Simon de Pury and collector Robert Tomei discuss their obsession with design as a harbinger of the contemporary market: “Collecting design is quite a new phenomenon,” he says. “In the past, collectors rarely attempted to buy great design as well as great art. Robert, though, is passionate about both, but he doesn’t take himself seriously. His collecting is all done in a spirit of fun, with a genuine interest and curiosity”, says de Pury. Tomei began by collecting video installations form the 90s and owns work by Maarten Baas, Piet Hein Eek, Sebastian Brajkovic, Rolf Sachs, Olafur Eliasson and Elmgreen & Dragset, among others. (more…)

Sean Kelly Gallery, Los Carpinteros, Kosmaj Toy (2012).

All images by A.M. Ekstrand for ArtObserved, on location at Art Basel Miami Beach Fair.

Art Basel returned once again in Miami Beach this past week for the 11th annual Art Basel Miami Beach Fair. Featuring over 300 galleries representing 36 countries around the world, the show has exhibited marked growth from last year’s event, with well over 2,000 artists flocking to exhibit at what has become the internationally-renowned closing party for the world art market each year.  It is of course always an irony that tens of thousands will fly down for the events and parties, with many of them never visiting the vast aggregation of what it said to be roughly $1.5 billion worth of art in one (large) room, a collection that few museums in the world could compete with.   Below is a selection of some of the works we thought to be notable from the fair.

Helly Nahmad Gallery, Mark Rothko No. 1 (1957) and Alexander Calder, installation view

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Elmgreen & Dragset, The Stag, 2012, courtesy Victoria Miro

Elmgreen & Dragset’s Harvest is a unique twin exhibition divided into two coexisting halves, presented on the upstairs and downstairs of the Victoria Miro gallery in London.

The lower half of the gallery presents a banal, almost “mock tranquillity”, exhibiting sheets of paint that have been carefully peeled from notorious art galleries from all over the world and are named retroactively. The works both pay homage to the galleries’ ability to facilitate the work, yet simultaneously mock the uniformity and pedantic nature of art culture. The installation on this floor plays on the irony of a modern art exhibition space: consistent, precise, conforming; yet the works that lie within are anything but.

To reinforce the subliminal jest upon which Elmgreen & Dragset have built their career, the upstairs of the installation is completely paradoxical to the work from which it ascends. What can only be described as a barn awaits the unaware viewer, the immediate submergence of hay forcing him to interact with the installation.

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Toby Ziegler‘s The Cripples, image via Art Observed

Back in 2003 in Frieze’s first year, no major international art fair had ever been hosted in London before. Frieze Art Fair, organized by Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp, has helped take London from being a city without a focused art scene to its current state at the center of the European art market. Now in its tenth year, Frieze Art Fair in London’s Regent’s Park has seen around 60,000 visitors, with 264 dealers from 35 countries hoping to sell work (valuing an estimated  £230m) created by more than 2,400 artists within 175 of the world’s leading galleries.

An Aaron Young motorcycle burn out work at Massimo de Carlo in Milan, photo via Art Observed

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Photo on site for Art Observed by Tara Sheena.

In a production for the Performa 11 Biennial, co-commissioned by the Royal Danish Theater and the Bergen International Festival, the artist duo of Elmgreen & Dragset presented their satirical theatre work, Happy Days in the Art World. A
referential collage of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days and Waiting for Godot, as well as Elmgreen & Dragset’s own play, Drama Queens, the work effectively combines a stream-of-consciousness humor with a bare bones set to reveal a contemporary commentary on the sociopolitical implications of the art world.

More text and images after the jump…
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Performa opens November 1 in New York with Elmgreen & Dragset work Happy Days in the Art World, featuring Joseph Fiennes [AO Newslink]

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Via Telegraph

In the center of London, Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth will display sculptures of a bronze boy on a rocking horse in 2012, and a bright blue rooster in 2013. Danish artist Michael Elmgreen and Norwegian artist Ingar Dragset created Powerless Structures, Fig. 101 to playfully contrast the ‘ordinary’ and a hope for peace against the other plinths’ weathered war heroes. Hahn/Cock, by German artist Katharina Fritsch is a colorful 14 foot tall addition to the square, representing regeneration and awakening, as well as male domination (with no specific nationality).

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Frieze Art Fair entrance in Regent’s Park, London

Art Observed is currently on site at the seventh edition of Europe’s largest contemporary art fair: Frieze which is on show in London’s Regent’s Park through October 18th.  The 164 exhibiting galleries represent the most exciting contemporary artists working today and for the past two years Frieze Art Fair has attracted over 60,000 visitors over the three day period for which it is active.  In addition to this, the fair not only attracts curators and collectors but encourages participation by all: over the three days the fair presents a curated program of talks, artists’ commissions and film projects, many of which are interactive or performative and encourage visitors to engage with art and artists directly.

A view of the booth of Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin with work from Xavier Veilhan in the foreground and Duane Hanson in the background at Frieze Art Fair via abcnews.go.com

Related Links:
Art out of the ordinary [TimesOnline]
Frieze gets off to fizz-popping start [The Guardian]
A chair you can actually sit on [WSJ]
Autumn Fairs Are a Barometer of the Art Market [NYTimes]
Abramovic, Paltrow browse at Freize as buyers haggle [Bloomberg]
Chill of recession hits London Frieze art bonanza [Reuters.com]
Introducing the Frieze Art Fair [Telegraph.co.uk]
Party of the Weel: No sign of the Crunch at Frieze Art Fair [The Independent]
Recession chill hits Frieze Art Fair [Channel4.com]
Roll up for moody modern masterpieces:it’s the Frieze art fair [The Guardian]
Frieze Art Fair Opens to Steady Sales, Gray Art [WSJ]
Frieze Art fair: test your knowledge. A quiz to find out if you’re an art aficionado or Frieze faker [The Guardian]
London Calling a Spate of Artists to their Openings [NYTimes]
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Michaelangelo Pistoletto’s performance of ‘Seventeen Less One’ at the Venice Biennale, photo by ArtObserved

The 53rd Venice Biennale is now open to the public after a press preview June 4-6.  During that time, Art Observed was on site and also has collected some of the relevant news stories covering the event from the global press.

U.S. representative Bruce Nauman won the Golden Lion for best national participation for his exhibition ‘Topological Gardens,’ curated by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  Also receiving Golden Lions are Yoko Ono, John Baldessari, and Tobias Rehberger, who won the best artist award for his work ‘What you love also makes you cry.’  Highlights of the Biennale include Britain’s Steve McQueen’s film ‘Giardini,’ which portrays the Biennale Gardens when not used as exhibition space, Liam Gillick at the German Pavilion, covered by AO here, Elmgreem and Dragset’s ‘The Collectors’ at the Danish and Nordic Pavilions, and ‘Making Worlds,’ the International Art Exhibition curated by Daniel Birnbaum, both covered by AO here.

On the Biennale:
Venice Biennale 2009: the opening day [GuardianUK]
Venice Biennale 2009 [Vernissage TV]
On your vaporetto to the far pavilions [GuardianUK]
Venice Biennale is a glimpse of the future [TimesUK]
Venice Biennale 2009: A photographer’s view [GuardianUK]
Trading places [Financial Times]
Venice Biennale Opens Showing Works by Over 90 Artists from all Over the World [Artdaily]
A More Serene Biennale [NY Times]
This, That, and the Other [Artforum]
It’s Reigning Men [ArtForum]
Blasblog From Venice: And So It Begins [Style.com]
“Art Is Everywhere” [Style.com]
The Venice Biennale opens with top honors for a German artist [Deutsche Welle via Art Review]
Over and Over: Art That Never Stops [NY Times]

On Bruce Naumann and the US Pavillion:
Bruce Nauman wins a Golden Lion at Venice Biennale [LA Times]
Venice is doubly enamored of Bruce Nauman [LA Times]
Venice Biennial: Hear the U.S. Roar [Wall Street Journal]
Shaking up the world of art for decades [Philadelphia Inquirer]
Golden Lion for the Best National Participation Awarded to the U.S. Representation [Artdaily]
Nauman Tops Venice Biennale, Wins Golden Lion: Martin Gayford [Bloomberg]

On Pinault’s innaugaration of his new museum:
Francois Pinault Opens The New Punta della Dogana Contemporary Art Centre in Venice [Artdaily]
How the French Charles Saatchi became the merchant of Venice [Guardian]
Pinault’s Venice Empire Grows With Cool Contemporary-Art Museum [Bloomberg]

On Steven McQueen, representing the UK at the Biennale:
Steve McQueen at the Venice Biennale: Private view with Adrian Searle [Guardian]
Art Charities Collaborate to Fund Steve McQueen’s Giardini for Venice [Artdaily]
Steve McQueen found something new in Venice [Guardian]
Steve McQueen’s “Giardini” at the Venice Biennale [IFC]
Steve McQueen lets Venice Biennale viewer do the feeling with Giardini [Times]

On Swoon’s Swimming Cities of the Serrenisma,video from the New York Landing of her boat in previously in Long Island City covered by Art Observed here:
Barging in to Venice [New York]
Swoon in Venice, Italy [dailyDuJour]
Barging in to Venice [New York Magazine]

And more:
Venice Biennale: Flashing Lights [NY Times]
Venice Biennale: Ships in the Sky [NY Times]
Venice Biennale: Listening to Art [NY Times]
Rauschenberg at the Guggenheim in Venice [Financial Times]
United Arab Emirates confronts stereotypes in Venice Biennale debut [GuardianUK]
Ukraine pavilion is a Venice Biennale knockout [TimesUK]

more photos and story after the jump…

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Tomas Sarceno’s ‘Galaxies’ in ‘Making Worlds’ at the Venice Biennale, photo by ArtObserved

Under the title of ‘The Collectors’, the artist duo Elmgreen&Dragset curated and staged the first joint venture between two Pavilions at the Venice Biennial.  As the title suggests, the show explores collecting as a practice combining privacy, public visibility, obsession and self-expression.

On the opening day, the line in front of the Danish Pavilion that served as the entrance to both Pavilions was as long as the rooster of represented artists was impressive: Terence Koh, Hernan Bas, Wolfgang Tillmans, Jonathan Monk to name only some of the 24 international artists and designers participating.  The public was guided on a tour by a real estate agent through a “For Sale” Danish Pavilion and into the neighboring Nordic Pavilion counting the story of a kinky bachelor named Mr. B. and his collection of contemporary art and his ex-lovers’ swim wear. The naked young man lasciviously posing in an Arne Jacobsen arm chair was the definitely the favorite photo occasion of the day.

The Collectors
La Biennale
Venice Biennale Shows Men Embracing, Bruce Nauman’s Rituals [Bloomberg]
Rising to Biennale’s Curatorial Challenge [WSJ]
Politics dominates Venice Biennale [Globe and Mail]
It’s Reigning Men [Artforum]

Installation view of ‘The Collectors’ by Elmgreen&Dragset at the Danish and Nordic Pavilions, photo by ArtObserved

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