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Yinka Shonibare Opens Artist Residency Program in Nigeria
British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare CBE has opened a residency program and art space in Nigeria with a mission to foster exchange between artists of different cultures and career paths.
Located on two sites, Lagos and a rural working farm in Ijebu, Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation will provide public programs, exhibition opportunities, and workspace for creatives from Africa, the diaspora, and around the world.
Ghanaian-British architect Elsie Owusu and Lagos-based architect Nihinlola Shonibare designed the location in Lagos, a barrier-free venue that boasts studio, gallery, and performance space on the ground floor and shared living quarters upstairs—enough to accommodate three resident artists at a time. (London-based Owusu also designed Shonibare’s house in Lagos.)
The 54-acre farm is staffed by local villagers and features hundreds of cashew-nut trees and other crops. The farm’s new building, designed by Papa Omotayo of MOE+, will offer residency space for artists, scientists, and agriculturalists. Construction on workshop spaces dedicated to weaving, ceramics, and other crafts will begin in the spring.
Both sites were funded by Shonibare himself; the residencies and programs will be funded by his foundation and through partnerships.
“The art world needs to evolve,” Shonibare said at the center’s opening, as reported in the Nigerian newspaper The Nation. “There is a rich vein of talent out there, but we might lose them if the status quo of the last 30 years remains. We are working with the local community, whilst opening doors for the next generation, equipping them to thrive not just survive.”
Shonibare is one of many African and African diasporic artists who are capitalizing on their own success to cultivate the next generation of artistic talent in their
countries of origin. Painter Amoako Boafo, installation artist Ibrahim Mahama, and performance artist Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi have each set up spaces in Ghana to support young artists. Meanwhile, Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock residency in Senegal has become a closely watched incubator for emerging figures. In the absence of robust government funding for the arts, these initiatives have quickly become a core part of their countries’ cultural infrastructure. Shonibare first announced the launch of his non-profit in 2019. It was inspired by his long-running “Guest Projects” initiative, for which he invited up-and-coming artists to work in a London studio, located on the ground floor of a former carpet factory.
The Nigerian residency spaces were originally slated to open last November, timed in conjunction with the Art x Lagos art fair, but the logistics around the pandemic resulted in delays. It officially opened its doors in February.
Yinka Shonibare with his installation “The British Library.” Photo by Tabatha Fireman/Getty Images.
Paris’s Galerie Templon to Open Outpost in New York
Galerie Templon, one of Paris’s leading contemporary art galleries, will open a location in New York this fall. The space’s inaugural exhibition will be a solo show devoted to artist Omar Ba, who is based in New York and Dakar, Senegal.
The new location, at 293 Tenth Avenue, is located in New York’s Chelsea area, and was formerly home to Kasmin gallery. The 6,500-square-foot space will be renovated by architect Markus Dochantschi’s studio MDA. In addition to the Ba exhibition, Templon has shows planned in the
coming months for artists Chiharu Shiota, Iván Navarro, Prune Nourry, Michael Ray Charles, Jim Dine, and Edward and Nancy Kienholz.
For his exhibition, Ba will “present a new series of paintings investigating the complex position of Africa in today’s American and European politics,” according to a release. He will also have two major institutional shows later this year, at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels (opening in April) and at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Templon was founded by Daniel Templon in Paris in 1966 and is located in the city’s Marais neighborhood. In 2016, the gallery expanded to Brussels. Daniel’s son, Mathieu Templon, had previously led the Belgian space, and will now relocate to New York to lead the new space.
In a statement, Mathieu Templon said, “In a context profoundly reshaped by the pandemic, and the renewed attractiveness of Paris as a cultural hub, it only seemed natural to expand the gallery’s footprint and organize a permanent presence in New York. A large number of our artists do not have American representation or have not exhibited in the U.S. in a long time. Our objective is to give them an opportunity to engage with new audiences and give them the global platform they deserve.”
Templon is the latest blue-chip gallery to set up shop in Chelsea. Galeria Nara Roesler, which is based in Brazil, launched a space in the district last year, and Los Angeles’s David Kordansky has plans to inaugurate a New York gallery there this spring.
Phillips Nets $40 M. in London Sale, Pledges Funds for Ukraine Relief
Galerie Templon.
Amid the somber backdrop of an escalating war in Ukraine, Phillips followed its competitors Sotheby’s and Christie’s, holding an evening sale dedicated to modern and contemporary art at its London headquarters that brought in £29.9 million ($40 million) on Thursday. The total surpassed the sum made during last year’s equivalent sale held in April, which brought in £24.8 million with premium ($34.2
million), across 30 lots.
At this sale, 36 out of a total 41 lots sold, yielding a solid 95 percent sell-through rate. Eight works, including ones by David Hockney, Günther Förg, and Henry Moore, were secured with third-party backing before being offered in the sale. After four lots were withdrawn prior to the sale, the auction was expected to fetch an estimated hammer price of £24.7 million–£36 million ($33 million–$48 million). The sale’s final sum of $40 million (£29.9 million) includes premium.
Phillips auctioneer Henry Highly took up the gavel on Thursday to lead the sale. The atmosphere in the room appeared notably downcast as reports of economic sanctions targeting key Russian financial institutions and high-net-worth Putin allies, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, continued to escalate.
On the heels of a recent announcement earlier this week of its plans to sell a $70 million Basquiat painting in May that would mark a price milestone for the house, Phillips is now being eyed over its status as a Russian-owned company as the armed conflict worsens abroad. Amid some scrutiny over the house’s ownership by the Moscow-based luxury behemoth Mercury Group, the house pledged to donate the proceeds made from buyer’s premium and vendor’s commission from the sale to a Ukrainian relief fund. The sale raised a total of £5.8 million ($7.7 million) for the cause. “Of course no financial donation is going to rectify this terrible situation,” a Phillips spokesperson told ARTnews in a statement. “But we feel we are taking the lead in the art market in making a significant donation in expressing our solidarity with the people of Ukraine in a meaningful and practical way.”
The sale’s top lot on was a 1984 painting by David Hockney titled
Self-Portrait on the Terrace, which sold for a final price of £4.9 million ($6.5 million). Cecily Brown’s 2016 red, pink, and white–hued canvas When Time Ran Out was the second top seller, going for a final price of £3.7 million ($4.2 million), against an estimate of £2 million ($2.7 million).
A 2015 canvas by Nicolas Party titled Houses, which features a cluster of five multi-colored structures of various heights, attracted bidding from London. It ultimately went to a bidder on the phone with Phillips U.K. contemporary art specialist Charlotte Gibbs, selling for a final price of £1.5 million ($1.9 million).
A work by British painter Jadé Fadojutimi, whose work has seen a rapid rise in the auction circuit over the past year, saw attention from bidders in Asia. Her 2020 canvas A Cropped Perspective of This Whirlwind Effect, an abstraction in a green palette, saw bidding between Phillips head of client advisory Kevie Yang, based in New York, and Kathy Lin, a Londonbased client liaison for the Asia Pacific region. It sold for £627,500 ($854,000) with premium, four times the £150,000 estimate ($204,000), to Lin’s client.
In her auction debut, a work by Los Angeles–based artist Lauren Quin saw three bidders from Japan, Hong Kong, and mainland China compete for the work. As the sale’s opening lot, the abstract composition, titled Air Sickness (2021), spurred momentum early on in the sale when it sold for a final price of £441,000 ($600,000), more than ten times the estimate of £30,000 ($40,000) low estimate. But that speed proved difficult to maintain as the sale progressed.
Only one record was set during the London sale, on par with the performance from the mid-season London sale in 2021; the single record set at that sale was for Tunji Adeniyi-Jones. On Thursday, Issy Wood’s 2019 canvas Chalet, an up-close photorealistic painting of a pair of black leather gloves, sold for £441,000 ($590,499), four times the £100,000 estimate. The price surpassed Wood’s previous record of $468,750 set in 2021.
Record-Setting Franz Marc Tops Christie’s $334 M. Sale in Shanghai and London
Not long after reports first emerged Launching the spring auction season with a three-part auction that took place in London and Shanghai, Christie’s sold $334 million in works from the 20th and 21st centuries on Tuesday.
Between the three sales, 94 out of a total 105 lots that were offered sold. Two works—one by Stanley Whitney, the other by Gabriele
Münter—came with in-house guarantees, while another 20 were secured with third-party backing. The entire grouping after several lots were withdrawn was expected to fetch an estimated hammer price of £202 million–£290 million ($269 million–$386 million). (The sale’s final sum of $334 million includes premium.) This was the first time the house’s mid-season London evening sale was expanded to include a section conducted at a salesroom in Asia. It marks an attempt by the house to further incorporate clients across the Asia Pacific region into marquee Western sales.
Christie’s auctioneer Caroline Liang, a jewelry specialist based in Shanghai, took to the rostrum on Tuesday evening to kick off the dual-city sale event, titled “20/21 Century Shanghai to London.” Jussi Pylkannen, Christie’s European president, took over in London, later passing the gavel on to his colleague Veronica Scarpati, a London-based 20th and 21 century art specialist, for a section focused on Surrealism.
The work which fetched the highest price on Tuesday was a Franz Marc painting from 1913 that was the subject of a closely watched restitution case. It came to the sale after being returned from a German museum to the heirs of its former owner, the Jewish businessman and banker Kurt Grawi, in January 2021. The painting, titled Die Füchse (Foxes), sold for a final price of £42.7 million ($57 million) to bidder on the phone with Christie’s London-based client liaison Guy Agazarian. It had been expected to fetch roughly £35 million ($46.8 million). The result well outpaced Marc’s previous record of $24.2 million, paid for Weidende Pferde III (1910) at Sotheby’s London in 2008.
A large-scale untitled triptych painting by Francis Bacon produced between 1986 and 1987 went to a lone bidder on the phone with Christie’s co-head of the London modern and contemporary art evening sale, Katherine Arnold, for a final price of £39.4 million ($47.6 million). Coming to the sale with an irrevocable bid, the work hammered just below its low estimate of £35 million ($47 million). First
exhibited in Moscow in 1988, the billboard-sized work bares reference to three different figures: Woodrow Wilson after signing the Treaty of Versailles in 1919; Bacon’s then-partner, John Edwards; and the Russian political dissident Leon Trotsky, who was assassinated in 1940.
Another big-ticket item to hit the block in London was Lucian Freud’s Girl with Closed Eyes (1986–87), a portrait of the painter’s muse, Janey Longman, that a British collector had held onto since 1987. The canvas, featuring a partially nude Longman who appears to be sleeping, hammered at a price of £13 million ($17.3 million). The result landed between the £10 million–£15 million ($13.4 million–$20 million) estimate and sold for a final price of £15.2 million ($20.2 million).
Elsewhere in the sale, five works by Picasso were sold by the mega-collecting Berggruen family. Those works attracted bidding across Shanghai, London, and New York. Out of the group, Picasso’s print etching of two dining figures Le Repas frugal (1904) sold for the highest price of £6 million ($8 million) with premium. The result was four times its £1.5 million ($2 million) estimate.
Bidding from Asia drove up the hammer prices for contemporary artists in high demand. Multiple buyers on the phone with Christie’s Shanghai and Hong Kong specialists competed for a 2017 still life of pink tulips by Nicolas Party. Competition for the lot accelerated the bidding pace that had slowed midway through the sale. The work ultimately went to a buyer on the phone with Christie’s regional director for China Tan Bo for a final price of £1.8 million ($2.4 million), more than four times the low estimate. A 2015 minuscule canvas by Romanian contemporary painter Victor Man, featuring a portrait of a dazed woman and titled D with Raven, saw a bidding frenzy before it eventually sold for a final price of £214,200 ($285,000). The result was more than ten times the pre-sale low estimate of £20,000 ($26,000). It went to a Shanghai bidder, who beat out eight others calling in from New York, Italy, and London. The result set a new record for the artist, surpassing Man’s previous milestone price of $54,000,
paid for an untitled 2005 painting sold at Phillips in 2014.
At the house’s new headquarters in Shanghai, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 painting Il Duce, featuring a skeletal figure on an orange ground, was the top seller, going for CYN 94 million ($14.9 million) and meeting its low estimate. But it was up-and-comers who took the spotlight. Irish painter Genieve Figgis’s 2017 painting Debutante’s Ball sold for CNY 4 million ($639,000), against an estimated CNY 800,000 ($127,000). Emmanuel Taku’s 2015 canvas Ripped, a double portrait of two pink-clad suited men sold for CNY 1.6 million ($253,000) with premium. The result was 8 times the low estimate of CNY 200,000 ($32,000). Both the Figgis and Taku results marked new records for the artists.
Capping the final portion of the night were lots by modernists prized in the European market. Pablo Picasso’s cubist portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter, La fenê tre ouverte (1929), came to sale after being held in a private collection for half a century. It went for £16 million ($21.3 million), against an estimate of $14 million. A 1937 Salvador Dalí pen and ink drawing of three figures titled Femme à la tête de rose, buste de femme et vieillard nu hammered at £240,000 ($320,000) with a buyer in the room, doubling the £100,000 low estimate and selling for a final price of £302,400 ($403,000).
Efforts since the start of the pandemic to further expand the reach of sales taking place in Western hubs to Asia are paying off, as was evident at Christie’s today. Asian bidders’ activity threatens to rival that of buyers based in the U.S. and Europe. The shifting dynamic was felt during bidding over the Man work, which was won by a buyer in Asia. Just before he brought down the hammer, Pylkannen addressed specialists on the phone with buyers from New York, London, and Italy, and said, “That was as close as you go.”
Paris Wax Museum Dumps Putin
The Grévin Museum of wax figures in Paris has removed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s statue from display. (edit by Valentina Di Liscia/Hyperallergic) With international outcry on the rise over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, institutions large and small are looking for ways to express their dismay at the dictator’s bellicose politics. In what is surely the most withering reprisal of all, the Grévin Museum of wax figures in Paris has removed Putin from display. The decision is at once a rebuke of the belligerent leader and a matter of security, as visitors have vandalized his figure last weekend.
“Today it is no longer possible to
present a character like [Putin],” the museum’s director, Yves Delhommeau, told France Bleu radio, as quoted in Reuters. “For the first time in the museum’s history we are withdrawing a statue because of historical events currently under way.”
Delhommeau also said he felt it would be inappropriate to ask staff to groom and maintain the Putin statue, which was created in 2000, in order to restore it from the damage done by vandals.
“Given what has happened, we and our staff do not want to have to fix his hair and appearance every day,” Delhommeau said in the radio interview.
The statue was relocated to storage until further notice, leaving an opening in the lineup between American President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping. According to Delhommeau, the museum is considering replacing it with a statue of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Maybe president Zelensky will take his place,” said Delhommeau. “He has become a hero for having resisted and for not fleeing his country. He could perfectly well take [Putin’s] place among the great men of history and today,” he said.
With the removal of his wax figure— not to mention outspoken international disdain for his actions—one has to wonder if Putin will recognize that his attempts to burnish his own legacy as a mighty ruler will ultimately lead to the meltdown of his global image, not just his wax figure.
Hauser & Wirth Institute Awards $700,000 in Grants to Studio Museum in Harlem, Pratt, and More
The Studio Museum in Harlem print workshop, 1971. Courtesy of the Studio Museum in Harlem. .
The Hauser & Wirth Institute, a nonprofit founded by the similarly named mega-gallery, announced on Monday that it would award $700,000 in grants and scholarships to archival projects and research initiatives.
Most of the funding went to the Studio Museum in Harlem and the
Pratt Institute. The Studio Museum received $360,000 for a project that will see the New York museum digitize its archives. “The generous funding from Hauser & Wirth Institute will enable us to continue this archival work for generations to come, while furthering our commitment toward making this invaluable information an active, ongoing resource for all,” said Studio Museum director and chief curator Thelma Golden in a statement. Meanwhile, Pratt got $280,000, which will be used to fund two full-ride scholarships for students entering the school’s art history master’s degree program. The grant is intended to support students from “underrepresented” backgrounds, the Hauser & Wirth Institute’s announcement said.
Also announced were a series of smaller grants. The Asia Art Archive received $25,000 to process and digitize the archive of Pakistani modernist Zahoor ul Akhlaq, the Chicago-based arts publication and archive Sixty Inches from Center was also granted $25,000, and the YVR Art Foundation, which supports Indigenous artists throughout western Canada, received $10,000.
“The pandemic created many challenges, but it also made space for us to step back and assess where the gaps in funding and support are, and how we could best serve those working with artists’ archives,” Hauser & Wirth Institute executive director Lisa Darms said in a statement. “It was out of this reflection and dialogue that we chose to fund The Studio Museum, student archivists, and progressive nonprofits and collectives that expand access to archives for communities that have been underfunded and underrepresented.”
