Expert's Eye: Gallerist Mike Weiss Previews the SVA Alumni Auction

NEW YORK—Mike Weiss is the proprietor and director of the Chelsea gallery that bears his name, which he founded in 2003. Prior to opening his own gallery, he was the director of the Stux Gallery for two years and was also an independent curator and art consultant.

Weiss recently joined ArtInfo at the preview exhibition for the School of Visual Arts’ Alumni Society auction, which will be conducted by Sotheby’s at the SVA Visual Arts Gallery at 601 W. 26th St. on Sept. 26.

This is a fascinating auction because it offers opportunities to buy everything from recent grads’ work for a few hundred dollars—to an Elizabeth Peyton valued at $35,000. The auction is divided into two sections, a live auction (for a relatively small number of works by big-name artists) and a silent auction that is already open for written bids. Click here to view the online catalog.

Weiss shared his market expertise regarding charity auctions in general—and offered his assessment of some of the specific works for sale.

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On Robert Melee’s Unidentifiable Suck Lucking Substitution

“Right when I walked in, I was very struck by this Robert Melee work [valued at $7,000]. I think it’s an extraordinary, stunning piece. He is represented by the Andrew Kreps Gallery, and he has done shows with Jay Jopling at White Cube in London. I’m very familiar with his work. As well as bottle-cap pieces like this, many of my collectors own his photographs and video art. If I were with a client, I would tell them to bid on this. Even though a piece like this goes for $6,000 to $7,000 at his galleries, it’s so good it’s well worth bidding it up. After his show in London and all the exposure that got him, Melee’s definitely an artist who is doing great things.”

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On Tim Rollins’ Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl (After Harriet Jacobs) Atlanta

“Tim Rollins had a very good career in the 1980s. He showed at Mary Boone. He had some problems with a controversy over children who were painting his paintings, and they weren’t getting money for it. But he’s a very good artist. After his fall out with Mary, he hasn’t had the kind of recovery that some artists have had—but I think he’s still an extraordinary artist, and a piece like this is quite beautiful. It’s valued at $10,000. I don’t think that I would bid on it personally, but sometimes you can get a piece like this way undervalued.”

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On Elizabeth Peyton’s Pete Doherty (in Hello!)

“It’s a beautiful piece, and I’m a great admirer of her work. A lot of times if someone’s going to spend $35,000 or $40,000 for a piece, they’d like to buy it through the gallery—and get in with the gallery, and get in with Gavin Brown [Peyton’s dealer] and get to be invited to the parties. But the problem is you can’t just go to the gallery and buy an Elizabeth Peyton, because there are waiting lists, and they want to know who you are and what your collection is like. So sometimes for a very good piece like this, an auction is the best place to get it. But the problem is a lot of people are going to be thinking the same thing, so the price is going to get bid up.”

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On Lisa Ruyter’s Untitled (Self Portrait)

“Lisa Ruyter just had a show at the Team Gallery and she showed these pieces. I thought they were really good. It was sort of a departure for her. There is a Warhol feel to this drawing which is really quite beautiful. The minimum bid is $2,000, and I think a lot of people will bid on Lisa. She’s getting a lot of attention, and this is a piece that I would have expected to find in the live auction, but I think that they’ve put it in the silent auction to raise up the level of the works there.”

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On the Photography on Display

“The photographic work here is really very good. I can’t say I’m really familiar with a lot of the artists, but it would be a really good way to start a photography collection. Sometimes coming across a really beautiful photograph by an artist whom you just don’t know can be a really great investment. This piece by Zackary Drucker [Untitled #118] is really nice, and so is this work from Billy Sullivan [Delia & Elaine]. A lot of these works are small, but not everyone wants a photograph that’s the size of an Andreas Gursky.”

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