Artsy Insider: Rising Demand for Works by ARTNOIR Benefit Alumni
Adjei Tawiah, IRONY, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and ARTNOIR. Kevin Claiborne, Untitled (Therapy Boy), 2021. Courtesy of the artist and ARTNOIR. Solomon Adufah, Black Starlight 13, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and ARTNOIR. Ashante Kindle, Morning Sunrise, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and ARTNOIR.
Welcome to Artsy Insider. This week, on the occasion of ARTNOIR’s 2021 benefit auction opening this Tuesday, July 13th, on Artsy, I’m looking back at last year’s edition and tracking the trajectories of artists who’ve seen demand for their work rise since then. I’m also sharing a collection of works by artists featured in both last year’s and this year’s ARTNOIR fundraisers on Artsy, and taking a closer look at the market for two of those artists in particular.
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By the Numbers
ARTNOIR Alumni
The chart above shows the changing demand on Artsy for six artists featured in the 2020 ARTNOIR benefit sale who’ve seen significant jumps in collector interest on the platform this year. Works by Khari Turner, the Milwaukee-born, New York–based painter, have met with skyrocketing demand since last year’s benefit. Shortly thereafter, his work was included in “Say It Loud,” a selling exhibition organized by advisor Destinee Ross-Sutton with Christie’s. Through the first half of 2021, demand for his work has increased eightfold over the second half of 2020. Nebraska-born, Detroit-based artist Gisela McDaniel saw demand for her work on Artsy tick up by a third in the first half of the year. Last month, she had a solo presentation with London gallery Pilar Corrias as part of Art Basel’s online initiative “OVR: Portals,” selected by ARTNOIR co-founder Larry Ossei-Mensah. Smaller works in the virtual booth were priced under $10,000, while larger paintings were offered for prices between $10,000 and $25,000.
Collection
ARTNOIR on Artsy
From left to right: Lord Ohene, Party In The Park, 2020. Courtesy of Gallery 1957. Dana Robinson, Cecelia's Colorful Makeover Too, 2021. Courtesy of Selenas Mountain. Alanna Fields, Close Your Eyes and Remember, 2021. Courtesy of Assembly.
This week, Artsy Curatorial brings together standout available works by the artists featured in last year’s ARTNOIR benefit auction, as well as those participating in the 2021 edition. Browse works from a range of visual artists representing a variety of perspectives and experiences.
Explore the full collection on Artsy.
This Week
Growing Appetites for Abstraction
Last month, a work by Bronx-born painter Patrick Alston was offered at auction for the first time ever. The 2020 painting Native Sun, which the consignor had acquired directly from the artist, was offered during a Phillips day sale in New York with an estimate of $6,000 to $8,000. The yellow, black, and red composition was a prime example of Alston’s approach to abstraction, with oil, acrylic, and spray-paint marks playing off against mixed-media elements including a shower curtain and insulation foam. The dazzling work nearly tripled its high estimate in the end, selling for $23,940.
That starry auction debut capped a busy year for Alston. After being featured in ARTNOIR’s 2020 benefit auction on Artsy in July, he had his first solo exhibition, “Eighty Days - Trials and Tribulations,” which opened at Detroit gallery Louis Buhl & Co. in September. The heightened visibility is translating to rapidly rising demand for Alston’s work on Artsy. The number of collectors inquiring about his work on the platform increased sixfold from 2019 to 2020; at the current level of interest, that number could double year over year in 2021.
Another painter featured in last year’s ARTNOIR benefit auction who is well versed in the formal language of abstraction—and which he routinely subverts through figuration and narrative—is Florida-born, New York–based artist Jamaal Peterman. Earlier in 2020, he made a strong showing at the final U.S. fair before the pandemic hit, The Armory Show, where London’s Vigo Gallery was showing several of his intensely chromatic and textured canvases. The gallery sold three of them for prices ranging from $8,000 to $10,000. Peterman closed out the year with a solo show at James Fuentes; the gallery is currently offering works on paper by the artist, depicting stylized figures rendered in hard-edged geometric shapes, for $4,500 each.
Peterman’s works—which take up formal tropes of abstraction from the likes of Peter Halley, Frank Stella, and Josef Albers, but juxtapose them with figurative imagery that addresses timely social and political tensions—have struck a chord with collectors. His works first appeared on Artsy in 2017 but really took off last year, when the number of users inquiring about them more than quadrupled. At the halfway point of 2021, this year is already his biggest on the platform, with the number of collectors inquiring about his work on track to double last year’s total.
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