Year_07: Fresh Finds and Steady Sales

LONDON—Getting through Year_07 Art Projects was like navigating one of Turner Prize nominee Mike Nelson’s labyrinths. The fair, which debuted at the Mary Ward House last year as Year_06, moved this year to County Hall, scene of the late-lamented Saatchi Gallery (now ironically a Star Wars exhibition). The echoing corridors of County Hall led to galleries zig-zagging along the paneled front and side enfilades of this curious building.

Collectors seemed to have no troubles finding their way around, however: Red dots were everywhere the morning after the opening party, which was no surprise given the amount of fresh and unexpected work under £10,000 ($20,000).

Drawings—detailed, beautiful, and often of birds—were everywhere. Offerings from the young German artist Sebastian Gogel appeared at both Galerie Emmanuel Post of Leipzig, where they were George Grosz-ish, and at Galerie Adler, of Frankfurt and New York, where they were huge baroque exercises in charcoal. Both galleries said Gogel is one to watch.

At the booth of New York–based Schroeder Romero, “Bad Boy” William Powhida’s gouache and graphite painting-drawings caught my eye, and singing bird sculptures by Misako Inaoka intrigued my ear. The latter looked as if they had been wrenched, cheeping, from 18th-century automata. Gallerist Lisa Schroeder told me she was very encouraged by visitors’ reactions to these curious little creatures.

There were drawings, drawings, and more drawings at Galerie Anne Barrault, of Paris, where a marvellous series by Killoffer (just one name there) had a forest of red dots. Barrault told me Killoffer, one of the founders of L’Association, a cult publishing firm that creates literary comics, is already well known in the French comic strip world and is beginning to attract wider attention outside France.

One of the most impressive installations at Year_07 was presented by New York’s Winkleman Gallery. Jennifer Dalton’s series “What Does an Artist Look Like” is based on images of artists in the New Yorker from 1999 to 2001. The installation is comprised of 436 postcard-sized images divided into rows presenting different types of artists and ranging from “Genius” at one end to “Pin-Up” at the other. Owner Edward Winkleman had already sold two out of the three complete sets for $18,000, but collectors can also select any ten images in an edition of six for $600.

Another contender came from Platform Gallery in Seattle. Scott Fife’s “True Grit” pieces are small sculptural portraits in archival cardboard, glue, and screws. Among the works on display were depictions of a wild boar’s head and a Native American. After all the carefully executed little drawings I’d been seeing, these had a refreshing sense of rugged, red-blooded drama. I asked gallerist Blake Haygood if the cardboard boxes on which the pieces were standing were part of the artist’s intent. “No,” he replied. “They came packed in them.” So much for art theory.

Where was paint in all this? It was around, but not dominant. At Irish gallery Kevin Kavanagh, Robert Armstrong’s exquisite misty oils had this season’s magic ingredient: historical reference. Here, the rocks in Madonna of the Rocks and the equestrian statue of Louis XIV, hung together, were stand-outs. Armstrong is one of those mid-career artists (he’s 50) who is suddenly back on the radar again.

Nettie Horn, a new gallery in London’s uber-trendy Vyner Street, also showed small oil paintings with historical references, these by its up-and-coming star Rebecca Taber. Director Tony Taglianetti told me Taber’s recent residency in Spain brought undertones of Velasquez to her work, which also has subtle Mannerist and baroque references. He said she is already attracting serious collectors.

In this unexpected labyrinthine atmosphere, two surrealist jokes also stood out: Debbie Lawson’s Collars and Cuffs, a patterned carpet forming an aspidistra standing on an elaborate stool at Nettie Horn, and, at Frankfurt's Galerie Martina Detterer, Lei Xue’s Drinking Tea, an assemblage of crushed soda cans in classical Chinese blue-and-white porcelain.

All in all, there were plenty of surprises to be seen at Year_07, if you could find your way to them.