nobody wants it

.
that big black + white albert oehlen painting in the current show at luhring augustine is the same painting that was in concrete works at mitchell innes & nash 6/2007 for $425,00 and later that december on display at miami basel with luhring augustine (noted here).

nobody wants it.

RESULTS, from Artist's No-BS Market Report

Delayed, but... results are in. Eleven different Miami 2007 artfair-participating artists report:

5 pieces - 4 sold
5 pieces - at one gallery - 0 sold
3 pieces - at one gallery - 0 sold (gallery claims to have done well)
2 pieces - 0 sold
4 pieces - at two fairs - 0 sold
2 pieces - at one gallery - 0 sold
7 pieces - at two galleries at two different fairs - 1 sold
4 pieces - at one gallery - 0 sold
2 pieces - at Pulse - 0 sold
1 piece - at one gallery - 1 sold
8 pieces - at three galleries - 1 sold

Eleven artists, 43 pieces, 7 sales. Seven artists reporting no sales.

Artist's No-BS Market Report

Hey artists, let's do an unscientific no-bullshit survey on the artfair market. Just be anonymous, NO NEED to be strategic or to protect/promote a position.

Tell us how many pieces you had in Miami this year, and how many (if any) sold. Please try to be relatively specific, while retaining your anonymity. For example, "I had X number of pieces, at X number of galleries, at X number of fairs - X number of pieces sold", plus any other relevant information you feel comfortable sharing.

If nobody comments I'll probably delete this post with the new year.

miami

It is kinda weird, for someone who is rarely in NYC and is always hearing about how HOT the art market is, with artists supposedly under pressure to produce new work for fairs, to come across so much stuff I have seen in NYC shows re-represented in people's shots from Miami. What are the chances that work from the few shows I have seen in Chelsea are the ones that just happen to get photographed and put on the internet by people visiting ABMB? Makes me think that if I were a (more) frequent visitor of the galleries and had gone to Florida I would've seen A LOT of familiar stuff.

PLUS, so much of it got good press in New York. I don't know much of anything about the art market, and am not a participant, but if good stuff that is getting good reviews in the NYTimes is not selling... how "hot" can the market be?

Albert Oehlen in Concrete Works, at Mitchell-Innes & Nash - priced at $425,000, it good a good mention in the NYTimes review of the show.

- in Miami at Luhring Augustine.

Michael Zahn, in Late Liberties, at John Connelly - positive mention in the Bridget Goodbody NYTimes review of the show.

This show (and Zahn) got A LOT of mostly positive press; Time Out New York, Gay City News, New York Sun, Bloomberg, James Wagner, more. Actually, I wasn't too into this show, except for the Wendy White and Carrie Moyer.

- in Miami at 11 Rivington.

Sarah Peters, at Winkleman - this was a good show, good prices, and she got a very good review in the NYTimes, by Roberta Smith (scroll down)! What the hell, why is there so much of it in Miami? I don't get it.

HOT Market + GOOD Work + EXCELLENT Review + by ROBERTA Smith! = SHOULD Equal they are all GONE, right? Something does not compute... input dekimasen... system overload... CRASH.

- in Miami at Winkleman.

There is more, I just wanted to hit the NYTimes ones. Maybe it's because they were summer shows? OR/and is the market hype a big bluff, and it's over? OR/and are NYtimes reviews no reflection on sales? It looks like the Overstock.com warehouse.

UPDATE: forgot to include this great post/thread in which Frank Holliday comes onto Wendy's blog to defend his review of the Late Liberties show.

oooh, wicked

Did you see Christoph Buchel's Protect me from what I want Jenny Holzer reference, hidden under the schoolkid's desks of his Hauser & Wirth Miami Basel installation? I noticed it in the photo from the NYTimes slideshow.

Buchel's installation is called Training Ground for Training Ground for Democracy, a coda to his Mass Moca peter-out, and has reportedly sold for $250,000 to the Flick Collection. Jenny Holzer is the artist whose work currently occupies the Mass Moca space abandoned (held hostage? sabotaged?) by Buchel, the first artist to do so.

It's good to see Buchel back at a scale he is happily able to handle, on familiar artfair ground. He's also got a bunch of limited edition prints of his Mass Moca legal correspondence on exhibit at Maccarone's booth, beside McCarthy's chocolate Santas (as advertised in Vanity Fair). Maccarone is the anti-market gallery, or something. I'm not sure..

Make sure you click on Christoph Buchel... it's necessary to keep the world's first google image search sculpture alive.

Hoosick Falls White-Hot Market Report

My village is for sale!! When I was in NYC last month I talked to a FAMOUS GALLERIST who told me that s/he is thinking of buying property in the country... hey, how about in or around Hoosick Falls???

We have many nice houses available... and some landmark buildings that have hit the skids. Some of these would make great live/work studio buildings.

I was just there a couple weeks ago, taking care of Paco. C'mon, let me show you around!


This is called The American House... it used to be wrapped in porches on all three floors. We used to come here and eat pizza and play pool. My grandfather was in a club called the Derby Club, which met in the bar.

You can have it for $99,000! WOW!

That brick building on the far left used to be a small market called O'Dells, ran by Mary Jane O'Dell and her mother. We would go there for the penny candy. I think Mary Jane is still around, but I haven't seen her since the last time I went to the Kiwanis Chicken Barbecue (at the church where the real Natty Bumpo is buried).


This is St. Mary's Academy, where we went to school. My parents and three of my four grandparents also went to school here. I actually remember being in school here and thinking that these would make nice apartments someday.

Now you can! $349,000! It's been empty for years, totally dickerable!


BONUS: View from St. Mary's! You can see a bit of the protest house on the left. Unfortunately, the protest house has now been mostly painted over, and is no longer a protest house to the whole town, just to the neighbors on one side.

I heard my first dirty joke down on that corner, by the stop sign, about a lady looking for her dog, named Titswiggle. Have you seen my Titswiggle?

Officer Royal Howard used to stand in that street so we could cross.


This place has no special memory, but it is BIG and for sale, for only $150,000! Check it out. Yes, that is the top of the American House in the background (the back view).


Okay.. you can have BOTH of these houses and that lot to the left for only $75,000! Junky but cheap. In the background you can see the St. Mary's church.


Here's a nice building for only $189,000. That is Don's Barber Shop next door... I showed this place before (remember my WARNING) .

This is almost directly across the street from the window where Grandma Moses' paintings were first discovered! We actually ended up living in one of the apartments above that store for a short time. Here is one of Grandma Moses' pictures of Hoosick Falls....

Have you seen my Grandma Moses screenplay idea???

Confession: I have a painting in the window (of the next-door store)!!! Mine is in the center, back.... here is a better image. This just might be my ticket to the big time!!!

Thomas Moses, great-grandson of Grandma, also has stuff there.

Every kid in Hoosick Falls learns to swim and ice-skate, cute library, nice public tennis courts, nice athletic fields, Youth Center with basketball courts, band concerts in the park every Wednesday night all summer long since the beginning of time conducted by Mr. Gaillard.

MORE info:

- Hoosick Falls Town Website
- Hoosick Falls History - NICE site!
- Hoosick Falls on Wikipedia
- one of my previous HF posts

MORE properties:

- Valerie Sutton has a lot of good ones - i used to be her paperboy, and play in her haybarn!
- At-Home Realty
- Martinez Realty - his father was the town doctor!
- This one I know for a fact is in great shape, for a really good price. He is my sister-in-law's step-brother.
- Here is one that might be made nice, for $52,000.

Nice big cheap houses, beautiful place, proximity to Bennington VT, Williamstown MA, North Adams MA, Albany NY, Saratoga Springs NY; also not too far from NYC, Boston, and Montreal.
Artists! Consider a move to Hoosick Falls!

Art For The Cash Poor White Hot Market Report

Saturday's Art For The Cash Poor event was hot! I had too many beers and fell asleep in the only shade available - under my table. I think I was out for two hours. I got an e-mail today from an old girlfriend from which I'll excerpt:

"Hi Martin, I'm sorry I didn't get to talk to since you were sleeping when I stopped by your table". She also had this to say - "p.s. I'm glad you've been working so much over the years. Not everyone sticks with it. Kudos". So True! Thanks Kristan.

I did get to meet some other old and new friends. MaryAnn Devine stopped by to introduce her new husband and return a painting she had been holding for me forever. Sean Kelly, an old co-worker from Borders, happened to walk by and we had a chance to catch up. Sean is now the Program Director at Eastern State Penitentiary. That place is super-cool - if you happened to catch the Virgil Marti talk earlier this year you know that ESP is the place where he had his Oscar Wilde installation. Here are the guidelines if you'd like to submit a project proposal.

Especially exciting was that I got to meet OK Artists Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof. Roberta and Libby write one of the first two artblogs I started reading (Tyler's is the other) and are a big inspiration - as both artists and artbloggers. They had a table of work from their So True and Dorothy Speaks series, much of which I had already seen on their website and written about. They were selling So True pieces for only $50.00 so I left the market to try and find a cash machine and get one. I ended up getting the piece above, which is a thin brick of wood with another painting on the reverse. Can you believe it? Only $50.00 for two paintings by artists that are going to be on the covers of Artforum and Art in America in 2020! What a bargain!!

Roberta and Libby and I spread the artists supporting artists thumbs-up magic and posed for photos with each other's work. They've already posted their photos (and you can see my table of meatballs baking in the sun behind me) but I'm still using a Kodak disposable so it will be a while until I finish that roll of film and get it developed. Daniel Buren is on that roll also.

My t-shirt is by Richmond artist Nick Kuszyk.