Superlative contemporary and modern decorative arts, design and jewelry by internationally recognized museum class artists will be showcased by 55 international dealers from 12 countries at SOFA NEW YORK 2009, which debuts Wednesday, April 15 and runs from the 16 -19 at the Park Avenue Armory. An overwhelming number of the examples epitomize not only the extraordinary artistry of material-based artworks but also recession proof values in today’s art market. Here are just some of the unrivalled highlights from the fair:
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WILLIAM ZIMMER GALLERY,
MENDOCINO, CA
In blurring the boundaries of sculpture and design, Tom Hucker with the Mendocino, California based William Zimmer Gallery is considered a leader in the American studio furniture movement. To his artistry, Tom Hucker brings a rare mastery of two distinct disciplines: Asian aesthetics with intensive study at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and the Urasenke School of Tea Ceremony in Boston along with solid technical training at the Domus Academy in Italy, under a fifth generation German cabinetmaker.
Curators, collectors, designers and architects alike praise Hucker’s innovative works for his streamlined sense of design and lyrical sense of rhythm. “His work is in major museums like the Art Institute of Chicago,” says dealer William Zimmer. “Hucker’s work sold within minutes at SOFA CHICAGO this past November, proving the popularity of his artistry with both seasoned and novice collectors,” says Mark Lyman, Founder/Director of SOFA fairs in New York, Chicago and new in June 2009, Santa Fe, and Vice President, dmg world media Art & Antiques. “At that time, CBS Marketwatch reporting on the fair, accurately and aptly designated SOFA ‘a sweet spot in the market’,” says Lyman.
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CLARE BECK AT ADRIAN SASSOON, LONDON
Millionaire collectors who turn to superstar architects and interior designers Peter Marino, Brian McCarthy and Sally Sirkin Lewis as well as young art collectors all share one particular art object in common: the gold and silver vessels by the Japanese born, London based Hiroshi Suzuki. They’re hardly alone as close to 30 museums stretching throughout Britain and across to France, Australia and Korea own his work as well. “They’re attracted to Suzuki’s unsurpassed artistry as he demonstrates an entire new versatility in precious medals,” says Clare Beck who works with London dealer Adrian Sassoon, former curator of the Getty Museum.
In a nutshell, Suzuki’s intricate vessels hand hammered from a paper thin, single sheet of silver are a contemporary response to a traditional material, treasured by kings and queens for centuries. “While his work has gone up 100 percent in a scant five years, at the same time his vessels remain surprisingly undervalued,” says Beck while adding that Britain’s foremost collector, the Duke of Devonshire plucked up a Suzuki recently for his vast art collection. In addition, on their stand is the work of another leading London silversmith, Junko Mori, who is also receiving major league acclaim and will be at SOFA speaking in the Lecture Series, included with admission.
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HABATAT GALLERIES, CHICAGO, IL
“Even as an undergraduate, Shayna Leib’s dazzling glass art was racking up awards as she snapped up an “Emerging Artist” award from the Museum of Arts and Design,” says Michael John Hofer, Habatat, Chicago gallery manager. “But still her artistry remains significantly undervalued,” he says, “as compared to contemporary art, her work is a bargain with prices beginning at only $12,000.”
A number of high profile corporate CEOs, private investors and interior designers own her glass sculpture. Above all, they are attracted to Leib’s dynamic exploration of materiality. “To complete just one square inch of her wall pieces requires more than a grueling two hours of pulling intricate glass canes for firings,” says Hofer. “If you don’t collect her work very soon, it will become untouchable in terms of prices as Shayna branches into the fine arts like few other glass artists.” “She’s amazing,” he says. “Just how many other artists have technical skills honed while earning a Masters of Fine Arts, Summa Cum Laude?”
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MODERNE GALLERY, PHILADELPHIA
Rarities by modern masters of design are also prominent at SOFA and Bob Aibel, who heads up the Philadelphia based Moderne Gallery, is featuring a world-class museum Wharton Esherick sculpture. Esherick’s 1931 “Pizzicato”, a carefully articulated light box transforms his Cubist efforts into a revolutionary wood/light sculpture. Aibel says, “This predates by more than 30 years the art world’s Light-and-Space movement of the 1960's, and later experiments with light.” On a walnut pedestal, the rosewood sculpture comes with an important provenance. Classical music legend, Philadelphia Orchestra concertmaster Alexander Hilsberg commissioned it, according to Aibel, who commands a 16,000 square foot gallery and has sold to the Dallas Museum of Art, Corning Museum and the Toledo Museum of Art, to name just a few.
Esherick collectors include world renowned textile designer Jack Lenor Larsen, Americana dealer Leigh Keno and architect Alan Wanzenberg. Further cementing Esherick’s acclaim, his artistry is in the permanent collections of more than a dozen museums from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Wolfsonian in Miami. Plus, Esherick’s own house in Pennsylvania was designated a National Historic Landmark by the US Department of Interior. Still, the market for Esherick remains recession proof in value with nary a downturn in sight, says Aibel.
SIENNA GALLERY, LENOX MA
With fine arts museums now building formidable holdings of contemporary artist jewelry, that specialty is the hottest collecting field in the entire international art market. Even so, there are artists like Jamie Bennett, a three-time winner of the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, in the big leagues globally with affordable price points.
Bennett has garnered a traveling museum show, Edge of the Sublime: Enamels of Jamie Bennett now at the Arkansas Art Center, which is touted in this month’s Art in America magazine and the focus of a new book as well. Back in the 1980’s, Bennett established his reputation internationally and today his work can be found in close to 20 museums including the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as ones in Australia and Norway. Demonstrating a genius for exacting enameling, Bennett turns to abstract art principles to create his innovative, unique designs. His enameled brooches begin at $4,800 and each one is akin in artistry to an abstract painting masterpiece. But there’s a new twist to artist jewelry collecting, says gallery director Sienna Patti. Now they are acquiring drawings by those jewelers including a superb wall drawing by Jonathan Wahl.
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GALERIE BESSON, LONDON
African-American artist Howard Smith represents the enormous range of global artistry on view at SOFA. Although living in Finland, his acclaimed work can be found in the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian and Museum of African-American Art in Los Angeles, among others. Plus, Smith, now in his 80’s, has worked across all media from wood, clay, fiber and paper leading a prominent Finnish art critic to dub him “The Leonardo of Finland”. Over the years, he created ceramics and textiles for such renowned firms as Iittala and Arabia but his own sculptures and works on paper command attention in the art world. On offer with Galerie Besson will be Smith’s distinctive metalwork, masks and paper cuts, much of it Modernist in style and dating from 1980 to 2008. With the Finnish government just awarding Smith a lifetime annuity, he rightfully ranks as a national living treasure. Prices begin at a modest $1,200.
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MOBILIA GALLERY, CAMBRIDGE, MA
The world’s most discriminating museums like the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Yale University Art Gallery, Brooklyn Museum; the Milwaukee Museum of Art all include Tom Loeser’s sculptures which encapsulate the disciplines of naval architecture, design and wood artistry simultaneously. “Their skeletal forms in birch, the traditional boatbuilding materials, test our perceptions of vessels and flotation, solidity and fluidity, form and shape as well,” says Libby Cooper of Mobilia Gallery in Cambridge, Mass. “Surprisingly although he has already achieved placement in major fine arts institutions, his prices are relatively modest,” says Cooper. She reports that clients for Loeser include architects, artists and collectors like Daphne Farago, whose world-renowned jewelry collection is at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. “Already some clients have been telling me their Loeser’s are a fantastic investment, far greater than any bank stock that’s now in turmoil,” says Cooper. Further securing the value of Loeser’s mesmerizing sculpture is his work will be featured in a major book, which will be published this summer.
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TAI GALLERY, SANTA FE, NM
Ecologically correct green bamboo sculptures in internationally recognized fine art museums? Decidedly, yes when it comes to the exquisite artistry of Honma Hideaki and a host of other such artists with the TAI Gallery. Hideaki’s work can be found in such haute museums as the Art Institute of Chicago and others. And it only takes a nanosecond to appreciate his astonishingly intricate skills in weaving highly complex sculptural forms from totally natural materials.
With less than seven dozen recognized bamboo artists in all of Japan, this niche specialty is about to take off. “While the market for Japanese bamboo art is still relatively nascent in the West, Hideaki and others have already secured a major position in the field,” says Robert Coffland, who heads up TAI and introduced bamboo arts to this country. Another sign confirming the rock solid values of Hideaki and other bamboo artists is the New Mexico Museum of Art will open their exhibition International Contemporary Baskets from the Sara and David Lieberman Collection which features a number of bamboo artists represented by Coffland, just a single week after SOFA. Other galleries with superb Asian art include Joan B. Mirviss Ltd., Lea Sneider Gallery, KEIKO Gallery, CREA Gallery, ARTCOURT Gallery, D & M Fine Arts Ltd., and gallery gen making SOFA a veritable treasury of Asian art.
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DEL MANO GALLERY, LOS ANGELES, CA
Major museums like the Fine Arts Museum, Boston; Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts all own wood sculpture by Michael Peterson. Yet prices for Peterson’s artistry remain accessible with some sculptures beginning in the $5,000 range, according to Ray Leier, who founded del Mano Gallery more than three decades ago. “Unlike the contemporary art world, prices in this area remain consistent even though the demand has stepped up with a new generation of collectors cherishing sculpture in organic materials,” says Leier.
Aside from featuring the work of Peterson, Leier is showcasing wood artistry by other pillars of that movement. Case in point is William Hunter, whose finely fluted turned sculptures are also in important art museums. To add another dimension to collecting and appreciating wood sculpture, Leier is bringing superstar wood sculptor William Hunter to SOFA NEW YORK. “Museum curators, designers, architects and novice collectors alike value meeting artists,” says Leier. When he had Hunter on his stand speaking to the SOFA CHICAGO audience this past November, Leier achieved sales of iconic Hunter sculptures to three prominent museums which all have Old Masters paintings to edgy contemporary art in their permanent collections. SOFA is the place to meet artists, with more than 200 of them in attendance at the Fair.
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JOANNA BIRD POTTERY, LONDON
Proof of artist Annie Turner’s wide appeal, cross category collectors owning Henry Moore sculpture, contemporary art and 20th century design have been zeroing in on her ceramics sculpture. “Annie explores new boundaries in clay and in incorporating fossilized shark teeth, feathers and shells in her work, infuses it with memory and observation shaped over five generations of her family living on the shores of the River Deben in East Suffolk, England,” says dealer Joanna Bird, who just sold a Turner to the National Museum of Wales. The blistered and encrusted surfaces of her built, titanium-glazed stoneware evoke images of decaying jetties, bleached fish bones and the ebbing tides. “So her work reveals both the sensibility and textures of the tidal landscape fitting right at home with a range of art and design collections,” says Bird. She is bringing a number of Turner’s sculptures, including her new wall ceramics. Turner prices run from only $750 to $6,000.
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