With New Director, Artissima Subtly Shifts

Last week's ARTISSIMA art fair brought together 172 international galleries—11 more than last year—for business in Turin. Sunny skies and mild temperatures prevented a repeat of last year's washout.

The fair, founded in 1993, is better known for its conceptual bent and innovative booths than its market share. A new director, Sarah Cosulich Canarutto, focused on collector and dealer outreach to boost sales without compromising quality.

"It's the first time I have been invited," Belgian collector Frederic de Goldschmidt told A.i.A. London-based collector Jean-Conrad Lemaître told said this was "the first time in many years that we return to ARTISSIMA."  Read More

Nudes Prevail at Brussels' FotoFever Fair

Brussels' Fotofever was founded last year as a satellite event running  at the same time as the well-established Paris Photo fair. This year the fair took place last week, in advance of November's Paris Photo.

Director Cécile Schall has plans for expansion. "It's not a pop-up fair. We plan to expand also to Asia and U.S.," she told A.i.A. With 60 participating international galleries, the fair took place in a renovated warehouse belonging to the Belgian royal family of Thurn and Taxis on the Brussels-Charleroi canal.
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Upgraded Viennafair 2012 Debuts

Viennafair opened with a new look last week in the convention center under the Austrian capital's landmark Prater Ferris wheel. The upgrade included young new directors, Ibid Projects cofounder and former Pace director Vita Zaman; and 2009-2011 Art Moscow artistic director Christina Steinbrecher. A citywide advertising campaign depicted the women decked out in evening clothes, perhaps an attempt to lure the rich and titled from the city's world-famous Lipizzans horse show, which took place during the fair. Read More

abc's Open Marketplace

Parties and gallery openings abounded in the run-up to this year's abc, the exhibition-like fair that takes place annually under the umbrella of Berlin Art Week. With 129 galleries paying just over $4,500 per artist presentation, this abc installment (Sept. 13–16) boasted three halls under one roof (Station Berlin, in the Kreuzberg neighborhood) tallying roughly 20,000 square feet.

There were no curatorial restrictions—last year the paintings were selected by curator Rita Kersting, while the year before the focus was on moving images—which was a welcome change for galleries like Kicken Berlin, which brought a first-rate selection of photographs by Götz Diergarten, Jitka Hanzlová and Hans-Christian Schink.
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