SAN FRANCISCO – The bustling lunchtime crowd at Hole in the Wall Pizza in the Sunset district is about to get even busier. 

Awadalla Awadalla, the owner of the pizzeria, is gearing up for a special evening as he prepares to showcase his New York-style pizzas at the inaugural Sunset Night Market.

“I have a booth in the Night Market, so we’re getting ready. We’re doing a display, lights, and everything. We’re going to start setting up our booth soon,” said Awadalla.

Awadalla has been serving up slices of pizza on Irving Street since 1997. On Friday night, his delectable creations will take center stage at the Sunset Night Market, a first-of-its-kind event.

“We believe Night Market is going to change the atmosphere and the thinking of the people. They will feel better leaving their houses, walking around, and partying on the streets. We think it’s going to change the mentality of the people,” Awadalla added.

The Night Market arrives at a crucial time for businesses in the area, which have been grappling with an increase in crimes that have driven customers away. Sam Kaleh, who owns a convenience store near Awadalla’s pizzeria, is all too familiar with this issue.

“Crime is bad. They just broke my window in the morning. The police called me at 5 in the morning,” Kaleh lamented.

Both Awadalla and Kaleh enthusiastically support the Night Market, an event organized by Supervisor Joel Engardio.

“This Night Market is about creating joy, celebrating all the fun things in life—art, music, food. Night markets, they bring people together, they make streets safer. They give small businesses a boost—all the things we need in San Francisco right now,” Engardio explained.

The inspiration for the Sunset Night Market came from Engardio’s husband, who hails from Taipei. During their visits to Taiwan, they marveled at the vibrant night markets there.

Engardio realized that the Sunset District needed its own version.

The supervisor collaborated with local businesses to turn this vision into a reality.

The result is a lively street party that will take place from 5 to 10 p.m., featuring 70 stands offering a variety of food, games, and arts and crafts. Attendees can enjoy three entertainment stages with musical acts throughout the evening and even hit the dance floor with a DJ.

For Awadalla and Kaleh, this event represents an opportunity to not only showcase their offerings but also to make some extra income. Kaleh, in particular, is preparing extra batches of his famous brownies to meet the expected demand.

So how was business at Armory Week in New York, really?

As the art world rushes from event to event, driven by a mix of FOMO and transactional fervor, it can be hard to discern what’s actually happening on the ground in real time. The spin is thick. The stakes are high. And the next trade show is already on the horizon—not to mention the upcoming auction season, led (so far) by the $120 million Pablo Picasso from the late Emily Fisher Landau’s collection.

There’s no denying it: Things have changed. The pandemic art boom is over, even as the virus is back with a new strain.

The first-day reports of brisk sales—our own included—were somewhat inconclusive. In fact, the Armory Show exhibitors reported so few sales over the course of the week that Artnet News’s regular “Price Check!” roundup of fair transactions had to be shelved this time around. Was this because most of the savvy, publicity-generating mega-galleries—armed to the teeth with PR teams—opted not to participate in the fair, while the smaller galleries that did aren’t liable to telegraph their sales to the media?  

The Armory Show, 2023. Photo: Vincent Tullo

This year’s fair came with a heavy load of competing events in New York and far away. The season-opening rush included openings on consecutive days of Frieze Seoul in Korea and the Armory Show in the Big Apple. Both brands are now owned by the Endeavor Group, which bought the Armory Show for $24.4 million, giving birth to a new hashtag: #Friezmory.

Further diluting attendance, Independent 20th Century—a boutique fair focused on the overlooked artists—opened to the VIPs at exactly the same time as the Armory all the way on the other side of the island. Collectors and advisers had to juggle art events with their children’s back-to-school frenzies, not to mention post-vacation jetlag. The congested schedule translated into fairly unpopulated aisles—and, not surprisingly, slower sales.

This, at least, is the consensus of the market professionals the Art Detective spoke to for this column.

“It didn’t feel urgent,” said Alex Glauber, the recently elected president of the Association of Professional Art Advisors. “There wasn’t the velocity of sales. There weren’t that many compelling works you felt like you had to rush over and buy.”

To be sure there were bright spots. At the Armory, Victoria Miro sold all 11 paintings by Maria Berrio in its booth for as much as $200,000. Paintings by emerging artist Lydia Blakeley, priced at $2,000 to $20,000, were all snapped up too at Niru Ratnam of London.

Installation view of Lydia Blakeley’s work at the Armory Show, 2023. Courtesy of Niru Ratnam Gallery.

At Independent, Nahmad Contemporary sold out its booth of historic paintings by Marie Laurencin, with prices ranging from $50,000 to $250,000. Galerie Lelong sold three of its five paintings by Mildred Thompson, at $85,000 each.

Paintings by Winfred Rembert at James Barron Art drew rave reviews in the press, but just one sale was finalized by the fair’s end. Prices ranged from $225,000 to $400,000.

“More importantly, we have museums interested and that will take time, but we are in no rush,” Barron told me. “Given our goal of reaching an audience through museums so that Rembert’s life and art are shared, we are trying to match donors with the proper museums.”

Meanwhile, art dealer Allegra LaViola felt impatient at the Armory Show. Her Sargent’s Daughters gallery mounted a striking solo presentation by El Paso, Texas-born Carlos Rosales-Silva, who just completed a large commission for the San Antonio Museum of Art.

“In the first 20 minutes I was like: ‘Why isn’t everything sold?’” LaViola told me this week.

Sargent’s Daughters presentation of Carlos Rosales-Silva at the Armory Show. Courtesy of the artist and Sargent’s Daughters. Photo: Nicholas Knight.

“We got a little spoiled by the pandemic environment, where random people would email you and buy random works sight unseen,” she said. “It wasn’t normal—at least not for me. Now we returned to the playing field where people want a sure thing. They want what they know, what’s been vetted, or what they’ve been waiting for. There’s less desire to take a chance—even if the works are very inexpensive.”

The 12 works on view were priced between $5,000 and $10,000, a comfortable range for most VIP collectors to say yes to. LaViola sold seven works, and is optimistic about placing the remaining five.

“The main goal was to have a lot of eyeballs on his work,” she said about the fair.

LaViola wasn’t alone in noting that “things were moving, but not flying.” Other dealers stressed having “good conversations”— the ultimate code word for making lemonade out of art-fair lemons—instead of frenzied sales.

Todd Levin, a veteran art adviser, said the slower pace of transactions during Armory Week represented the market’s return to normalcy after several seasons of being “out of whack” due to rampant speculation. Back then, investors flocked to the market from around the world on the hunt for inexpensive works by emerging artists in hope of reselling them a year or even months later.

Winfred Rembert, Watermelon, Saturday Evening (2003). Presented by James Barron Art at Independent 20th Century.

“Untested artists selling at auction for $400,000, $600,000, $800,000, $1.2 million—they don’t deserve those numbers,” he said.

Now, with interest rates still rising and money much more expensive than a year ago, let alone at the peak of the pandemic, many speculators are out of the market.

“I wasn’t shocked when dealers said the fair was OK but not gangbusters, or when collectors said, ‘Yeah, I went but didn’t buy anything,’” Levin said.

On the primary market, we’ll have to get more data points next month when blue-chip galleries will converge at Frieze London and, afterwards, at the keenly anticipated Paris+ par Art Basel.

Then November will be the big test of the secondary market, with many exceptionally high-quality works coming to auction—a panoply of masterworks that could either act as a defibrillator on the softening market or further flatline it.

Sotheby’s won many of them so far. The Emily Fisher Landau collection—highlighted by that high-value 1932 Picasso, Femme à la montre (“Woman With a Watch”)—is the most stunning trove going under the hammer so far. Art dealer John Cheim is parting with a significant painting by Joan Mitchell, estimated at $20 million. And the Long Museum’s founders hope to get more than $45 million for their Modigliani in Hong Kong next month.  

Advisers believe that wealthy collectors are still willing to splurge on the best of the best—if not the rest.

“If that Picasso doesn’t bring at least $100 million at auction, I’ll hang my hat,” Levin said.

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ArtRio opened its 13th edition in Rio de Janeiro this week, with a noticeable uptick in participation from international galleries at its photogenic location on the shore of the city’s Guanabara Bay at Marina da Glória. According to organisers, the fair this year boasts 25% more space for the 80 galleries participating, a significant bump from the 62 that took part in 2022—which was its first full-scale edition since before the pandemic.

“What kept our fair going these last few years was the national market, but now I feel a new interest from international galleries and my expectation is that we can gradually open up this international market again, bringing to Rio de Janeiro these galleries while also showing our artists to international players,” Brenda Valansi, ArtRio’s founder and president, tells The Art Newspaper.

According to the most recent edition of Art Basel and UBS’s annual report The Art Market, sales within South America accounted for the overwhelming majority (81%) of Brazilian dealers’ sales in 2022. The post-Covid-19 rebound in the country’s art market also slowed significantly in 2022, to just 1% growth year-on-year—in 2021, South American dealers’ sales surged 29%.

“We are experiencing a renewal of our international role both in the number of international galleries but also the number of foreign collectors, curators and visitors coming to this year’s ArtRio,” Valansi says.

This year’s fair features a small but significant cohort of six international exhibitors from Uruguay, the United States, Italy and Portugal. One of them is Sur Galeria from Maldonado, Uruguay. Absent from the fair since 2020, Martin Castillo, the gallery’s co-founder, says it was important to return to Rio.

“Brazil has a very strong position in the Latin American art market,” Castillo says. “It is one of the countries that measure the temperature of the region’s art market and ArtRio is unique, because here there is has a very distinct combination of sea and sun.”

Another international gallery participating in ArtRio is Lisbon-based Francisco Fino. The gallery, making its debut at the fair, is showing a solo stand of works by Brazilian painter Priscila Rooxo, a winner of the fair’s Foco Prize last year.

Rooxo has become one of the darlings of Brazilian collectors, for her raw depictions of daily life for people in Rio’s poorer neighbourhoods. “My work talks about gender, territory and class,” she says. “It has a social footprint, with the vision of peripheral women like me.”

The fair is once again divided between Earth and Sea pavilions, the latter gaining a second floor of stands. The exhibitors are divided into five sectors, including Vista—a section in the Sea pavilion devoted to galleries founded in the last ten years—and the Mira programme devoted to works by artists whose work is influenced by cinema. The fair’s sector for solo presentations, located on the lower level of the Sea pavilion and curated for the second consecutive year by curator Ademar Britto, features solo stands from 16 galleries.

“Galleries did an excellent job this edition, bringing very important works of both Brazilian modernism and contemporary art in general,” says Valansi.

“ArtRio gave a boost to the Rio art market,” says Sergio Gonçalves, whose namesake gallery is participating for the first time. “Moving the fair to the Marina da Glória was the turning point.” From his stand, Gonçalves can see one of Rio’s most famous postcard views of Sugarloaf Mountain. He adds, “There’s no fair in the world with this view.”

Gonçalves says that many of the artists featured on his stand have never participated in fairs in Rio de Janeiro. “I try not to bring in those artists who are already in the mainstream,” he says. “I really want people to discover new artists. I would like to help form this new generation of future collectors.”

One of the most visited stands during the fair’s preview was that of Belo Horizonte-based Lemos de Sá Gallery, which features a solo presentation of Brazilian artist René Machado’s very sought-after paintings.

“Demand is phenomenal,” Machado says. “The fair is very well structured, and we are receiving visitors from all over.” By the end of the preview day, Machado said one work had sold and there were several reserved by interested buyers.

“ArtRio has the characteristic of being very fresh, very cutting edge,” says Brazilian curator and art critic,.

According to the curator and critic Paulo Herkenhoff—who was the general director of the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes and the first cultural director of the Museu de Arte do Rio—ArtRio brings together all the issues and themes that have defined Brazilian art in the 21st century, including contemporary Indigenous art, art by and about Brazil’s communities of African descent and LGBTQ+ artists.

“All of this coexists in a charming way,” Herkenhoff says. “It’s a tsunami from contemporary Brazil. This is the uniqueness of ArtRio.”

• ArtRio, until 17 September, Marina da Glória, Rio de Janeiro

Alchemy and the depths of the occult manifest within Remedios Varo’s practice. The Spanish surrealist (1908-1963), whose works are on view at the Art Institute of Chicago, was a researcher at heart with a vast, insatiable curiosity for discovering the unseen and underrecognized. Interested in scientific disciplines like astronomy and ecology along with psychology, tarot, and feminism, Varo was intent on expanding the limits of human perception. “I deliberately set out to make a mystical work, in the sense of revealing a mystery, or better, of expressing it through ways that do not always correspond to the logical order, but to an intuitive, divinatory, and irrational order,” she’s quoted as saying.

Born María de los Remedios Alicia y Rodriga Varo y Uranga in Catalonia, the artist was a natural polymath, having taken a childhood interest in her father’s work as a hydraulic engineer while reading the sci-fi novels of French author Jules Verne. Her early experiences and desire to learn informed what became her artistic practice and ushered her entrance into Surrealism. After a few years of living and working in Paris, Varo, like many of her contemporaries, fled Europe before World War II and relocated to Mexico City, where she lived until she had a heart attack and died at age 54.

“Armonía (Harmony)” (1956)

In Science Fictions, more than 60 of Varo’s paintings, sketches, and sculptures are on view at a U.S. museum for the first time in 23 years. The enchanting works evidence the artist’s esoteric affinities and are rife with unexpected magic. “Creation of the Birds,” for example, centers on a hybrid, owl-like character who appears to paint winged creatures that are brought to life by a stellar beam. Similarly, “Useless Science, or The Alchemist,” depicts a cloaked figure turning a crank that powers a towering apparatus of gears and pulleys, producing a pale green liquid at the base.

While Varo’s subject matter is often rooted in experimentation and discovery, so was her physical making process. She tended to produce cartoons, or full-scale preparatory drawings, that she would transfer to a panel or canvas. These renderings offered structural support to her more capricious techniques like blotting, scraping, and decalcomania, which involves pressing a painted material against another surface so that both are temporarily joined by a layer of wet paint. This creates organic, biomorphic planes when pulled apart. The vast quantity of textures adds to the cosmic, enchanting qualities of Varo’s works, which she produced layer by layer, sometimes embedding natural materials like mother-of-pearl within the compositions.

“Simpatía (La rabia del gato) (Sympathia)” (1955)

Although lesser known in the U.S., the artist is well-established in Latin America. Varo is part of a trio of artists dubbed “the three witches,” along with Leonora Carrington and photographer Kati Horna, and was active in Surrealist circles in Mexico. “Varo has been revered as a cult figure since the 1950s, her allure stemming from the enigmatic nature of her work, both in terms of its subject matter and technique,” said curator and art historian Tere Arcq, who helped organize the exhibition with Art Institute curator Caitlin Haskell. Presented in partnership with Museo de Arte Moderno, Science Fictions is widely lauded for recognizing and expanding access to Varo’s contributions to art history, both of which are long overdue.

Given her enduring search for transcendence and transformation, would Varo have considered the artworks themselves an act of alchemy? “That’s a fascinating question,” Haskell says. “She was certainly reading about alchemy, as we know from her library, and she was not alone among the artists in her circle to be thinking about analogies between art making and alchemy. In a metaphorical sense, yes.”

Remedios Varo: Science Fictions is on view through November 27.

“Ciencia inútil, o El alquimista (Useless Science, or The Alchemist)” (1955), Museo de Arte Moderno, INBAL / Secretaría de Cultura.

Detail of “Creación de las aves (Creation of the Birds)” (1957)

“La huida (The Escape)” (1961), Museo de Arte Moderno, INBAL/Secretaría de Cultura. Photo by Rodrigo Chapa

Detail of “Armonía (Harmony)” (1956)

“Tauro (Taurus)” (1962), Museo de Arte Moderno, INBAL/Secretaría de Cultura. Photo by Rodrigo Chapa

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Reimagining European art historical genres with a special affinity for the Romanticists, artist and illustrator Bill Mayer’s wry and moody paintings (previously) merge fantastical figures with vast landscapes. From a haughty crow with insect companions to a giant goldfish overseeing a lone figure on the coast, the artist’s enigmatic scenes highlight hybrid creatures and unexpected relationships.

“The Bird-Woman” is currently part of Beinart Gallery’s Small Works 2023 exhibition, which runs September 16 through October 8 in Melbourne, and Mayer’s work will also be a part of a group show in December with Principle Gallery. Explore more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

“Old Crow”

“Afternoon Tea”

“The Bird-Woman”

“The Black Swan”

“La Caracol”

“Mantis”

“Ringo, the Beatle”

“The Monkey’s Paw”

“When Insects Rule the World (Beetle)”

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 Enormous Animals and Human Hybrids Interact in Enigmatic Landscapes by Bill Mayer appeared first on Colossal.

Student Government hosted their own version of the South Bend farmer’s market Thursday afternoon, featuring vendors from the South Bend area.

Anna Jang, student government’s director of community engagement, said the goal of the market is to expose Notre Dame students to local businesses.

“We did contact a lot of different businesses in the South Bend area, and then these wonderful vendors got back to us. And they get to keep 100% of their proceeds,” Jang said.

In addition to local vendors, Downtown South Bend, a nonprofit organization that partners with the city to put on events downtown, had a booth to tell students about opportunities in the area. Quinn McKenna, who graduated from Notre Dame last year and organized the first farmer’s market on campus, now works at Downtown South Bend.

“Over the last like 15 years, we’ve just seen a ridiculous transformation in South Bend and downtown South Bend especially. It’s just a really vibrant city, a beautiful place to be,” McKenna said. “And there’s so much that goes on that people don’t know about.”

While studying at Notre Dame, McKenna said she noticed that students usually engage with South Bend in a service partnership.

“There’s so many awesome businesses, so many cool restaurants, coffee shops, that sort of thing. I think the goal of this student [government] department, in particular, is so awesome because they want Notre Dame students to engage with the community in a non-service context,” she said.

For students looking to explore downtown, McKenna recommended Cloud Walking Coffee or First Fridays, an event for which the city blocks off the 100 block of Michigan street to feature live music, dining, retail specials and more.

Four other vendors, some of which also own booths at the South Bend farmers market, sold food or merchandise Thursday.

Trudy Mark bakes kieflies, a traditional Hungarian pastry, for her South Bend farmer’s market booth called Mom’s Kieflies.

In 2015, after hearing that a few of the bakery spots were closing at the farmer’s market, she decided to start selling kieflies during the holidays.

“We took them in on a Saturday, and we were sold out by 11 a.m. So we took them in again the next Saturday … and we were sold out by one,” Mark said. “Ever since then, we’ve been just generally building over the years, and now I own a booth that I’ve had for five years.”

Mark inherited the family recipe for kieflies and runs Mom’s Kieflies with her family.

“It means [a lot] for me … to have my family working all together,” Mark said. “My daughter helps with the Facebook, and she’ll roll dough. My son sells out of Mishawaka farmer’s market, and he rolls the dough. My grandkids do the stickers and cards sometimes and help out too. So it’s just a family affair.”

Jenna Trethewey was also at the farmer’s market, operating her shop. The Olive Tale sells handmade jewelry, and customers can order customized jewelry with lines from their favorite books.

“I started my jewelry business over three and a half years ago. I went sober, and I needed something to do to keep my mind busy and my hands off the bottle, so I started messing around with jewelry,” Trethewey said. 

The Olive Tale is a regular vendor at the New Buffalo farmer’s market in Michigan, and Trethewey also sells at art-focused events in South Bend.

Early in the afternoon, a GrubHub robot on the way to deliver an order knocked over her tent, and it ripped while Trethewey was parking her car. Despite the mishap, though, she said the students were enthusiastic about her art and the music was “fab.”

Shaina Poland was also selling jewelry and authentic gemstone accessories for her booth Gems of Pride.

“I do sell at the Mishawaka farmer’s market as well as the South Bend one,” Poland said. “It’s actually been really fun selling to students because a lot of my styles are more geared towards a younger demographic, and so it’s nice to be able to do a pop-up where it’s a good fit for me and my artwork.”

Daniel Jung, student body president, said he hopes the market helped students realize how much variety South Bend can offer.

“I mean, we’re all about community building at student government, and we see the South Bend community as part of the Notre Dame community,” Jung said. “For us to be able to reach out to them and for them to be so gracious to come here, it really speaks volumes about this collaboration, this partnership and we’re really excited to continue going forward.”

Tags: Downtown South Bend, farmers market, first fridays, gems of pride, local art, mom’s kiefles, South Bend, South Bend Farmer’s Market, Student government, the olive tale, Vendors

The new Singapore Gallery Weekend is poised to take advantage of the region’s relatively optimistic art market.

The global auction market cooled 18% during the first half of 2023, but Southeast Asia seems to be faring better than many regions thanks to a surge of new events and activities.

According to Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2023, auction sales dipped in Japan, South Korea, and other smaller markets internationally in 2022. Singapore was an exception, with double-digit growth largely thanks to Sotheby’s first live Modern and Contemporary Art sale in the city in 15 years in August 2022.

Art fair ART SG debuted this year at Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands, with reportedly strong sales from major international galleries such as White Cube, Gagosian, and David Zwirner.

The city also recently announced a new gallery weekend launching on 15 September, in conjunction with the annual Singapore Grand Prix which drew a record-breaking 302,000 in 2022, following a two-year pandemic-induced hiatus.

There’s reason for optimism in other countries in the region too. While Singapore narrowly avoided a recession in Q2 of 2023, with the economy growing just 0.3%, Indonesia’s economy grew 5.17%, laying a strong foundation for Art Jakarta from 17 to 19 November.

Art Fair Philippines returned for its tenth edition in February with 63 exhibitors, an uptick from 46 exhibitors last year. (The fair returns from 16 to 18 February, 2024.) The country’s leading gallery, SILVERLENS, expanded westwards with an outpost in New York last July.

Artists from the region are also seeing sustained interest.

Ken Tan, who oversees Lehmann Maupin‘s business in Southeast Asia, said, ‘the recent results of the major Asian auction sales will show a strong appetite for artists in the region. This is because of the quality of the work—I think collectors are ever more discerning in our current economic climate and will pay for great work, since primary access is increasingly more difficult.’

Exhibition view: Jane Lee, Melt VII (2017). Acrylic and heavy gel on fibreglass. 180 x 150 cm. Courtesy Sotheby’s, Singapore.

Sotheby’s Singapore auction in July raised US $11.1 million compared to, US $17.5 million last year, but contemporary women artists performed well.

Singaporean artist Jane Lee‘s Melt VII (2017) achieved US $140,877 and Indonesian artist Christine Ay Tjoe‘s The Team of Red (2013) sold for US $576,818—both above high estimates.

Jasmine Prasetio, Sotheby’s Managing Director, Southeast Asia, said, they are ‘fantastic artists with unique sense of style and identities who worked conscientiously with idealism and persistence throughout their lifetime or established careers.’

‘In their own ways, they broke boundaries and gained recognition and validation from a strong following of collectors from their own domestic circle as well as from international patrons and institutions,’ Prasetio said.

I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih, Mesatya 97 (Mesatya Ceremony 97) (1999). Acrylic on canvas. 89 x 69.5 cm. Courtesy Gajah Gallery.

Ay Tjoe was an honouree at the 2019 Asia Arts Game Changer Awards, Hong Kong, from Asia Society while Lee currently has a solo exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum.

Ning Chong, a Singaporean art consultant and collector, observed that collectors in the region have their eyes on Lee, citing her ‘almost sold out shows’ at Singapore’s Gajah Gallery and STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery this year.

Additionally, Chong referenced Indonesian auction company Larasati Singapore’s first in-person auction this April, when Lee’s The Little Red Painting (2009) sold for SG $36,600 (US $27,000), well above Larasati’s pre-sale estimate of SG $15,000–20,000 (US $11,000–15,000).

Chong said another artist to watch is I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih (1966–2006), who has seen growing interest this year.

Joseph Kong, Sales Manager at Gajah Gallery, described Murniasih as ‘an indomitable voice in the Indonesian art scene.’

‘We recently exhibited her works at Tokyo Gendai, and a solo feature at Art Basel in Basel, where her works sold to several institutions and important private collectors.’ —[O]