This year Artissima featured an expanded variety of galleries, apart from its usual suspects. The fair’s elaborate and well conceptualized array of thematic sections, crafted, as everybody knows, by a committee of over 50 well established curators (mostly North America and Europe-based), provide plenty of options for both institutions and the market, offering obscure jewels of the past in a dedicated section, as well as a prescient emerging artists section–out of which came current New York scene’s hottest young star, Rachel Rose, 2014 Illy Present Future Prize winner, with a show opening at Castello di Rivoli during the fair as well as recent solo shows at the Whitney in NYC and Serpentine in London.
Fair’s new additions included a quite uneven representation of Mexico City ‘s young gallery panorama, including Marso and Proyectos Monclova, in terms of the quality of their programs. This is probably due to the equally uneven business in the fair for Latin American galleries -many latino gallerists see the fair more in terms of public relations with European institutions than as a spot for significant sales, but that is not necessarily affordable to everyone.
Natalia Valencia
