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ARCO

REVIEW OF ARCO’07

ARCO MEETS ITS TARGETS AND CLOSES WITH A 15% INCREASE
IN SALES

As forecast, the 26th International Contemporary Art Fair will close its doors today with one of the best financial results of its career. Added to ARCO’s satisfaction at seeing its targets met, there is the success of its sales figures, with an estimated 15% increase in total sales, and higher number of collectors and buyers attending. There were around 20% more professional visitors, due both to visitor segmentation and to the fact that the private collectors’ showings were extended to two-and-a-half days.

In addition, the estimated number of visitors was similar to those in previous editions - around 190,000. This was topped off by the high standard of the 271 galleries that took part, all of whom went to great lengths to produce fine displays, showcasing a splendid selection of artists.

Having concentrated on putting several aspects of the fair to the test, with a view to consolidating future potential, and enhancing two essential areas (collecting, and ARCO’s business profile), the results not only confirmed ARCO’s own forecast, but it also proved that the Spanish market is increasingly in tune with the upward trend of the international art market.

Three other features were unanimously spotlighted by the press and marked this 26th edition of the fair, which is undergoing a period of smooth transition led by Lourdes Fernández’s new management team: greater focus on professional visitors, higher quality of the goods on offer, and the consolidation of an emerging body of local collectors.

Supporting collectors. Earning trust through its focus on professionals, and becoming an appealing option for collectors abroad and in Spain, was a specific undertaking that helped to boost this year’s fair. The strategy was visitor segmentation, devoting an entire extra day to professional visitors, thereby encouraging work and business contacts between galleries and buyers. Proof of this can be seen in the numerous sales transactions that took place on those days. There was a marked difference between the first day, Wednesday, when a large number of preliminary contacts and reservations were made, and the second and third days, when a high number of actual sales took place. For corporate visitors - an area where major new buyers were apparent - the Berge Group (via Hyundai), contributed a VIP Lounge which served as an exclusive meeting place for collectors and professional visitors.

The Special Guest Country, South Korea, also ended on a high in terms of business results. Its strong turnout of galleries aroused huge interest amongst collectors, and generated a large volume of sales: over half the galleries sold 100% of their selected works. This also goes to show the growing acceptance of Asian art on the international art scene.

Focussing on professionals. The results confirm what critics have unanimously described as the great progress made by ARCO in terms of professional visitors, with a balanced presence of major international artists, some of the world’s top galleries, and artworks of a very high standard. By enhancing its profile in this way, ARCO is right on track, in the highly competitive world of international contemporary art fairs. Art spaces were better laid-out and contained more balanced proposals, many of them making some brave artistic choices, all of which met with great approval this year. Some galleries also decided to hold one-man-shows, a feature that really appealed to visitors. And distinctions were made between visitors themselves, who were also generally better qualified.

The target: quality. The care taken with the selection process and the growing international interest in the Spanish market have turned ARCO into a leading art fair, ever more international in scope, and deeply rooted in an expanding market. The fifty top galleries that attended the fair for the first time this year joined firmly established ARCO regulars. This was one of the major steps taken this year, with a view to making quality a priority, and it means ARCO is now seen as a business platform that is fully equipped to meet current market demands.

2008. This year’s strong results are undoubtedly a huge step in the right direction in terms of ARCO’s firm decision to achieve top quality. This goal will be the basis of the selection process for next year’s fair, which features Brazil as Special Guest Country. The 2008 edition, which will transfer to Feria de Madrid’s new exhibition halls, will have a brand new, well-defined layout and design. Collecting will once again be the highlight, with particular focus on corporate collecting, one of the areas with the greatest potential right now.

For more information go to: http://www.arco.ifema.es

The Power Plant, Toronto

3 March – 22 April, 2007
Fiona Banner: The Bastard Word
Yael Bartana: Ritual

The Power Plant
Contemporary Art Gallery
231 Queens Quay West
Toronto ON Canada M5J 2G8
+1 416 973 4927
http://www.thepowerplant.org

Fiona Banner: The Bastard Word

Fiona Banner, a leading mid-career British artist and former Turner Prize nominee, has been exhibiting widely since her first solo show at City Racing in 1994. Her exhibitions include ‘Asterisk,’ Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen, 1999; ‘Your Plinth is my Lap,’ Dundee Contemporary Arts / Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, 2002. Banner is represented in various collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Philadelphia Museum, The Arts Council of England, Tate Gallery, London and the Walker Art Gallery, Minneapolis.

‘The Bastard Word,’ curated by The Power Plant Director, Gregory Burke, is an exhibition of new and recent work that brings together a range of sculptures, installations, drawings, and a selection of newer pieces that are among her most ambitious to date. Banner investigates the limits and possibilities of written language, drawing on source material from military hardware and films to pornography and the tradition of the nude. Recent work that addresses her interest with the concept of war include Parade, 2007, an installation of 179 Airfix models of all of the world’s fighter planes and Tornado Nude, 2006, a drawing on the wing of a Tornado airplane that stands at nearly 6 metres high. Every Word Unmade, 2007, is a work of the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet in neon physically bent by the artist. These rather crude and primitive letters are indicative of a ritualistic process of personally re-creating language. Banner will also be giving a rare performance, relat
ed to the ‘Nude’ series, for which she will create a word painting as a life-drawing.

In conjunction with the exhibition, The Power Plant and The Vanity Press are producing an illustrated newspaper with a rare and insightful interview between Fiona Banner and Gregory Burke, and an essay by Cay-Sophie Rabinowitz, the Senior US Editor of Parkett.

Fiona Banner: The Bastard Word is generously supported by lead donors Yvonne & David Fleck, Guy Knowles, Phil Lind, Liza Mauer & Andrew Sheiner, Nancy McCain & William Morneau, and the British Council.

Fiona Banner is represented by 1301PE, Los Angeles, Frith Street Gallery, London, Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin, and Tracy Williams Ltd., New York.

Yael Bartana: Ritual

Documenting and restaging everyday activities, Yael Bartana’s films suggest how social rituals and other group activities promote national and cultural cohesion. Bartana’s context looks to her native Israel with regards to how militarization, nationalism and the possibilities of protest resonate in many contemporary situations. Her approach to the quotidian has been likened to “amateur anthropology,” a notion borrowed from the Polish-Canadian writer Eva Hoffman. Yet while Hoffman posits the immigrant as one who sees minute details that others take for granted, Bartana is no detached voyeur. By slowing down footage, manipulating and editing footage, she isolates moments of ambivalence, resistance or over-compensation that undercut simple national and cultural affiliations. In so doing, Bartana hopes to “provoke honest responses and perhaps replace the predictable, controlled reactions encouraged by the state.” There will be four film works shown at The Power Plant, including h
er latest piece, Wild Seeds, 2006 – a video of young Israelis playing a game based on the forced withdrawal of Jewish settlers from Gilad’s Colony in 2002. This exhibition has been curated by The Power Plant’s Senior Curator of Programs, Helena Reckitt.

Yael Bartana divides her time between Amsterdam and Tel-Aviv, and her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, 2003, Kunstverein Hamburg, 2006, and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2006; group exhibitions include Manifesta 4, Frankfurt, 2002, 10th Istanbul Biennial, 2005, and Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, 2006.

Yael Bartana: Ritual has been generously supported by the Consulate-General of the Kingdom of The Netherlands. It is presented in conjunction with 20th annual Images Festival, Toronto. Bartana is represented by Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam.

For more information go to: http://www.thepowerplant.org

Kunstmuseum Bern

HORN PLEASE – The Narrative in Contemporary Indian Art
Exhibition at the Museum of
Fine Arts Berne
September 21, 2007 – January 6, 2008

Kunstmuseum Bern
Hodlerstrasse 8-12
CH-3000 Bern 7
Phone +41 31 328 09 44
press@kunstmuseumbern.ch
http://www.kunstmuseumbern.ch

Unlike Western modernisms of the 20th century that rejected the narrative in favour of the self-reflective artwork, India has had a strong tradition of figurative, narrative painting that goes back several decades. The exhibition Horn Please attempts to follow the journey of the narrative over three decades, from the 1980s to the present, by tracing certain ‘critical’ moments in Indian art – moments of both assimilation and intervention – through which a particular kind of narrative was constructed. Our points of departure are the exhibitions Place for People (1982) and Question and Dialogue (1987) of the Radical Painters and Sculptors Association. Both these moments serve as reference points only to try to capture what followed until today, across time shifts and media, breaks and continuities.

The Place for People exhibition in 1982 was put together by a group of artists – Jogen Chowdhury, Bhupen Khakhar, Nalini Malini, Sudhir Patwardhan, Gulam Mohammed Sheik and Vivan Sundaram – based in Baroda mainly, but with their links in Bombay, Delhi and Shantiniketan. This was, at that moment in time, a significant exhibition because it brought into focus new ideologies of narration (formulated almost as a manifesto by Geeta Kapur) and narrative paintings that appropriated the vernacular and the global, drew as much from traditional styles as it did from the West and told everyday stories without resorting to the monumental or the iconic.

This move was in turn rejected by the Question and Dialogue (1987) exhibition constituted by what came to be known as the Kerala Radical group. This short-lived collective was formed on the lines of left-wing political activism through what they saw as alternate art practices. Narratives were condensed into gestures that emphasized the political, the humanitarian and the social. Everything international, commercial and Western was rejected by the artists in this group who included Krishna Kumar, Alex Mathew, C K Rajan and Anita Dube, who was also the “chronicler” of the movement.

Horn Please will revisit some works and writings from these seminal exhibitions, juxtaposing them with current works made by the same artists, and place them alongside the works of much younger artists, for many of whom the exhibitions referred to might be of no significance whatsoever. By representing scenes from everyday life, fictive happenings, mythology and satire as well as autobiographical, societal and historical material, the contributing artists will in turn reflect an India that has changed economically, politically and socially over the last three decades.

Horn Please tries in its own way to bring together the multiplicity and diversity of art practice around the well-defined, the ambiguous and sometimes fragmentary narratives told through painting, sculpture, photography, photomontage, video, animation and installation work. The exhibition also shows how people who do not come from a primarily artistic background bring in new types and styles of narratives and how a number of women artists began using the narrative in different ways in new media work. The definite artists list will be communicated later.

Horn Please is curated by Bernhard Fibicher, curator of contemporary art at the Museum of Fine Arts Bern and Suman Gopinath, independent curator and partner/director of Colab Art & Architecture, Bangalore, India. A catalogue in German and English will be published and distributed worldwide.

Contact:
Ruth Gilgen Hamisultane, Press + Communication
Phone +41 31 328 09 19, ruth.gilgen@kunstmuseumbern.ch

For more information go to: http://www.kunstmuseumbern.ch