Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures

New York's Metro Pictures was showing a new series by Cindy Sherman including "Untitled" (2007/2008).

George Condo Cindy Sherman Andreas Gursky Olaf Breuning Sterling Ruby John Baldessari Thomas Demand Fischli and Weiss

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“The days of the five-minute decision are over,” said Andreas Gegner, director of Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers’s London branch. “The guideline for the future is that quality works at good prices will sell, and bad pieces won’t.”

Evidently the gallery, which also has a Cologne location and is opening a Berlin branch this weekend, had some good pieces. A new mural-sized manipulated photo work by Andreas Gursky — based on a space-agey music club in Frankfurt — sold for €600,000 ($806,000).

The gallery also sold a two-panel piece by John Baldessari, Beautiful in My Eyes from 2006, for $350,000; a large George Condo drawing in acrylic, charcoal, and oil pastel, Rodrigo with Girlfriend (2008), for $75,000; Thomas Demand’s Kabine, a C-print/Diasec image from 2007, from an edition of 6, for €130,000; Sterling Ruby’s funky, towering sculpture Monument Stalagmite-Wear It (2006), executed in urethane, Formica, and wood, for $135,000; and a fresh work from the Swiss duo Fischli Weiss, Untitled (Egg), in mixed media and plaster, for €450,000.

Despite these results, Gegner conceded, “It’s definitely slower this year. There were fewer collectors, especially from America.”

Photography and sculpture were also moving at New York’s Metro Pictures. Several prints from a new series by self-portrait icon Cindy Sherman sold at $175,000 apiece. The artist continues to invent new personas, here appearing as a fashionable, middle-aged woman, dripping in Balenciaga and wearing oversized glasses. Her new show opens at the New York gallery next month.

Younger members of the Metro set also had success. Swiss artist Olaf Breuning sold his Smoke Bombs from 2008, a large-scale work depicting an elaborate construction of colorful smoke bombs, for $15,000.

Monica Bonvicini sold Fool, a wall relief that spells out the title word with welded chain in a deadpan Ed Ruscha style, for $30,000.

“We came here with no expectations,” said the gallery’s Tom Heman, “and it’s been fine. The whole art world has gotten used to this totally hyperactive market, and now it has returned to a little bit of normalcy.”

Exiting the fair, seasoned Brussels dealer Maurice Keitelman said this about the changed art world: “The party has been going on for a really long time. And now, there’s a very bad case of indigestion.”

Judd Tully is Editor at Large of Art+Auction.