Review

3 ~ 8, Dec. 2008
3000 NE 1st Avenue, Miami, USA

There must have not been any other time in history when the relationship between the art market and the world economy was as agitated as it has been this year. For the past one or two years, there have been art fairs and auctions every month around the world. Prices of artworks increased day after day at auctions and market prices even manipulated the trends in art. Even prices of artworks by nameless young artists increased rapidly and art dealers stretched out their tentacles to them to purchase art.

올해처럼 미술시장과 세계경제 관계가 동요되여 온적은 역사상 없었다. 지난 1-2년간 세계적으로 매달 옥션과 아트페어가 있었다. 옥션에서 작품가격과 시장가격은 작품경향을 교묘하게 조절하며 날마다 상승했으며 심지어는 무명의 젊은작가들도 가파르게 가격이 올랐다. 딜러들은 그들의 작품을 소지하려고 촉각을 세우기도했다.

On September 15, 2008, however, as Lehman Brothers, the financial investment bank of the U.S., declared bankruptcy, the so-called Lehman Shock has been an enormous impact on the art market and its investors.

그러나 2008년 9월 15일 미국의 투자은행 리먼 부라더스의 파산 선언으로 소위 리먼 쇼크가 미술시장과 투자가들에게 막대한 충격을 던져 주었다.

 
There were 21 art fairs in Miami alone. More than 2,000 art galleries came from all around the world. There have been this many art fairs and participating galleries for the past few years. When they reached the peak in 2006 and in 2007, more than 100 private jets and countless collectors gathered here and bought over KRW 20 billion worth of art. At the VIP opening, expensive artworks were sold out in only two hours as the buyers were already forming lines before the opening. In 2008, however, there still were many visitors, but not many people actually bought the art.

지난 몇년동안 21개의 아트페어가 있었는데 Maimi 에만도 세계각국으로부터 2,000 여 갤러리가 참가하였다 . 2006,2007년을 정점으로  많은 컬랙터와 100여명 제트족들이 몰려들어 20억 이상의 작품들을 사갔으며 VIP 오프닝에서는 공식 오픈전 2시간만에 바이어들에 의해 이미 값비싼 작품들이 다 팔렸다. 그러나 2008년은 많은 방문객이 있었지만 실제적으로는 작품이 많이 팔리지는 않았다.  

The sales records were historic low. I did not visit all 21 art fairs, but judging by the six art fairs I visited, not many were sold although there were many people. Most of the artworks sold were around USD$ 10,000-20,000 or even lower. I contacted the Art Fair Headquarters for more information, but I have not received their reply yet. The Art Basel Miami Beach exhibited many masterpieces that reached JPY 70 million to 100 million in prices, but none of them seemed to have been sold. Unlike gigantic corporations, many art dealers are private entrepreneurs, and they must have been struck hard by this year? art fairs. Not many galleries had come from Korea, China, and Taiwan and seven galleries in Seoul cancelled their participation before the opening. Fortunately, some Korean galleries in the U.S. did participate.  

작품 판매 기록이 역사상 제일 저조했으며 21개의 아트페어에 다 참가하지 못했다. 그러나 6개의 아트페어를 방문하여 평가한다면 많은 관람객이 있었으나 작품은 많이 팔리지 않았다. 팔린 작품 대개가 10,000 -20,000 달러 혹은 그 이하의 적은 가격대의 작품이 대부분이었다. 나는 더 많은 정보를위해 아트페어 사무국과 연락을 취해 보았지만 아직 답장도 못 받았다 Maimi 바젤은 7,000만Yen 에서 1억Yen에 달하는 가격대의  많은 걸작품을 선보였지만 아무도 사간사람은 없었던 것 같다. 대기업 또는 많은 딜러들 그리고 많은 중개업자들이 올해 커다란 충격을 받아서 일까? 아트페어에 대만 중국 그리고 한국에서 참가하기로한  많은 갤러리들과 서울의 7개 갤러리들은 오픈전에 참가를 취소 했으며  다행이 미국에 있는 몇몇 한국갤러리가 참가를 했다.  

There are many problems to be solved. It seems that the art market has just entered a very difficult war. There could be more serious situations ahead. On the bright side, private collectors will look for distinguished and non-market-oriented quality artworks. If the difference bet-ween art history and art market is past history, now is the time of seeing through the essence of art.     Art Critic_Yuzo Ueda.

풀어야할 많은 문제점들이 있다. 미술시장이 어려운 국면으로 막 들어가고 있는듯 하다. 더 심각한 상황이 초래될수도있다, 긍정적인 측면에서 보면  개인 컬랙터들이 무엇인가 차별화되고 시장이 아닌곳에서 오리지널 작품을 찾게 될것이다. 만약 미술의 역사와 미술시장의 차이가 과거였다면 지금은 작품의 본질을 통해서 보는 시대이다.

평론가  Yuzo Ueda

ENTROPY AND TESTIMONIESSubid Gupta’s installation embalms an entire office area. It’s a reference to the ubiquitous bureaucracy in India, an image of entropy, with the limitless gathering and processing of details undertaken by bureaucracy, epitomised in Gupta’s sculptural morphing of a bursting filing cupboard. Like all of his work it carries contradictory energies. Filmmaker, Amar Kanwar’s installation is cinematic in its reach, with seven video projections surrounding the beholder, reflecting the documentary filmmakers own desire to lose himself in the image, to not be an observer but a participant. ‘The Lightning Testimonies’ projects a montage of hundreds of shifting images, it could be considered a moving tribute or memory room for new forms to narrate these testimonies to oppression and suffering –of women in the internecine conflicts in India and its regions, whether at the hands of Hindu, Muslim or their own families. FRAMING INDIAN HIGHWAYIt is burdensome rhetoric by the curators to claim that the so called younger artists are to be “ …[framed] and contextualised by the new paintings …created for the Serpentine Gallery by India’s most acclaimed living artist, M. F. Husain … India’s most historically significant artist M.F. Husain” any such significance for Husain, self-exiled in the UK due to the dangers he faced for his works’ political protest in India over the past 50 years isn’t fully realised as they are installed by the architects Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Muller in a structure wrapping three sides of the Serpentine in a series of contiguous boxes. These are paintings after all, and have no reference to public space or the context on the exterior of a museum.Similarly the design intervention by the same architects invited by Raqs Media Collective (RMC) was to create an immersive environment. - painted silver with silver aluminium ladders, while the documentary films were screened onto the silver surface and fixed onto the ladders. The RMC project asked these video makers to do a very interesting thing, to re-enter and re-edit an earlier work, to intercut any idea of a secure representations of an historical moment, some were more successful in this uncanny de-centering, but all were slightly ‘repressed’ by this environment. AN EXHIBITION IN PROCESSHans Ulrich Orbrist is known for his desire to develop projects that are not closed but discursive, open, accumulative and generative. To this end this exhibition has a long list of associated events,  open, accumulative and generative. To this end this exhibition has a long list of associated events, including cinema, dance, and literature and will travel to different institutions over four year period – the first being Astrup Fearnely Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, and will bring in other artists and curators along the way. This expansion as a means to prevent a containment of meaning threatens also to produce chaos without a critical focus. In contrast the catalogue is a comprehensive mapping of the scene in India and of India itself, with essays providing a context and debate, such as Geeta Kapur’s analysis of contemporary documentary film and video and its more recent political uses against censorship in India along with other essayists writing on contemporary art in contemporary Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh that indicate the importance of intellectual engagement in this scene. So this exhibition is incomplete in this sense, and it is not a matter of whether we get lost in this chaos but whether the works selected are able to survive the context and address what is the opposite of an escape from reality, the wish that is always embedded in the dream.