Single-artist stands punch above their weight at Frieze New York

Cautious, conservative, difficult, tough, protected, selective, uneven, unsettled—the adjective of alternative could fluctuate, however the message in regards to the state-of-the-art commerce coming into Might 2024 is identical nearly irrespective of whom you discuss to. The traditional knowledge says that sellers working on this surroundings could be clever to unfold out their bets throughout any artwork truthful stand they current, foregoing monolithic displays in favour of providing works by a various cross-section of the artists of their programmes.

But a noteworthy share of the exhibitors at Frieze New York have achieved the alternative. Counting the Focus part, which is themed round single-artist displays, 24 of the 64 stands at this yr’s truthful—round 40%—are presenting works by just one artist. (The whole variety of exhibitors is greater as a result of some sellers have teamed as much as share area and prices.) This group options ten of the 30 sellers with stands on The Shed’s most important ground, together with such heavy hitters as Gagosian, Gladstone Gallery and Gallery Hyundai.

The prevalence of solo stands appears counterintuitive greater than 4 months right into a yr that has supplied little of the financial reduction that many analysts anticipated. Underscoring this reality was the announcement by United States Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, simply earlier than Frieze New York opened to VIPs on Wednesday, that the Fed’s benchmark rate of interest would stay within the 5.25% to five.5% vary, a roughly two-decade apex, for the ninth consecutive month.

Nonetheless, dealmaking on the truthful has confirmed regular, significantly for a cross-section of sellers who went all in with a single artist. It was no shock that Gagosian bought two of the 4 large-scale Sterling Ruby work anchoring its stand and “a lot of” smaller collages by noon on Thursday, in response to a gallery spokesperson; sources say costs have been $550,000 for the previous and within the tens of hundreds of {dollars} for the latter. However Gallery Hyundai additionally discovered patrons for “greater than ten works” by the Korean conceptualist Seung-Taek Lee priced between $35,000 and $100,000 every, a Frieze spokesperson says, and Kukje Gallery shortly bought out its stand of latest works on paper by Haegue Yang, at costs from €27,000 to €42,000.

The counterintuitive prevalence and business success of single-artist stands is price noting. However fixating purely on the {dollars} and cents would obscure the multifaceted concerns resulting in their proliferation in a market that casts them as dangerous.

Technique past gross sales

“You need to determine what the aim of a good is,” says Katey Acquaro, a director at Silverlens Galleries of Manila and New York. “Some are nice platforms to promote quite a lot of your artists. Others, like Frieze New York, are nice for establishing an artist.”

Silverlens’s stand on the primary ground centres on work and works on paper by Leo Valledor (1936-89), an necessary Filipino American painter of hard-edged abstractions. The show of enormous canvases, on supply for $60,000 to $120,000 every, doubles as each an introduction to the artist and the gallery’s newest touchpoint to advance a bigger story about Filipino American Modernism.

At Frieze New York in 2023, Silverlens offered a solo stand of works by Carlos Villa (1936-2013), Valledor’s closest pal who blended Western aesthetic ideas with Filipino and international Indigenous iconographies. The stand, which adopted a travelling museum retrospective on Villa, additionally arrange a present 4 months later at Silverlens’s New York location that put his work in dialog with Valledor’s. The solo stand on Villa one yr in the past, Acquaro says, “began every kind of institutional conversations that proceed right here” at Frieze New York in 2024. She provides: “Each artist wants gross sales, however additionally they want a long-term plan, particularly institutionally.”

Since institutional tasks and acquisitions typically take years to blossom, sure gala’s can operate as very important gears to maintain the conveyor belt shifting. Frieze New York is one in all these, partly due to the excessive focus of curators who name the Empire Metropolis residence. As one seller (who requested to not be named) stated on Wednesday, “Some curators all the time journey to different gala’s, clearly. However so lots of them reside right here. They’re not going to not present up of their yard.”

Solo stand spectrum

Not all solo stands are created equal, even when assessed in strictly business phrases. One case research is Stephen Friedman’s stand of latest sculptures by the 34-year-old London-based artist Holly Hendry. Since she is greatest identified for big out of doors commissions, together with these lately unveiled at London’s Hayward Gallery and Temple Underground station, the gallery “needed her to concentrate on home works” for Frieze New York, says Stephen Friedman director Jonathan Horrocks. The outcomes have been a number of wall sculptures and one bigger, table-based work, all of which incorporate a number of supplies to “carry a lid on the physique” in a delightfully cartoonish method.

At Artwork Basel in Switzerland, Horrocks says, the gallery usually gives a variety of works priced from the entry degree “to the tens of millions”. However Friedman tends to current solo stands at Frieze gala’s, which the gallery finds to be “an incredible alternative to be centered”. This yr, the bigger circumstances within the commerce additional refined the technique. “Due to the fluctuations out there, we introduced works at a lower cost level than we’d usually convey,” he provides. The wall works have been out there from £6,500 to £15,000 every; the complete complement had bought out by mid-afternoon on Wednesday.

“Frieze New York offers our artists an necessary platform to develop a solo physique of labor in a business setting outdoors the gallery,” Horrocks says. “After all, we need to become profitable on the finish of the day, however that is actually an exquisite curatorial endeavour.”

As a counterpoint, think about Gladstone’s Frieze New York stand dedicated to a brand new collection of work by Alex Katz, a universally acknowledged titan working monomaniacally by way of his twilight years. Within the month main as much as the truthful, Katz created the works to research the optical phenomena of afterimages, which he believes knowledgeable Matisse’s well-known The Purple Studio (1911). The (largely) monumental, fiery orange-and-white canvases are “in keeping with his work of timber previously yr or so: extraordinarily reductive, daring, bright-coloured,” says Gavin Brown, now nearly 4 years into his partnership with Gladstone.

Given the enthusiastic market demand and institutional popularity of Katz’s work, it could be a stretch to contemplate providing a solo stand of his new work at a high-end commerce truthful an entire leap of religion. The works are priced from $110,000 to $1.5m, and a number of other had been positioned by noon on Thursday, Brown says. However neither is it an train in calculated technique.

“Festivals are type of improvisatory issues,” he says. “Usually you’ve got an concept, however then when one thing like this comes round, you throw that out.” He provides that, at age 96, Katz “shouldn’t be desirous about whether or not individuals see the work when he’s not round”. Gladstone’s presentation at Frieze thus qualifies as “a considerably distinctive circumstance, as a result of you’ve got a painter who shouldn’t be withholding. He has nothing to lose. He says, ‘When’s the following time individuals can see this?’ The subsequent alternative was Frieze artwork truthful.”

However what in regards to the notion that, on common, group displays are safer bets for sellers in an unforgiving financial local weather? “That’s completely true, particularly when you’re coming from out of city and have a variety of transport prices and no matter. With a hometown truthful, you’ll be able to take a special method,” says Brown, whose uncanny expertise for turning stands into memorable occasions was instrumental to constructing his popularity as a seller.

“The artwork truthful as an animal is inherently conservative, and when you react to it conservatively, then the following time it’s important to go even additional. It looks like that’s already occurred. What I’m extra desirous about is how we bought right here.” This yr’s Frieze New York means that, to go elsewhere, much less actually could also be extra.