Between talks, special projects, big names and emerging realities, the 25th edition of Artissima has just ended. The fair stood out once again for its turnout, setting a new record of 54,800 visitors compared to the 52,000 of last year. Looking at the numbers, the event is nothing but a triumph – with 195 international art galleries from 35 countries, over 500 collectors, around 50 partners and sponsors, and as much as 1,500 journalists.
Still, we could ask ourselves – despite the many novelties that helped make the fair an immersive experience even beyond its institutional spaces, is it still tied up with excessively standard references? Has the time come to integrate it further with new parameters that answer more to the contemporary demand of market and research?
Our feeling is that this was yet another occasion to privilege the reassuring linearity that characterizes the fair as a competitive format mostly for the big names of the market, rather than for the emerging realities, using a bit too much caution in the dialogue with the latter.
Nevertheless, we saw several prime examples – both well known and interestingly surprising. Just to name a few,
it’s worth mentioning the works exhibited by Gregor Podnar, Semiose, Eva Meyer…
But here are our favorite booths.
KOW
LAST RESORT
discretion.
A booth that perfectly managed to balance the works of the exhibited artists, developing through a dialogue path between the sculptures by Oren Pinhassi and the paintings by Marco Reichert.
artists that – through different countries and disciplines – explored the aesthetics of daily life, swinging between the variables and possibilities of its representations. The works by He Yida, Jeremy Everett, Ko Sin Tung and João Vasco Paiva preserve on one hand their solid autonomy, while on the other structuring along a synergy that kept them so close to make them appear each as a fundamental part of research of the other.