ArteBA: A Relaxed Aperitivo to Basel’s Big Feast

BUENOS AIRES—Just a week before Art Basel grips the art world’s attention, a less well-known and decidedly more relaxed fair is in full swing: ArteBA, Latin America’s most important art event. The six-day show, now in its 17th year, has attracted 81 galleries mostly from Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Mexico, Chile, and its home country, Argentina. It runs through Monday at the La Rural convention hall in Buenos Aires.

“It’s much more international this year,” says Facundo Gomez Minujín, president of the ArteBA Foundation, the fair’s nonprofit sponsor (his day job is running JP Morgan Chase’s Buenos Aires office). “And the overall quality of the works is better. Before we had museum-quality things but also much lower. Now it is higher all around.”

The jam-packed opening night on Wednesday — the first wave of an expected 110,000 visitors, about double what Basel usually gets  — attracted mostly Spanish speakers (despite unseasonably cold weather), but smatterings of French and English were overheard as well. The guests downed Champagne courtesy of Chandon, one of the event’s sponsors, and encountered a huge variety of contemporary work with very international flavor — not just the colorful painting that fits the stereotype of Latin-American art. “We have more photography and video this year,” says Minujín, “and that’s because they’re getting more attention worldwide. The curators who came ready to purchase on the first day all bought photography.”

Marcos López, the local photographer much buzzed about by Buenos Aires’s biggest collectors, had a large presence at the booth of Madrid’s Galeria Fernando Pradilla and its sister operation, Galeria El Museo of Bogotá. López, who channels the heightened color and emotion of David LaChapelle and mixes it with his own unique style, had three works up for sale: The Pink Bedroom (2007), depicting two men in their pajamas holding hands, for $8,000; Il Piccolo Vapore (2007), a surreal cantina scene, for $9,000; and The Director’s Birthday (2008), a Catholic-school fantasy, for $11,000.

Many of the works on view throughout the fair should pleasantly surprise international collectors used to big markups — some of the most eye-catching pieces were under $10,000. Partly that’s because Argentina is still recovering from the economic crisis of 2002, which hammered the value of the peso while making the country a haven for bargain-hunting foreign visitors. But it also reflects the developing tastes of the local collecting base. “You can’t bring the most expensive works here,” says Oscar Cruz of Sao Paulo’s Baró Cruz Gallery, who’s on the ArteBA selection committee. “Argentine collectors will pay big money mostly for Argentine artists. They’re not as prepared to spend on international names. That’s quite unlike the situation in Brazil.” While he was still setting up his booth, Cruz was able to sell The Last Battle, a piece by Buenos Aires–based Sebastián Gordin, to a “major Argentine collector” for $15,000. It’s an aquarium-sized tank containing a diorama-like scene of Medieval-looking works in a museum setting.

A handful of U.S. galleries were present, mostly those with some kind of South-of-the-border connection. Chelsea-based Magnan Emrich Contemporary Art, which shows Latin American art, had a space for the first time this year. “We thought we’d give it a shot,” said assistant director Sarah Greenwalt. “They were very friendly about the booth price.” (Indeed, ArteBA subsidizes both young galleries and those traveling from abroad, and, as a nonprofit, it plows its proceeds back into the fair each year.) Greenwalt was getting a lot of attention for a colorful diptych of photographs by Sandra Valenzuela of Mexico, from her “Boyfriend” series, showing the artist and her current squeeze tied up in Japanese bondage ropes; by turning the images upside down, she makes them appear to be flying rather than constrained. The work is priced at $6,000 for both images.

Paintings were certainly plentiful as well — among the most striking was a roughly 190-by-142-inch untitled piece from 1963 by Juan Batlle Planas, touted by his gallery, Daniel Maman Fine Art of Buenos Aires, as the “first Argentine surrealist.” The huge four-panel work, with large blocks of blues and browns and greens and an air of De Chirico, was priced at $400,000. “It’s a difficult piece, and we’re holding out for a museum purchase,” said the gallery’s Valeria Pecoraro.

One of the most popular areas of the fair was a brand-new invention: the Barrio Joven, featuring some 20 newer galleries and very inexpensive work. Kiosko, based in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, was having great success with $600 black-and-white line drawings by Douglas Rodrigo Rada. The theory behind Barrio Joven was simple, said Kiosko’s Raquel Schwartz: “Young artists attract young collectors.” And in the fast-developing Latin American art scene, that may be the key to future success.

Ted Loos is Executive Editor of Art & Auction.