https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/artist-short-changed-after-shanghai-show

Ran Dian is publishing the Chinese translation under license from The Art Newspaper.

Screenshot of the original online version of the article published by The Art Newspaper on October 7, 2020

“Auction sales across all formats nearly halved in the year to July 10, according to ArtTactic’s “2020 In Review” report published this week. Total sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips fell from $5.7bn in the equivalent period last year to $2.9bn in 2020.” —Auction sales halve in 2020 in spite of online boost, by Melanie Gelis, Financial Times, July 24, 2020: https://www.ft.com/content/5389a93d-836e-4525-9cac-0ca2b639c6ad (pay wall)

The art market continues to cling to the false hope of a digital savior. This is deluded.

Funnily enough it repeats a frequent misconception about digital art: mistaking the medium for the message when often the medium is…just medium, and mediocre at that. To be blunt, the digital art market is not bigger, more important or even more efficient than the existing physical market. This is, unsurprisingly, partly because in the case of art, still mainly physical objects, the digital, the virtual are generally not as good as the real thing (unless they are the real thing: the art itself, not an image of it but the digital recording…as you see, things quickly get circular, but we are not interested in a course of 101 Art Philosophy here, so back to the real world…). It is also because the art market operates in a top-down way, meaning that personal relationships are absolutely crucial – whether or not digital technologies are used to maintain them is beside the point. While lots of millennials may lazily click cool on an image of a giant blow up doll floating in a harbor, it is monetized in negotiations with collectors and related merchandise deals for Muji shops (like the music industry, increasingly popular new art relies upon the audience’s ignorance of history. C’est la vie).

Accordingly, there is little to be drawn from the reported online sales at Art Basel. As usual, sales staff at galleries email and phone and send WeChat and WhatsApp messages to their clients. Yes, some artworks are sold using digital platforms such as artnet and artsy but this does not replace the existing market. Nor would we want it to, for it is really boring to reduce the experience of art to catalogue browsing. And besides, we already have auctions for that.

This is not to dismiss online viewing rooms. They are repetitive and dull but right now also necessary, or at least better than nothing. The bigger issue is how can new technologies make the experience of art more interesting. The benefits of bringing museums to isolated classrooms are obvious but benefits to the market are less clear other than simply more images and (very imperfect) price comparison.

The real advantage of adapting technology to the art market will be storage – location, security, insurance. But the real innovations will come not from new technology but simply scale – the bigger and more fluid the market, the more opportunities there will be for exhibiting, collecting and trading art, and in some cases also for controlling supply and even market manipulation. But we will leave that discussion for another day.

Meanwhile, something less easily defined and more intriguing is happening. Howsoever the art market may like to present itself, the practice of art making is fragmenting. It is increasingly cross-disciplinary, and not merely between related media such as film, design, fashion and architecture, but also with biology, physics and politics (it always had these links but now they are increasingly diverse, complicated, frequent and influential – think of the works of Olaf Elliasson and Tomás Saraceno). It is also increasingly unmediated, with artists becoming famous without the need for galleries, collectors and museums. They don’t even need to be talented, merely social media savvy. Finland has already given away traditional school subjects such as physics, math, languages, in favor of an interdisciplinary world – it makes sense, because this is how the world is. This is just the beginning. Many other areas of society are going to be structured in increasingly interdisciplinary and fluid ways. Artistic practice will be a mode of thought applied to many aspects of life, but that does not mean it will necessarily have an economic value or commercial system the way it does now. It will still be traded because it usually has a decorative value of some sort and is a conveniently transportable marker of value. Whether such things will be of any interest to the most brilliant artistic minds of the near future is however utterly uncertain, doubtful even – except perhaps in the field of trademark licensing.

So while we mope desultorily through yet another online viewing room, scroll through the latest auction sale, ignore the don’t-miss-digital-forum, remember this is actually the smallest, least interesting corner of the expanding art universe. The digital experience is still flawed and inadequate compared with reality. Or rather, it is something different. It replaces nothing, yet. Or perhaps the art world is just averse to moving fast and breaking things. As the Joker says–

“Introduce A Little Anarchy, Upset The Established Order, And Everything Becomes Chaos.”

Gallery Weekend Kuala Lumpur
15-17 November 2019

Malaysia rarely makes global headlines, and neither does its art, but the Southeast Asian nation has a new optimism that is spilling into its culture after the first ever successful opposition win and transfer of power in the 35-year history of the ostensible democracy in May 2018. The diverse Nusantaran home of some 30 million people is frequently overshadowed by its immediate neighbors: size and vibrancy gives fellow Muslim majority nation Indonesia a spotlight, while the small and orderly fellow former British colony Singapore has tighter cultural and economic ties with the West.

The breadth of Malaysia’s small but energetic art scene took center stage last November for the fourth edition of Gallery Weekend Kuala Lumpur. Organised by collector and art advisor Shalini Ganendra, the nonprofit GWKL aims to raise Malaysia’s cultural profile through a particular focus on expanding local art audiences. With its Luminaries programme, a roster of six to eight visiting Asia-Pacific art professionals convene for an intensive tour of art venues in the Malaysian capital, and join panels with local artists and curators.

Its 2019 participants included senior curator of Singapore’s National Gallery Adele Tan, deputy director of curatorial programmes at Singapore’s NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Karin Oen, indigenous Taiwanese independent curator Biung Ismahasn, and Aga Khan Museum curator Marika Sardar. This year saw the expansion of Malaysian panelists to 25% of the total, including Islamic Art Museum Malaysia’s head of curatorial affairs Heba Nayel Barakat, textile historian Edric Ong and artist Ahmad Fuad Osman. “The response this year is the strongest so far, and the organic growth was evident in the very full Luminary sessions, filled tours and increased gallery traffic,” says Ganendra.

“GWKL is a cultural platform providing an immersive introduction to quality culture in Kuala Lumpur,” says Ganendra. She lists its immediate goals as “facilitating engagement between public and culture through enjoyable, accessible and free programming” –  with no charges for audiences or participant galleries and institutions, which this year included galleries Suma Orientalis, Taksu and Ganendra’s SG Advisory and Residence Gallery and nonprofits Rumah Lukis, the Sekeping Collection and Badan Warisan Heritage Society. Also, it “connects experts, both local and global, for the development of transnational engagement [while] growing cultural tourism to Malaysia.”

Last year’s dramatic elections saw the upset win of side-switching former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, now 94, over entrenched religious populist Najib Razak. Najib was subsequently detained for corruption charges including his role in the 1MDB embezzlement scandal. The corruption crackdown has taken a toll on art sales; of its four art auctioneers Edge Galerie has folded, and KL Lifestyle, Masterpiece Malaysia and Henry Butcher are reportedly struggling. Butcher organises local fair Art Expo, running 13 years. “An expected market correction is happening now,” Ganendra says. “The new government has been supportive of culture in principle, supporting independent efforts through endorsement and promotion.”

“There are not many changes since the new government, as [art] has always been a ground up initiative. But there are more activities for a few years now, as there are more active galleries,” says Richard Koh, who represents Southeast Asian artists through his eponymous gallery opened in Kuala Lumpur in 2005 and now with locations in Singapore and Bangkok. “The local auctions have slowed down like most markets, but dealers here are not as badly hit as it’s still a pretty small market.” He describes it as “still inward and mainly local” with a handful of established collectors buying regionally or globally. “We do have some pretty good and interesting artists and they are slowly getting the exposure they deserve,” such as sculptural weaver Anne Samat, who in 2019 had shows in Taiwan, South Korea, Norway, New York and Bangkok.

With the new government, Ganendra says, “there is a sense of a more responsible and open censorship policy, with more confidence in the expression of ideas. [It's] a more confident government.” Earlier incidents of censorship included the removal of a work titled Under Construction, by collaborating collectives Pusat Sekitar Seni and Population Project from Malaysia and Indonesia, ostensibly for Communist content, during the inaugural Kuala Lumpur Biennale in 2017. A second edition of the biennale, at the state-run National Visual Art Gallery, is in the works for 2020.

The Red Bean Grows in the South
Faurschou New York (148 Green Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn) December 15, 2019 – April 11, 2020
Ai Weiwei, Georg Baselitz, Louise Bourgeois, Cecily Brown, Cai Guo-Qiang, Tracey Emin, Omer Fast, Anselm Kiefer, Edward & Nancy Kienholz, Christian Lemmerz, Paul McCarthy, Richard Mosse, Joko Ono, Robert Rauschenberg, Alison Saar, Danh Vo, Yu Hong

Faurschou Foundation opened its New York branch this month with a show dedicated to fallen heroes and strident protests. Ran Dian first revealed the foundations plans to open in New York in our interview with Jens Faurschou last December. Faurschou New York resides in a former shoe factory in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint area. Designed by New York-based German architect Markus Dochantschi, the single-story building has a definite Danish understatement. From the beginning Faurschou wanted a space that was easily accessible from Manhatten and from the street.

Installation view of the exhibition “The Red Bean Grows in the South”, Faurschou New York, 2019. Photo by Ed Gumuchian, © Faurschou Foundation.

With some 1800 square meters of space, Faurschou New York balances scale with purpose: it is more about showing art than showing off. This is reflected in the opening show, “The Red Bean Grows in the South” which mixes major Western and Chinese mid- and late-career artists, about a third women. Faurschou developed the exhibition from the juxtaposition of George Baselitz’s “Mit Roter Fahne” (With a Red Flag) (1965), with its wretched German soldier returning home from Russia, and Paul McCarthy’s giant “CSSC Frederic Remington Charles Bronson” (2014–16), depicting the famously macho Hollywood actor with cowboy hat. At a time of increasing nationalism, this show critiques the glib jingoism that has taken hold in so many countries, not least America. It is not the kind of show expected from a private collection.

Photo by Ed Gumuchian, © Faurschou Foundation.

Installation view of the exhibition “The Red Bean Grows in the South”, Faurschou New York, 2019. Photo by Tom Powel Imaging, © Faurschou Foundation.

Faurschou launched his foundation in 2012 in Copenhagen in a converted warehouse on the ctiy’s docks, with some 1,500 square meters of space, of which about 900 is devoted to exhibitions. Faurschou’s former gallery space in Beijing’s 798 Art District became the Foundation’s China outpost. With its New York expansion, Faurschou Foundation is doing something quite different from other private art institutions, which often court international adulation while doing little for artistic development (just think back a couple of weeks to Miami). Instead, Faurschou Foundation is building intercontinental networks for artists and visitors, setting up the kinds of interactions that eventually lead to new collaborations, whether among artists or museums. Sure, it remains a private foundation, but its Copenhagen-Beijing-New York network has the potential to make a real and unique difference in an art world drowning in hubris.

Artist Yu Hong with Jens Faurschou at the opening of Faurschou New York. Photo by Ed Gumuchian, © Faurschou Foundation.

Installation view of the exhibition “The Red Bean Grows in the South”, Faurschou New York, 2019. Photo by Ed Gumuchian, © Faurschou Foundation.

Artist  Christian Lemmerz with Jens Faurschou at the opening of Faurschou New York. Photo by Ed Gumuchian, © Faurschou Foundation.

Installation view of the exhibition “The Red Bean Grows in the South”, Faurschou New York, 2019. Photo by Tom Powel Imaging, © Faurschou Foundation.

Installation view of the exhibition “The Red Bean Grows in the South”, Faurschou New York, 2019. Photo by Ed Gumuchian, © Faurschou Foundation.

Photo by Ed Gumuchian, © Faurschou Foundation.

Installation view of the exhibition “The Red Bean Grows in the South”, Faurschou New York, 2019. Photo by Ed Gumuchian, © Faurschou Foundation.

Installation view of the exhibition “The Red Bean Grows in the South”, Faurschou New York, 2019. Photo by Ed Gumuchian, © Faurschou Foundation.

Installation view of the exhibition “The Red Bean Grows in the South”, Faurschou New York, 2019. Photo by Ed Gumuchian, © Faurschou Foundation.

When will the Art Fair canaries stop singing?

With all this in mind, in the coming months investor eyes will be on the leading art fairs taking place internationally and in China, although how revealing they will be is questionable. The fair companies and exhibitors committed months ago and the galleries are already working hard to set up sales. Meanwhile auction sales of blue-chip artworks will probably continue to be healthy as investors seek safe havens for cash, including in art. A similar effect will be seen in China with collectors who have reliable lines of international credit who want to buy blue-chip international works and those buying blue-chip local works. Mainly it will be the same collectors. The more telling figures will be how many galleries commit to art fairs in the new year, including Art Basel Hong Kong and Taipei Dangdai. Of course by then Asia’s main art fair may have been renamed Art Basel South Shenzhen.

Take another look

Current economic uncertainty and Hong Kong will likely deter international collectors this time. It should not. International appreciation of the local Chinese art market remains profoundly undeveloped. With the exception of a relatively small group of committed people, most international collectors (and galleries) continue to be largely ignorant of the local scene, relying on recognition of a handful of names, such as the one-man PR machine. The result is one of the most idiosyncratic aspects of the Chinese art market: a disconnect between local and international artists. New York, London or Berlin may look upon an artist such as Yu Hong (b.1966) as overpriced simply because of a lack of familiarity. In truth, this disjunction between the local and international market is probably only depressing Ms Yu’s prices. As far as broadly similar works are comparable among artists (e.g. medium, size, age, reputation), with some exceptions among emerging artists, Chinese artists are still undervalued.

Yu Hong “Old Man Yu Gong Is Still Moving Away Mountains”, acrylic on canvas, 6 panels, 250 x 300 cm each, overall 500 x 900 cm, displayed at Art Basel Unlimited 2018 (image courtesy the artist and Long March Space, Beijing, photo Chris Moore)

The picture is further confused however by some artists probably being overpriced, whether because of the sheer luck of their gallery representation, facility with English, how easily their art accords with current Western preconceptions of art (abstract wallpaper or multimedia burp), and how good the artist is at playing the art game. But this problem is hardly germane to China. At the end of the day, there are still lots of promising emerging and particularly mid-career and late-career artists who have consistently produced work of profound quality, but who are still largely or even completely unknown in the West. That’s definitely a shame but a depressed market provides excellent grounds for collectors to finally pay more attention and start discovering the true breadth of the China art scene.

Time will tell whether wisdom and curiosity triumph over ignorance and nervousness. It will be very interesting to compare pre-Brexit frieze in London and fiac and Asia Now in Paris, and then in November West Bund and ART021 in Shanghai and finally in early December Art Basel Miami Beach.

Then again, by December the whole world may have gone to Hell in a hand-basket.

* Chris Moore was publisher of Ran Dian from 2010-2018. He is a partner of NRM., a curatorial consultancy. 

At this year’s Art Brussels press conference, it was announced as a positive development that 28 % of the participating artists at this year’s fair were women. To be fair, it is in fact an improvement in comparison to last year where it was only 21 %.

Despite the  broader movement in past years to re-evaluate the role of women artists in the contemporary art world, there is still more than enough reason to question these kind of statements. – Or said in another way, for some the glass might be half full but for others it is still, well, 22 % too empty.

The Berlin Gallery Weekend, another significant art-world event, took place simultaneously to Art Brussels and it was interesting to learn that before and during Gallery Weekend an anonymous campaign had been hanging up posters and stickers throughout Berlin, criticizing that 75 % of the participants were male, and that out of the 45 galleries participating in the Gallery Weekend, 38 galleries showed works by men.

I personally don’t find the term “Women Artists” very appealing and to some extent even rather “ghettoizing”, but despite the complexities of defining a minority-issue without stigmatizing at the same time, I have chosen to focus this report on the so-called “28 %” as a comment on the dubious statistics at this year’s Art Brussels.

JULIE FAVREAU
House of Egorn (Berlin)
Julie Favreau’s video work ’Will Deliquesce’ (video, 4K, 8 minutes 28 seconds, 2018) invited the viewer into an intriguing voyeuristic world, exploring the sense of touch and sensory stimulation. A curious camera moves around calmly in a small Berlin-loft apartment. It’s raining outside, which makes you, as a spectator, want to “stay inside”. After a little while you see a group of performers, that are all either naked or lightly dressed, performing intimate choreographic gestures and interactions with one another. At first glance, not a lot happens in Favreau’s erotic and aesthetic video-work, but in all its simplicity it’s a brilliant depiction of existence in its sheer and undiluted materiality.

Veeeeerrrrrmmmmmeeeeerrrrr, inkjet print, 46,66 x 70 cm, 2018 (edition of 4)
Still from ‘Will Deliquesce’, video, 4K, 8 minutes 28 seconds, 2018
Photo credit: Joseph Devitt Tramblay

Installation-view: Gallery booth of House of Egorn with work by Julie Favreau
Photo credit: Renato Ghiazza

Comfort, inkjet print, 45,7 x 68,55 cm, 2017 (edition of 4 +1AP)
Still from ‘Will Deliquesce’, video, 4K, 8 minutes 28 seconds, 2018
Photo credit: Joseph Devitt Tramblay

MERVE ISERI
Ballon Rouge Collective (Brussels)
One of the artists showing work at the gallery was the Turkish-born artist Merve Iseri (based in London). A series of Iseri’s paintings were on display which depicted figurative motives of lush and sensuous gardens and surreal abstract dreamscapes.
The newly opened nomadic gallery ‘Ballon Rouge Collective’, which has organized exhibitions in London, Istanbul, Los Angeles, Sao Paolo, Paris and New York has recently settled down in Brussels with a permanent gallery space. The B.R Collective’s booth was in the ‘Invited’ section at Art Brussels, which is a new section at the fair that includes younger galleries that haven’t previously been invited to Art Brussels and encourages alternate formats to the traditional gallery model.

Work by Merve Iseri.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Ballon Rouge Collective and Photographer David Plas

RACHEL MONOSOV
Catinca Tabacaru (New York)
Monosov’s interdisciplinary practice involves video, photography, sculpture and performance and evolves around various socio political concepts. During the fair a performer was activating Monosovs piece ‘The Space in Between’ (2019), which, in a stylized manner, limited the movement of the performers hand. I was told that the imposition of limitations and restraints on the human-body is a recurring aspect of Monosov’s work.

Art Brussels 2019, Rachel Monosov performance ‘The Space In-Between’, 2018 (cacti, earth, metals, plastics) at Catinca Tabacaru. Photo credit: David Plas

ANNE ROCHAT
Counter Space (Zurich)
At Counter Space the intriguing live performance “Obsidian” by Swiss artist Anne Rochat, attracted a large group of visitors at the opening of Art Brussels. During the performance Rochat’s nude body embraced a large block of ice generating a bodily imprint that became deeper in the course of the performance. Her gesture, both fascinating and disturbing, seemed to be a dramatic maneuver hinting at how our physical actions are generating climate-changes and hence causing ice glaciers to melt…

Anne Rochat performaning ‘Obsidian’ at Counter Space, Art-Brussels 2019
Photo credit: David Plas

ANICKA YI
Gladstone Gallery (Brussels & New York)
Simultaneously with Art Brussels, South Korean Artist Anicka Yi (based in New York) had her first exhibition at Gladstone Gallery, called ‘We Have Never Been Individual’. One of the series of work in the show were ‘aquascapes’ hanging from the wall which resembled paintings (in the broadest definition of the word) and intimate extraterrestrial landscapes. Containing fluid matter, microalgae and cyanobacteria they seemed to hint at a utopian future where humans will learn how to better use the planet’s aquatic resources and the relation between humans and microorganisms will become one that is more symbiotic. Anicka Yi is also represented at this year’s Venice Bienniale.

Anicka Yi, ’15 Hissing Cockroaches’, 2019
Acrylic, UV Prints, LEDS, glass, resin and tubing
50 x 40 x 5 inches (127 x 101.6 x 12.7 cm)
Photo credit: David Regen and Gladstone Gallery

Anicka Yi, ‘Living and Dying In The Bacteriacene’, 2019
Powder coated steel with inset acrylic vitrine, water, 3-D printed epoxy plastic and filamentous algae
33 x 25 x 5 1/2 inches (83.8 x 63.5 x 14 cm)
Photo credit: David Regen and Gladstone Gallery

Dominique Lévy has risen rapidly in the past decade to become one of the most successful and prominent art dealers in the world. Having herself worked for leading art dealers such as Anthony d’Offay in London and Daniel Malingue in Paris, Dominique embarked on a spectacular career establishing Christie’s pioneering private client division. Then in 2010 Dominique left the auction house to become an art dealer, along the way working with Robert Mnuchin and then independently again before joining forces with her erstwhile Christie’s colleague, Brett Gorvy. The reputation and success of Lévy Gorvy continues to grow and in 2017 they opened an office in Shanghai. Now they are opening a gallery in Hong Kong to complement their galleries in New York and London.

Just prior to Chinese New Year Chris Moore spoke Dominique Lévy by telephone to discuss Hong Kong and China, beginning by discussing why Lévy Gorvy first opened an office in Shanghai before opening the gallery in Hong Kong.

Rendering of Lévy Gorvy Hong Kong Exterior, 2018 Courtesy HS2 Architecture and Bill Katz Studios

Dominique Lévy: “It felt a bit disrespectful to just open an outpost in Hong Kong, bringing Western art. [We wanted] first to connect with the Mainland clients we have been working with on an international basis. We realized that Hong Kong is a wonderful business trading place but that actually we want to understand and really start working with [Mainland] collectors, and they are more comfortable having conversations in Shanghai and in Beijing. And Brett and Li Danqing, who runs our Asia outposts, were very adamant that we first get to know everyone before we opened a space in Hong Kong. So, for the first two years, I particularly went to Shanghai and Beijing and all the different cities and met with collectors and really tried to understand what was interesting to them in Western art. ‘Why collect Western art?’ – is really the question you experience the most when you meet a lot of these collectors, because there is a true tradition of collecting in Asia. It starts with extraordinary ceramics, calligraphy, even the art of living: everything is full of tradition! And in the past five to eight years [collectors] have been curious to look at Western art too.”

In short, Lévy Gorvy opened in Shanghai first to better understand how to bridge Asian art and Western art. It is the obvious thing to do but they are among the few to have done it. Perrotin opened first in Hong Kong and then Shanghai last year. Lisson Gallery and Almine Rech Gallery are both about to open in Shanghai. But before this new wave, there were only a few Western galleries. Italy’s Galleria Continua opened their Beijing space in November 2005 in what is now the 798 Art District and around the same time Lucerne’s Urs Meile in an Ai Weiwei-designed building in Cao Chang Di district. Copenhagen’s Jens Faurschou followed in 2007, with New York’s James Cohan Gallery in Shanghai and the Ullens Centre of Contemporary Art (UCCA) and Pace Beijing all in 2008, and finally Hadrien de Montferrand in 2009. A number of other Western galleries maintain private offices in Shanghai.

Dominique Lévy: “Pace did something very different and quite extraordinary because they didn’t go there to sell Western Art but to understand Asian art and to bring Chinese artists to the front scene in America. So, they did something completely different and incredibly brave at the moment when nobody [in the international art scene] was going there. For other galleries [in Hong Kong], what Brett and I noticed was that, opening these galleries was a brilliant commercial outpost but was maybe not engaging people in a more meaningful conversation. So, we went a different way. [Which is why] our opening exhibition is a reflection on the conversation between Mainland China and East Asian art and American or Western art (‘Return to Nature’).”

In choosing a space in Hong Kong, Dominique and Brett, with their Asia Director Danqing Li, also formerly of Christie’s, decided against established gallery locations in Central, such as The Pedder Building and H Queens, instead opting for the exceptionally prominent ground floor of the St. George’s Building. With about 250 square meters of space, it will also be one of the largest art galleries in the center of Hong Kong, sending a very clear signal to the Hong Kong art market of the seriousness of their intentions. Added to their existing office in Shanghai, the new gallery indicates the scale of Lévy Gorvy’s ambitions for the Asian art market generally.

Dominique Lévy: “We went with the heart rather than the head, although the head confirmed what we felt. Last year and the year before we visited the Pedder Building and the H Queens building, and all these others, and Brett and I were literally going from one building to another and saying ‘No, we don’t feel it.’ We decided to change real estate agents and go away from the ones that were doing all the galleries and we went to the ones that are doing luxury spaces and we said, ‘look, we want something that’s smaller, but we need high ceilings, something with which we can share our taste. That’s why we hired [architect] Bill Katz to do it because he really knows what our taste is. And that space is the most incredible location, so everyone not, just from Asia or Hong Kong, who passes in front of it, but also anyone from New York who comes to Hong Kong, anyone from Paris or Zurich [too]. Also, at street level… [the space] has incredibly high ceilings, which in Hong Kong is unheard of – we have almost 4-meter-high ceilings!”

Brett Gorvy, Founder, Lévy Gorvy
Photo: Zenith Richards, Courtesy Lévy Gorvy

On Brett Gorvy

Dominique has worked with numerous leading art dealers over a long time, so I asked her why Brett is different and the right person to team up with.

Dominique Lévy: “Brett and I have been friends and colleagues together at Christie’s and then from separate sides of the Atlantic [Ocean] for more than 20 years. He moved to New York when I was running Christie’s private sales. He moved from being responsible for Contemporary Art in London to Contemporary Art in New York, and we immediately connected and worked very well together. Then when I left Christie’s and continued on my own, we stayed colleagues and worked against each other and with each other for over 20 years. So, the partnership, although very new, feels incredibly natural.”

I note that this is very rare.

Dominique Lévy: “You know, the beauty of it is that we’ve had very good successes together and we’ve had to deal with very difficult situations over the years too. I believe that you know someone in business when you get into a really complicated or difficult situation. The way they behave in that moment really shows who that person is, and Brett and I have had to do that over the years. I think that is why we felt very comfortable in doing this partnership.”

Beginnings

I ask Dominique what it was it that first got her involved in art and I mention that I read that her mother took her to the first Art Basel in 1970.

Dominique Lévy: “That became a funny story – a true story but I said it only once! But may I tell you, I was three years old, and I was in a stroller. So, I don’t believe my first involvement in art came from that! My mother was from Belgium and when she moved to Switzerland, she felt it was utterly boring and the Basel art fair was a breath of eccentricity and fresh air. And she took me [along] from the get-go! When I [first] applied to the art fair in Basel, they were quite difficult with me and I said that’s unfair, I think I’m the only dealer who has been there since Art Basel One!”

So, what did prompt her to become involved in art?

Dominique Lévy: “I wanted to be a clown and an artist, and I failed in all that, so I guess becoming an art dealer was the logic after that! I started getting interested in art after studying theatre and political sciences. I met an extraordinary woman in Paris called Raymond Moulin (b. 1924) and she is one of the first art sociologists and developed the idea of art sociology. I followed her class and it completely enchanted me that you could look at history or society or political behavior all through the lens of art and art was always ahead of everything that was happening or much quicker in understanding what was happening or much quicker in illustrating and making you understand what was happening. That was my entry into art and artists actually.”

I asked Dominique, what was the next crucial step for her after leaving the Sorbonne?

Dominique Lévy: “The crucial step was realizing I couldn’t go into the theatre, I couldn’t go into the circus, but I loved art and I started meeting and becoming friends with artists in Switzerland. I organized my first exhibition following in the footsteps of sociology. A lady in Switzerland let me use her 18^th Century house and, this sounds really corny, but you’ll have it because you’ve asked, I did a show there called something like ‘Artists of Today in Yesterday’s House’ and I was 18 or 19 and invited a bunch of artists to do site-specific works in that very old house…It was an extraordinary experience! – very transformative for me in all aspects; first in finding artists, inviting artists, convincing artists, and then realizing where their imagination was taking them, finding the financing, and then becoming a dealer and selling these things and negotiating these [sales] and convincing people that these works were special. And all of that together was the first experience for me [as an art dealer] and it was while I was still a student at university.”

CM: “Do you still work with any of those artists?”

Dominique Lévy: “No, but I’m still friends with one or two but none of them became international superstars. They were mostly Swiss, good artists.”

CM: “Interestingly it’s a quite similar story to Han Ulrich Obrist and how he began.”

Dominique Lévy: “Yes! We sometimes talk about that.”

Dominique learnt her trade working with some of the most important gallerists of the time, including Daniel Malingue in Paris (father of gallerists Edouard and Olivier, respectively now in Hong Kong and London) and then Anthony d’Offay (b.1940).

Dominique Lévy: “All my mentors [were] actually all men, were great gallerists, but my [intellectual] sources, my mentors emotionally and mentally, are indeed Pierre Matisse (1900-1989) or Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) or Xavier Fourcade (1926-1987) but I never met them. Leo [Castelli] (1907-99) and [Rudolf] Zwirner (b.1933) [father of David] I met in New York and had fantastic conversations with them, but I never worked for them either. The other dealer who was not only a big source of inspiration but also a great vote of confidence, was Ernst Beyeler (1921-2010), because when I moved to New York to run private sales for Christie’s, he was the first person who trusted me and bought and sold art with and to me. I knew him for many, many years and he was someone who would trust young people and give them a chance.

After finishing my studies, I was an intern for Martha Baer at Christie’s, I think that was 1987, at the time of the first Tremain sale[one of the greatest private collections of 20^th Century Art]. And I had internship after internship, and finally I got a job with Sotheby’s when Simon de Pury (b.1951) was running Sotheby’s Geneva. I worked with him on a really extraordinary project at the time, from the Malbin Sale at the Villa Favorita to the other Tremain Sale to the sale of [van Gogh’s] ‘Moulin de la Galette’ (1886) and ‘Dr Gachet’ (1890), these two paintings that changed art history. I travelled with them to Japan. I was so lucky to be at the right place at the right time with the right people! I was given tremendous responsibility really early on and it was Daniel Malingue who poached me from Sotheby’s, and then onwards to running private sales at Christie’s.”

Danqing Li, Senior Director, Lévy Gorvy Asia
Photo: Yuan Yuan, Courtesy Lévy Gorvy

CM: “How did that come about. Because it was a crucial moment in the history of art auctions and private markets, whereby auction houses decided they were going to run private client sales and not in a small way but as a really serious part of their business, and that shifted the entire art market from how it was previously run.”

Dominique Lévy: “Correct! I think that what happened, was that very quickly auction houses realized, and at least Francois Pinault (b.1936), when he bought Christies, that auction houses were absolutely not taking advantage of the momentum after an auction. Imagine! – after an auction, not only do you have the buyers, but you have all the immediate underbidders. So, if you are well organized and well prepared, you can satisfy underbidders with private sales pretty quickly. I think he realized that and hired me to start that department; at that time. It was very much swimming against the current, because auction houses were not at all trained for that. The dealers were the enemy, and doing private sales was like you were stealing away from the auction houses. The first two years were absolutely dreadful! But once the team and the experts understood it was not taking away from but adding to them, then the machine became a huge machine. And Brett was one of the absolute first to understand how interesting this was and to accept and agree to collaborate with me while we were together at Christie’s.

CM: So even within Christie’s there was not wide acceptance for what you were trying to do?

Dominique Lévy: There was zero acceptance at the beginning, because it was not the mentality. The auction house was mostly run by a group of English boys. There were very few women, sent there from Europe, from the new ownership, and [we were regarded as] the enemy. So, there was no acceptance and no interest in it. It took the first two years for the whole Christie’s team to realize that it was making money, Number 1, and Number 2, it was getting them closer to their clients. It became a transformative culture. Now I think if you look at Sotheby’s private sales results, they did a billion dollars-worth of private sales last year. This really blew me away. I thought, oh my gosh! We started a nightmare there because now they have much more power and much more information than dealers or gallerists! We grew a monster!”

CM: “Well is it a monster? Famously, Art Basel takes a very negative view of auction houses. Any sort of galleries that have some sort of ongoing relationship with auction houses tend to never make it into Basel.”

Dominique Lévy: “I believe this is old rivalry. This is like telling you, ‘I don’t like working with a computer.’ Auction houses have an extraordinary presence. You have to separate a lot of the gallerists’ tasks, which is much more working with artists and estates and legacies and museums and publications. But if you wear any sort of commercial hat, you cannot then start criticizing or being scared of the auction-houses. You have to find the right way of working with them. This idea that they are the monsters is literally archaic. They are what they are, and you work with them in an interesting and intelligent way.

“Where I would agree that they are not suitable and shouldn’t come, is when, for example, it was announced that Christy MacLear had joined Sotheby’s and that they wanted to start having an artists-estates department and wanting to advise and run and work with artists. That I think is inappropriate for an auction house. But for everything else we should team with them and work with them in an intelligent way.”

CM: “So you’ve been at Christie’s for a number of years setting up Private Client Sales and it has gone very well. What’s the point where you decide, ‘I’ve got to go back into the gallery scene.’”

Dominique Lévy: “Five years into working with Christie’s, I felt I had done what I had to do there. I think also I’m a very bad employee; I’m too much of an entrepreneur to be an employee! I felt I had given the best I had to give, learned everything I had to learn, and I decided it was time for me to go back on my own, as I had done regularly over the years. I decided to set up a small art advisory service. It was soon after I had my first baby, I was in New York, it was soon after September 11, getting a visa, setting up – everything was a nightmare! It grew very quickly, and within the first year I realized that I was missing the connection with art when you have when you’re a gallerist and that’s when Bob Mnuchin came along. The Sufi says that when the student is ready, the Master comes. I guess I was ready.

Robert E. Mnuchin (b.1933) became an art dealer in 1992 after a long career as a banker with Goldman Sachs. He is the father of Steven Mnuchin, the current US Treasury Secretary (and executive producer of the 2017 Wonder Woman film).

“Bob Mnuchin, at that time, had just lost someone he was working with at his gallery and he asked me if I wanted to work for him. I said, no, I’m never working for anyone anymore but if you want to merge businesses and work with me, why not? I said this in a kind of joke way. It was Sunday and he said, ‘Come and see me Monday.’ By Friday, we had made a deal. I could not believe that this man, who had been a giant in everything he had done, was prepared to suddenly make a business that was L&M Arts and not something else. I trusted him a lot and I admire him a lot and we had 7 great years.”

L&M Arts operated from 2005 until 2013.

Dominique Lévy: “Towards the end of that time, we started not seeing so much eye-to-eye. Maybe it was a difference of generation or maybe the difference of culture. I wanted to be much more involved in the contemporary world. I wanted to do more art fairs. I wanted to build a more international business. I wanted to bring European art much more to America. And he was more a very plastic, post-war, American-focused dealer. So, it was time for me to start again!”

The main business of the gallery is secondary-market business, but it also represents living artists. I ask Dominique she balances this.

DL: “At the end of the day, representing an artist or representing an estate, while an artist is alive and full of energy and constantly renewing, and an estate is more about their legacy, but there is a fine line [between the two] … And parallel and complementary to this is the secondary market, which is really two halves also: the half where we are dealers, we take a position and we buy and sell art, and we have another half which is the advisory service we have developed and has been incredibly active for the gallery over the past two years. To me, they all feed into one another, are complimentary to one another.”

CM: Would you say there are one or two artists who have been particularly important to your development as an art dealer in terms of your philosophy and outlook?

Dominique Lévy: “It all started when I was working with Anthony d’Offay [the English art dealer]. That was the big leap. He put me in charge of his American artists. I was working with the de Kooning Estate, I was working with Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) and with Jasper Johns (b.1930). This made me absolutely committed to two things. One, I had to find a way to move to America. And two, I had to work with artists. That was a transformative moment. Then, once I moved to America, and after the Christie’s experience, I was missing Europe, I was missing European artists, and I felt that America was so close-minded to European artists at the time. My commitment or leap-of-faith was to decide to bring European artists to an American audience.

“The next transformative moment was representing the Yves Klein Estate, because Yves Klein (1928-62) had been an artist that the American public and American museums had absolutely loved and then forgotten when they decided to collect the great Abstract Expressionism and post-AbEx American artists. So, being able to bring Yves Klein back to America, to get his market to go from ‘zero to 10’, to get museums to look and acquire, to display, to show – the ten years of collaboration with the Yves Klein Estate was another big pillar of my career.

“I’m the product of that classic Paris-New York/New York-Paris story. You can’t look at American art without looking at European art; you cannot look at European art without being aware of American art. It’s just one. We’re so provincial if we don’t do it. And now – thank god! – we have opened that door to Latin American and Asian art. The idea that art has a nationality and that we would only collect, or only look at, or only analyze, or only criticize, or only write about one school was so provincial. …That is one of the huge transformations in the art market…

Lévy Gorvy maintains galleries in London, New York and now also Hong Kong, as well as offices in Shanghai, and Zurich. Lévy comments, “[The galleries] are spaces that are very much artist-centric. That’s where we do our exhibitions and our publications. [Our presence in] Shanghai, Zurich, and Taipei is more client-centric.”

I ask Dominique when she first came to China, and it turns out she has been visiting China and East Asia, including Japan, Korea and Singapore, frequently for 30 years: “I came with my parents as a young adult. [Later] I participated in a small art fair in Singapore, when I had my business in Switzerland. Then I was part of a conference in Shanghai which was a reflection on art in public space and how art can change people’s spirit. Then I lived in Japan for three months when I worked with Simon de Pury at Sotheby’s, developing a project on freeports. In the last seven years I have gone less – only three times a year. Brett goes much more. We try to divide our work and Brett really runs the Asian side of our activity and I run the European side of our activity.”

We have been talking solidly for almost an hour and it has become clear that while Dominique Lévy is very competitive and driven even, she is not at all arrogant but, on the contrary, feels a strong desire to prove herself – not to others, but for herself. She is direct but concerned to present Lévy Gorvy very precisely. In addition to all the hoopla that inevitably comes with the opening of a major private gallery in Hong Kong, Dominique Lévy still has a strong sense of wonderment concerning Asia. Sometimes it comes out in a certain circumspect etiquette she deploys, but every so often a sense of her passion escapes, lauding this or criticizing that. Well, we cannot print it all.

Dominique Lévy: “[When] I look at this part of the world, I find it very intimidating, because the more I go there, the more I learn about the customs, the culture, the traditional art; the more I see an enormous sense of responsibility regarding how we bring Western Art to Asia and what we sell to Asian people and Asian collectors. And part of it is education and part of it is humility. All of us – American and European dealers – we go to Asia with a lack of knowledge and a lack of a profound understanding of the culture, and definitely with a lack of humility. And very often, the shows I have seen in Asia, are definitely not as good as the shows in New York and London. It made me really uncomfortable and it has pushed Brett and I to really think: what are we going to do and how are we going to do it in a way that we [will] feel proud of what we have achieved in the next 20 to 30 years. Asia is very intimidating. It is bigger than anything we have realized, in terms not just of geography, that is obvious, but much deeper, in terms of history and artistic tradition, [where] their love for art is so profound, so deep, so ancient. Unless we make the effort to really understand it much better, we may be financially successful over the short term but I don’t think we will make something that is meaningful.”

Lévy Gorvy’s inaugural exhibition is ‘Return to Nature (Zao Xue Han Zhang)’, March 26 –May 18, with works by Wu Dayu, Willem de Kooning, Song Dong, Wassily Kandinsky, Hao Liang, Agnes Martin, Joan Mitchell, Claude Monet, Pierre Soulages, Pat Steir, Yan Wenliang, Wu Yinxian, and Zao Wou-Ki, among others.

Lévy Gorvy
St Georges Building, corner of Connaught Road Central and Ice House Street opens on March 26.

The majority shareholders in ART SG, Tim Etchells and Angus Montgomery Arts have announced a new exciting organisational structure for the fair, following MCH Group’s change of direction.

Magnus Renfrew has now joined Tim Etchells and Sandy Angus as a co-founder of ART SG. Renfrew has significant experience in art fairs, and in the Asia region as founding Fair Director of both ART HK and Art Basel Hong Kong. Renfrew is presently the co-owner and director of Taipei Dangdai, which will have its launch edition in January 2019.

Charles Ross, who was Managing Director of Art HK from its inception through to its sale to Art Basel, and is currently the Managing Director of both Art Central and Taipei Dangdai, will also oversee the operations of ART SG.

Shuyin Yang has been appointed Fair Director of ART SG. Singapore-born Yang has based much of her career in the Southeast Asia region, working with Christie’s auction house and Sundaram Tagore Gallery. She is currently the Fair Director of Art Central in Hong Kong.

Tim Etchells said, “Sandy Angus and I have been actively developing ART SG for several years and we are ready for its launch. We are delighted that Magnus Renfrew will be joining us as a shareholder and will play an active role in helping us to develop the Fair. We’ve worked together for over 10 years since we created and founded Art HK, which is now Art Basel Hong Kong. Magnus has an unrivalled skill and track record for developing Fairs at the highest level and the launch gallery list for Taipei Dangdai is testament to that.

We are also thrilled that Shuyin will be taking on the role as Fair Director for ART SG. She has done a first rate job on Art Central, and has a formidable passion and knowledge of the Southeast Asian art scene.”

Magnus Renfrew said, “I’m thrilled to be extending my partnership with Tim and Sandy. In Shuyin Yang we have an exceptional Fair Director and I look forward to working with Shuyin to create a Fair with a true Southeast Asian focus at a time when the regional collector base is rapidly developing.”

Shuyin Yang said, “I am excited to be taking on the role as Fair Director for ART SG, which I firmly believe in as a platform to support and nurture the ecology of our galleries, artists and collectors. To be given the opportunity of developing a Fair of real significance both for the city and the wider region is a privilege.”

“We welcome Magnus Renfrew and Shuyin Yang on board the ART SG team. We are confident that their experience with ART HK, Art Basel Hong Kong, Taipei Dangdai and Art Central will help make ART SG a success. The arts scene in Singapore has grown steadily over the years, and the involvement of such experienced international art practitioners in ART SG is a testament to the potential for Singapore’s art scene to grow even further,” said Serene Tan, Director, Arts & Cultural Precincts, Singapore Tourism Board.

ART SG is supported and welcomed by the Singapore Tourism Board (STB), the National Arts Council (NAC) and the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB).

Marina Bay Sands will be the venue for the inaugural ART SG. Credit: Marina Bay Sands

Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale, Hong Kong, September 30
Sotheby’s Modern Art Evening Sale, Hong Kong, September 30

At Sotheby’s Hong Kong Evening Sale four works stood out, by Zao Wou-Ki, Liu Ye, Xu Zhen and yeah, um Hao Liang. Let’s have a chat about that, with an anonymous but curious collector.

Read on Reader! Going Down!…>>

Anonymous: What do you think of the Zao Wou-ki sold 65 million dollars when in 2005 at Christies it made USD 2.5 million?

Chris: Intellectually this work is wildly overvalued! It’s very pretty but is this in the same league as Barnett Newman, Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning—come on, no way! But its auction price reflects market scarcity, audience conservatism and even nationalism, and maybe also that Mainland people are looking for safe-harbor moveable assets to put money into. And it’s pretty. Obviously at least two people think it’s USD-60 million pretty! 

No, you’re wrong about the Zao Wou-Ki. That size!… It’s the Lilies of China, not abstract-expressionism! And respectable provenance too. Always important with Chinese collectors.

Of course, yes, and Zao’s big show at Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris will have helped too. Institutional imprimatur always soothingly rubs the bellies of picky collectors…

…like this one

Enough already! Let’s move on.

What do you think of Hao Liang ’s USD 1.5 million price?

Chris: Absolutely NUTS ! He was born literally yesterday, in 1983!!! The work itself is basically extremely similar to thousands of other works, some of which are hundreds of years old. This feels like a speculator is boosting prices. We cannot know. Maybe this collector just really really really likes Hao Liang. Like really, massively, likes his stuff a lot. But let’s pretend it’s speculation. Say the speculator owns ten works by Hao Liang and then buys the 11th work at an outlandish price of say USD 1.5 million, then KABOOM!! Suddenly they have ELEVEN very expensive works. If they are sold on…  Of course, if their bluff is called, then it can be very damaging for an artist’s career, not to mention the “investment”. But hey, I’m not impressed by Hao Liang anyway. Seriously, it’s 2018 – the 21st Century! – and this is where we’re at ??

And Xu Zhen’s Supermarket was sold too, a Conceptual Idea!

Chris: Ooh, I feel wobbly with emotion. But seriously, this work led Sotheby’s marketing campaign for the sale and it reached slightly above the high estimate. For a work that is complicated to display (a shop, a shop fit-out, lots of specially emptied consumer goods packages, plus staff) and cannot be hung on a Hong Kong condominium wall, this is a great result for the artist… and also for sales of conceptual works in traditionally risk-averse and conservative Hong Kong. For comparison though, think of it this way: Xuzhen Supermarket—one of the most important artworks produced in China in the past 20 years—is basically the same price as one of Xu Zhen’s big Under Heaven cake-icing paintings. Looking at this way, it was a total bargain.

What about Liu Ye?

Chris: USD 2.7 million is impressive. In recent years a lot of artists from 1990s China have seen their reputations—and prices—decline in the West and even in China, including Zhang Xiaogang and Yue Minjun. A couple of artists have managed to avoid this. Zeng Fanzhi is one and Liu Ye another. Liu Ye’s prices continue to be solidly reliable. It helps that the figurative works are so cute of course, though recent still-lifes of books are much harder for civilians to unpack, so it will be interesting to see how the public reacts to them in years to come.

Liu Ye does his own thing. The paintings are not huge and he doesn’t need a massive studio and huge team of helpers to make his art. Watch out for his show at Prada Rong Zhai in Shanghai next month.

The 13th edition of Contemporary Istanbul was held from 20 – 23 September 2018 at the Istanbul Congress Center.

In spite of the fact that Turkey is facing its biggest economic crisis since 2001 and while the Turkish Lira has plunged to roughly one-fifth its value within the last year [1] ’Contemporary Istanbul’ still holds its head high and managed to attract around 80,000 visitors to the fair this year. While champagne bottles were being opened and collectors came from all over the world to purchase new art works, there was no doubt that the show had indeed gone on at ”Contemporary Istanbul’, with final reports counting strong mid-range sales.

Neither, with 83 galleries from 22 different countries, had CI decreased in size this year. Some of the international galleries that returned to CI were Galleria Continua, Galeria Plan B, Marlborough Gallery and Galerie Michael Schultz. The international newcomers included Almine Rech, The Hole and Ethan Cohen. From Turkey Zilberman Gallery and Martch Art Project were at CI for the first time.

While Turkey is facing a tumultuous future, both politically and economically, there seems to be an awareness of the importance of keeping the local scene attractive for the international art world. The ‘Gallery Support Program’ which was launched in 2017 gives financial assistance to a selection of international galleries participating in the fair. It is unfortunate, however, that local Turkish galleries, especially in these difficult times, are not being invited to participate in the Gallery Support Program.

At Upstream Gallery from the Netherlands there were works by four different contemporary Dutch Artists, all working in the forefront of digital art: Harm van den Dorpel, Constant Dullart, Jan Robert Leegte and Rafaël Rozendaal. Harm van den Dorpel’s work “Strategies” was shown on a flat screen monitor and spell bounded a lot of fairgoers with its endless flow of intriguing imagery combined with short and catchy statements, such as “It is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful”. The phrases are seemingly referring to the rapid development of technological hardware and how we are applying and modifying it in our everyday lives.

Harm van den Dorpel, “Strategies”, Courtesy Upstream Gallery

Harm van den Dorpel, “Strategies”, Courtesy Upstream Gallery

At Paris based GALERIE DIX9 multidisciplinary Artist Esmeralda Kosmatopoulos from Greece had a solo show. Kosmatopoulos is working with language, identity and otherness, investigating the construction of identities, questioning the influence our post-Internet era has on the dialectic between writing and speaking and aims at encompassing the kinesthetic functions of language. Her show at Galerie Dix9 showed some of her most recent works.

Esmeralda Kosmatopoulos, Courtesy Galerie Dix9

Esmeralda Kosmatopoulos, Courtesy Galerie Dix9

Interview: Günes Terkol
One of the booths that stood out at the fair was the local Istanbul gallery KRANK. Especially the tactile fabric works by emerging Turkish Artist Günes Terkol were visually intriguing and seemed to reference ancient folkloric myths about spirits and ghosts.

Installation view, Günes Terkol, Courtesy KRANK Gallery

On my last day in Istanbul I had the great pleasure of meeting Günes Terkol at the hard-to-find sidewalk café ‘Urban’ located on one of the narrow streets in the city center. Terkol is a charismatic young Artist with short hair who roles cigarettes and contemplates the existential questions in life. She is originally from Ankara, but is based in Istanbul where she has been represented by KRANK gallery for the past three years.

Terkol told me that the fabric pieces on display at Contemporary Istanbul are made out of cotton fabric which was originally used for packing cheese and vegetables. She uses natural dye to color them and cuts them up and sows them together in different shapes and constellations. When I, with some intentional naiveté, asked her why she chooses such modest materials, I began to understand how she positions herself artistically: “the local things that people use on an everyday basis are the ones I am communicating with”. In general, community and inclusiveness are recurring themes in Terkol’s work.

Alongside her solo practice she frequently organizes workshops in Turkey and beyond. In Summer 2017 Terkol hosted a workshop called “Good Days” to which she invited Syrian refugees to make a work on the building facade of the French Consulate in Istanbul. “There are currently approximately 3.5 million refugees in Turkey from the neighbor country Syria” she tells me, and with the first worried expression so far, she adds “but a lot of Turkish people don’t want them to stay in the country, because they see them as a burden to the country’s current economic troubles”. With “Good Days” Terkol wanted to make a statement by giving the Syrian refugees, that are otherwise relatively invisible in Istanbul’s social scene, a strong presence in the city’s political and cultural life and asked them to collectively make a fabric work that covered the facade of the building.

When I asked Terkol what it is like to be an independent female Artist in the current political climate in Turkey, she surprised me by focusing on one of the more positive aspects of Turkish society that is easily overseen. It is the strong presence of women on the contemporary art-scene. While men are still more dominant in most other sectors, there is generally more gender equality on the art scene in Turkey compared to Northern Europe and The United States.



“Good Days” a collaborative piece by Günes Terkol and Refugees from Syria
Institute Fraincaise, Istanbul, 2017



Pedro Gómez Egaña, “First-Geometries”, 2018
Leather-glove, DC-motors, microcontroller-sensors, electronic chipboard, white box 40 x 30 x 12 cm
Courtesy Zilberman Gallery

Manolo Valdés, “Retrato con Marco I”, 2016
Oil on burlap, 162.6 x 163.8 cm
Courtesy Marlborough Gallery



Guido Casaretto “Fior di Bosco/Scart”, 2018
Oil pastel on apposite panel, 95 x 170 x 85 cm
Courtesy Zilberman Gallery



Loris Cecchini, “Seed syllables”, 2018
branch of sandblasted oak (Quercus ilex), steel modules 288 x 215 x 68 cm
Courtesy Galleria Continua



Jochen Proehl, Galata Close-Up, 2017
Oil on canvas, 150 x 120 cm
Courtesy Galerie Michael Schultz



Jochen Proehl, Galata Close-Up, 2017
Oil on canvas, 130×180 cm
Courtesy Galerie Michael Schultz


[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/10/business/turkey-economy-erdogan.html