Joana Vasconcelos

A little niche

Over the past eleven years the Artgenève fair has slowly but surely grown into a key event in the contemporary art world for this international city, famous for its free port among other things. Helmed by its director Thomas Hug, it found a little niche at the end of January in the very busy calendar of the global market for current art.

Mainly around 50 000 euros

Tony Cragg

It operated on its own scale, modestly and efficiently, in a very wealthy part of Switzerland. The works on offer are not in the millions of euros, but instead have an average price of around 50,000 euros. It has been so successful that it even created a smaller offshoot, Art Monaco, which is held in the principality in mid-July.

Fraud, mismanagement, theft

But in July 2023 Thomas Hug was dismissed from his post for unknown reasons. And on 18 January 2024 a bi-monthly Swiss business magazine, Bilan, revealed that the former director of Artgenève has been subject to accusations of fraud, mismanagement and theft.

Gstaad Art Salon

At the same time we learned that Thomas Hug had created the Gstaad Art Salon, a fair at the luxurious ski resort comprised, according to inside sources, of 20 participants, some of whom are highly influential such as the French Perrotin, the English-origin gallery White Cube, and the Mexican Kurimanzutto. It is set to take place from 16 to 18 February 2024 (1). Gstaad has become a major platform in the art trade during winter. Gagosian and Hauser & Wirth both have bases there this season. It is also located a two-hour drive from Geneva.

Charlotte Diwan

Charlotte Diwan

It’s in this context, which is unsettled to say the least, that Artgenève is opening from 25 to 28 January, this time directed by Charlotte Diwan, formerly in charge of the fair’s partnerships. We could sum up the situation with a remark from Tancredi in The Leopard in the eponymous novel and film: “Everything must change for everything to remain the same”. The new director explains: “I don’t have ambitions for major changes. I’m not commenting on issues relating to the charges against Thomas Hug. What matters to me is the quality of the participants at Artgenève. The powerful galleries benefit from the fair to showcase part of their program with relatively low prices. These are artworks that are not seen at the larger fairs.”

Drop in business

Le Corbusier @ Le Minotaure

More generally, for this 12^th edition of the fair a number of the gallerists admit they have observed a significant drop in business in recent months, a slowdown of sales, a wait-and-see attitude among clientele and a general sense of uncertainty in relation to the global economic, geopolitical and social situation.

Joana Vasconcelos

But against all these odds, the offerings from the 80 participants at Artgenève are good. The most spectacular artwork at the fair, placed in a space reserved for large format works and curated by Genevan art critic Nicolas Trembley, is a sculpture by Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos (born in 1971). In the form of a monumental octopus, she has called it “Valkyrie Mumbet”. It is decorated with braiding, embroidery and luxuriant crochet work made in the former Portuguese colonies and is showcased across 16 metres by the Genevan Gowen gallery (on sale for 1.5 million euros).

Homage to Elizabeth Mumbet

Joana Vasconcelos

“It is an homage to the first woman to be freed from slavery in the United States in 1781, Elizabeth Mumbet,” says the artist. The work was displayed in 2020 at the inauguration of the Mass Art Museum in Boston.

Wim Delvoye

Talking of spectacular installations, there’s also the unmissable intervention of Belgian artist Wim Delvoye (born in 1965) at Geneva’s Museum of Art and History (a report will soon be written on this featuring an interview with Wim Delvoye) where he revisits the institution’s collections in his erudite and iconoclastic way, by copying, drilling holes, cutting things up and circulating skilfully constructed marble runs.

Perrotin

Wim Delvoye

An art market star in the 2000, since then he has been more under the radar. At Artgenève Perrotin is presenting one of his sculptures, a standing nude in gilt bronze transformed in anamorphosis, on sale for 220,000 euros.

Philippe Parreno

Philippe Parreno

The Genevan fair allows us to spot new works from recognized artists. The French publisher Cahiers d’Art is exhibiting a work by high-profile French artist Philippe Parreno (born in 1964). In 2023 he created a sculpture which is a real-life snowman. It tells a story. It was deliberately designed to be dirty and badly shaped . At the Cahiers d’Art booth it melts relentlessly. In fact the gallery is displaying a mould, a plinth and instructions to endlessly remake this sculpture of a conceptual nature, which is reminiscent of a contemporary vanitas (on sale for 40,000 euros in a set of 10 copies) (See here a recent report about Philippe Parreno).

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman

At the Hauser & Wirth booth there is a photo on show taken from the new series by famous American photographer Cindy Sherman (born in 1954), made with the aid of artificial intelligence. As usual it is a self-portrait with a grotesque appearance in black and white (on sale for 150,000 dollars in a set of 6). The artist also appears, as she shows on her instagram account, in an advert for Marc Jacobs, playing herself under the lens of Juergen Teller.

Miquel Barcelo

In Geneva’s old town, the private Barbier-Mueller museum, known for its fabulous collections of tribal art, is establishing a dialogue until 14 April between their sculptures and the work of Spanish painter who lives in Paris, Miquel Barcelo (born in 1957). He has just published an autobiographical book, “De la vida mia” (Mercure de France) which recounts his private life and his inspirations, with amusing lines like: “With my father we spoke little. He was a man of few words. He looked a lot like Frankenstein.”

Miquel Barcelo

At the booth of the Ropac gallery there is one of his remarkable canvases, a still life dated from 2021 in white against a dark red background, thickly textured as usual. It is on sale for 450,000 euros.

Zhenya Machneva

Zhenya Machneva

The nice surprises of the fair are the spaces – and there are many of them – dedicated to solo shows. At the Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois gallery from Paris there is a space dedicated to Russian artist Zhenya Machneva (born in 1988). When war broke out between Russia and Ukraine she decided to leave her country for France. She draws, but her large-scale compositions are tapestries which she makes using her own looms. Here she has created industrial landscapes that play with geometry and colour contrasts, deserted factories like the ones that inspired German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher from the late 1950s. Zhenya’s work was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2022. Her tapestries are on sale between 8000 and 5000 euros.

Chico da Silva

Chico da Silva

The art consultant Vincent Matthu has an exhibition space in Brussels named Ars Belga. At the Geneva fair he is also staging a solo show of a fascinating Brazilian painter, Chico da Silva (perhaps 1910-1985). His canvases are on sale for 50,000 dollars. His paintings are filled with countless patterns creating fantastic animal forms in a lush natural setting and belong to the art brut movement. This autodidact from the Amazonian region had dazzling success during his lifetime.

Pinacoteca in Sao Paulo

Chico da Silva

In 1967 he represented Brazil at the Venice Biennale. But the end of his life was dramatic, and his later output was less appreciated. His works, most often on paper, are uneven in quality, depending on his level of intervention at his atelier. The market takes this into account. Da Silva was the subject of an exhibition at the Pinacoteca in Sao Paulo until October 2023 and recently the trendy Kordansky gallery in New York and Los Angeles displayed  his drawings too. This sudden relevance explains a strong recent rise in his prices. According to Vincent Matthu they have doubled in the past two years. On 14 November 2023 Sotheby’s even sold one of his large-scale gouaches from 1966 in New York for the record price of 303,000 euros.

Despite an unsettling context, the art market continues to reward exceptional works by the most in-demand artists.

https://artgeneve.ch/

• (1) Thomas Hug did not wish to respond to our questions and the fair’s website does not provide detailed information.