Thomas Solomon Gallery

L.A. MAKES A SHOWING AT ARCO

Susan Emerling

Art in America, Vol. 98, No. 2, February:  30.

For the first time in its 29-year history, the international contemporary art fair ARCOmadrid has invited a city--Los Angeles--rather than a country as its "honored guest."  (The United States received the distinction in 1994.)  The switch, says the fair's director, Lourdes Fernandez, reflects the fact that "contemporary meaning is not in countries, but in cities."  Once organizers decided to start with a North American city, Los Angeles was chosen for "its view to Latin America."  It probably doesn't hurt that L.A. is full of collectors and galleries, very few of which participate in ARCO, representing a potential future constituency.

Though the fair [Feb. 17-21] doesn't generate the international buzz of its rivals, it is a "phenomenon in Spain," according to Fernandez, drawing large crowds from all over the country.  Launched in 1982, ARCO, which hosts close to 150 contemporary galleries--the majority from Spain and Germany--was founded at a time when there were few opportunities to see contemporary art in Spain.  Today, it draws almost 200,000 visitors over the course of its five-day run, far more than other contemporary art fairs, such as, in 2009, London's Frieze (60,000), Art Basel Miami Beach (42,000), Art Basel (61,000) and the Armory Show (52,000) in New York, which play to art world insiders.  Unlike most fairs, ARCO has a collecting entity, the ARCO Foundation, which acquires work, chosen by curators, from each fair.  This year's curators, Chus Martinez, director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein, and Sabine Breitweiser, founding curator if Vienna's Genrali Foundation, will have an acquisition budget of around $220,000, down from about $290,000 in previous years. (The ARCO Collection is on temporary loan to the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea in Santiago de Compostela.)  L.A. dealer Christopher Grimes, who serves on ARCO's advisory board and is bringing work by Allen Sekula to this year's fair, feels that he has been able to cultivate a deeper engagement with collectors at this event than at other fairs.

The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs is underwriting some of the costs, including salaries of independent curators Kris Kuramitsu and Christopher Miles, who were selected by ARCO to curate "Panorama: Los Angeles."  The 17 participating galleries range in scale from old school titan Margo Leavin Gallery, which is spotlighting John Baldessari, to the much smaller Thomas Solomon Gallery, presenting emerging artists such as Analia Saban and Brad Eberhard.  The $100,000 the city is budgeting for this effort is a small fraction of the $2.4 million it recently spent to present L.A. at the 2009 Guadalajara Book Fair, a disparity that has caused some griping among the dealers participating in ARCO, who would like to see the city throw more economic weight behind the event.  ARCO is providing the L.A. galleries with hotel accommodations and free booths, which will be in a special area designed by the L.A. architectural firm Johnston Marklee.

Other exhibitions dealing with Los Angeles are taking place at numerous venues in Madrid.  "Invisible City," at the Instituto Cervantes, features nine artists, including Mark Bradford and Ruben Ochoa.  During the fair, at the space Matadero, the L.A.-based performance art collective My Barbarian (funded by a $20,000 grant from the L.A. DCA) will present what co-founder Malik Gaines calls "a class play" about the "former colonial relationship between Madrid and Los Angeles."  Additional shows of L.A.based artists include photographs by the late Julius Shulman at the Canal de Isabel II, works by Robert Irwin at the Museo Esteban Vicente, Ed Ruscha's artist's books at Alcala 31 and new media work by Mario Garcia Torres at the Reina Sofia.