The city of Sedona recently purchased and installed the sculpture ‘Stormy Bay’ at the Ranger Station Park at 250 Brewer …
City installs ‘Stormy Bay’ sculpture at Ranger Station Park
About
Posts by :
The View From: Gladys Lin
The View From is excerpted from The Asia Pivot, Artnet Pro’s biweekly members-only newsletter providing mission-critical analysis, insights, and exclusive intelligence on developments in Asia’s art markets, with a focus on business opportunities and challenges. Subscribe here to receive it directly to your inbox.
The whirlwind week of Art Basel Miami Beach wrapped up a busy year. Miami Art Week was still fun and full-on, just like how I remembered it from my last visit in 2019, but it was not as warm and sunny as expected. The chilly wind and lack of sunshine spoiled the mood a bit, as I had to cling to my sweater wherever I went.
Miami’s somber weather also somehow corresponded to the vibe of the art market in 2023. Things may appear to be vibrant and glamorous to outsiders, but in reality, this was not the case. The market has indeed slowed down dramatically. Just look at the auction results around the world and the slower sales at art fairs. The economic uncertainties, geopolitical conflicts, and wars have together ended the celebration of an art-market high early.
But this slowdown is by no means a bad thing. In fact, this can be the beginning of a much-needed transition, with the art market heading towards a better, healthier place—although this may be painful to some.
The market explosion over the past couple of years has caused some problems. For example, the rules of pricing went almost completely out of the window. Price manipulation, both in the primary and secondary markets, was obvious. An increase in prices for an artist’s work used to follow a trend, for instance, after a certain number of solo shows. But recently, prices for certain works in the primary market were marked up for no apparent reason, or at a level that they did not deserve.
This was further fueled by record prices achieved at auctions for contemporary art. Newcomers treated art collecting as an investment vehicle, looking to resell a work within six, or even three months. Galleries were rushing to sell. Everyone was pushing for new things. Attention spans were short. It was a difficult time for artists, too. Like injecting growth hormone into chickens to ensure larger but perhaps less tasty cutlets, it was a very unhealthy cycle.
The great thing about 2023 was that these circumstances did not continue to spiral downwards. Indeed, some people who bought art at unreasonable prices in the past have failed to find buyers for their works this year, putting everybody in the trade on the edge. Some of my younger clients have learnt their lessons and now they are looking to buy works by artists who have a much more solid career and developed practice.
This was much more acutely felt in Asia, particularly at the major auctions in Hong Kong, where highly anticipated blockbuster lots failed to find buyers. Works by emerging artists that fetched high prices in the past sold at lower reserves. But let’s not forget that the Asian art market expanded tremendously since the pandemic. Hence, the slowdown is much more obvious compared to its Western counterparts.
The general economic uncertainty in China is one huge factor at play, and the disappointing sales results for the collection of the Long Museum founders at Sotheby’s was a key indicator. The country is still suffering from the aftermath of a prolonged lockdown under its zero-Covid policy, which was finally lifted only this year, in addition to larger geopolitical tensions. Works priced above $100,000 were so much harder to sell at Shanghai fairs this year. China is too large to ignore, and its impact can be felt not just in the region but also globally, whether you like it or not.
The grim outlook aside, I’ve made some (re)discoveries this year. I made my first trip to South Korea after many years to attend Seoul Art Week, and I was impressed by the local trade’s ambition and determination in cultivating the country’s art industry and market. There are good private collections and eager young collectors there. Art is treated as a core part of the country’s cultural and creative industries alongside K-pop and K-drama, which have been pivotal to Korea’s surging global influence. In terms of art, there’s still a lot more to discover.
In New York, I found that some younger galleries are eager to show art from wider areas, and works by overseas Asian artists are getting more exposure, little by little. People are tired of seeing the same kinds of works at art fairs over and over again. But this development is still at a very early stage, and I expect that Asian diaspora artists are a demographic that is worth paying attention to in the coming years.
As for my New Year’s resolution, I just wish everyone to stay healthy—both among art industry practitioners as well as the art market. We must stay healthy and fit as a fiddle, both physically and mentally, to brace for the challenges in 2024.
—As told to Vivienne Chow. This article was originally published in The Asia Pivot on December 13, 2023.
Gladys Lin is the founder of Gladys Lin Projects and divides her time between Taipei and New York. Lin was previously the Asia director for Sean Kelly.
Follow Artnet News on Facebook:
Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward.
Pop Up Art Market spreads love for local artists
Locals and visitors alike ducked inside The Collective event space Saturday to escape the chill and immerse themselves in color, chatter, and a vibrant artistic community.
The Valentine’s Pop Up Art Market held Saturday, Feb. 10 gave local artists a chance to sell their wares and connect to the rest of the community.
20 artists from different backgrounds and artistic mediums filled the space with paintings, photography prints, handmade ceramics, and more.
Local artist Erin Abraham organized the event alongside Laramie Artists Salon, a collective of local artists focused on building connections between creators of all different kinds of art.
“One of the things we’re trying to do with Laramie Artists Salon is really build up the artist community in Laramie, so I thought this would be a good way to try and do that,” Abraham said.
She sees it as a way to keep people engaged in the artistic scene through the cold Wyoming winter, when outdoor art fairs and farmer’s markets are not an option.
It’s also a chance to be festive.
Claire Pearson, the artist behind Prickly Pearson, was excited to weave a Valentine’s Day theme into her wares.
“I like the color and I like the heart. And I like, you know, the love motif—just celebrating the people you love and your friends and your partners and your family,” she said.
Pearson is a textile artist, and she filled her table with hand-crocheted flower bouquets. That kind of handcrafted work was popular with many attendees.
“I really love all the handmade stuff,” said Kendall Nahorniak. She was one of many attendees who expressed interest in making art themselves.
“I’m a little bit of a fiber artist myself, so I always love seeing the ways that other people are trying to make things come to life,” she said.
The pop up market offered artists a chance to build camaraderie with peers and passersby alike.
Tara Pappas, one of the exhibiting artists, spoke fondly of that togetherness.
“It’s a very supportive, tight-knit community. We’re not in competition with each other; we’re here to help each other and grow together,” she said.
Lisa Muller attended to support her daughter, artist Rose Gardener. “I think it encourages young artists—I just spotted a couple of friends, with children, y’know, little people—it encourages them to have a different perspective,” she said.
In addition to getting people out of the house and spreading awareness, events like this help local artists turn their passions into livelihoods.
“I grew up very crafty, my mom had this kids-knit book when I was little; I made a lot of really ugly skinny scarves,” Claire Pearson said.
She became a full-time artist in June of 2023. “It’s been a lot of fun! I feel very lucky and privileged to be able to do that,” she said.
Erin Abrahams hopes to host more events and to continue uniting the local art scene in the future. She’s currently planning similar pop up markets for Jubilee Days and for the University of Wyoming Homecoming.
Cupid’s Revenge IV: Apollo and Daphne in Sculpture
Ruben C. Cordova writes his annual Valentine’s day essay, about artworks telling the story of Apollo and Daphne in Art History.
Cleaning up Kenya’s Beaches & Turning Discarded Flip-Flops Into Art
This is incredible work that is cleaning the environment, beautifying the world, and even helping some Kenyans put their kids through college!
New “Water Songs” Sculpture by Artist Angie Hinojos Enhances Seattle’s Public Art Scene
Seattle artist Angie Hinojos unveils “Water Songs,” a sculpture reflecting community history as part of the FLOW initiative.
She helped integrate Richmond Public Schools in 1961. Now you can follow her steps
In a powerful tribute to the legacy of Daisy Jane Cooper Johnson, a striking sculpture named Strides has been unveiled at the intersection of Libbie and Patterson Avenues.
British snow sculptors travel to Japan to create an Embryo snow sculpture using 27 TONNES of snow
Martin Sharp, Sarah Sharp, and Justin Scott’s snow sculpture at the 21st International Snow Sculpting Competition Japan Cup 2024. (Martin Sharp via SWNS)
Vishniac Documentary Explores Photographer’s Life
His photographs are like an open window on a world that is forever lost, the traditional world of Eastern European Jewry.
From 1935 to 1938, Roman Vishniac, with little more than a pair of cameras and film tucked into his luggage, crisscrossed communities large and small in Poland, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. He captured a priceless record of the daily life of Jews suffering under the crushing burden of poverty and dislocation. It was made worse by newly passed antisemitic laws and government regulations.
His many trips through the region were financed through the European office of America’s Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which saw — in his powerful portrayal of communities under stress — a way to help raise both money and public awareness.
The mid to late 1939s were a stressful time for the impoverished communities of Eastern European Jews.
Now, for the first time, Vishniac’s monumental record of Eastern European life and his long career as a photographer of rare skill and sensitivity are the subject of a new documentary by director, Laura Bialis. The documentary will have its Atlanta premiere in a pair of screenings at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.
Bialis was given full access to Vishniac’s vast archives of more than 23,000 images and had the extensive on-camera participation and support of Vishniac’s daughter, Mara, who lived just 10 minutes from Bialis’s home in California. Over the four years that the two women were involved in the project, Bialis developed what she described as her transformation under Mara’s influence.
This portrait of an old Jewish man was featured on the cover of a book of Vishniac’s photos that won a National Jewish Book Award in 1984.
“It was like a very slow unwrapping of everything Mara had experienced growing up with her father and their long relationship. And we became friends. She was this incredible person and was so wise, but also still had that childlike interest in looking at the world through something her dad gave her, her gift of observing people. I feel like I was transformed by Mara.”
Mara and her family, with some assistance from the Joint Distribution Committee, made a miraculous escape from Nazi-occupied Europe on one of the last ships to bring refugees to America at the end of 1940.
For the film’s director, Bialis, there is something in Vishniac’s photographs of those doomed communities and their residents in the 1930s that transcends the mere recording of everyday life.
“I feel like when you look at his photos, you’re getting right into the face of someone, and you really meet them. This is a real person in their real habitat. He was somehow able to capture their essence — their personality. It was a spark that he captured. Photography is not just light and film. There’s a thing that happens, a magic spark for a second that happens between the photographer and his subject. And he had something that was able to get these people to give him that.”
Vishniac’s Eastern European photos were financed by the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
After his arrival in America on the eve of World War II, Vishniac worked to reinvent himself. During the last 50 years of his life, before his death in 1990, he shifted from being a deeply intuitive photographer of people to becoming an intense observer of the natural world, particularly as a pioneer in the use of microphotography to study nature up close.
His work was featured in Life Magazine, and he lectured widely about nature and basked in his celebrity. But arguably, his scientific photography never achieved the richness and depth of those pre-Holocaust years when he was searching out the many faces he fleetingly captured in Warsaw, Krakow, Lodz, and Munkacs.
“Vishniac’s” director, Laura Bialis, says that the photographer had an ability to capture the unique relationship between photographer and subject.
“Vishniac” is one of those rare documentaries which has a professional artistic finish that honors the profound artistry of its subject and his work. The production, which effectively integrates a number of recreations of many of the incidents in both Mara and her father’s life, was put together by producer Roberta Grossman, who has been a frequent presence at the AJFF. She was joined by the executive producer, Nancy Spielberg, Steven Spielberg’s sister.
The script, by Sophie Sartain, that neatly wraps up the many strands of Vishniac’s professional and personal life, and the music by Todd Boekelheide, subtly and effectively punctuate the film. Finally, the deft handling of all the many elements that make up the final production by the editor, Chris Callister, is truly remarkable.
The documentary is one of Bernstein and Bahr’s Best Bets at the festival, It arrives in Atlanta after a heavy schedule of screenings domestically and internationally, where it was the closing night film at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival and was chosen best documentary in this year’s Jewish film festival held in, of all places, Hong Kong.
New NYC Art Space, Storage APT, Opens with Barbara Nitke Photography Exhibition, ‘American Ecstasy’
Storage Tribeca director, Onyedika Chuke, is launching a new project space, Storage APT, opening on Valentine’s Day with a solo exhibition of Barbara Nitke’s photography series, American Ecstasy.
Chuke is launching Storage APT as “a deeply intimate, lesser-commercial setting.”
KEA KAPOI
Chuke conceived of Storage APT (Art Presentation Template) as a “deeply intimate, lesser commercial setting” and is running the space out of his own Bowery apartment. While apartment galleries have a long history in urban centers, Chuke notes that, for him, “it’s a matter of creating a space that lets people get closest to the work and fosters community.”
Chuke views Storage APT as a live/work experiment and plans to host artist talks, dinners, and experimental projects out of the space. He is also intrigued by the inherent vulnerability in this venture. “I’m making myself vulnerable by letting the public into my apartment…viewers are also making themselves vulnerable…but there’s an intimacy, a warmth, a quality of light that you won’t find in a traditional gallery space.”
Storage APT is aimed at fostering a warm space where works are presented at a living, human scale … [+]
KEA KAPOI
Chuke is opening Storage APT with a solo exhibition of Barbara Nitke’s series, American Ecstasy—a provocative retrospective of photographs taken by Nitke (b. 1950) while she was working as a photographer on adult film sets in New York City in the 1980s.
Chuke explains that his discovery of Nitke’s work happened quite by accident and feels there is a sort of serendipitous magic in opening his apartment art space with this exhibition. “I discovered Barbara’s work after returning my rental truck when I moved to this apartment…I was walking down 23rd Street and saw a pop-up exhibition. I was immediately intrigued and had to learn more…I realized her work—which was largely shot on sets in New York City apartments, was perfect for my vision of Storage APT.”
Nitke’s images “reveal…great beauty, tinged with sadness, punctuated by surreal silliness.” – From … [+]
Barbara Nitke
The exhibition explore Nitke’s color photographs of adult film actors on set between 1982 and 1991 and “reveals the elegant and spiritual connections between [adult film] actors.”
Intimate, raw, and at times silly, Chute was drawn to the power of Nitke’s female gaze in a male-dominated industry. “It was important to me to show Nitke’s work in a way that allows viewers to get close to her subjects…there’s an element of voyeurism but I love that she is taking back the male gaze.” Chute is also interested in the retro nature of the work, noting that Nitke is now in her 70s, as are many of the featured actors. “They’ve all moved on with their lives,” Chute says, “some of them are grandparents! It really made me think about the art world’s fascination with youth and what it means to age in our society.”
“It was the power to capture that fleeting glimpse into someone’s soul, and preserve it forever, … [+]
Barbara Nitke
Chute is looking forward to exploring the possibilities of programming at Storage APT. “We’re excited to build community…one night we’re going to serve the food the actors had on set, we’re going to have the actors in for talks—we really want Storage APT to be a space to learn and explore. It’s counter-market and it’s niche, but that’s all very attractive to me.”
American Ecstasy opens at Storage APT February 14th from 5-8pm. RSVP Only.
Please contact info@storageartgallery.com or DM Storage Archive for more information.
