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Dan Colen

Dan Colen’s “TBT” (chewing gum and gum wrappers on canvas, in artist’s frame, 2008) sold at the Phillips Auction New York Contemporary Art Day sale of 17 May 2013 for $305,000.

Born in Leonia, New Jersey in 1979 and a 2001 BFA graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Dan Colen has long questioned the “editorial decisions artists have to make when creating a scene from scratch on canvas.”

Stepping away from paint as a medium in 2006, Colen started using chewing gum. In 2008 he wrote, “When I first started, the canvases were very sparse … It slowly developed into a more elaborate and involved process. I started adding a lot more gum to each canvas; I would put pieces down, pick them up again, move ’em around, stretch them out, mush ’em together, and mix flavors to create new colors”.

Dan Colen creates his work in a variety of media – painting, sculpture, photography, performance, and installation – from a variety of materials including gum, dirt, grass, tar, feathers, and street trash from the street.

He examines cultural mythologies and archetypes, the boundaries between “high” and “low” art, and the artist’s measure of “control” over the behavior of a given material.

Dan Colen’s recent “Purgatory” (2017) is a work of strong imagination and probing. On view at New York’s Lévy Gorvy Gallery, that now collaborates with Gagosian and Massimo De Carlo to represent Mr. Colen, stylistically it is as if by another artist entirely. Oil on canvas in deep reds and black, the painting draws the viewer frighteningly in along a diagonal through a tunnel of dark clouds back towards a receding glow.

Mr. Colen’s works are in a number of public and private collections including New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery,  LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Oslo’s Astrup Fearnley Museet, Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, the Dakis Joannou Collection in Athens, Miami’s de la Cruz Collection, and Puerto Rico’s Jiménez-Colón Collection.

 

See:

Dan Colen, “TBT,” 2008, Phillips Contemporary Art Day, New York, 17 May 2013, Lot 125

Dan Colen, Gagosian

Dan Colen, Lévy Gorvy

“Lévy Gorvy to Represent Dan Colen in Collaboration with Gagosian, Massimo De Carlo,” Sarah Douglas, ArtNews, 31 May 2017

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private museums | Oslo’s Astrup Fearnley Museet

The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art is a privately owned contemporary art museum in Oslo, Norway. The museum was funded by two philanthropic organizations, the Thomas Fearnley Foundation and the Heddy and Nils Astrup Foundation, that merged in 1995 to form the Thomas Fearnley, Heddy and Nils Astrup Foundation.

Established and opened to the public in 1993, the museum moved into two new buildings in 2012.

The two new buildings, located in the Tjuvholmen skulpturpark along the banks of the Oslofjord in the center of Oslo, are designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano (who also designed New York’s new Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, Switzerland).

The collecting focus of the museum is Norwegian and international contemporary art. Artists represented include Olafur Eliasson, Francis Bacon, Janine Antoni, Dan Colen, Cao Fei, Olav Christoper Jenssen, Elmgreen & Dragset, Jeff Koons, Fischli & Weiss, Sigmar Polke, Richard Prince, Charles Ray, Gerhard Richter, Torbjørn Rødland, Matthew Ronay, Cindy Sherman, and Christopher Wool.

See:

Astrup Fearnley Museet, www.afmuseet.no/en/hjem;

“Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, Norge,” GoNorway

 

#art #artmarket #contemporaryart #museums #privatemuseums #collection #collector #dancolen #olavchristopherjenssen #christopherwool #torbjørnrødland #francisbacon #signarpolke #gerhardrichter #astrupfearnley #astrupfearnleymuseet #oslo #norway #renzopiano #architecture #design #engineering #whitneymuseum #whitney #lacma #centrepompidou #fondationbeyeler #newyork #paris #losangeles #riehen #hongkong #luxury #realestate #philanthropy

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art-market disruption & the brick-&-mortar gallery

In a time of disruption of the art market by auction house and online agents, global accumulation of wealth at the high end, and growth of the world’s contemporary art market (21 times between 2001 and 2008), Belgian investment banker and art connoisseur/collector Alain Servais believes in the brick-and-mortar model of the art gallery.

In his opinion, a brick-and-mortar gallery, like a museum or an art biennale, is where works of art look best. Galleries are a “right location” and a “right context” for works of art. “There is an aura to the work of art in the right location and the right context, which nothing replaces.”

Mr. Servais provides insight into his collecting and offers his thoughts as to how the gallery could well evolve.

Why collect?

“I don’t believe that one decides to become a collector, but rather that you are or you are not. And more generally, collecting is more than acquiring works of art. It is a way of living, a way of thinking.”

“To express myself. Adding my “sentence” around the “words” created by the artists. To share new ideas, questions, doubts, and surprises. To learn about myself and the world I am living in, so to open my mind to other options. To participate in the constitution of the history of the art of today. To feed my insatiable drive to learn what is not taught. To think outside of the box.”

“Finally, art must surprise me, challenge me, open up my mind and heart following the definition that I heard many years ago from Mera Rubell: “Art is a language which opens your heart to the Other.”

How does he collect?

In “constant conversation with art history, because when you look with connoisseurship you can find people who are completely forgotten, disregarded, or underestimated.”

How should the gallery model evolve?

The goals of the gallery are to court collectors, sell artists’ works, and give priority to the artists and to the art.

What must galleries do to evolve well?

reinforce legal and best-practices infrastructure

stabilize the artist-gallery relationship

balance contracts at all levels of the industry

provide more transparency

on pricing: “there are growing conflicts of interest between artists and gallerists. Sometimes what is in the interest of the gallery is not in the interest of the artist. For example, pricing policies. How fast do you want to raise the price?”

on the gallery-museum relationship, “what’s dubious about the gallery system? One thing is the relationship between the museums and the galleries. Right now only the wealthy galleries can get their artists work into museums because one of the problems is: who can produce the works? Who can put the money up front for massive pieces for exhibitions and biennales?”

develop multiple exhibition strategies

multiple exhibition spaces

select art-fair participation

space exchanges in different cities

pop-up exhibitions in dedicated spaces

cooperative events with artists and peer-group galleries

 animate with intellectual discourse

“art spaces need to be “animated” – with talks, conferences, and events

this will serve to enable meeting spaces – forums for exchanges – between artists, galleries, dealers, curators, collectors, and other stakeholders

See:

“Interview with Alain Servais” | BMW Art Guide

“Collector Alain Servais on Why Galleries Should Act Like Luxury Brands to Survive the Internet” | Alain Servais, Artspace, 27 December 2016

“Collector Alain Servais on Insider Trading in the Art Market, “Blood-Sucking Leeches,” and Why We’re Now Just the Fashion Industry” | Andrew M. Goldstein, Artspace, 23 May 2015

“Art in the shadow of art market industrialization” | Alain Servais, NYAQ/LXAQ/SFAQ International Art and Culture, 10 November 2014

#art #artmarket #smartluxury #luxury #artcollecting #collectors #collections #connoisseurship #AlainServais #museums #galleries #brick-and-mortar #auctionhouse #disruption #finance

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“blockage” & the valuation of damage to art for an insurance claim

Ronald D. Spencer, Chairman of the Art Law Practice at the New York law firm of Carter Ledyard & Milburn LLP, addresses the issue of the valuation of loss or damage to art for an insurance claim. He specifically addresses the use of, and questions the appropriateness of the use of, “blockage” and “blockage discounts” as applicable standards for interpreting the loss valuation provisions of an insurance contract.

The insurance coverage amount is the maximum amount the policy will pay. This amount provides the basis for calculation of insurance premiums. Most insurance claims do not involve claims for the full coverage amount.

The methodology used by the insurer to value a damage claim is a relevant variable for the insured. Most art insurance policies are vague, however, on the valuation method, “providing, simply, that in the event of disagreement on the value of the loss, the insured and insurer will each retain their own appraisers, and if the appraisers do not agree on the value of the loss, the dispute is to be submitted to an umpire or arbitrator, whose decision will be final.”

New York’s Bruce Silverstein Gallery suffered loss on October 29, 2012 caused by flooding during Hurricane Sandy. The gallery had an “All Risks Fine Art Dealers Floater” insurance policy with a “Basis of Valuation” provision stipulating that “consigned property shall be valued at the Agreed Net Consigned Value Plus 10%.” The concept of “blockage” was applied by the umpire representing the gallery’s insurance company. This was the first time the concept of “blockage” for art sales, which first arose in 1972 in the context of art valuations for estate tax purposes, was applied to an art valuation for purposes of calculating a loss for an insurance claim.

When valuing the loss of many artworks, the concept of “blockage” values works as they could be sold on one particular date, the date of the disaster (or death, in the framework of estate sales) on which the loss takes place. Blockage discounts the present value of the works of art based on future streams of income from sales over the period of time it would require to sell the art.

The application of blockage is considered to be consistent with USPAP Standard 6 which provides that when a large mass of property is to be valued as of a specific date, the appraiser is required to take into account that the value of the whole may be different from that of the individual parts.

Mr. Spencer observes that “by choosing to apply a blockage discount to an insurance loss valuation, an umpire, in effect, is deciding that the insurance loss should be determined by the price a bulk buyer of the art at the date of loss would be willing to pay.”

He observes, further, that “the art owner should understand that the result of a blockage discount for the owners’ insurance claim is that the more art the owner has lost, the less the insurer will pay per item—the larger the volume of art lost, the greater the blockage discount for each piece.”

See:

“Think Your Art Is Adequately Insured? Here Are a Few Insider Strategies to Help Minimize Your Risk” | Ronald D. Spencer, artnet.com, 8 September 2017

#art #artmarket #artcollections #collectors #galleries #insurance #fineartinsurance #blockage #blockagediscount #risk #hurricane #Sandy #Harvey #Irma #NewYork #Houston #MiamiBeach #appraisals #valuations #finance #tangibleassets #contractlaw

 

 

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楊詰蒼 | Earth Roots @ Ink Studio, Beijing

Beijing’s Ink Studio presents Earth Roots, a survey of Yang Jiechang’s One Hundred Layers of Ink series.

Born in Guangdong Province in 1956 and a 1982 graduate of the Chinese Painting Department of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, calligrapher Yang Jiechang (楊詰蒼) was selected to participate in the 1989 group exhibition Les  Magiciens de la Terre at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Yang Jiechang arrived in Paris in April 1989 without works to show, however, as they had been detained at the Chinese border. So he responded extemporaneously.

Retaining his native medium, he distilled all that he knew and experienced into a simple procedure: the repeated application of ink with a brush on paper, day after day and layer upon layer, until the fibrous surface hardened into a thick, densely textured relief with a metallic sheen. As blackness turned paradoxically luminescent, it gained the dimensions of space and time, becoming a record of his actions and being. 

The resultant One Hundred Layers of Ink series departed strikingly from traditional ink paintings and resembled rather color fields and other modernist idioms,

but for Yang it was calligraphic practice in its bare essence, and was grounded moreover in the multilayered polychrome court painting of the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

Four large rectangular works were exhibited at Les  Magiciens de la Terre at the Centre Georges Pompidou.

Artsy describes Yang Jiechang’s multimedia works as combining  traditional Eastern and Western modes of representation, a confluence he calls “Eurasian.” Based in Paris and Heidelberg, Mr. Yang states, “Eurasia is the land I experience everyday in my life: I am from Canton, China, my wife is from Germany, our children are Eurasian. We feel this land; this disposition and lifestyle bear a lot of possibilities and power.”

Works from the One Hundred Layers of Ink series are in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum; Cantor Center for the Arts, Stanford University; Deutsche Bank; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; Hong Kong Museum of Art; M+, Hong Kong; and University Museum and Art Gallery, University of Hong Kong.

Other of his works are in the collections of Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley; François Pinault Foundation, France; Fukuoka Art Museum; Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou; Ministry of Culture, France; Rockefeller Foundation, New York; and World Bank, Washington, D.C.

See:

“Earth Roots” | Yang Jiechang Paintings, 1985-1999, 10 June – 12  August 2017, Ink Studio, Beijing

Yang Jiechang | Artsy

#YangJiechang #InkStudio #Beijing #calligraphy #Artsy #artcollections #collectors #art #artmarket

 

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Lévy Gorvy’s Brett Gorvy speaks

Lévy Gorvy, the gallery

What we do see ourselves as is a boutique, a haute-couture gallery that ultimately adapts itself and takes advantage of market changes and opportunities but is very sustained and has growth over a longer period of time.

It’s incredibly important to Dominique and myself that we are an individual company. We’ve committed ourselves financially to this project with the understanding that we can work with any business partner where it will be mutually beneficial, with no conflict of interest.

It will also be about painting, because what we really responded to in Dan’s studio is that he’s returning to his roots in a way that’s very much to our own tastes, where it’s less about the conceptual pieces and more about just really beautiful painting.

The only way these kinds of shows can be feasible is if you have a financial commitment and also a focus, which is how this kind of gallery works. Here I mean less from a purely curatorial aspect, and more curatorial in that it’s highly focused on our client base from a business point of view, and on the art-collecting sphere we feel very close to.

Auction background

Working at an auction house is a phenomenal training, obviously—you have access to great art, you have access to an amazing group of collectors who become your friends, and you learn how to work as a team, which is incredibly important within this environment. But you also learn ultimately how to understand the valuation of works of art and price them.

… because of our strong auction background, we have very close ties with now all three auction houses. That gives us an understanding of how markets work and how values work, because we can dissect the results of the auctions at all three houses and know exactly what happened.

Art fairs

If you look at how an art fair can ultimately change, communication will be a large part of it. … So now they’re going to have to get to the fair in the first half hour, because that’s when these things happen. … The key is to get someone as committed as they would be to an auction picture, to the point where the only thing they need to do is see it physically, which is obviously a crucial part.

Asia

I’ve done a lot of work in Asia over the years, and we want to continue our position there. We believe very firmly in the strength of the market there, not just in China but all over Asia, and, having worked there, you know all of the nuances, and who are the people to deal with.

So, from our point of view, Hong Kong is where we’ll have the best access to the top collectors who we can ultimately develop. One of the most exciting aspects about Asia is that the learning curve of Asian collectors is phenomenal. I’ve never come across that speed of understanding markets and artists and desiring to learn more and read more.

And in Hong Kong too—we really need an office in Hong Kong in order to function, because a lot of clients want to have a base outside of mainland China, either because they want to have their assets outside of the mainland or because they prefer that way of buying. It’s like with a lot of West Coast collectors in America—they prefer to come to New York to buy, even if it’s from a dealer who has a gallery out on the West Coast. People buy more when they’re traveling.

See:

“Former Christie’s Rainmaker Brett Gorvy on How He’s Creating a New Power Center in the Gallery World” | Andrew Goldstein, Artnet, 12 June 2017

#art #artmarket #LévyGorvy #DominiqueLévy #BrettGorvy #collectors #collections #Asia #HongKong #Christie’s #Sotheby’s