Who’s the Next Market Superstar? Here Are 5 Artists to Watch at This Week’s Contemporary Art Auctions in New York

The art world spins fast. Back in the 1990s, major auction
houses still considered it taboo to offer works by living artists
that had been completed less than a decade earlier. Fast forward to
the 21st century, however, and the Big Three houses now hold annual
auctions that are specifically built to promote fresh works, some
of which have made the trip from the studio to the auction block in
less than five years. During especially frothy times, it’s not
unheard-of for short-term profiteers to flip a piece at auction
just a few months after acquiring it on the primary market.

The art trade isn’t in a moment as overheated as the Zombie Formalism craze
of 2011 through 2015. But that doesn’t mean a select few young
and/or freshly appreciated artists won’t still see their works
blast off into the deep space of the price galaxy this week, when
Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips all turn their attention toward
the emerging and mid-career portions of the career spectrum. To
prepare you market pros and gossip hounds for this week’s slate of
contemporary sales, we’ve selected five artists with the best
chance to command this particular auction conversation.

Gina Beavers, Pork
Chop and Basil (2012)

Where It’s Offered: Phillips New York’s
“New Now” sale

When: Tuesday, September 24

Estimate: $3,000 to $5,000

Why It Could Pop: Roughly two months after
joining the roster of Marianne Boesky Gallery and three weeks after
the curtain call of “The Life I Deserve,” her widely beloved MoMA
PS1 solo exhibition, Gina Beavers looks poised to devour her
current auction record of just $10,276. Measuring slightly over 16
inches by 12 inches, Pork Chop and Basil is
still a full meal for fans of the artist’s super-saturated,
borderline-sculptural renderings of online #FoodPorn that
alludes to our multifarious appetites.

Surprisingly, only three other Beavers works have mounted the
auction block to date, and only the most recent (offered
in a Christie’s online sale this July) landed above its high
estimate. So it won’t even
take much of a feeding frenzy for collectors to chew through the
old high and place this well-loved artist into a fresh price
tier.

Julie
Curtiss, Fruit Bowl on Fire (2015)

Where It’s Offered: Phillips New York’s
“New Now” sale

When: Tuesday, September 24

Estimate: $4,000 to $6,000

Why It Could Pop: Julie Curtiss’s work
entered the auction
arena for the first time in Phillips’s 20th century and
contemporary day sale in New York this May. There, her
18-by-14-inch canvas Princess catapulted over
its $6,000 high estimate by 1,771 percent, landing at a
premium-inclusive $106,250 (and winning Curtiss the title of
“Strongest Speculation Magnet” in our recap of the Empire
City’s major spring auctions). Sources say that her paintings have
been moving through the private side of the secondary market at
similar prices in the time since that sale, which also coincided
with Curtiss’s inaugural solo exhibition at Anton Kern from late
April through mid-June.

Fruit Bowl on Fire, her third work to appear
at auction, may not reach quite those same heights. After all, it’s
a work on paper rather than a painting on canvas, and it measures
just over 12 inches by nine inches. But the piece is still likely
to incinerate its conservative high estimate in a flash. And if
this small drawing does rage its way to six figures,
it will be time to certify Curtiss’s red-hot market as a full-on
inferno.

Claudia
Comte, Sculpture Object 25 (2014)

Where It’s Offered: Phillips New York’s
“New Now” sale

When: Tuesday, September 24

Estimate: $7,000 to $10,000

Why It Could Pop: Claudia Comte is in the midst
of a prolific year. Aside from installing an array of
underwater concrete sculptures off the Jamaican coast, the
Swiss-born, Berlin-based artist has mounted separate one-person
exhibitions at Gladstone Gallery’s New York and Brussels locations
(the latter is on view through late October) and will debut another
solo show at König Galerie’s London site one week after this sale.
Comte’s work has also attracted consistent demand at auction to
date, with each of her previous six works significantly exceeding
its high estimate.

With so much high-profile activity in her career of late, it
seems likely that Sculpture Object 25, one of Comte’s
signature chainsaw-carved
woodworks, will continue the trend. If nothing else, no good
dealer will allow their artist to open a new show immediately after
an underwhelming auction performance, and Comte is represented by
more than one of those. Combine that fact with legitimate organic
appetite in the buyer base, and this piece has a very strong chance
of achieving a very strong price.

Simone
Leigh, Untitled (2009)

Where It’s Offered: Sotheby’s New York’s
“Contemporary Curated” sale

When: Thursday, September 26

Estimate: $40,000 to $60,000

Why It Could Pop: For a period of time earlier
this year, the artwork of Simone Leigh had seemingly taken over New
York City. In April, her Hugo Boss Prize show opened at the
Guggenheim, bringing large bronze sculptures to the Upper East
Side. In May, similar sculptures were included in the Whitney
Biennial. And then a month later, some dozen blocks up 10th Avenue
from the Whitney, she unveiled Brick House, a 16-foot
bronze that inaugurated a new space for outdoor sculpture on the
far West Side called the High Line Plinth.

Appropriately, her market has started to shift upward, and while
no monumental work has come on the block, collectors are still
scrambling for smaller examples of her practice. An untitled work
that went up in April at Swann Auction Galleries, a house with a
department devoted to African American art, exceeded its high
estimate and sold for $93,750, despite being only two feet
tall—miniature compared to her epic-scaled works. That performance
bodes well for this foot-and-a-half-tall work, which could easily
go for much more than its $60,000 high estimate.

Loie
Hollowell, Lick Lick in Orange and
Blue (2015)

Where It’s Offered: Christie’s New York’s
“Postwar to Present” sale

When: Friday, September 27

Estimate: $70,000 to $100,000

Why It Could Pop: As its name suggests,
the Christie’s “Postwar to Present” sale doesn’t focus solely on
the ultra-contemporary, a
la Phillips’s New Now sale. It’s more of a mix, with pricey works
by Andy Warhol and Helen Frankenthaler lending heft to the lots by
younger artists still building their markets. But one lot steers
straight into the zeitgeist: Loie Hollowell’s Lick Lick in
Orange and Blue, a striking neo-psychedelic painting that the
36-year-old rising star made in 2015. It debuted at the same time
as her first solo show at the tiny 106 Green gallery in Brooklyn,
when her large paintings were selling for just $2,500.

Since then, Hollowell gained representation from the global Pace
Gallery juggernaut, and her primary-market prices have
increased steadily with each show. She currently has work up at
the gallery’s brand new eight-story digs in Chelsea, and each of
the nine paintings in that show sold for $100,000. That makes the
$70,000 to $100,000 estimate for
five-foot-by-four-foot Lick Lick in Orange and Blue
seem positively conservative. But with a waiting list as long as
Loie Hollowell’s, expect feverish bidding from collectors shut out
of the primary market to push this lot well past its high
threshold.

The post Who’s the Next Market Superstar? Here Are 5 Artists
to Watch at This Week’s Contemporary Art Auctions in New York
appeared first on artnet News.