Stocks dive, art show thrives
TORONTO INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR
TheStar.com | entertainment

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Peter Goddard

The American economy is in the dumpster. Disposable income is harder to find than Maple Leafs tickets. But the bad news simply could not be better for the ninth annual Toronto International Art Fair, which starts on Thursday and runs to Oct. 6 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

Following Wednesday's Sobey Art Award winner announcement and overlapping with Nuit Blanche, TIAF sees itself as the centrepiece of what Mayor David Miller calls "art week in Toronto."

But the really good news for the 100 or so galleries at TIAF comes, surprisingly enough, from signs of a troubled economy. Art has emerged as an even more golden commodity than, er, gold.

Weren't economic forecasts bleak before last October's TIAF? Maybe, but that fair had 18,000 visitors and generated some $15 million. A forecast of around $18 million in sales this year is not excessively bullish following last week's unprecedented $199 million Sotheby's sale on behalf of British art mogul Damien Hirst, even as Wall Street was being gutted.

Major art fairs – the short list includes Art Basel in June, Art Basel Miami Beach in December and Frieze, the newest, held in London each October – provide art dealers with access to the major money from leading collectors. There's nothing new here. Art fairs go back at least to the 16th century.

"Art fairs have been attractive to dealers for some time," says Susan Hobbs, a Toronto gallery owner appearing at TIAF for the first time, along with 21 other first-time galleries. "But the competition to get into fairs is even harder now."

Hirst's aforementioned end run around his dealers concerns other, smaller dealers, who fear their artists might follow suit. (Takashi Murakami, the "Japanese Warhol," is thought to be the next to take work straight to auction.) So spectacular art fair sales are the dealers' best revenge.

In Canada, where sales of contemporary work at auction lags years behind the rest of the world, younger artists find little alternative to the art fair. "They know there is no secondary market, no art auction market for their work," Hobbs says.

To get a better impression of TIAF's importance, the Star contacted a pair of European dealers – Peter Wilde and Bjorn Stern of Berlin's Wilde Gallery – and two Canadian dealers, Catriona Jeffries, the influential Vancouver-based gallery owner, as well as Hobbs.

All have extensive international connections. Wilde, originally from Toronto, represents Toronto-based artists Balint Zsako and Johannes Zits internationally. Brian Jungen and Geoffrey Farmer, both represented by Jeffries, are established international stars whose prominence is rapidly being equalled by Toronto multi-media artist Scott Lyall from Hobbs's gallery.

Yet the gallery owners all agree that a mid-level fair such as TIAF presents opportunities not found elsewhere.

"Sometimes it's good to be a big fish in the small bowl," says Stern. "Sometimes a mid-level dealer will seem to be much further up the food chain by showing at a mid-level fair."

"When I come to the Toronto fair I know (Ottawa-based) National Gallery people will be there, that Art Gallery of Ontario curators will be there," says Jeffries.

Hobbs adds: "Corporate buyers, particularly from Montreal, go to the fair, as well as museum people from out west."

"A significant amount of the work I do is in Ontario, where there are a number of very good private collections," Jeffries points out.

TIAF is "well organized in terms of its marketing structure," says Stern, who planned Copenhagen's art fair for a number of years.

TIAF's new owner, the Chicago-based consumer show giant Merchandise Mart Properties, was the deciding factor for Hobbs to participate this year. "I did their Chicago fair at one time," she says, "and their customer service was the best I ever had."

Peter Goddard is a Toronto freelance writer. He can be reached at peter_g1@sympatico.ca