Mixed-media pieces by two dozen artists take flight in Birds Rising at Brassworks Gallery in Portland, Oregon, this month. Curated by artist Heiko Müller, a vibrant selection of works take feathered creatures as a starting point, showcasing a range of styles that reference mythology, fairytales, and quickly-changing habitats. Works by Diana Sudyka, El Gato Chimney, and Caitlin McCormack—among many others—highlight a variety of media almost as diverse as the avian world itself.

Birds Rising opens with a preview on September 9, and you can find more information on the gallery’s website and Instagram.

Richard Ahnert

Alexandra Lukaschewitz

Eiko Borcherdin

Ki Sung Koh

Ana Juan

El Gato Chimney

Mario Klingemann

Ryan Heshka

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Two Dozen Artists Gather a Diverse Flock of Avians at Brassworks Gallery for ‘Birds Rising’ appeared first on Colossal.

TISHOMINGO – Chickasaw Nation Governor Bill Anoatubby’s vision of showcasing Southeastern Indian artists will celebrate its 18th anniversary Oct. 6-7 during Chickasaw Annual Meeting and Festival.

A bevy of artists representing the Five Civilized Tribes – Chickasaw, Cherokee, Choctaw, Muscogee and Seminole – along with other Southeastern Indian tribes will showcase authentic Southeastern Indian art.

Jewelry, fashion, weapons, painting, sculpture and much more will be on display at the Southeastern Art Show and Market (SEASAM) 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Oct. 6 and from 11 a.m. onward Oct. 7 after Governor Anoatubby delivers his annual State of the Nation Address.

Artists have an allotted area west of the Chickasaw National Capitol Building where they will display their work and visit with patrons, art lovers, tribal citizens and the general public.

SEASAM is a juried show for both youth and adult artists from federally recognized Southeastern Indian tribes. Awards are presented for the very best art at SEASAM representing several differing categories in which artists compete.

In 2022, third-generation Cherokee artist Bryan Waytula took SEASAM Best of Show, following in the footsteps of two master craftsmen and Cherokee Treasures, his grandmother, Betty Scraper-Garner, and mother, Vivian Cottrell.

Many acclaimed Chickasaw artists are expected to show works this year, including master woodworker and artist Richard Thomas who specializes in weaponry; Dustin Mater and his eclectic collection of works that have consistently wowed art lovers; Joanna Underwood Blackburn, a master potter who has also won awards for fashion; Daniel Worcester, whose forged knives and cutlery are in demand from museums to European art collectors, along with many others.

Governor Anoatubby’s vision and determination to see Southeastern Indian art rise to the same level as Southwestern art was enhanced in 2018 when he launched “Visual Voices: Contemporary Chickasaw Art.”

This touring exhibition features 60 works by 15 renowned Chickasaw artists from painters, potters, sculptors, metalsmiths, weavers and more.

Chickasaw artists of “Visual Voices” offer unique, intrinsically Southeastern Indian designs and distinction among today’s contemporary tribal artists, including abstract, experimental, celebratory and thought-provoking art confirming a strong continuation of contemporary Chickasaw art endeavors going into the future.

Chickasaw Annual Meeting and Festival officially kicks off Sept. 29 with a social stickball game and traditional stomp dance at Kullihoma, east of Ada on State Highway 1. A full week of festivities are planned, including the crowning of Chickasaw princesses, the serving of a traditional meal, many cultural demonstrations and, on Oct. 5, the Chickasaw Nation’s cultural evening at the Chickasaw Cultural Center, Sulphur, Oklahoma, where Chickasaws are honored for preserving the tribe’s cultural heritage.

Governor Anoatubby’s State of the Nation Address is set for 9 a.m., Oct. 7, at Aiitafama’ Ishto “large meeting place” on the Chickasaw National Capitol grounds in Tishomingo, Oklahoma.

A complete list of events, locations and schedules will become available online at AnnualMeeting.Chickasaw.net. The event schedule is subject to change.

Follow Chickasaw Nation social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram and X, formerly known as Twitter, for updates.

For more information, call (580) 371-2040 or email Kelcey.Upton@Chickasaw.net.

“For foreign galleries wanting to come to Seoul, our main strengths are the purchasing power of our art lovers and our infrastructure,” says Oh Se-hoon, the mayor of Seoul.

Speaking on the opening day of the second edition of Frieze Seoul earlier this week, Oh was quick to point out South Korea’s economic clout as the tenth largest economy in the world, also nodding to the country’s vibrant cultural history and established network of collectors and private museums.

Oh, a member of the country’s conservative People Power Party, cites the biggest difference between the art market in Seoul and others around the world “is that young people are very interested in buying art”. He adds: “Young people in their 20s, 30s and 40s are truly interested in—and invested in—enjoying art in Seoul. That is the real energy behind this trend.”

Hong Kong’s crown

Ten years ago, there was another trend: all eyes were on Hong Kong as the global art market’s “next big thing”. The Swiss franchise Art Basel launched a fair in the city, taking over from the local fair ART Hong Kong, and mega dealers began to eye up the prospect of accessing billionaires based on Mainland China. Since then, the Chinese market (including Hong Kong) has dramatically expanded, not only in terms of value but also its infrastructure of galleries and private museums.

However, dogged in recent years by growing censorship from Beijing and tight Covid restrictions, Hong Kong’s pre-eminent position is said to be slipping. As Won Jae Park, the director of Seoul’s ONE and J Gallery, puts it: “Hong Kong is not what it used to be, but everybody knows that Asia is happening. We need to have an anchor somewhere and it seems like people have found Seoul to be the best place for that—at least for the time being.”

Frieze Seoul sales

Despite Seoul’s clear ascendancy, however, the Korean market is still in its nascent stages, at least in terms of monetary value. Sales at Frieze Seoul this week have largely been made around the $100,000-$200,000 mark. Very few seven-figure sums were reported; those to breach that level include a new Georg Baselitz painting which sold to an Asian collector for €1.2m at Thaddaeus Ropac gallery. The Austrian dealer, who says Frieze Seoul “has moved up a gear since last year”, also sold a 1988 Donald Judd “stack” exhibited at his Seoul gallery to a Korean collector for $3m. A Calder mobile at Pace, valued “in the millions”, and an imposing Jeff Koons Gazing Ball sculpture from 2004 at Robilant + Voena for $3.6m had yet to find homes by the end of the second day.

Many lower- and mid-tier galleries are playing a longer game. By the end of the second day, Taipei’s TKG+ gallery had sold five paintings by the Thai artist Mit Jai Inn, two installations by Joyce Ho and five paintings by Chiu Chen-Hung (both from Taiwan) for a total of $150,000.

Director Shelly Wu says the gallery will “definitely not” recoup the cost of doing the fair—her experimental programme focuses on video and photography by emerging and mid-career artists. She adds: “Our intention in doing international fairs is to present talents from the region to international audiences, so we not only look at the sales results, but also exposure of the artists to museums and institutions, which we have been doing quite well. This is the case for many mid-scale galleries.”

There is a distinctly more Asian feel to the makeup of the fair this year; around 40% of galleries are from the region and 58% of galleries have a presence in Asia in the shape of a gallery or office. Several dealers and advisers observed fewer American buyers on the ground and even fewer Europeans than last year, though collectors from Southeast Asia and China are making up for those shortfalls, having been prevented from travelling in 2022 due to Covid restrictions. As Matt Carey-Williams, the director of MCW Fine Arts, puts it: “The fair felt buzzy and animated on the opening day, though there were not as many international visitors as last year. I noticed an adjustment in material: much more primary market than secondary market. The fair has energised the primary market side of things in Korea in a big way.”

Patrick Lee, the director of Frieze Seoul, confirms there are 93 international museum representatives in town this week, including individual curators and directors, though larger patron groups are thinner on the ground compared with last year. US institutions in attendance include the Aspen Art Museum, The Bass, the Hammer Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; while those from China and Hong Kong include M+, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art and the Pingshan Art Museum, in Shenzhen.

Lee is acutely aware of the need to keep attracting such individuals and groups to South Korea. “Frieze Seoul is much smaller than Art Basel Hong Kong, but there’s overlap in terms of the audience, we’re targeting similar people,” he says. “For this fair to succeed, it’s got to be greater than Seoul. It’s got to be global.” As with the other Frieze art fair franchises, the organisation has successfully collaborated with other events taking place during in Seoul this week including Kiaf art fair, Seoul Fashion Week and the Seoul Mediacity Biennale.

One of the perennial problems for the global fair circuit is overcrowding. Lee acknowledges the clash with The Armory Show in New York, which runs concurrently to Frieze Seoul, is “less than ideal”. Now that Frieze has acquired the US fair, the director hopes there is a chance of separating the two events by a few weeks.

In the meantime, Western galleries and auction houses are making their presence felt in Seoul. This month alone sees the arrival of Sotheby’s and White Cube, who join heavyweights such as Lehmann Maupin, one of the first Western galleries to set up shop in the South Korean capital; Thaddaeus Ropac, which this year has expanded its footprint to enable the gallery to show two artists at once; and Pace, which enlarged its space a year ago.

Pace’s president Samantha Rubell declined to comment on rumours that the gallery is looking to leave its H Queens building in Hong Kong, saying: “Despite setbacks, the Hong Kong market is still extremely vibrant. Hong Kong remains the most international city in Asia attracting collectors and curators from all over the world. We are absolutely committed to continuing to operate our gallery in Hong Kong.” According to a spokeswoman, the gallery has a year-long lease on its H Queens space, where “programming continues”.

Gagosian, too, is dipping is toe in the water. Last month, the gallery appointed Jiyoung Lee to lead the gallery’s operations in South Korea. Nick Simunovic, Gagosian’s senior director in Asia, says “all options are being evaluated” when it comes to opening a permanent gallery in Seoul.

At the fair, Gagosian had sold much of its booth in advance, primarily to Asian clients—though not exclusively Korean collectors, according to Simunovic. With a focus on the gallery’s primary market, prices range from $100,000 to “a few million dollars” for a Jonas Wood painting. He describes the market in Korea as “sophisticated and opinionated” and believes pitting Seoul against Hong Kong is a “false dichotomy”. Though he notes there are obvious advantages of doing business in Hong Kong, namely it being a trade free zone and its central location at a cross roads in Asia.

South Korean market slowdown

After a boom year in 2022, during which the South Korean market reached a record 1 trillion won ($782m), according to Korea Arts Management Service, the auction market in the first half of 2023 is reportedly down by 9.9%, with sales of high-end works particularly affected, probably due to increased interest rates.

Dealers say a correction was needed. As Jason Haam of the eponymous Seoul gallery puts it: “2022 was lava, it was way too hot.” He says the beginning of this year was “quiet”, but that “businesses is slowly picking up”. At Frieze Seoul, “there’s been a substantial increase in demand in the market”, with “clients deciding on purchases on the spot”. During the opening day he sold a painting by the 26-year-old Seoul-based artist Moka Lee, which she finished the morning the fair opened, to a Korean collector for $55,000.

Won Jae Park thinks South Korea’s market slowdown can be attributed to the poor health of the global economy. “Everything is slowing down,” he says. “It was a similar situation in 2008, right before Lehman Brothers collapsed. Everything was happening, and then all of a sudden, everything was gone. What I find different this time is people are really interested in learning what contemporary art is. There are many smaller collector groups organising art talks and educational programmes, they are really trying to learn the Western narrative of how we are where we are now, and also trying to figure out what we should do as Koreans—to either adapt or participate in this global event.”

As Mayor Oh Se-hoon notes, younger buyers are certainly fuelling the excitement in the contemporary art scene. According to Jane Yoon, Sotheby’s managing director in Korea, collectors under the age of 50 now account for around 80% of sales at the Seoul outpost of the auction house. Whether they will stay the course is another question. As Park puts it: “Things are changing fast. I’m sure some of them will fall away and lose interest. It’s a long process becoming a collector, but the growing interest is a good step.”

Carey-Williams also points out that South Korea’s market still remains largely domestic and in the hands of a few. “It’s a local market that has become very big and confident. But that handful of big collectors who can spend $10m on a painting is still a handful.”

Gossip about recent art fair-industry consolidation was a major focus at the VIP opening day of The Armory Show, as art world denizens debated the impact of the Frieze acquisition of both Armory and EXPO Chicago earlier this summer.

For the near-term, and amid a buzzy opening that seemed to only be gathering momentum as the the day wound on (the fair runs until September 10), Armory Show executive director Nicole Berry was laser-focused. “I feel like this is just such a strong fair. And the response has been wonderful and supportive of that,” Berry told Artnet News a few hours into the opening.

Berry said that everything was already very much in-motion for this year’s edition when the Frieze acquisition was announced in mid-July. “My team has been focused on creating a great fair. A lot of the discussions about what happens in the future will be post-fair,” she said. For now Frieze New York, which takes place just a few blocks south of the Javits Center in the multi-level venue of the Shed, at Hudson Yards, is scheduled to take place as usual, as is the 2024 edition of Armory, again at the Javits.

However, this year’s fair, the Armory’s third appearance at the Javits Center, was a tonal downshift from 2022. The 225 exhibitors marked a drop from last year’s 240, and on day 1 there was a sense among fairgoers that attendance was light.

The broader art market correction that saw tepid at best (and disastrous at worst) auction results in New York this spring may now be manifesting in the primary market. Dealers at the VIP preview told Artnet News that sales were slower than last year. Sales figures are still trickling in, but beyond what works sell and for how much is the matter of what is for sale—some might characterize the bevy of figurative paintings on offer as evidence dealers are playing it safe.

To be sure, enthusiasm for art fairs practically piqued in 2022. It’s hard to compare to the mood of a year marked by jubilation that Covid lockdowns and travel restrictions were for the most part behind us—enthusiasm that surely juiced sales and attendance. Perhaps in anticipation of that, organizers purposefully shrunk the fair slightly this year, according to Berry.

“The fair is about nine percent smaller based on our own decision,” she said. “We felt like we wanted to bring it in a little bit. When we first started here at the Javits, we had really wide aisles and big spacious areas because of Covid. And now the beauty of this venue as opposed to the piers is…it’s not cramped and crowded. But we sill wanted good energy and I think we found the right balance.”

And there were still standouts. The special Armory section “Platform,” which features large-scale works and was curated by Eva Respini, deputy director at the Vancouver Art Gallery, was particularly compelling, with star pieces like Woody De Othello’s large-scale patinated bronze sculpture, presented by Jessica Silverman, that sold for $400,000.

Also on view was Yinka Shonibare, Agnes Denes, and Teresita Fernandez, among others. Organized under the theme of “Rewriting Histories,” it featured a mix of new works alongside iterations of previously seen hits, like Barthélémy Toguo’s latest version of the massive Urban Requiem (2015), shown at the Venice Biennale last year.

Installation view of Nara Roesler booth at The Armory Show. Image courtesy Nara Roesler.

Beyond this, there was a massive amount of figurative paintings on display across all sections of the fair—a fact that many visitors couldn’t help but notice and comment on throughout the day. And business seemed brisk.

Dealer Ben Brown, one of only a handful of gallerists that simultaneously exhibited at both Armory and Frieze Seoul in South Korea, told Artnet News that the energy at Armory was decidedly better, especially with more confirmed sales. The booth, which had striking works on display by Yoan Capote, Candida Höfer, Vik Muniz, José Parlá, Enoc Perez, and Ena Swansea, was hard to miss within feet of the fair entrance.

Sales of works included those by Capote and Muniz; prices of sold works ranged from $75,000 to $100,000.

New York gallery Berry Campbell had a standout booth, a curated presentation of 12 postwar women artists. The gallery has a distinct focus on re-examining underrepresented women artists of the 20th-century. Gallery owner Christine Berry called it “an incredible day,” noting high demand for artists including Alice Baber, Bernice Bing, and Lynne Drexler.

Lynne Drexler, Burst Blue (1969). © Estate of Lynne Drexler. Image courtesy Berry Campbell, New York

Works by Drexler sold for $885,000 and $200,000; the artist, who has been drawing intense interest, will likely be the subject of a traveling institutional retrospective at some point in the near future. A work by Baber went for $200,000—Berry Campbell hopes to mount a solo show of the artist next year.

Later on in the day, the gallery let Artnet News know that a painting by Ethel Schwabacher had been sold for $195,000.  

A range of dealers appeared upbeat about VIP day, including Daniel Roesler, partner and senior director of Nara Roesler, which has branches in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo, and Chelsea in New York. “We had an energetic first day with a steady flow of thoughtful engagement about our artists with New York and Brazilian collectors,” said Roesler.

The gallery sold Heinz Mack’s The painter’s garden (chromatic constellation), (2001), for €240,000 ($258,000) and two Fabio Miguez mixed-media works for $15,000 each.

Miles McEnery Gallery, which has been drawing buzz with a string of adjoining ground-level galleries in Chelsea, found success with contemporary favorites, including Inka Essenhigh, Jacob Hashimoto, Tom LaDuke, and James Siena. “There is a palpable electricity to the fair this year with robust sales from longtime friends and new collectors from across the U.S.,” said Miles McEnery.

Los Angeles dealer Anat Ebgi told Artnet News that the first day response was “amazing,” and that their two booths nearly sold out. The main booth featured artists including Greg Ito, Faith Wilding, and Robert Russell while another booth was a solo presentation highlighting works by Alec Egan. Sales included nearly all of the works in the solo presentation of Egan’s oil paintings at prices between $45,000 to $55,000.

In the group presentation, sales included works by Ito, as well as Jordan Nassar, Caleb Hahne Quintana, and Alejandro Cardenas and priced between $35,000 and $55,000. Additional sold artworks were those by Karyn Lyons Ming Ying, Janet Werner, and Amie Dicke, all priced between $20,000 and $30,000. Works by Fabian Treiber, Tammi Campbell, Krzysztof Strzelecki, Ryan Driscoll, and Angela Lane sold at prices between $6,0000 and $16,000.

San Francisco gallerist Jessica Silverman, who is celebrating her 15th anniversary this year, said the gallery artists’ “sustained presence in world-class museums demonstrates the high quality of our roster.”

Woody De Othello, thought in mind (2023). Image courtesy the artist and Jessica Silverman Gallery. Photo by Lance Brewer.

“The positive reception from institutions on the East Coast shows how our artists’ material and conceptual rigor is timely and timeless,” she added. Sales during opening hours included five table-top bronze sculptures titled I Need You (2023) by Rose B. Simpson—one to the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Rollins Museum of Art in Winter Park, Florida, and four others with important American collections.

Other first-day sales and an oil painting by Julie Buffalohead for $50,000 to a Texas foundation. Several works on paper by Clare Rojas and Rupy C. Tut sold in the range of $12,000 to $20,000 and a weaving by Margo Wolowiec sold for $38,000.

Paris gallery Templon, which opened an outpost in Chelsea last fall, sold work by Will Cotton for $150 000, as well as works by Chiharu Shiota, priced from €60 000 to €100,000 ($64,000 to $107,000). All Philippe Cognée works on the booth for €30 000 to €75,000 ($32,000 to $80,000) were also sold.

Anne-Claudie Coric, executive director of Templon, noted a lot of interest from American collectors in international artists. “The first hour was extremely busy and it felt like we were back in the pre-Covid times.”

The Armory Show is on view at the Javits Center from September 8 through 10.

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