«I LIKE MONEY ON THE WALL»

France’s leading contemporary art fair,Fiac, opened this week in Paris with a flurry of early sales and general applause for the quality of the works of art on offer. Indeed, so early were some sales that they happened before the fair actually opened, even to VIPs. On Tuesday, a couple of France’s leading collectors and their advisers were trawling the aisles of the Grand Palais, which in theory only opened on Wednesday. “People seem to be getting in earlier and earlier,” commented one dealer who got caught out and wasn’t there. Among the sales made was a huge depiction of masked soldiers on donkeys by the American/Cuban pair Allora and Calzadilla, the US selection for next year’s Venice Biennale. Entitled “Intermission, Halloween Iraq IV”, it sold for $75,000 to François Pinault’s adviser Caroline Bourgeois on the Kurimanzutto stand. At the opening, New York’s David Zwirner had huge success with work by the inventive French artist Adel Abdessemed, selling a wall of masks for $280,000 as well as another five pieces and reserving “Taxidermie” (2010), a block of taxidermied animals, also priced at $280,000. “We expect to sell all the Abdessemed works,” said Alex Ortuzar of the gallery.

-Financial Times
Oct 22 2010