions that are not so savvy on social media (the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum) build their Instagram presences and attract younger audiences. [NYT]

— Saltz Lampoons Abstract Painting Trend: “Galleries everywhere are awash in these brand-name reductivist canvases, all more or less handsome, harmless, supposedly metacritical, and just ‘new’ or ‘dangerous’-looking enough not to violate anyone’s sense of what ‘new’ or ‘dangerous’ really is, all of it impersonal, mimicking a set of preapproved influences.” [NYM

— Ceramics in the Spotlight: Ceramics are more and more popular with artists and curators, but not all collectors are on board. [TAN]

— Massimo Torrigiani and Davide Quadrio will curate Contemporary Istanbul’s New Horizons section, which will host China as this year’s guest country. [Art Daily]

— Edward Biberman’s New Deal mural “Abbot Kinney and the Story of Venice” is the centerpiece of LACMA’s exhibit on the history of Venice. [LAT]

— London gallery Victoria Miro has expanded its roster and nabbed Kara Walker, Eric FischlSecundino Hernández, and Celia Paul. [TAN]

ALSO ON ARTINFO

Art Basel Kicks Off With a Big Bang of Serial Sales

Strong Works Shine Bright, But the Guggenheim’s “Under the Same Sun” Flames Out

See Highlights From Art Basel’s Feature Section

Collector Profile: Michael and Seren Shvo Buy From the Gut

Check our blog IN THE AIR for breaking news throughout the day.

Jake and Dinos Chapman - Tattoo Parlor - Jerwood Gallery

Slideshow: Highlights from Statements, Art Basel 2014

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Highlights from Statements, Art Basel 2014

VIDEO: Photographer Anthony Goicolea Turns to Landscapes for Basel

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VIDEO: Photographer Anthony Goicolea Turns to Landscapes for Basel

Cuban-American fine art photographer Anthony Goicolea continues to push his fantastic tableaux, maneuvering from the wildly complex multiple self-portraits he became known for in the past decade to conceptual territories of displacement and alienation in unpopulated hybrid landscapes.

New York-based Goicolea's work is on view at London's Beers Contemporary during Art Basel Week at VOLTA10 through June 21, 2014. GalleryLOG has partnered with VOLTA, in association with Blouin ARTINFO, to produce a series of unique short videos highlighting a selection of emerging artists for the art fair's Basel edition.  

Photographer Anthony Goicolea

Slideshow: Highlights from LISTE's 10th Performance Project, Art Basel 2014

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LISTE's 10th Performance Project, Art Basel 2014

GALERIE KLÜSER at Art Basel 2014

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GALERIE KLÜSER at Art Basel 2014

Slideshow: The 2014 Istanbul International Arts & Culture Festival

Art Basel's Statements Section Spotlights Emerging Artists

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Statements, Art Basel’s section for up-and-coming galleries, is smaller and more focused this year. Its relocation from hall 1 to hall 2 has placed the section in a much more prominent position, alongside the mega-fair’s Galleries, Feature, and Edition areas. “Moving Statements to hall 2 will ensure that these young galleries and their emerging artists will reach the widest possible audience of potential patrons,” Art Basel director Marc Spiegler said, commenting on the changes earlier this year. “And reducing the sector’s size will push its quality even higher.” Fourteen international galleries were invited, featuring solo presentations of emerging artists from Europe, the Americas, and Asia.  

American Contemporary, New York | David Brooks

David Brooks (b. 1975) is a New York based artist whose work considers the relationship between the individual, and built and natural environments. His work “Lonely Loricariidae,” 2014, presents five “undescribed” species of wild fish (not yet studied by scientists) caught in the Amazon Basin that have been arbitrarily assigned an identifying “L” code, since they lack a species name. Exhibited at Basel are L14, L25, L26 L27, and L427.

Galeria Isabel Aninat, Santiago de Chile | Paula De Solminihac

Paula De Solminihac (b. 1974) is a Chilean artist who lives and works in Santiago, where she is also a professor at the Catholic University. Her multi-media installation “Stratigraphy of Memory,” 2012-13, evokes Chile’s seismic history using simple elements such as clay and paper to create a complex multi-panel artwork that refers to various aspects of Chilean geography, culture, flora, and fauna.

Arratia Beer, Berlin | Pablo Rasgado

For his series “After Life,” 2013, Pablo Rasgado (b. 1984), who lives and works in Mexico City, researched lost paintings in international archives. Rasgado then repainted these “blind spots of art history” with the help of old photographs. After this, he exposed them to dust in a partly decaying palace-like building in Paris, before reworking their now patinated surfaces to lift the veils of time once more.

Laura Bartlett Gallery, London | Marie Lund

Danish-born and London-based artist Marie Lund’s (b. 1976) sculptures and installations are interested in material and the potential of continual processes, surfaces, and borders. At the Art Basel Statements section, London’s Laura Bartlett Gallery presents “Smooth Pursuits,” 2014, an installation consisting of two new series of works.

Bureau, New York | Ellie Ga

Combining narrative genres such as the essay and travelogue, New York-born and London-based Ellie Ga’s (b. 1976) work explores the limits of photographic documentation. “Measuring the Circle,” 2013-14, Ga’s new single-channel, split-screen video, unfolds with a narrative about the Pharos Lighthouse, whose sunken marble remains lie in the harbor in Alexandria, Egypt.

Pilar Corrias, London | John Skoog

John Skoog (b. 1985) works with film and video, following in the tradition of Scandinavian films through the use of stark backgrounds and slow pacing. The poetic use of Swedish landscape and powerful studies of character and emotion is reminiscent of works by such cinema greats as Victor Sjostrom or Mauritz Stiller.

Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin | Katja Novitskova

Estonian-born and Amsterdam-based Katja Novitskova (b. 1984) is known for her interest in the relationship between the nature of contemporary visual forms as they are disseminated and their ancient socio-material origins. Berlin Gallery Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, where Novitskova is currently showing her exhibition “Spirit, Curiosity, and Opportunity,” presents her new installation “Pattern of Activation,” 2014, in Basel.

Labor, Mexico City | Jorge Satorre

For “Killing Pots (Matar Vasijas),” 2011, Mexico City-based artist Jorge Satorre (b. 1979) worked with the co-founder of the Xico Valley Community Museum, which owns more than 5,000 pre-Colombian objects donated by local residents who found them while building their homes or working the farmlands. With drawings and three-dimensional works, Satorre attempts to vindicate seemingly unrepresented opinions as those able to reveal non-hegemonic truths.

PSM Gallery, Berlin | Christian Falsnaes

In his performances and installations, Danish artist Christian Falsnaes (b. 1980) works on critical observations of social phenomena, his research developing in active collaboration with his audience. In Basel, Berlin Gallery PSM presents Falsnaes’s “Justified Beliefs,” 2014, a specially commissioned performative installation in which viewers and live performers are linked by headphones.

RaebervonStenglin, Zurich | Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs

Swiss duo Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs (both b. 1979) are part of a new generation of artists working with photography. Their enchanting images combine irony with wonder and sly sophistication. At Art Basel Statements, Zurich gallery RaebervonStenglin presents a new project by the pair, in which two 16mm films depict their journey from Zurich to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

Ramiken Crucible, New York | Lucas Blalock

New York- and Los Angeles-based artist Lucas Blalock (b.1978) explores the formal conventions of photography as well as its limitations and inert paradoxes. By applying Bertolt Brecht’s literary theory of alienation to his use of photography, he renders the basic principles of the medium — and its subsequent manipulations — visible. In the Statements section, the New York gallery Ramiken Crucible presents two new still-life photographs by Blalock.

Gallery Side 2, Tokyo | Fumito Urabe

Born the son of a monk, Japanese artist Fumito Urabe (b. 1984) is interested in the interactions and exchanges between Eastern philosophy and contemporary art. Urabe works with sculpture, painting, installation, and found objects. At Art Basel Statements, Tokyo’s Gallery Side 2 presents Urabe’s new work “Butterfly Wings Scattered Over the Water,” 2014.

Société, Berlin | Trisha Baga

New York-based artist Trisha Baga (b. 1985) is known for her unique mix of video and installation, and the use of state of the art technology with which she creates immersive and clever environments. The New York gallery Société presents a new multi-channel video installation by Baga, made exclusively for Art Basel Statements.

Kate Werble Gallery, New York | Anna Betbeze

Anna Betbeze (b. 1980) uses Flokati wool carpets to create multi-hued wall reliefs that straddle the categories of painting, sculpture, and textile. She engages the wool as a ground for acid dyes and pigments, performing various actions on the rugs such as cutting, burning, and tearing. In Basel, the American artist presents a single, sculptural, oval shaped platform providing a heightened experience of the traces that remain from her processes.

Art Basel's Statements Section Spotlights Emerging Artists
A detail of Anna Betbeze's "Untitled (Pillow)," 2014 at Kate Werble Gallery.

Katie Paterson Takes the Very Long View

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Scottish artist Katie Paterson, currently based in Berlin, recently initiated a project in Norway that won’t be finished for 100 years. Titled “Future Library,” the basic thrust of the work involves 1,000 Norwegian spruce trees planted in Nordmarka forest, a reasonably short commute via train from Oslo. Those trees will provide the raw material to print an anthology of literary works, with one title being commissioned each year from now through 2114. Paterson is creating a room within Deichmanske Library in Bjørvika, what she terms a “public portal” that will hold the finished volumes when they are produced a century from now. The commissioned works will not have been previously printed or seen by the public, and will remain unread until the conclusion of the project — in other words, when everyone currently involved with “Future Library” is long dead.

The project was commissioned by development company Bjørvika Utvikling and is part of “Slow Space,” a series of public art commissions produced by the UK’s Situations. Paterson herself will helm a selection committee to commission the annual books, joined by auxiliary members who will rotate every four years or so. “The authors are being selected for their outstanding contributions to literature and poetry and for their work’s ability to capture the imagination of this and future generations,” she explained. “Two key words in our selection process are imagination and time. We are aiming for 100 contributions from writers of any age, nationality, of any content, of mixed genres and styles, and in any language. The length of the piece is entirely for the author to decide. The title and their name will be displayed in the library room, but nothing beyond that.”

This is not the first time that Paterson has engaged the physical world as raw material or as an active collaborator in her practice. Previous projects have involved simple directives — like “a fragment of the moon couriered around the world for a year,” or “a meteorite, cast, melted, and re-cast back into a new version of itself” — and as such highlight the contrast between our comparatively transient lives and the uncharted immensity of the larger universe. “Future Library,” Paterson said, “connects with my wider practice through its engagement with nature and time — long, slow time. While previous works have dealt with time on a geological or cosmic scale of millions of years, the human timescale of 100 years is more confronting. It’s beyond our current lifespans, but close enough to come face-to-face with it.”

Interacting with the project doesn’t require a journey to Norway. Paterson has produced 1,000 works on paper that “entitle the owner to one complete set of the texts printed on the paper made from the trees after they are fully grown and cut down in 2114.” The artwork-cum-legal document will be on view in New York at James Cohan Gallery’s “The Fifth Season” group show, opening June 24, and at Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh from June 27. Consider it a sound investment in the future.

Katie Paterson Takes the Very Long View
Katie Paterson working on "Future Library," commissioned by Bjorvika Utvikling a

Slideshow: Art Basel Film Section 2014 - Moving up with Moving Images

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Slideshow: Moving up with Moving Images

Slideshow: The Building of Katie Paterson's "Future Library"

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Katie Paterson's "Future Library"

Hans Ulrich Obrist and Klaus Biesenbach on What Makes Their "14 Rooms" at Basel Worth Exploring

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The Beyeler Foundation, Art Basel and Theater Basel have joined forces to bring a special highlight to town for this year’s Art Basel: "14 Rooms," a major live-art exhibition curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Klaus Biesenbach. A continuation of the 11 Rooms project the duo originally presented at the Manchester International Festival, the group show features many well known artists such as Marina Abramovic, Damien Hirst, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Tino Sehgal, and Xu Zhen. The concept calls for performative art pieces in 14 different rooms by 14 participating artists. ARTINFO spoke about the show with Obrist, co-director of the London Serpentine Gallery and curator of the Swiss pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, and Biesenbach, head of New York’s MoMA PS1.

What makes "14 Rooms" special for you as curators?

HUO: Normally exhibitions have a very limited lifespan; they come and go. Our exhibition, however, functions differently as it can continue to exist indefinitely in the form of instructions for living sculptures. It started in 2011 and the research continues and new works are discovered each time we do a new chapter of the show.

Would you say the project is defining a new kind of exhibition space, one that adapts to the mobility of the art world?

KB: Completely. The project evolves and every edition is a new experience. It all began when the Manchester International Festival commissioned us to curate an exhibition for their 2011 edition. Shortly after we began speaking about the project, I was visiting Villa Borghese. In front of the building, there was a silver-painted acrobat who stood as still as a sculpture and then, as I entered the villa and walked from room to room, I encountered different sculptures in different rooms. The idea evolved; we came to the conclusion that we would create a sculpture gallery, one room after the other, but in each room there would be a “living sculpture,” always a man or a woman, but rather than the artists themselves, it would be actors who follow the artists’ instructions.

HUO: We decided to realize the exhibition only once a year and that every year an additional room is added. In 2011, 11 Rooms at the Manchester International Festival; in 2012,
12 Rooms in Essen as a co-commission by the International Arts Festival Ruhrtriennale; 13 Rooms in 2013 in Sydney with Kaldor Public Art Projects; and now in 2014, we are presenting a totally new version designed by Herzog de Meuron, who mirrored the rooms into infinity and built a spectacular structure for 14 Rooms, plus an additional small building for the additional room by Jordan Wolfson.

How did the artists react to the exhibition format?

KB: Each is a distinct experience, separated by the rooms. With Otobong Nkanga’s work, the theme of opening up public space takes on a further dimension. Her work “Diaspore” deals with migration and exile, looking back at the home left behind and forward at a new country. While Ed Atkins’s avatar project involves the projection of digital figures and approximates reality.

HUO: In addition to the "14 Rooms," we are also showing a work from the Baldessari archive. This
work consists of the documentation of an early work by John Baldessari, which he proposed
to the MoMA in 1970. In “Unrea-lized Proposal for Cadaver Piece,” Baldessari wanted to exhibit a cadaver in order to address how death is dealt with in art and in society. It’s not surprising that it still hasn’t been possible to realize this project. The archive presents our endless communication with local and global bureaucracy
and authorities.

Have people reacted differently to the rooms in different cities?

HUO: “14 Rooms” is not a theatre where one speaks to many, but an exhibition. As Dorothea von Hantelmann shows in her excellent writing on exhibition as rituals in the modern age, exhibitions have become a ritual that includes a crowd of people who can be addressed as individuals. As it is about separation, it does not produce connectivity. This takes us to exhibitions which go beyond objects and which address all senses, which leads us to “Touch.”

KB: I think that Yoko Ono’s project, “Touch” is especially interesting. She plays with the interaction of one visitor to another, and what will actually take place in this dark room is the question. The instruction “touch” implies that visitors are meant to touch one another. She creates a break with physical distance, integrity, and the untouchability of strangers. Is the touch of a stranger a more intimate transgression when the room is empty than when it is full? Or is it more uncomfortable? 

Hans Ulrich Obrist and Klaus Biesenbach on What Makes Their "14 Rooms" at Basel Worth Exploring
Otobong Nkanga's "Diaspore" 2014, presented at 14 Rooms in Basel by Fondation Be

Slideshow: Art Basel Sales Reflect a Strong Art Market

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Art Basel Sales Reflect a Strong Art Market

Strong and Steady Sales Continue at Art Basel

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BASEL, Switzerland — The sales register continued to ring for modern and contemporary art at the 45th edition of Art Basel, though at a slower pace than the frenetic action on Tuesday and Wednesday, when attendance was limited to VIP card holding guests. Some seasoned observers say Basel is a one-day fair, meaning a lot of sales take place at the opening and then the event goes into sleep mode, but the current strength and depth of the market is extending that critical time frame.

“I was expecting today to be quiet,” said New York’s Fergus McCaffrey, “but I’ve been pleasantly proven wrong.”

The dealer’s stand, dedicated exclusively to Post-War Japanese artists, racked up over 25 transactions since opening day at prices ranging from $25,000 to $2.5 million, including Jiro Takamatsu’s impressive oil on wood and metal abstraction, an untitled shadow painting from 1966 that sold to a European collection for $475,000.

“The best collectors in the world are buying this material,” noted McCaffrey, “and it’s become so much more of a broader market.”

The Takamatsu bore ghostly elements of both Duchamp and Rauschenberg, with a wooden cross beam running horizontally across the 26-inch wide canvas and pierced by a metal hook. The painted shadow hovering over it resembled a long-handled brush.

Though Modern material seemed to be in short supply as though some super-power had turned off the tap, good to excellent examples of Post-War and contemporary works seemed to be in relative abundance.

Madrid’s Galeria Elvira Gonzalez sold Rudolf Stingel’s rather early “Untitled” painting from 1988 in the region of the $850,000 asking price and a striking, wall hung Donald Judd copper and red Plexiglas sculpture, “Untitled (Bernstein 81-8),” from 1981 that sold to another European collector in the realm of $1.5 million.

Asked if the Judd buyer was new to the gallery, partner Fernando Mignoni said, “It’s someone we knew of but had not met before.”

That is part of the beauty of Basel, at least for the dealers.

An interesting medley of small-scaled works from American Ab-Ex artists were in fresh evidence at New York’s Washburn Gallery, led by an early Surrealist influenced Mark Rothko 20- by 28-inch oil, “Heads,” from 1941-42 that sold to a European collector for $550,000 and a small but punchy Jackson Pollock, “Untitled,” from circa 1944 in gouache, India ink, and graffito on paper that sold for $285,000. The red and green hued Pollock bore the distinctive side view shape of a hungry she-wolf, indicative of greater things to come.

The gallery also sold a crisply executed Myron Stout graphite on paper, “Momento,” from 1977-79, just 3 by 9 ½ inches that went to an American collector for $125,000.

“A European museum wanted it,” said gallerist Joan Washburn, “but they couldn’t move fast enough.”

There was a wind blown colony of Alexander Calder painted metal sculptures at New York/London Helly Nahmad Gallery, and of that delightful group, three had sold at prices ranging between $1 to 2.5 million.

The largest of that elegant trio, “Un Noir et un Jaune” from 1972, a painted metal and wire hanging mobile with red, yellow, and black leaves and measuring 38 by 86 by 20 inches, hovered over the stabiles standing below on a purpose-built and elevated platform.

The gallery also sold a brilliantly red hued Lucio Fontana, “Concetto Spaziale attese” from 1964-65, measuring 25.7 by 21.3 inches and bearing four vertical cuts in the canvas, for approximately $3 million.

“You need the material to do these huge fairs,” said London-based Helly Nahmad, “and I think the material is dwindling. It’s harder and harder to find 20th-century works. There’s not enough evening sale material here for the space to get all the big guys here,” added the dealer, referring to the auction term for major sales. “They won’t come for a $500,000 Donald Judd but at the same time, it’s still the best fair on earth by a mile.”

There was, as it turns out, a beautiful Pablo Picasso painting of a woman from 1963 at Zurich’s Thomas Ammann Gallery, priced in the region of $12 million, and an equally alluring Fernand Leger oil of two reclining female nudes from 1954, priced at $3.2 million.

There appeared to be strong interest in both works as the storied and retired Swiss dealer Daniel Varenne entered the stand and slowly walked over to the Leger, informing Doris Ammann, “I came back to see my girl friends.” Varenne sat down and admired the painting, which was displayed on a wooden easel.

“There is good interest in the modern things,” said Ammann, “but people want to take their time and we have to respect that.”

Other works in the stand were sold quickly, including two large-scale works by the artist collective Bruce High Quality Foundation, as “Olympia,” a unique silkscreen from 2014 and measuring 72 by 108 inches and framed by slender and lit neon tubes, sold in the region of the $200,000 asking price. Both versions of the black-and-white reprise of the famed Edouard Manet painting of the reclining nude beauty, attended by a black maid, drew strong interest.

Ammann also sold two large paintings by New Yorker Enoc Perez, whose work is currently on exhibit at the gallery’s Zurich location. At Basel, Perez’s “Nude” from 2012-13 at 80 by 60 inches sold for around $220,000 as did “Untitled (Yves Klein Blue)” from 2013 and scaled at 60 by 48 inches in oil, acrylic, silver leaf, and inkjet on canvas.

That modern feeling was also in the air at Geneva’s Marc Blondeau, where Louise Lawler’s C-print, “18-20” from 2003, from an edition of three, depicting a group of Marcel Duchamp objects as they were being prepared for a Phillips de Pury auction, sold for more than $100,000.

A smaller Lawler, just three by three inches, “Diamonds” from 1989, titled after two-diamond shaped paintings by Piet Mondrian, sold for approximately $18,000.

In the so-called “Feature” section of the fair, where galleries mount small single artist shows, the standout was at New York’s Luxembourg & Dayan with four paintings in acrylic and sand on canvas by the Italian Pop Art master Domenico Gnoli, dating from 1959 to 1967. All featured a comfy looking bed, some with figures under the covers.

The only one that was on offer quickly sold, the smaller scaled “Dormiente No. 2” from 1966 that is understood to have brought between $3 and $4 million. The gallery declined to give a price.

Though missed on the first round of reporting early sales due to the traffic jam in his stand, Paris/Salzburg dealer Thaddaeus Ropac nailed a number of big sales, including the huge, chain-saw carved and painted sculpture, Georg Baselitz’s “Self-Portrait as Rodin’s Thinker,” which sold to an American collector for 2.3 million euros.

Ropac also sold work from another great German artist, Joseph Beuys’s stunning sculpture, conceived in 1961, executed in 1976 and rearranged in 1985-86, just days before the artist’s death.

“Unbetitelt,” including a self-portrait cast iron head resting on a child’s chair and another head lying on its side in the glass vitrine, sold for 2.2 million euros. A 20- by 16-inch acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas Andy Warhol from 1980, “Joseph Beuys,” logically hung next to the vitrine, also sold for 325,000 euros.

“You always think,” said Ropac, speaking of the fair, “you can’t top what you did here, but you can.”

The gallery also sold a trio of 74-inch high Alex Katz painted aluminum cut-outs of swim suited women, each playing with a beach ball, a la Roy Lichtenstein’s famed Pop Art painting of the same subject. The works, “Chance (Anne),” “Chance (Vivien),” and “Chance (Darinka),” from 1989-90 and long held in the artist’s own collection, sold as a group to a Swiss collector for $1.5 million.

Looking a bit starry-eyed, Ropac said he decided not to rehang the stand after the sales as he usually would but to keep the works as is, in opposition to the thoughts of his staff.

“We could do it but I enjoy looking at these great things which you work hard to get.”

Back in the more contemporary arena, New York’s Gallery 303 saw numerous sales, including two untitled abstract paintings by Jacob Kassay at $150,000 apiece and Kim Gordon’s “Chelsea Series (Silver Wreath 2) from 2014 in spray paint on canvas for $30,000.

Nearby at Galerie Chantal Crousel, Wade Guyton’s super-scaled “Untitled” canvas from 2013, executed in Epson Ultrachrome inkjet on linen and measuring 10 feet 8 inches by 9 feet 2/8 inches, sold to an otherwise unnamed museum for $350,000.

Five other like-sized works and similarly composed by Guyton sold for the same price at his other primary market dealers stationed in Basel, including galleries Capitain, Marconi, Pia, and Petzel.

You could almost call it a democracy.

Strong and Steady Sales Continue at Art Basel
Joseph Beuys's "Untitled,"1961-1976-1985/1986, restored in 1985 by the artist.

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