When the Paris and New York gallerist Yvon Lambert decided to open a new branch in London’s überhip East End during the Frieze Art Fair, he could hardly have anticipated that his inaugural show, of the Mexican-born artist Carlos Amorales, would be a test of the resiliency of the contemporary-art market. He passed the test with flying colors: The October 16 opening of Lambert’s new digs, an expansive, 7,000-square-foot space across Hoxton Square from the London mainstay White Cube, drew a huge crowd that spilled out into the street. Numerous art world machers were on hand, including the curator Norman Rosenthal, as were a smattering of celebrities, such as the fashion designer Stella McCartney and Alice Dellal, the London It Girl model. Eager collectors picked up a number of works by Amorales, whose show ran through November 15. Prices ranged from $5,000 for small collages to $200,000 for a maquette of a sculptural cityscape, Subconscious City, 2008, pictured; by evening’s end, the latter was on reserve to a museum. Two editions of a large sculpture of a bird sold, as did 20 collages, 3 small paintings and one edition of a mirror incised with a spider web, to American and European buyers.

Olivier Belot, the director who oversees all of Lambert’s galleries, was happy with the results, especially since Amorales is less well known in Europe than in the United States, where he is currently having an exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. Belot also sold two paintings by Amorales for $45,000 each at Frieze, where he says “people were buying in a more considered way” because of the straitened economic climate. "U.K. Edition" originally appeared in the December 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's December 2008 Table of Contents.