Elegant, richly textured garments cloak artist Carlos Cabo’s enchanting ceramic figures (previously), showcasing the endless possibilities of clay. Tall and slender, the figures sport a wide variety of styles, donning button-down tunics, dresses, neck ties, and hats. While each one is unique, they are drawn together by a synchronic gesture: mouths open wide, they sing toward the sky.

Cabo gathers his material from the countryside around his home in Salinas, Spain, then works it into column-like figures and geometric forms. He considers the texture to be “the skin of the piece,” differentiating each from its companions while also emphasizing their similarities and a sense of unity.

Find more on Cabo’s website and Instagram.

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 A Choir From Clay: Colorful Textures Swathe Carlos Cabo’s Ebullient Ceramic Figures appeared first on Colossal.

NEW YORK, Nov. 9, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Stagwell (NASDAQ: STGW), the challenger network built to transform marketing, today announced a unique partnership with Google Cloud and SADA, a Google Cloud Premier Partner, to develop generative AI (gen AI) marketing solutions that support Stagwell agencies, client partners, and product development within the Stagwell Marketing Cloud (SMC).

Through this collaboration, SMC will build AI-based tools for modern marketers and receive development support from Google Cloud as a strategic cloud and AI provider. This work will greatly enhance SMC’s ability to identify, develop, and infuse AI capabilities into all of its products. SMC will leverage Google Cloud’s gen AI solutions including Vertex AI, Duet AI, and other advanced tools to create new solutions, initially spanning the following areas to help customers:

• Transform brand campaigns: Develop go-to-market programs for brands supported by gen AI, specifically with SMC’s Media Studio Audience Identification, PRophet Monitor, and PR applications.
• Accelerate gen AI solution development: Develop solutions that drive market-leading initiatives, such as translation services for market research and survey solutions, and an AI agent-to-agent service.
• Harness data analytics and insights: Develop and train a proprietary Stagwell large language model (LLM) purpose-built for Stagwell clients; productize data assets via APIs to create new digital experiences for brands, and multiply the value of their first-party data ecosystems to drive new revenue streams using Vertex AI and open source-based models.

Additionally, SMC plans on releasing its solutions on Google Cloud Marketplace in the future, scaling access to Stagwell’s marketing-focused AI-enabled product suite.

The partnership comes as artificial intelligence is poised to help transform a diverse range of popular consumer segments such as automotive, entertainment, financial, hospitality, retail and more, driving operational efficiencies, marketing transformation, and customer experience innovation for digital companies worldwide. For Stagwell, the collaboration with Google Cloud adds a trusted technology partner who can accelerate the company’s ability to identify, build, and scale AI products.

“Partnering with Google Cloud is an opportunity to strengthen our SMC offering and engage with some of the best technology professionals as we build, test, and scale our gen AI products, enabling us to get market-shifting technology in the hands of our teams and our client partners faster than ever,” said Mark Penn, chairman and CEO, Stagwell. “As we work to lead the AI-based transformation of marketing, it is an honor to partner with Google Cloud and SADA to chart the future on AI.”

“Through Stagwell’s collaboration with Google Cloud, brands can gain competitive access to the transformative power of gen AI, accelerating the development of customer-centric marketing campaigns with enhanced data analysis and automation,” said Caroline Yap, Managing Director, Global AI Business, Google Cloud. “This partnership exemplifies Google Cloud’s commitment to getting cutting edge technology into the hands of customers through its easy-to-deploy, scalable, and secure AI solutions.” 

“At Stagwell and in the Stagwell Marketing Cloud, we are laser-focused on reinventing the marketing technology stack with AI-infused products and solutions,” said Merrill Raman, Global Chief Technology Officer, Stagwell. “With rich proprietary data and insights from our in-depth knowledge in core marketing disciplines, we are eager to work with Google Cloud  and develop purpose-built gen AI models and tools that drive value for our clients and help them win in the marketplace.”

“SADA is proud to be Stagwell’s trusted advisor on their gen AI and cloud transformation journey. We’re thrilled to be a part of this exciting partnership working with a visionary company like Stagwell that is leading with technology to help take their businesses to a completely unprecedented level,” said Tony Safoian, President & CEO, SADA.           .

About Stagwell

Stagwell (NASDAQ: STGW) is the challenger network built to transform marketing. We deliver scaled creative performance for the world’s most ambitious brands, connecting culture-moving creativity with leading-edge technology to harmonize the art and science of marketing. Led by entrepreneurs, our 13,000+ specialists in 34+ countries are unified under a single purpose: to drive effectiveness and improve business results for their clients. Join us at www.stagwellglobal.com.

About Stagwell Marketing Cloud

Stagwell Marketing Cloud (SMC) is a marketing-focused, AI-enablement platform built for the modern in-house marketer. Born out of Stagwell’s (NASDAQ: STGW) network of award-winning marketing agencies, SMC’s technology empowers marketers to drive business impact by giving them intuitive tools equipped with proprietary, actionable data. SMC’s portfolio of solutions powers strategic customer research, communications, and media activation for brands worldwide by leveraging technology such as generative artificial intelligence, shared augmented reality, and more. Get your head in the cloud at www.stagwellmarketingcloud.com.

About SADA Systems      

SADA is a market leader in professional services and an award-winning solutions provider of Google Cloud. Since 2000, SADA has been committed to helping customers in healthcare, media, entertainment, retail, manufacturing, and the public sector solve their most complex challenges so they can focus on achieving their boldest ambitions. With offices in North America, India, and Armenia providing sales and customer support teams, SADA is positioned to meet customers where they are in their digital transformation journey. SADA is a 6x Google Cloud Partner of the Year award winner with 10 Google Cloud Specializations and has been recognized as a Niche Player in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Public Cloud IT Transformation Services. SADA is a 15x honoree of the Inc. 5000 list of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies and has been named to Inc. Magazine’s Best Workplaces four years in a row. Learn more at www.sada.com.

SOURCE Google Cloud

New York’s much-anticipated auction season has started nervously, reflecting a fragile art market in the midst of wider turmoil. The highest-wattage sale this fortnight, of the collection of 31 works from the late arts patron Emily Fisher Landau, came in at the low end of expectations at Sotheby’s on November 8, making a total of $351.6mn ($406.4mn with fees, est $344.5mn-$430.1mn).

Top lot of the evening by far, as expected, was Picasso’s “Femme à la montre” (1932), a portrait of his lover Marie-Thérèse Walter, which sold for $121mn ($139.4mn with fees, est $120mn). This is the second-highest auction price for the artist, whose record stands at $179.4mn.

Only one work flew far ahead of expectations: Agnes Martin’s “Grey Stone II” (1961), which was estimated between $6mn and $8mn and hammered for $16mn ($18.7mn with fees). Among the works that disappointed against estimates were two by Robert Rauschenberg while an dark painting by Mark Rothko from 1958, estimated between $30mn and $40mn, went for a relatively paltry $19mn ($22.2mn with fees). 

The auction house had offered a guaranteed payout for all the works in the sale, increasingly necessary to bring in supply, and managed to offload the risk to third-party investors on 24 of the works, including the Picasso.

Contemporary female artists fared well at Christie’s 21st-century evening sale on November 7, where over-performers included Jenna Gribbon, Ilana Savdie and Jadé Fadojutimi. The latter’s painting, “A Thistle Throb” (2021), sold for $1.35mn ($1.7mn with fees, est $500,000-$700,000).

A notable difference this season is that the seemingly untouchable older guard at the higher end seems to have reached its price limit. Christie’s top lot was Cy Twombly’s 2004 “Untitled (Bacchus 1st Version II)”, which went for $17mn ($20mn with fees), against an $18mn-$25mn estimate. Two works of 43 were withdrawn prior to sale, by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Mark Bradford, while Bradford was also one of two artists whose works went unsold. The other was John Currin, whose titillating “Nice ’n Easy” (1999) had been estimated between $7mn and $10mn. In 2016, this work sold for $12mn.

The sale overall made $88.4mn, below its $93mn-$134.2mn estimate ($107.5mn with fees).

Fresh from the Rugby World Cup, England’s Maro Itoje has another project afoot: he is co-founding an art gallery with the dealer Khalil Akar. Offering an international platform to African, Caribbean and diaspora artists, Akoje Gallery (a combination of their names) is close to the British-Nigerian sportsman’s heart. “When I bought my first flat in London [in 2015], I wanted to decorate it with African art and couldn’t really find any. And the few places that offered it were completely out of my budget,” Itoje says. The markets in Lagos proved more promising, and he confesses now to being an art addict. “My guest room has become a storage space,” he says. 

He initially joined forces with Akar, who was then running Signature gallery in London, in 2021 to co-curate a show on black histories. Since then, they have been planning their own project. Akar has subsequently closed Signature in London — although the gallery is still run by his father from its original base in Lagos — and plans for Akoje to run about four temporary exhibitions around the world each year. These start in London’s Spring Studios on December 13 with a group show of its represented artists (price range £7,000-£100,000). Among those on view will be the Trinidadian painter Sarah Knights, who was recently chosen to paint a portrait of King Charles III for the cover of Tatler magazine. 

Next up is a show in New York in May, Akar confirms, and the pair commits to showing in Nigeria too. “There needs to be two-way traffic [between Africa and the west]”, Itoje says. His passion for art “helps me maintain the balance of life, and I think tends to make me a better player”, he adds.

The artist Peter Doig will donate all the proceeds from a new limited-edition print of the poet and activist Linton Kwesi Johnson to the George Padmore Institute, a London-based charity dedicated to documenting black communities in postwar Britain and continental Europe.

There are 150 available editions of the print that go on sale from November 9 through Paul Stolper Gallery, starting at £2,000 apiece. The immediate aim, Stolper says, is to raise £35,000 needed for urgent structural repairs to the GPI’s building on Stroud Green Road, which also houses the publishing business New Beacon Books. 

The gallerist Eva Presenhuber opens a group show in Zurich this week, giving equal prominence to the artists she represents and those she describes as having “different positions”, who are mostly lesser-known. The latter include Stanislava Kovalcikova, a Czech artist whose work Presenhuber discovered at Vienna’s Belvedere Museum last year, and Aleksandra Waliszewska, an artist with great success in her home country of Poland but less well known elsewhere. They join gallery stalwarts, including Ugo Rondinone, Franz West and Steven Shearer, in a show of about 80 works by about 26 artists (November 11 to February 24). 

The title of the exhibition is Melencolia, although Presenhuber says that the art is more “works that are all reflective and thoughtful”. This, she says, is relevant for some of today’s artists under the age of 40 who can get “abused by high prices at auction, when they need more time and energy to think about what they are making. I have a distinct preference for slow burners,” she says.

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