How Small Galleries Are Evolving to Face the Challenges of 2024 https://ift.tt/e6MFDIC

Small galleries form the bedrock of the contemporary art world. They play a crucial role in providing access to—and shaping the careers of—emerging artists, and help to provide everyone from potential collectors to institutions with new ways of engaging with art at its most cutting-edge.

Most small galleries are also small businesses, meaning that they find themselves at the forefront of the shifts taking place in both the art market and their local economies. From adapting their programming to managing overhead costs, these galleries are evolving their commercial strategies and redefining their relationships with collectors and artists alike.

Here, we spoke with five galleries participating in Foundations—Artsy’s online fair that spotlights fresh works from tastemaking galleries—about three of the main challenges facing their businesses, and how they are being tackled.

1. Cultivating a strong artist roster

Small galleries—often embedded in the heart of their local art communities—play a crucial role in finding and incubating emerging talent. Jonny Tanna, co-founder of the London-based alternative art fair Minor Attractions and founder of the buzzy North London gallery Harlesden High Street, emphasizes that these spaces give collectors direct access to local art scenes.“We have our ears to the streets,” he said, underlining the intimate quality of small galleries. This proximity allows them to spot and nurture new artists before they hit the mainstream. “We know what’s coming up and what’s happening,” he added.

Still, this advantage is coupled with the challenge of standing out in a crowded field. “For any small gallery, making sure that your programming is exciting and finding the right artists and finding something that’s not derivative is a challenge in itself,” he noted. Tanna advocates for a measured approach to gallery management, cautioning against the rush to participate in high-profile events such as fairs. Instead, he encourages a focused commitment to cultivating and nurturing the artist roster.

“I advise other gallerists to take their time because everybody wants to squeeze into these fairs, where everybody stands on ceremony, and nobody goes by reputation,” Tanna said. “I built this space to get away from all of that. I built this space to not be part of the art world and just enjoy art. It’s thankfully finally slowly paying off for us….We don’t focus on press. We don’t focus on all sorts of obvious things. We focus on our program and our artists.”

Likewise, Soo Choi, founder of Seoul’s P21, an experimental gallery comprised of two ultramodern glass cube showrooms, builds upon Tanna’s approach, expressing concerns about the tricky balance between sustainable business and growth. The challenge, as Choi notes, lies in scaling up without compromising the gallery’s core values or financial health. “I question how big I want to grow my gallery,” Choi said, noting the challenges of balancing a sustainable budget with a bigger artist roster and a bigger staff.

“Nowadays, that is the biggest question I have,” Choi said. “Whether it makes sense to become bigger and grow the gallery into [a] bigger organization with more staff, more artists, then how sustainable is it going to be? That would mean bigger overhead, but then also would it be possible to manage artists myself?”

2. Rising costs

Small galleries operate like any small business and resultingly face similar challenges. With rising inflation a global economic theme of the past few years, these local galleries are risking a lot more to host presentations at home and internationally.

Soaring rental prices in major art capitals like New York and London continue to pose a threat to the physical spaces, which was starkly evident in the second half of 2023, when a series of gallery closures rippled through Tribeca in New York. And, according to Artsy’s Art Industry Trends 2023 report, 66% of gallerists who sell a majority of primary-market works reported a rise in prices, either significantly or slightly, with inflation marked as the main factor for doing so.

Another knock-on effect of rising costs is participation in art fairs, which can be a crucial source of meeting new collectors for small galleries. Yet increasing a gallery’s global presence comes with significant overhead costs—and even more risks.

Night, 2023
Taewon Ahn
P21

Prime Time III, 2016
Serge Attukwei Clottey
Brigade

For P21’s Choi, participating in international art fairs is a necessary component for nurturing talent and the gallery itself. However, she admits the increasing difficulty that accompanies these high-risk presentations, especially as galleries face significantly lower returns.

“The biggest challenge is the huge cost of our international art fairs,” Choi said. “I was very lucky to get into major art fairs from very early on, but then I considered it as an obvious investment. But getting into these high-profile art fairs, we are pressured to make impactful presentations, and they are expensive, and they don’t necessarily sell enough at all—if at all—to cover the cost. So, these are huge risks and investments for us.”

These risks are especially prevalent when day-to-day overhead costs continue to increase, spanning from shipping costs to rent prices for the galleries’ brick-and-mortar. Karen Foss Becker, gallery director of Brigade in Copenhagen, emphasizes that balancing this budget is more time-consuming than ever.

“You have to love risk to be in this business because everything is so uncertain,” Becker said. “Of course, try to strategize and try to predict things, but it is just very risky because there are so many high costs and overhead costs to have a space. Also, when you’re trying to be international, [you] have high shipping costs and these overlying financial things that you have to be on top of all the time.”

3. Forging new relationships in a hybrid art world

One prevailing byproduct of the pandemic is the heightened online accessibility across the art world. Buying art online is now a firmly established channel for galleries and collectors. Artsy’s Art Collector Insights 2023 report found that 80% of collectors surveyed had bought art online in the past year, and in Artsy’s Art Industry Trends 2023 report, 51% of galleries said that online collectors are primarily new to their business. Finn Schult, the co-director of HEIRESS in St. Petersburg, Florida, opened his gallery after the pandemic and believes the digital realm helped propel the gallery’s presence across the planet.

“I’d like to think that these relationships today are more able to breach the confines of location than they used to be,” Schult said. “With the help of the digital realm, it’s not uncommon for us to work with artists and collectors that live on the other side of the globe, which is honestly crazy, considering the fact that it wasn’t all that long ago that that type of gallery/client or gallery/artist relationship wasn’t even close to fathomable for a small gallery in Tampa Bay.”

However, these online connections are a new territory for most small gallery owners. For instance, Vincent Chen, the owner of Artnutri Gallery in Taichung City, Taiwan, noted that today, small galleries have to leverage social media and online platforms to reach collectors effectively. Chen noted that collectors can buy art far more easily than in years past, so increasing digital strategies has become a crucial way to stay relevant.

“Collectors have more choices; artists also can look for galleries from social media or other art platforms to exhibit their works. For our gallery, we can easily invite artists through email or Instagram,” Chen said. “We don’t need to meet each other face to face.”

Whirlwind, 2023
Savannah Marie Harris
Harlesden High Street

Force Dogu(WXL), 2023
Takami Miyaoka
Artnutri Gallery

Maintaining a balance with the gallery’s physical space is also important. At Copenhagen’s Brigade, which opened in the wake of the pandemic, the founder Becker noted the importance of cultivating a physical space that is open to a broad range of visitors.

“We’ve tried to build some kind of community in the space,” Becker said. “Not just a white cube, but trying to get people to come in and to have a coffee and buy a book or read a book, and then see that there is a gallery and then go and have a look. Trying to bridge the gap between are you a collector or are you a student or what the barriers are to come into a gallery.”

As small galleries carve out their path, their challenges symbolize the broader shifts within the art market. As gallerists experiment with new digital tools and balance new business models, they continue to serve as vital conduits for emerging talent and new collectors alike.

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29 Emerging Black Artists to Discover This Black History Month, Part 1 https://ift.tt/wyXpuNO

To recognize Black History Month, Artsy is spotlighting 29 emerging Black artists—one for each day of this important month. This list hopes to highlight the work of emerging Black American artists who are at pivotal stages of their careers.

These are exceptional creators from around the country who are working in different media, including the multimedia textiles of Ambrose Rhapsody Murray; the textured abstractions of Ashante Kindle; the fanciful, figurative depictions of Lauryn Levette; and the enigmatic photographs of Shan Wallace.

Here is the first installment of Artsy’s emerging artist series for Black History Month. Watch out for part two, dropping later this month.

Abigail Lucien

B. 1992, Dallas. Lives and works in Baltimore and New York.

boule de fwa VI, 2023
Abigail Lucien
Tiwani Contemporary

Abigail Lucien crafts sculptures that speak to colonial lineages, and contemplate ways that people use imagination and myth to create new realities. For example, their piece ​​boule de fwa VI (2023), a pink candle fashioned from acrylic, vinyl, and steel, prompts questions about imagination and care. The sculpture seems to be ignited from both ends, creating a surreal and almost otherworldly ritual object.

The motifs that Lucien employs in their work—like candles—are related to grief and meditation, exploring how the artist has worked through their own history to process complicated (and sometimes painful) experiences. A song of ascents (2020) unpacks similar themes, stacking blocks of pink soap cast in cinderblock molds with heart cut-outs, into the shape of steps. A lit candle sits mournfully at the lowest step. The poignant work pays homage to the artist’s father and grandfather, who were both lost to the coronavirus.

Lucien was recently selected for the Forbes “30 Under 30” list, and their work has been displayed at institutions around the country, including SculptureCenter and MoMA PS1 in New York, as well as Atlanta Contemporary, and UICA in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In spring 2023, they participated in the Amant residency in New York, and completed archival research related to the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. They are currently represented by Deli Gallery in New York.

Alex Anderson

B. 1990, Seattle. Lives and works in Los Angeles.

Nothing Nice I, 2023
Alex Anderson
Superposition

The sculptor Alex Anderson creates ceramic works that are skillful and strange—they employ a variety of techniques to fashion pieces that use contemporary symbolism along with cheeky wordplay in their titles. “Anderson spotlights his experience as a gay, Asian-African American, decidedly de-flaking the crustiness of the Western ceramic tradition,” wrote Julie Weitz for Contemporary Art Review LA in 2020.

Anderson’s work Spring (2019) is testament to this approach: The work shows leaves and flowers arranged in a curvilinear heart. At first glance, the sculpture seems like a normal wreath wrought from foliage, but upon closer inspection, the flowers appear anthropomorphic, appended with eyes and hands. These delicate flourishes add a fun touch to a centuries-old medium.

Spring, 2019
Alex Anderson
Gallery COMMON

Lovely Shade Flower, 2021
Alex Anderson
The Hole

Another piece, Lovely Shade Flower (2021), shows a black flower with a face, a single tear sliding from its eye, its mouth rendered in a spirited scribble. Such choices allow for the artist to “counterbalance baroque decorative motifs—like flower petals and leaves—with three-dimensional emojis that adorn his sculptures as digital punctuations,” as Weitz observed in her review.

Anderson’s work was recently featured in group exhibitions with Superposition gallery in Miami, The Hole in L.A., and UTA Artist Space in Beverly Hills, California.

Ambrose Rhapsody Murray

B. 1996, Jacksonville, Florida. Lives and works in New Orleans.

Memory Box, 2022
Ambrose Rhapsody Murray
Fridman Gallery

Known for their multimedia textiles and paintings, Ambrose Rhapsody Murray creates vibrant tapestries that speak to family history, Black femininity, and spirituality. For example, their weaving The hummingbird hovered within the hour (2023) combines family photographs in a disjointed grid, whispering narratives of a rich and complex lineage using soft fabrics and muted, earthy colors.

In Phthalo memory (2022), the artist uses blue and purple shades to digitally weave archival and family photos, in order to “excavate generations of buried emotions and memories that have been stuck within my family system, as well as within our bodies, leading to illness across my matrilineal line,” Rhapsody Murray wrote. “I am trying to make sense of the disjointed relationships and stories of the women in my family, but also honoring them, their beauty/complicatedness and longing to connect with them.”

The hummingbird hovered within the hour, 2023
Ambrose Rhapsody Murray
Superposition

Rhapsody Murray also explored these themes in 2021 in a solo presentation for Fridman Gallery entitled “Within listening distance of the sea…” Many of the textile pieces in the show were sourced from archival photographs of Black women and girls taken in the early 1900s, which were often traded as pornographic postcards.

Last year, they attended Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock residency in Senegal and were featured in Forbes’s annual “30 Under 30” list. They are currently represented by Fridman Gallery in New York.

Ashante Kindle

B. 1990, Clarksville, Tennessee. Lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut.

Ashante Kindle often creates compositions encrusted with thick, layered paint. The artist draws inspiration from unexpected sources—like the tops of nappy heads viewed from above or music videos from the 1990s—to create abstracted renditions of everyday Black experiences.

“I’m never able to create the same piece more than once,” Kindle said in a previous interview with Artsy. “And I feel like that [abstraction] specifically speaks to our existence. It speaks to how we exist as people: Many of us [Black people] have similarities, but Blackness isn’t the same for everyone, right? And that’s really beautiful. And as far as hairstyles go, even if you bring an image of a hairstyle to your beautician, she’ll never make something exactly like that.”

Cause I Know My Joy’s Coming in the Morning Light, 2021
Ashante Kindle
Red Arrow Gallery

The painting Cause I Know My Joy’s Coming in the Morning Light (2021) viscerally displays Kindle’s ability to use texture, its metallic pink paint applied in swirls and spirals. Other works, like Til the Very Second I’m Gone (2022), employ circular compositional elements to explore light and texture.

Last year, Kindle’s work was featured in Kleaver Cruz’s book The Black Joy Project, and she is currently represented by Red Arrow Gallery.

Jaylon Israel Hicks

B. 1993, Houston. Lives and works in Minneapolis.

Untitled (Protest), 2020
Jaylon Israel Hicks
MAXIMILLIAN WILLIAM

Using a diverse array of media, Jaylon Israel Hicks creates art that analyzes themes of globalization and modern society. His work Untitled (Protest) (2020), a provocative photographic image of a shopping cart engulfed in flames, is a clear nod to the protests following George Floyd’s death during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hicks expertly captures those emotions of rage, uncertainty, and chaos that so many of us felt at that time. Other pieces, like Ex (2022), reference the fraught relationship that we have with consumerism, shipping, and globalization.

Writing about this body of work, shown at Hicks’s solo exhibition at MAXIMILLIAN WILLIAM in 2023, Salena Barry noted that “Hicks, a student of material science, plays with the significance of polystyrene through the prefix ‘Ex’: Extract, excel, exploit, excuse. These verbs, and others, relate to ideas bound up in discourses on climate change and consumption.”

Hicks is currently represented by MAXIMILLIAN WILLIAM gallery.

Kevin Claiborne

B. 1989, Washington, D.C. Lives and works in New York.

Being Named From Color, 2022
Kevin Claiborne
sobering

Known for his thought-provoking conceptual art, Kevin Claiborne is a multidisciplinary artist who uses everything from printmaking to photography to painting to prompt questions about education, Black history, and mathematics.

The polymathic creator’s interests stem from his unique origin story: Claiborne received a BS in mathematics from North Carolina Central University, a master’s in higher education from Syracuse University, and an MFA in visual arts from Columbia University. This diverse educational background helps Claiborne to create pieces that combine information from different disciplines. His collage Landscape (2022) is testament to his varied interests: The piece contains a diverse array of images, including a woman’s breast, a pair of eyes, and a text that reads “landscape of blood and cotton.” These elements hint at America’s fraught history of slavery and colonialism, a legacy that deeply informs Claiborne’s practice.

my skin is me, 2021
Kevin Claiborne
OSMOS

“Working conceptually is a necessary and political starting point for me, because through this practice, one can reach a deeper, more critical space where a wider range of responses and conversations become available,” Claiborne said in a previous interview with Artsy.

Last year, Claiborne had a solo exhibition at Public Service in Stockholm, and he’s currently participating in a two-person show at Latchkey Gallery in New York.

Lauryn Levette

B. 1999, Philadelphia. Lives and works in New York.

Desperado, 2023
Lauryn Levette
Chilli Art Projects

Lauryn Levette’s paintings are otherworldly. She deftly uses brightly colored brushstrokes to envision new realms where Black femmes reign supreme and oppression is eliminated.

“I also think a lot about how blackness isn’t a monolith and that there’s not enough Black art out there,” Levette told Black Cherry magazine in 2020. “I know that when we can each tell our individual stories and see more Black artists, we can all learn more about each other and show that blackness exists in different ways and different nuances—it’s super important for people to know that.”

Sitting On Chrome, 2022
Lauryn Levette
New Image Art

New Twists (My Hands Hurt but at Least I Still Look Cute), 2020
Lauryn Levette
New Image Art

Her painting Sitting On Chrome (2022) tells one story about Black femininity. It shows a figure holding a hat and a knife to her chest; another person in the background sits with her legs wide open, smoking a joint. This painting is bathed in dark blue, with bright green highlights giving it a surreal quality that heightens its intimations of violence. The women in this image are assertive and unabashed, and Levette aptly portrays the power of Black female sexuality without fetishizing the figure.

Black feminine strength also fuels Desperado (2023), in which a woman points a gun straight towards the viewer, as if warding off their voyeurism. Such compositional choices help to complicate typical representations of women in art history: Levette makes the female figure an agent instead of a passive recipient of the viewer’s gaze.

Last year, Levette had her second solo show at New Image Art in Los Angeles. She was also featured in Good Black Art’s “Beyond the Boroughs” campaign.

Na’ye Perez

B. 1992, Los Angeles. Lives and works in New York.

Sunsets in Harlem, 2021
Na’ye Perez
ART FOR CHANGE

Na’ye Perez uses different techniques—including printmaking, painting, and drawing—to talk about his community. His subjects include loved ones: Higher, Thy Will / Peace of Mind (2022), for example, shows a friend of the artist’s dressed in a track and field uniform while performing a high jump. The image is peppered with references to Black history, from upraised fists—symbols of resistance and protest—to visual allusions to the Pan-African flag. Sunsets in Harlem (2019), meanwhile, depicts a father cradling a young child in his arms. Such tender depictions work to correct historically negative depictions of Black families, and reinforce the different ways that relatives can express care for one another.

Perez also looks to Black community more broadly, drawing from diverse influences from Black history, literature, and music. His 2022 painting What You Know About Love, which was exhibited at the Brooklyn nonprofit BRIC, is just one example of this: The title is a reference to a song by the late rapper Pop Smoke.

“People always ask me who my audience is,” Perez said in a video interview with BRIC. “My audience is, first and foremost, Black people. Even though I start with my own experiences and memories, my work is bigger than that. I want people to hopefully find a little bit of themselves in the work.”

Patrick Alston

B. 1991, New York. Lives and works in New York.

Known for his colorful abstractions, Patrick Alston creates distinct works that innovatively employ color and texture. For example, his 2023 painting Untitled (Yellow) is an explosion of energy, featuring a kaleidoscope of mustard yellow, magenta, cobalt blue, and chartreuse, applied in emphatic scribbles, straight lines, and globs. Another recent painting, Untitled (Blue) (2023), brings together strokes of teal, beet red, and titanium white swirling around each other in an intricate dance. The composition is chaotic, but its combination of cool tones brings a sense of harmony.

Abstraction allows Alston to experiment with material without being too prescriptive about the meaning of his work, as he explained in a 2021 interview with Artnet News. “I feel it’s my mission to have important conversations around what a Black artist is and can be,” he said.

Untitled (Blue), 2023
Patrick Alston
Jenkins Johnson Gallery

Untitled (Yellow), 2023
Patrick Alston
Jenkins Johnson Gallery

Alston is currently represented by Bode, which mounted a solo show of his work in 2022. His first museum exhibition is on view at the Harvey B. Gantt Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Shan Wallace

B. 1991, Baltimore. Lives and works in Baltimore and New York.

Sisters Alike, 2019
SHAN Wallace
Mehari Sequar Gallery

Shan Wallace’s photographs brim with electric energy, capturing vibrant scenes of Black, and often queer, life. Her 2020 photo Body category, for instance, comes from a series that centers ballroom culture. The charged image features a couple dancing at a party, caught by Wallace in the middle of an intimate moment, but seemingly unaware of her gaze.

“It’s about making sure that there are people who are Black and queer in this archive that go far beyond images of brutality and pain but include images of celebration, love, and communion,” Wallace told The Cut of the series. Indeed, Wallace’s photos are imbued with an intimacy that’s often difficult to capture on camera.

Body category , 2020
SHAN Wallace
Mehari Sequar Gallery

Wallace has contributed photography to outlets including the New York Times, NPR, and The Cut. Last year, her work was featured in a group exhibition at NXTHVN in New Haven, Connecticut, and she has also exhibited at institutions including the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Taylor Simmons

B. 1990, Atlanta. Lives and works in New York.

Top of the Game, 2022
Taylor Simmons
Public Gallery

In paintings, prints, and drawings, Taylor Simmons foregrounds aspects of Black culture—drawing particular influence from the music and fashion cultures of Atlanta, where he was raised.

“I think about how many books there are documenting white subcultures, like punk,” Simmons told i-D in 2023. “We have the same niches in the Black community, it just doesn’t have names, so it’s not as celebrated or documented.

“Honestly, we need a Black version of Wolfgang Tillmans,” he continued. “I think that’s why I focus so much on body and clothes in my paintings, because those little signifiers are super important.”

Spectators, 2023
Taylor Simmons
Public Gallery

To that end, the artist uses fragmentation, expressive line work, and bold colors to portray predominantly Black subjects. For example, his painting Top of the Game (2022) shows a man broken down, Cubist-style, into geometric shapes; his eyes seem sandwiched to his nose, and his face is adorned with two pairs of lips. Another piece, Spectators (2023), uses drips and delicate washes of paint to depict a group of four Black men, with an emphasis on contour rather than detail. Though Simmons largely draws from archival images to create these works, he adds a distinctive flair through his color and compositional choices.

Simmons is currently represented by Public Gallery in London, which hosted his debut solo exhibition in 2022. Last year, he opened his first institutional show at the Sixi Museum in Nanjing, China.

Ryan Cosbert

B. 1999, New York. Lives and works in New York.

Ryan Cosbert uses acrylic paint to create dynamic, abstract compositions in compelling color combinations like bright blue, lemon yellow, and viridian green. Through the addition of objects like beads, shells, bullet casings, and other textural elements, she pushes these works beyond the bounds of two dimensions. In Motherland NO.3 (2022), for example, emphatically applied splotches of textured yellow and green paint give the surface a sculptural feel, like the three-dimensional bits of acrylic have a life of their own.

Cosbert’s bright canvases, while alluring, are more than pretty pictures. Many of her works are grounded in research on topics such as medical care in the Black community, architecture from the African continent, and generational trauma—all of which were surfaced in her 2022 solo show “The Past Is The Future And The Future Is Now” at UTA Artist Space in Atlanta. In bringing a scholarly approach to abstraction, Cosbert aims to uplift and inform viewers.

Ute Petit

B. 1995, Southfield, Michigan. Lives and works in New Orleans.

Ute Petit brings other worlds to life in her works, which comprise textiles, drawings, and paintings. Her vivid drawings depict bizarre worlds where snakes leap forth from the ground and guns morph into animalistic appendages, while plants seem to engulf the human figures that inhabit their environments.

“I work ancestrally,” Petit wrote when describing her work, noting her relatives’ roles as “quilters, educators, and farmers.” With a childhood spent with her grandparents in Mississippi and visiting farms in Japan, she incorporates her love of agriculture with her artistic practice. Now based in New Orleans, she works towards “rematriating” the land she works on there. This harmony with nature is evident in her practice. For instance, Petit’s graphite drawing Red Tail Ryda (2022) shows a central figure riding astride an elk, its ears curling up towards the rider, who looks forward with fierce determination. Another piece, Chicken Head (2023), depicts a person clutching the carcass of a dead bird while palm trees sway in the background.

Red Tail Ryda, 2022
Ute Petit
Swivel Gallery

In 2022, Petit was awarded the Queer Art Illuminations grant for Black trans women working in visual art. Swivel Gallery also recently announced the representation of Petit following her debut solo exhibition with the gallery, “LusaHumma: Land of The Black Red.”

Emmanuel Massillon

B. 1998, Washington, D.C. Lives and works in New York.

Dog Food ( Riot Ready, 1960’s ), 2023
Emmanuel Massillon
cadet capela

The multimedia conceptual artist Emmanuel Massillon is interested in how specific historical touchpoints relate to people of African descent. For example, his canvas Dog Food (Riot Ready, 1960’s) (2023) contains a photographic print of a black-and-white German Shepherd set against a painted fluorescent orange background. This work, taken from a wider series incorporating dog food, is imbued with a deeper meaning: “My dog food paintings talk about Black people in America’s history with dogs and the civil rights movement,” Massillon said in an interview with Platform Art. He added, “Dog food is also a slang term for heroin. And heroin and the civil rights movement directly affected Black people at the same time, around the late ’60s, early ’70s.”

Massillon is represented by cadet capela, which presented a two-person show of the artist’s work last year.

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India’s Art Market Is Thriving—Here's Why https://ift.tt/fFmYs8E

It is quite evident that India is at a fascinating point in its art market evolution. Art spaces have been opening up across the country, such as the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) in Mumbai, and upcoming Hampi Art Labs in Karnataka, and the Brij Museum in New Delhi.

Last year, Payal Kapoor, the founder of Arushi Arts in Delhi and long-time curator, launched Artix, India’s first-ever traveling hotel art fair. The 2024 edition will take place in Hyderabad, running from March 16th through 17th. This week, the 15th edition of India Art Fair, running from February 1st through 4th at NSIC Exhibition Grounds, will hold its largest iteration to date with more than 100 exhibitors from across India and the world. It will also debut a brand-new Design section, featuring collectibles and limited-edition designs. Local galleries participating in the fair include DAG, Nature Morte, and Sanchit Art, as well as international additions such as New York’s Marc Straus.

“Increasing collaboration between commercial galleries, patrons, and institutions has helped to support and bolster local art scenes,” India Art Fair director Jaya Asokan told Artsy. “We’re seeing a mutual and symbiotic relationship between the market and the art scene. Just as a strong economy is supporting the growth in the art market, the thriving arts and cultural sector is feeding back into and creating value for other parts of the economy.”

India’s economy has expanded rapidly in recent decades, with the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook projecting India to become the third-largest economy in the world in less than five years, leapfrogging the U.K., Germany, and Japan, and right behind the U.S. and China.

A fast-growing economy purportedly leads to an increased desire to collect and invest in Western art within Asian art markets. Hence, it is not surprising that Mumbai—where much of the country’s wealth is concentrated—launched its own major art fair, Art Mumbai, last November.

Both the new fair and the recently launched NMACC have drawn a great deal of interest from international art advisors and collectors, such as Lawrence Van Hagen, who has just opened a new curatorial project, “Pop: Fame, Love and Power,” at the NMACC. The project “brings together 12 American pioneers of the Pop art movement, such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Keith Haring,” Van Hagen told Artsy.

“Many of these artists have not yet been exhibited in India before, so it really is an exciting time both for cultural institutions in India and for the public to experience international art in their home country,” Van Hagen said. “Secondly, the recent opening of Art Mumbai, the city’s first major art fair, also signals a more international path for India’s art market.”

Back in Delhi, DAG—one of India’s most influential commercial galleries—has opened a new flagship gallery in Janpath in the heart of New Delhi, and has acquired the studio-cum-house of the late Indian modernist artist Jamini Roy, which it intends to transform into a museum.

“All this became possible due to the surge of popular interest in art that has been growing ever since COVID,” said Ashish Anand, CEO and managing director of DAG. “Not only have we seen a rise in younger collectors—we are also seeing an increase in audiences for all our events at our galleries, signaling a growing understanding of art as a lifestyle choice.”

According to Aparajita Jain, director of Nature Morte, which has branches in Delhi, New York, and Mumbai, there has been a notable diversification in the Indian collector base.

“The traditional collector base is now expanding, leading to a new generation of young, tech-savvy collectors who are attracted to affordable art,” she said. “We’ve seen an increase in first-time buyers and collectors interested in emerging artists. This trend is fueled by rising disposable incomes, increased art appreciation, and the rise of online art marketplaces and galleries in tier two cities.”

Jain shared that Nature Morte is currently adapting to this shift by hosting regular artist talks and gallery tours to introduce audiences to the artistic process and different artistic styles.

India Art Fair director Asokan also observed an increased interest from younger collectors. “Galleries are making sales at all price points to both established collectors and a new millennial generation who will be instrumental in shaping the art market of the future,” she said. “More and more younger collectors are entering the market driven by the social and emotional aspects of buying art, as well as the potential for financial return.”

To that end, India Art Fair has its own Young Collectors’ Programme. Now in its third year, the program primarily focuses on those starting out in their collecting journeys, as part of efforts by the art fair to continue to pave the way for the growth of the Indian art market.

Another notable change is the emergence of new, in-demand artists. A spokesperson from Sanchit Art pointed out that young artists such as Nandan Purkayastha and Deveshi Goswami are gaining recognition, with their works fetching substantial prices. More established artists are reaching new audiences and renewed appreciation, too.

Flight, 2016
Deveshi Goswami
Sanchit Art

Spring, 2008
Manoj Dutta
Sanchit Art

“Additionally, there is anticipation regarding the future value surge of certain artists, with experts pointing to Gulam Ragool Santosh, Ganesh Haloi, Manoj Dutta, and Neeraj Goswami, as potential frontrunners for price movement in the coming years,” the spokesperson from Sanchit Art noted. Last September, the late painter Amrita Sher-Gil became the most expensive Indian artist with work at auction following the sale of The Story Teller (1937), which hammered for $7.5 million at New Delhi auction house Saffronart last September.

At India Art Fair, these confluent factors will be on full display, highlighting a domestic art scene that is growing at a rapid and exciting pace. Ashokan, the fair’s director, added: “As we grow as a fair, we remain focused on our mission to amplify the voices of the most exciting artists from the region and to support the expansion of South Asian creativity.”

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