TUESDAY, JANUARY 22
Screening: Olaf Breuning “Home Trilogy” at Metro Pictures
This week-long screening of Olaf Breuning’s “Home” trilogy should be delightfully weird and sprawling. It’s only a week long, be sure not to miss it! —Dan Duray
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Using large scraps of white, off-white, burlap-colored and pale industrial green linen left over from previous projects, some of them dating back to grad school (which, of course, wasn’t that long ago), Jacob Kassay has constructed a series of scrupulously odd-shaped monochromes, all untitled, that have the elegant simplicity and the delicately affected sheen of Read More
One of the pleasures of visiting the Armory Show’s contemporary section on Pier 94 is the opportunity to catch up with the work of an artist one hasn’t seen in a while. Case in point: Jacob Kassay, the young artist who gained a certain level of notoriety a few years back after his slightly charred, unabashedly beautiful silver paintings began fetching increasingly high prices on the secondary market. Read More
In today’s Jacob Kassay-exceeding-market-expectations news (we can’t get enough), a small Kassay diptych, estimated at $30,000 to $40,000 at Phillips de Pury’s contemporary dale sale this afternoon, sold for $104,500. This wouldn’t be surprising given that the guy usually sells for multiples above his high estimate at auction, but this particular Untitled, made with Kassay’s signature silver deposit and acrylic on canvas, is about a third of the size of the canvas that set an artist’s record ($290,500) at the Phillips sale in New York back in May of this year.
So: it’s a new record! Sort of. By square inch anyway. Read More
Along with the glitzy evening sales at Phillips de Pury, Christie’s and Sotheby’s this week are the slightly more humble day sales, featuring more mid-level work and pieces from younger artists. Here present nine lots–three from each house–that we think will have interesting results. Read More
Last week it was time once again for the Frieze Art Fair, London’s annual, thoroughly exhausting week-long art-viewing marathon. Everywhere I went I felt the presence of the 10,000-pound elephant in the room: the art market could be felt in every aspect of what was happening in London. There was more art for sale than I could ever imagine, and though I worked hard to see the entire smorgasbord of gallery and museum shows, no one person could possibly fit it all in. There was also a second art fair, the Pavilion of Art and Design (PAD) for an audience in search of more mature, and historical work. (Both these fairs will pop up soon in New York—PAD next month and Frieze next May—so don’t fret, there will be plenty of fairs for everyone.) And then there were evening and day sale auctions aplenty, including the usual Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips as well as newcomer Bonhams Contemporary (headed by the lovely Benedetta Ghione). Read More
Jacob Kassay, the young artist who quickly became in demand when his canvases started fetching ten times their estimate at auction last year, continued his upward trend at Phillips de Pury’s contemporary evening sale in London yesterday. The piece in question, estimated at £50,000–£70,000 (the same range as one of his works included in Sotheby’s Contemporary auction in London happening today) sold for £163,250 ($256,000), more than twice its high estimate. Read More
The tone of the recent New Yorker Talk of the Town piece about Jacob Kassay portrayed the 26-year-old artist as aware of the hype surrounding his work, but largely immune to it, viewing it as something of a benign annoyance. (“I always thought of this work as much more boring than people were taking Read More
