SP-Arte: Growing into its own Skin

Camila Bel­choir
The third edi­tion of SP Arte—International Mod­ern and Con­tem­po­rary Art Fair of São Paulo took place this year between the 18th and 22nd of April at the Bienal build­ing sit­u­ated in Ibi­ra­puera Park. A young fair, founded in 2005, SP-Arte is rapidly grow­ing and acquir­ing the airs of a “grown-up” fair. At each edi­tion, it seems to nes­tle into its own skin fur­ther and fur­ther, assert­ing itself as a ref­er­en­tial trade fair that should be con­sid­ered by a wider scope of art advocates.

The only one of its kind in Brazil to date, one can’t deny that, soon enough, it will stim­u­late the sprout­ing up of satel­lite fairs or the likes so as to push its own lim­its fur­ther, con­tex­tu­al­is­ing it and widen­ing the mar­ket and its scope. There is talk that the very same organ­i­sa­tion will have frac­tured ver­sions of itself through­out the year in part­ner­ship and inside the city’s most exclu­sive mall, Shop­ping Iguatemi, in an attempt to lure the seri­ously deter­mined mall shop­pers into an art spree of sorts. Whether it is a good idea or polit­i­cally cor­rect to have the same fair occur in dif­fer­ent guises in the same city is to be decided when it in fact comes to fruition, but let’s just hope that it won’t be the begin­ning of yet another tam­pered niche in the market.

Of course, the qual­ity of an art fair has a lot to with what gal­leries are pre­pared to show and how they choose to do it within the guide­lines of the organ­i­sa­tion that hosts and stim­u­lates them to show their work. The fair is bla­tantly more con­tem­po­rary than it is mod­ern; 75% of the works on show this year were con­tem­po­rary, against 60% last year. Paulo Darzé gallery from Sal­vador, in the north­east of Brazil, has, since the fair’s incep­tion, always cho­sen to focus on the work of one artist per edi­tion. Last year, Darzé showed Mario Cravo Neto, one of the country’s most pres­ti­gious pho­tog­ra­phers, and this year, Mestre Didi; 12 of these works sold like hot cakes. Didi, inspired by the Afro-Brazilian cul­ture in Bahia state where Sal­vador is located, pro­duces objects that relate back to and con­jure cer­e­mo­nial arte­facts, colour­ful, rus­tic and deli­ciously organic. Gale­ria Fortes Vilaça, one of the most pres­ti­gious con­tem­po­rary gal­leries par­tic­i­pat­ing in the fair, showed a selec­tion of high­lights in one of the larger model stalls. Spe­cial atten­tion should be paid to Luiz Zerbini, rep­re­sented by Fortes Vilaça, who is one of Brazil’s most inter­est­ing and intrigu­ing painterly tal­ents. His most recent show at the gallery, con­comi­tant to the fair, was one of the best I have seen in town this year. A new­comer to the fair, Gale­ria Tempo came with a pleas­ant sur­prise: the works by Pat Kurs—a delight. Pho­tos of del­i­cate toy dolls, with what seem like hand-painted fea­tures on porce­lain faces, roman­ti­cally dressed and placed in sur­real set­tings, stood out from the oth­er­wise clut­tered stall. For­mally, they speak to likes of Hans Bellmer. Not far from Tempo was Portugal-based Gale­ria Mario Sequeira; a favourite. This was his first time at the fair as well, and he cer­tainly did well. His crates left back for Europe pretty much empty. One of the larger spaces in the fair, if not the largest, the works on dis­play demon­strated his keen and trained eye for art. The paint­ing that hung on the out­side wall, a reclined woman dressed in bright green, trig­gered a stream­ing array of art his­tor­i­cal images in my mind from the likes of Ingres, the Dutch mas­ters and Velazques. Gale­ria Leme from São Paulo showed a cap­ti­vat­ing group of draw­ings set away from the spot­light that caught my eye. These are by artist Rosana Palazyan. Her poetic approach to social themes is incom­pa­ra­ble and, how a few lines on paper can evoke so much, admirable. Luz Angela Lizarazo, a recent addi­tion to the gallery, is also worth not­ing since her exploits with line inter­rupted by jut­ting ver­sions of bones and spinal chords are some­thing to be remem­bered. Neil Hamon, a British tal­ent rep­re­sented by Leme and in this year’s bien­nale, also couldn’t have gone by unno­ticed by any aspir­ing or full-fledged collector.

Since the fig­ures that any fair rings up are also directly related to the works on show, you can draw your con­clu­sions. Esti­mates are that the fair gen­er­ated more rev­enue this year than last, and last year’s fig­ure was quoted at USD six mil­lion; which, for the Brazil­ian mar­ket, is not a low

The fair as a whole spread itself out wider in the Bienal build­ing this year. Signs of suc­cess. Instead of occu­py­ing only the ground floor, the stalls lined the ramp, first floor and mez­za­nine from which a birds-eye view of the stalls below is worth glimps­ing when a break from parad­ing the cor­ri­dors is nec­es­sary. On this same level, there was an insti­tu­tional video show—“Black Box.” A breather from the hia­tus of peo­ple dur­ing the open­ing (that reached about four thou­sand through­out the evening) showed a won­der­fully put together group of works. Videos by the Nei­s­tat Broth­ers who were at the 26th edi­tion of the SP Bienal and Oscar Muñoz, amongst oth­ers, were the best in the series named “Small, Medium and Large.”
Next year, SP-Arte will be held in the Bienal pavil­ion, in April, from the 23rd to the 27th.