Is there any affordable art at Art Basel?

Art Basel is home to big names and original works of art Keystone

An Andy Warhol self-portrait for more than $30 million, or an inflatable dolphin by Jeff Koons for $5 million? While the sale of these works at Art Basel grab the headlines, swissinfo.ch found many original works of art for under CHF5,000 ($5,603).

Many galleries the world over use Basel as a launching pad for young artists at entry level prices, since art fairs are often the only chance for exposure outside their home countries. They flock to Art Basel, and its four satellite fairs, Liste, Scope, Solo Project and Volta.

Given the faraway places from which many galleries come, geopolitics remain surprisingly present, even in art.

Art Basel

The photographs of Swiss duo Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs are selling for CHF4,800. Their latest work is presented by RaebervonStenglin, a young Zurich gallery, in the highly selective Art Basel Statements 2014.

Zaha, 2013, Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs, Silver Gelatine Print, 50 x 63 cm, mounted, framed, Edition of 5, Price: CHF 4,800. RaebervonStengelin Zürich

Considered one of the most inventive teams in contemporary photography, Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs present a series of analogous photographs from their road trips that have been spliced together to produce imaginary settings.

At Galeria OMR from Mexico City, 10 original pieces by established artists David Moreno, Julieta Aranda and Ryan Brown all sell for less than CHF 5,000.

David Moreno, b. 1957, USA, Biologie, 2013, 41x27cm, ink and cut and pasted paper on paper. $3,500 (CHF 3,140) David Moreno and Galeria OMR, Mexico

Galeria OMR, one of Mexico’s most prestigious galleries, has been coming to Art Basel for 15 years. “It takes us six months to prepare our display,” said gallery director, Kerstin Erdmann and it shows. Although there have been changes every day because sales during the preview days were brisk, the stand retains a harmony not unlike walking into someone’s home.

Volta

“It’s a gamble for everyone,” said Budapest eponymous gallery owner Erika Deak. She presents three of her artists at Volta, the fair that can be qualified as one down from the official Art Basel. And yet she is showcasing several striking works for less than the targeted price. “The problem is that we are situated in Hungary.”

Eva Magyarósi, Hungarian b. 1981, Reunion, 2012, glassprint, 80×80 cm. € 2,400 (CHF2,900). Deak Erika Galéria, Budapest

She explained that there is a lot of new wealth in her homeland, but not in the hands of real art connoisseurs, who tend to come from the left and not to belong to the present rightist government. “But I cannot have different prices when I present my artists abroad,” she said.

Deak admits that she has become more conservative in her tastes over the years: “I get tired of art that requires a lot of information to be understood.” She is looking for art that moves her, “that changes my life for five minutes and remains meaningful for a long, long time”.

Art fairs are important, she said, because they are not just about selling, they are also about putting artists in front of curators.

International 3, a gallery in Salford, across the river from Manchester, operates on a different level, but with similar goals. Co-director Paulette Terry Brien said that she and her gallery partner attend ‘degree shows’ to identify graduating students that they can assist on their career paths.

“You get rewarded from buying early on, for taking chances,” she insisted.

Liste

“You’re forced to go global,” Daria Pervain confirms. As principal of Sabot, a not-for-profit gallery at the heart of Transylvania, in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, she does the rounds of international art fairs to expose her artists.

Because there are no collectors in her home country, where art was used as a means of propaganda by the former Communist regime, she is an art Pygmalion who has secured premises in a former paint brush factory for local artists.

Aline Cautis, American b. 1975, Mall Flowers, 2014, oil on canvas, transparent gesso, matte medium, 53 x 43 cm. € 2.500 (CHF 3,050). SABOT, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Scope

Hans Alf, from Copenhagen, who made a fortune in the IT business, makes no bones about being an art merchant whose purpose is to sell: “What do people buy once they have their car and their kitchen, they buy art,” he observed. “My clients start at CHF1,000 and stay with me. I never sell them just one piece.”

Alf vindicates his taste for craftsmanship. “Ideas disappear, but craftsmanship doesn’t,” which in his view explains the success of the gallery that bears his name. The fact that Denmark did not adopt the euro and that the Danish krone is strong has also helped.

“At the end of the day, art is not God’s desire: it’s a product, but it’s a way for people to make a statement and be different, even when they have the same kitchens.”

Also at Scope, London-based Janet Rady specializes in art from the Middle East. As is often the case in international fairs, she presents artists who are widely recognized in their own countries but are completely unknown abroad. She therefore has the difficult task of reconciling the expectations of two opposing markets, pricing the works modestly to pierce the western market, but without damaging the expectations of the artists at home.

Solo Project

The two young owners of Gallery M2A from Dresden, Marko Göhre and Andreas Jenke, present high quality work that still comes out of the schools set up in the former East Germany: painting from Dresden (where Gerhard Richter was trained) and graphic design from Leipzig.

“There is a pool of artists from a rich artistic tradition from which we can choose,” they indicated. Most of the works they expose sell for less than CHF1,000.

Sign of the times, several galleries now  call themselves ‘projects’ and invite artists to give performances as well. Many can still be seen for free, but there is talk that they too will become collectors’ items. Right now, they’re still going for a song.

Art Basel and its satellite fairs

If you’re not afraid of crowds

Art Basel

Little has changed this year in the central section of Art Basel, where museum quality works of art are presented alongside contemporary rising stars. On the other hand, Art Unlimited for over-sized projects that occupies the recently remodelled hall by Herzog & de Meuron, has achieved this year an almost uncanny equilibrium between grandeur and harmony.

 

If you’re young, curious and like the experimental

LISTE 19 – the young art fair in Basel

LISTE was initiated in 1996 to encourage and showcase young galleries and their young artists under the age of 40. It takes place in a phenomenally inconvenient former brewery, where an outside zigzag staircase was added this year, as well as a tent-like annex with monumental plastic chimneys glued to the side. The art tends to be audacious and messy.

If you see art as an investment

SCOPE Art Show

For its seventh edition, SCOPE inaugurated a new location in Klybeckquai on the Rhine, that is presented as an up and coming cultural development in Basel, but is in fact desolate and difficult to reach. SCOPE showcases 75 international exhibitors alongside 20 Breeder Program Galleries, incubators for emerging art. SCOPE Art Shows in Miami, Basel, New York, London and the Hamptons boast about an attendance of over 1,000,000 visitors.

If you’re open to discovery, but want to play it safe

SOLO Project

The-solo-project has been set up by Paul Kusseneers gallery in Brussels seven years ago on the basis of invitations to likeminded galleries. Despite its location in a church and sports complex in southwest Basel, it has grown in sophistication. The 31 galleries in the 2014 edition present only 60 artists, which allows the displays to remain unusually airy.

If you enjoy art from the four corners of the world

Volta 10 

For its tenth anniversary, VOLTA has moved back to Markthalle, the historic domed landmark. Founded in Basel in 2005 by three international dealers, it is a platform for contemporary art galleries of global prestige who choose to work with emerging artists. The 2014 edition includes 68 exhibitors from six continents. The emphasis is placed on solo projects or those that bring the work of two artists into dialogue with one another. The art leans towards the exotic.