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Nona Garcia booked solid after ASEAN victory

For the past few weeks, conceptual artist Nona Garcia has been doing nothing but prime her canvases. She has so far prepared twelve, and they now lie against one wall, waiting to come alive at the touch of her brush. But twelve canvases are far from enough to cover all her upcoming exhibit engagements.

Oh well, even winning has its price.

Ever since she won the Grand Prize at the Philip Morris Group of Companies ASEAN Art Awards held last November in Singapore, Nona has had her hands full with offers from galleries all over Manila. The competition, which had her besting 35 entries from 7 participating ASEAN countries (Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam), was judged by a panel of eleven international judges, headed by Chief Judge Toshio Shimizu from the Meiji Gakuin University in Japan. 

Her winning work, entitled "See Saw," was made up of two horizontally arranged, 153 cm x 170.2 cm panels. The top panel is a photo-realistic painting of an object wrapped in cloth, while the bottom panel is a backlit X-ray collage of a chainsaw. Both panels relate to each other, with the X-ray collage posing as a presumptive revelation of the hidden object in the oil painting. 

Nona admits, however, that she welcomes the attention she has been getting after her victory. "Gallery owners were giving me their business cards right after the awarding ceremony. It was flattering," she says. 

With the business cards came offers for shows, and she now has to contend with six forthcoming exhibits - all lined up within a span of four months. "It's scary, in a way. I have stopped entertaining any more offers because of the tight schedule, but I'm happy that the offers are coming in."

She is particularly excited about her exhibit at the Lopez Museum this May, since the show is about healing, something which is close to her heart, since she comes from a family of doctors.

Asked if she is still exploring the theme of concealment (the subject of most of her previous works), she replies, "I'm taking things as they come. I'm keeping myself open to other things."

How Fares the Online Art Market?

The Internet bubble has burst. The online art market, which has been affected in no small measure by the plunge of Internet stocks last April, has been undergoing a major reality check.

But while everybody has become wary of anything suffixed with a dotcom, optimists still abound, reports Kelly Devine Thomas in last month's edition of Artnews Magazine.

Among them are New York art adviser Thea Westreich, who is convinced that people will eventually buy online. "What form it will take is the $64,000 question; or in this economy, the $64 million question. The Internet is going to continue to evolve and the art world will be a part of it," she was quoted as saying.

The biggest problem confronting e-commerce sites has been pulling enough revenue to offset the cost of operations. This, of course, is made doubly hard by the fact that they're dealing with low-volume/high-price items such as fine art. 

"(But) despite the challenging financial climate," the report goes on, "the past year had its successes. Sotheby's proved with its $8.14 million sale last June of a rare first printing of the Declaration of Independence that a high-end object could be sold over the Internet. EWolfs-the Web site of Wolf's auction house in Cleveland, Ohio, which began selling works exclusively online in April 1999-boasts selling an average of 90 percent of the property it offers in its monthly online auctions. It expected to break even last year, with $10 million to $12 million in sales."

Another success story was that of New York art dealer Mary-Anne Martin (http://www.mamfa.com/), who sold a classic work by artist Rufino Tamayo for $250,000 to an American collector living in Mexico. The collector spotted the work on the Web site, contacted them through e-mail, and then purchased it sight unseen. After Martin designed a private page for him showcasing about ten works from her inventory, he made two more purchases.

Optimism aside, however, what everybody seems to agree on is that the Internet is more about initiating a relationship with a prospective buyer than selling an object online. 

As New York photography dealer Howard Greenberg (http://www.howardgreenberg.com/) was quoted as saying, "(The Internet) is about outreach and gaining a connection, a pipeline to thousands of people I might not otherwise meet." 

The "Diva Artist" Phenomenon

The boom in contemporary art has turned some artists into celebrities, and this has not made the life of collectors any easier. 

"As collectors scramble for the best stuff, the increased demand is allowing certain artists to make demands of their own. Forget starving artists - it's diva time. Today's brush-wavers want visitation rights, they want their works hung in a certain light or in a certain frame, and they want buyers to sign the art-world version of a prenup," writes the Wall Street Journal's Ken Bensinger in a recent article. 

Much of it can be attributed to the boom in contemporary art, which is generally defined as work made after 1970. "Last November, big New York auctions of Impressionist and modern art did poorly, with barely 60% of the works offered selling. But contemporary art exploded, with three sales at the major houses totaling $113.4 million and about 85% of the works selling. Records were set for several artists, including $750,500 for a blue-and-pink canvas decorated with butterflies by Damien Hirst and $2.2 million for a Charles Ray sculpture of a life-size, nude, anatomically correct male mannequin," continues the report. 

And unless the demand for contemporary art goes down, contemporary artists will continue to be demanding. 

Artist Ellsworth Kelly, for example, who is known for his hard-edged, minimal paintings (in November, one of his paintings sold for a record $1.1 million), likes to just show up at a collector's doorstep to visit his work. 

Video artist Shirin Neshat, a rising art-world star after showings at the Whitney Biennial and other top shows, provides collectors with 'artist's certificates,' a thick document detailing what video projectors to use and when they can be used and even specifies the exact distance required between projectors and screens - in centimeters and inches. 

But in fairness to the artists, requirements such as these are necessary to ensure the work is seen in the way it was intended, especially down the road when the artist isn't around to monitor her work. As Neshat's dealer is quoted as saying: "New media has new rules."

The boom in contemporary art has turned some artists into celebrities, and this has not made the life of collectors any easier. 

"As collectors scramble for the best stuff, the increased demand is allowing certain artists to make demands of their own. Forget starving artists - it's diva time. Today's brush-wavers want visitation rights, they want their works hung in a certain light or in a certain frame, and they want buyers to sign the art-world version of a prenup," writes the Wall Street Journal's Ken Bensinger in a recent article. 

Much of it can be attributed to the boom in contemporary art, which is generally defined as work made after 1970. "Last November, big New York auctions of Impressionist and modern art did poorly, with barely 60% of the works offered selling. But contemporary art exploded, with three sales at the major houses totaling $113.4 million and about 85% of the works selling. Records were set for several artists, including $750,500 for a blue-and-pink canvas decorated with butterflies by Damien Hirst and $2.2 million for a Charles Ray sculpture of a life-size, nude, anatomically correct male mannequin," continues the report. 

And unless the demand for contemporary art goes down, contemporary artists will continue to be demanding. 

Artist Ellsworth Kelly, for example, who is known for his hard-edged, minimal paintings (in November, one of his paintings sold for a record $1.1 million), likes to just show up at a collector's doorstep to visit his work. 

Video artist Shirin Neshat, a rising art-world star after showings at the Whitney Biennial and other top shows, provides collectors with 'artist's certificates,' a thick document detailing what video projectors to use and when they can be used and even specifies the exact distance required between projectors and screens - in centimeters and inches. 

But in fairness to the artists, requirements such as these are necessary to ensure the work is seen in the way it was intended, especially down the road when the artist isn't around to monitor her work. As Neshat's dealer is quoted as saying: "New media has new rules."