Beyond Frieze, of course, is a vast parallel art world, with thousands of unrepresented artists and curators keen to realise their big ideas. Hypha Studios has for some years been finding vacant property in cities around the UK to provide free exhibition and studio space to artists, curators and other creatives. This week it launched Hypha Curates, an online sales platform. Ben talks to the non-executive director of Hypha Studios, Will Jennings.
This is the market laid bare, with all of its champagne, ludicrous outfits and obscene excess on brazen display for anyone willing to fork out a wodge on a ticket. That's what reviews of Frieze generally complain about, all the greedy capitalistic knives being stabbed into the heart of their beloved, pure art. But Frieze, and the more refined Frieze Masters, isn't really about art.
The classic picture of the mature magnate bidding for a Rothko at a London auction room is giving way to that of young individuals in their early thirties who invest from their mobile phones, share online stories of their favorite art stands from the Frieze Seoul fair, and buy and sell digital art with the joy of someone who accepts that everything in this life is transitory, so that leaving a legacy is not a priority.
Without the vast overheads of auction houses and galleries, the leaner, nimbler, more discreet advisory model chimes with a cautious market. "Many of us advisors have thought, what about a Super Advisory firm: taking five specialists from different departments in the auction houses and putting them to work without the overheads," says Josh Baer, author of the Baer Faxt trade newsletter and himself an art adviser.
Adventures with Van Gogh has just marked its 300th post since the weekly blog was launched in 2018. For the 200th, in February 2023, we ran a compilation of what had then been the ten most popular posts. This week, starting with the most popular, we look back at the posts which have attracted most readers since then. Some of the topics were predictable, others came as quite a surprise. All have recently been updated with new information for this latest compilation.
Amid the recent string of large and mid-sized gallery closures, could smaller, emerging galleries step into the power vacuum? "I 100% think they are the future," says Christiana Ine-Kimba Boyle, a New York-based dealer who has previously worked at galleries including Lehmann Maupin, Canada and Pace. "This whole idea of differentiating and categorising galleries-megas, mid-tier, small-is naturally disintegrating." This spring, Ine-Kimba Boyle launched Gladwell Projects, a nomadic gallery with a staff of one.
Judging by recent auction records that have been set by numerous artists from the Arab world and conversations with curators of major collections across the globe, it seems that demand for Arab art has expanded beyond the region into Western and Eastern collections.
The anticipated 'Trump bump' has ultimately given way to a 'Trump slump',” says Christine Bourron, the chief executive of Pi-eX. “Trump's 'Liberation Day' announcement introduced significant geopolitical uncertainty, casting a shadow over the global economy and unsettling buyer confidence in the art market.
"It's a momentous turning point," says Sirio Ortolani, the president of ANGAMC. "Italy can finally become a great international hub, attracting galleries from all over Europe and major fairs."
this prosecution, using specific Terrorism Act legislation, is the first of its kind and should act as a warning to all art dealers that we can, and will, pursue those who knowingly do business with people identified as funders of terrorist groups.
"It's really difficult to navigate. Everybody wants to do the right thing... Many of our collectors are buying once or twice a year, and their major buying moment is here at the fair."
