The Top 10 rare artists V – Contemporary art

Fridays are the Best! Every other Friday, Artprice offers you a themed auction ranking. This week the ranking reveals the 10 rarest and best-performing contemporary artists at auction this year.

From Barkley Leonnard Henricks to Alex Israel, this ranking of rare contemporary works spans three generations of artists. Once again, Americans have the upper hand with six places in the Top ranking, including some surprises and some little-known trends, read on…

The Top repeat offenders

Big winner in the Top rarest artists with three of the 10 best results, Alex Israel was already mentioned in the ranking for the best auctions at the start of 2015.
His success started to mount in 2010, the year he exhibited at the California Biennial. He exhibited the following year at Peres Projects in Berlin, at Almine Rech in Paris in 2013 and then at Gagosian in 2015. The result of this support by some of the best galleries: no less than five sprayed works were snatched up for more than USD 500,000 (including fees) since 2014. Alex Israel is not only the best of this ranking, he is also the youngest: at 33 years of age, this market meteor is masterfully managing his career. We recall that he has strong entrepreneurial sense as the head of the sunglasses company Freeway Eyewear, one of the artist’s varied projects.

Another Californian artist (by adoption) represented by the Gagosian Gallery: Jonas Wood (born in 1977) holds two places in the ranking. Truly rare at auction five years ago, his market has exploded in 2015, with 15 works already sold between London and New York, including a record at USD 610,000 including fees – five times the upper estimate – at Sotheby’s on 13 May. Also supported by the Saatchi Gallery, Jonas Wood is, like Alex Israel, one of the new darlings of the market. His works have already been included in major collections, from the MoMA in New York to the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art.

Young Danish-Vietnamese artist Danh Vo (born in 1975) has just arrived on the auction scene but he’s making quite an entrance, with two sales at more than USD 500,000 in less than a year! Danh Vo has benefited from a lightning-fast ascension since winning the Hugo Boss prize in 2012, where he picked up USD 100,000 in prize money and an exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in 2013. Today, Venice is the stage for his success, with his installation Mothertongue in the Danish Pavillion, and at the Punta Della Dogana, at the invitation of François Pinault. Danh Vo holds an auction record of USD 700,000 including fees, a record driven home three days after the official opening of the 56th Biennial in Venice… The Pinault effect is certainly no stranger to this take-off.

The low-profile artists

Abbés Saladi is a true surprise in this ranking. This Moroccan artist, deceased in 1992, abandoned his philosophy studies to paint exclusively, devoting himself to it fully as a self-taught artist. He earned mainstream success from this first exhibit in the Jamma el Fna plaza in Marrakesh in 1977, with a joyous painting style using flat tints and overlapping, and an iconography immersed in the sacred. His record was just multiplied by 10 this year, during an auction sale entirely dedicated to Moroccan contemporary creation and held in partnership with Casablanca and Paris. This unexpected record, USD 514,000 including fees for a large oil on panel titled L’Offrande (The Offering) (206 x 103 cm, 3 June 2015) bodes well for other success, especially since a new auction dedicated to Moroccan contemporary art will be held in partnership with Marrakesh and Paris in December 2015.

The success of young Abdulnasser Gharem (born in 1973) has made him an epiphenomenon in the Saudi Arabian scene, where the contemporary art scene remains peripheral, only concerning a few fortunate elite. However, Abdulnasser Gharem is determined to make contemporary Arabic art flourish internationally (through his work with the Edge of Arabia association) and to open minds via the intrinsic power of art (he organises workshops at a Riyad to divert youth from jihadism). The works of Abdulnasser Gharem entered the auction market in Dubai, Doha and London through sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. The good news is that the artist maintained a high price this year, with his work Hemisphere selling for USD 485,000 including fees in Dubai in March 2015. Having already exhibited several times in London (Victoria & Albert Museum, Edge of Arabia and British Museum in 2012), he lacks only an American presence to anchor him definitively in the world market.

Barkley Leonnard Henricks (born in 1945) is the oldest artist in the ranking and the one with the most concentrated market: all of his sales take place in the United States. Today he leaves his confinement behind thanks to an auction record which should help confirm the power of his work in the New York market: the Swann Gallery auction house doubled the high estimate of the portrait Steve in April, for an ultimate sale totalling USD 365,000. His African-American portraits, created on a nearly real-life scale on vibrant backgrounds, could continue to gain prominence thanks to the auction world…