red light specials /// art miami

...It’s Kmart special time at Art Basel Miami and its satellite fairs. With collectors being “outright ruthless” in their negotiating, complains one dealer sourly, and sellers in a mood to comply, it’s all about markdowns and modest expectations. Art worlders who believe “Go big or go home” didn’t come this year...At many booths, $30,000 seems to be a magic number, as if all the art dealers in the world had met secretly at Sant Ambroeus to decide that would be the starting price point of the year for wealthy collectors... And Miami pioneer art dealer Diana Lowenstein, who opened twenty years ago, this year is offering three exhibitions, one featuring all artworks priced at $999 — her gallery was packed.

Alexandra Peers/Vulture

IT AIN'T FAIR Art Basel 2008

Opening December 2, featuring Deitch Projects, Peres Projects...

Aaron Bondaroff, New York City’s "Downtown Don", brings his expansive community of artists, musicians, and weirdos to IT AIN'T FAIR. The second exhibition in Bondaroff and Al Moran’s groundbreaking O.H.W.O.W. space in the "West of Wynwood" district, this watershed project gets celebrated curators Tim Barber, Kathy Grayson, Andreas Melas, Dan Nadel, Pablo de la Barra, Nicola Vassell and Terence Koh to activate their various teams of artists in a huge multimedia exhibition featuring painting, sculpture, video and performance from artists all over the world with a focus on downtown Manhattan...

miami art basel and the shaky economy

How will Art Miami 'fair' this coming week? Check out one opinion here:

Art Basel Miami Beach and the New Economy: Diminished Expectations or Potential for a New Democracy?

...But is a high octane platform like Art Basel capable of running on cheaper fuel? Because at current prices, galleries cannot continue to rent large booths, ship art, pay for insurance, book hotels and flights and arrange dinners without a strong confidence in market return.
If the fair no longer guarantees an A-list of international collectors, if major Europeans stay away from Miami this year, as many Americans apparently neglected Frieze, FIAC and Berlin in recent months, then ABMB would become both more parochial and less lucrative...

On a side note, I was in an LA boutique about two weeks ago and overheard a prominent LA gallery owner say that they too had just pulled out of Art Miami because it wasn't worth the art sale gamble, extra spenditure, and hassle. He/she made predictions that other art fairs would collapse and the gallery "big-wigs" would soon be making cut-backs.

Want to re-live the past with me:
here, here, here, here, here, here
Oh, the good times!

stolen art makes for good art

THE THRILL OF COLLECTING

ok, so i am a little late but thought it was still worth noting. august makes for a dull month - and this art...is well actually interesting (and with a curated theme!?) despite the hoards of shitty art out there at the moment!

"The Thrill Of Collecting was an exhibtion in the Uovo Open Office in Basel. Initiated 3
days before the opening by Cyprien Gaillard, Tobias Madison and Emanuel Rossetti it
featured 17 international artists. Only artworks that were stolen were allowed into the
show. The title was taken from an AXA Art Insurance Programm whose advertising sign
was stolen from their booth in the collectors lounge of Art Basel."

http://www.daskonkret.com