The proliferation of independent art fairs is creating a small constrained market for young artists. This market has not been impacted by the boon in the international global art market driven by investments which in 2017 generated close to $64 billion, an annual increase of 12%, and is generally considered to be a better investment than stocks, antiques, jewelry or gold.   Four out of five artworks bought at auction go into storage for future sale. Unfortunately, art does not provide a living for artists, and 90% of US artists have to engage in other income generating work. Of 1016 visual artist responding to a survey by the Creative Independent only three percent rated their financial stability as high. For most, artistic work is a part time job and their low median income is about half of the average US income, often derived from multiple jobs.  Having a gallery representing them has no great influence on their earnings nor does an art school education. Rather, trial, error, and learning by example is important for achieving financial success.  The effort of major art galleries to support small galleries and the initiatives of the Affordable Art Fair to cover expenses of admission to their fairs for artists has become increasingly important.

Held from September  27 – 30 at Manhattan’s  Metropolitan Pavilion, the 26^th edition of the Affordable Art Fair NYC (AAF) returned for the its second 2018 presentation with more than 74 American and international galleries featuring over 400 emerging and established artists. Compared to the spring 2018 AAF, a larger number of galleries participated and the audience increased significantly. There was an increase in local and national galleries with foreign ones constituting 45% of the exhibitors. Showing art in different media from visual to sculptural works the mandatory price range started at $100 and could not exceed $10,000. Thematic and presentational style of the artworks shown corresponds to what is prevalent in the city where the fair is held. As in past New York editions the demand for exhibition space exceeded what was available. Given their past success in earlier AAF shows 42 galleries returned to the customer friendly fair environment which was equally appealing to new and experienced art collectors, with many young participants. User friendliness was emphasized in self-guided tours providing identification  and charges for numerous works on the color of the year, Ultraviolet, and those focusing on “Food and Art” honoring Anthony Bourdain.  Among the attractive  elements of this fall’s  show was the Young Talent Exhibition, a solo exhibition  of the mixed media artist Chase Hill, and a Limited Edition Print series  of 10 works by London-based  Adam Bridgland commissioned for the  fall fair edition. Other elements of the fair included therapeutic art-making, personal shopping tours, and a special exhibition of artwork priced for less than $500; though numerous galleries had similar specials. AAF also added an online market place for the selling of artwork.

The Affordable Art Fair was established in 1999 and by early 2018 had more than 3.3 million visitors and over $425 million in sales. This year fairs have been held in major global cities such as New York, London, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Milan, Singapore and Stockholm.  AAF has also been engaged in  charitable activities amounting to $6.5 million since 1999 in donations to emerging artists, art education, and charities. Its goal of making art more democratic included the Non-Violence Art Project  in in New York for the supporting the Non- Violence Project Foundation.  This original project  features  collectible limited-edition knotted gun sculptures selling for  $400 -$1,300, replicating miniature versions of the famous gun sculpture  created by Carl Frederik Reuterswald  as a tribute for the slain Jon Lennon. The miniatures were designed by noted individuals such as Paul McCarney, Jonny Johanson, Muhammed Ali, and Yoko One. 

The September 2018 AAF had an audience of about 10,000 visitors and sold more than1,500 works of art for a total of $3.1 million sales.  According to interviews with gallery representatives, the AAF mission to make art more accessible and democratic has apparently been met, as large proportion of the buyers purchased art for the first time and very few identified themselves as experienced collectors. As distinct from established upscale art fairs, few mentioned investment as a motivation for buying. When Christie’s had a special exhibition of ordinary art last year which sold at a range far exceeding the AAF parameter, the element of investment did played a much larger role.

Startling photographic images were presented by the VAST gallery. Established in 2017 by Dan Piech and based in Tribeca this enterprise has invented in a new ultra-high resolution type of photography composed and assembled by a global collective of photographers, computer scientists, and other specialists. Huge displays can be produced and the sharpness and colors of the images defies description

VAST photos are created by seamlessly stitching together many individual images of a scene. Each individual image is only a small section of the scene and a few dozen megapixels. However, after all the images are compiled together, the result is a photo of the entire scene with a resolution that can be thousands of megapixels. 

The  relative absence of once popular  works of art involving video or other moving images was striking . An exception were the Novado Gallery’s Light Art  pieces with steel and LED by Sunil Garg  available for $4,500. Garg is a former business executive that has morphed into a full time experimental light and illumination artist exploring manufactured light and showcasing twisted colorful neon tubes.

Prompted by an original conception, the Hamburg based Anna Kristina Stoffel has developed a new gallery, having its second public appearance at AAF. The Social Media Art is a one of a kind off line platform serving online photographers, reversing the appropriation of art from on line to off line and digital to analogue.  Selecting images from the best and unknown social media photographers, Stoffel presents them in limited editions for sale on her gallery platform. Framed they range from $300 to $11,800, sold through the website.  Among  her artists with up to 65,000 Instagram followers are June Lawrence, Rusty G., wiles, Bastian Schertel and Lorenz Weiss.

The well-established Australian artists Gillie and Marc Schattner, presented by New York’s Lilac Gallery, have been collaborating for the last 25 years with participation in many shows including the Biennale.  Working with a large number of media they are best known for the sculptural images of animals, specifically dogs and rabbits in all kind of variations. They premiered their famous Bondi Coffee Dog at the Biennale in 2009. Closely committed to the protection of animal wildlife their work has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for wild life charities which certainly makes them unique among the artists presented at the show. At the AAF their pink, clear resin, rabbit entitled She Screamed for Ice Cream, about 17 inches high, could be purchased for $2.500

Drew Tal, an Israeli artist living in New York, was presented at the fair by the Emmanuel Fremlin gallery. They showcased his magnificent Porcelain Dynasty portraits selling, for $9,000 each from multiple editions. His work is a combination of photography and digital media that creates realistic figurative images which are pushed to an extremely stylized expression. They are facial close-ups of a diversity of cross cultural characters with upscale backgrounds. They seem to be suspended in time but are exerting a strange sophisticated fascination.  In Draw Tal’s words”...The fragile faces are encased in masks of porcelain, or brush-stroked features, to appear as doll-like perfectionist images of innocence and prestige. The impactful portrait illustrates how inherited status limits the individual to an inanimate portrayal, even featuring cracks in the façade in some images…”   

Among my amazing discoveries at AAF was the  South African artist Schalk van der Merve. With a background in indie rock bands and award winning advertising art direction, he confronts reality in his artwork in a direct visceral and confrontational way. Emotions morph from despair and destructive impulses. The apparently obvious is submerged, and linear cognitive approaches to presentations are suspended.  Der Merve is not interested in realism or popular issues and in his words; his portraits explore and attempt to capture those qualities and emotions often hidden from view. His piece reproduced below, Lemons, is a mixed media work on fabricano available unframed for $3,660 from the London based Nadia Arnold, Ltd gallery.

The fall AAF show certainly delivered on its objective of making art more democratic through a successful business model as evidenced by the large number of visitors and sales exceeding $3 million.

Claus Mueller filmexchange@gmail.com