Limited Editions: Two Realities for Prints Dealers in Basel

BASEL—PrintBasel, the second-year, invite-only fair dedicated to editioned works, is a mere five-minute walk from Art Basel, but it might as well be a world away. In contrast to Art Basel’s sprawling, 300-gallery bazaar, PrintBasel presents an intimate 16-gallery showroom where you can actually pause to look at a work without being jostled by passersby. Unfortunately, a pleasant art-viewing experience does not necessarily equal a successful fair, and several of the dealers we spoke with clearly would have traded three-plus days of anemic foot traffic for a taste of Basel’s bustle. And yet, though ARTINFO heard more complaints at PrintBasel than at other satellites, spirits were mostly upbeat.

“The way this fair works is that most business is done in the last few days,” said London dealer Paul Stolper. “It’s been slowish so far. But sales picked up last night.”

Stolper reported sales of a 1973 Richard Hamilton print from an edition of 1,000 for CHF 2,100 ($2,025); a 2006 Damien Hirst from an edition of 55 for CHF 24,100; a Gavin Turk from an edition of 40 for CHF 4,800; and a Magne F from an edition of 50 for CHF 2,050.

“It hasn’t been bad so far. I’ve sold six pieces. If it continues like this, I’ll be pleased,” said Werner Röthlisberger of Basel’s Galerie Am Spalenberg, who had thus far sold two Eduardo Chillidas, two Jean Arps, a Giuseppe Santomaso, and an Antoni Tàpies for prices ranging from CHF 950 to 2,400.

“We’re having a blast, but there hasn’t been much business yet,” said MJ Hobby-Limon of London’s TAG Fine Arts, which reported the sale of two lambda prints, from an edition of 25, of The Little Artists’ Hirst’s Shark Tank, for £550. The work comes from an eight-photograph series in which the artists re-create memorable moments from art history using Lego pieces.

Hobby-Limon did not attribute the sluggishness to the market, but rather suggested that it had to do with the fate of satellite fairs in general and the organization of PrintBasel in particular. He expressed concern that “the fair organizers have not brought many people through the door,” and mentioned that the fair location is hard to find and does not share the same shuttle service as the other satellites. (Scope, Volta, and Bâlelatina, which are all near one another in a different part of the city, share the same buses.)

Ron Valdez of West Hollywood’s Hamilton-Selway Fine Art, which had yet to make a sale, felt that PrintBasel should market itself and coordinate with Art Basel better. Still, he said that he plans to return to PrintBasel next year if his application to Art Basel, which he admitted was a “long shot,” doesn’t work out.

Some galleries, however, saw things quite differently. Mixografia of Los Angeles, whose large booth was the last one in the fair, as if it was the culmination of the journey, was having an outstanding fair — “better than last year,” according to director Lea Remba.

The gallery is offering prints, multiples, and sculptures in several media at impressive price points, and sales included a suite of five Louise Bourgeois crochet prints, from an edition of 50, for €85,000, two Mimmo Paladinos, from an edition of 50, for approximately $45,000; two Donald Sultans for $6,000 each; a John Baldessari sailboat for $15,000; and an Ed Ruscha wood print for $15,000.

Another enthusiastic dealer was David Procuniar of New York’s Procuniar Workshop, who told ARTINFO that PrintBasel drew the right sort of visitors: serious collectors who you could do business with after the fair. By contrast, he said that in other fairs he has been to (in L.A., New York, London, and Chicago), half of the visitors are young artists who approach him about collaborating.

Procuniar reported that he earned $80,000 as a result of last year’s PrintBasel, much of it after the fair ended. This time around he had yet to make a sale, but he was fairly certain that a couple from Luxembourg would purchase for $9,000 apiece two works from Louise Bourgeois’s "Fugue" (2003–05), a series of 19 screenprints with lithography published by the Workshop in an edition of nine, plus one artists proof. According to the dealer, the set would not ordinarily have been split up, but in this case, he had sold a set to another dealer who had sold them separately, and these were a few that he was able to purchase back.