Sofa New York draws new collectors
But there is still a noticeable divide from fine art and design fairs



Flying off the wall: works by Jennifer Trask (above, Intrinsecus, 2010) sold well at Ornamentum gallery

New york. The 14th version of Sofa New York staged 14-17 April at the Park Avenue Armory sprouted a number of new features from expanded lecture series and a designers committee to a Young Collectors Night, along with a larger catalogue format à la Phillips and a video lounge. This all resulted in a buzzy vibe that led to pronounced sales for some dealers. Crowds were thick on opening night although down about 20% from last year to 2,000 visitors.

“We are aiming to draw cross-collectors from contemporary art and a new generation,” says Mark Lyman, Sofa founder and Art Fair Company president. While the vernissage of the 57-dealer show drew design loyalists such as Museum of Arts & Design trustees Nan Laitman and Jerome Chazen and patron Charles Bronfman, there were new faces as well. Among them were “Good Day New York” television anchor Rosanna Scotto and “Real Housewives of New York City” star Jill Zarin. Overall, the audience was mature rather than blue-jean-clad hedge funders or Upper East Side society.

The new marketing approaches paid off. “There’s a bounce back in sales,” says Stefan Friedemann, who heads up the Hudson, New York Ornamentum. His sales were up 20% including Jennifer Trask’s 2011 wall piece Abundant Uselessness consisting of bleached and sanded antlers and snake vertebrae intertwined with portions of 300-year-old gilt frames, sold for $48,000 to a Museum of Art & Design patron. In all, he sold over 20 important pieces. And Santa Fe’s David Richard Gallery sold the three-foot-high mosaic glass lipstick sculpture Ruby Lipstick 2011 by artist Jean Wells to Estée Lauder president John Demsey, who bought the work “for his desk”, according to dealer David Eichholtz.

Chicago architect Suzanne Lovell snapped up two Kate Malone ceramics vessels including the British potter’s Opening Pine Cone, 2010, priced at $14,500 from London dealer Claire Beck at Adrian Sassoon. New York and Dubai interior designer Geoffrey Bradfield commissioned a Chris Antemann porcelain ceramic figure for over $20,000 from Massachusetts dealer Leslie Ferrin.

But sales volume was most pronounced at the lower end. Lenox, Massachusetts jewellery dealer Sienna sold over 20 major examples tagged up to $10,000 for a Daniel Kruger enameled silver necklace, and around 200 pieces by emerging jewellers at $400 and under. London dealer Sarah Myerscough Fine Art, who was showing turned wood objects, and Lacoste of Concord, Massachusetts showing ceramics, both replenished their stands with works at levels under $10,000.

But a telling sign of the divide still separating Sofa from the fine art and design worlds was the participation of only one dealer who regularly shows at Design Miami Basel, Ornamentum, and only one from Tefaf Maastricht, Adrian Sassoon.

New York art advisor Stephen Rosenberg who has sold to the Museum of Modern Art found “a lot of material that does not transcend the questions: ‘is it art, is it craft?’,” pointing to the oversized blown-glass heads “bordering on kitsch” by Oben Abright on the stand of ECHT Gallery of Chicago.
Still New York Japanese ceramics dealer Joan Mirviss sold 11 of Akiyama Yo’s fired works for up to $40,000. “He’s a sculptor and that’s what sets him apart,” says Mirviss. Philadelphia dealer Lewis Wexler racked up glass sales, including William Morris’s Suspended Artifact,1995, blown glass for $82,000, a 1990 Tom Patti for $72,000 to a 1961 Stansilav Libensky for $38,000. Wexler believes SOFA could include important contemporary art and design. “But this entire field and the show are in transition,” he says.