The art market, like many other businesses, has taken severe knocks from the COVID-19 pandemic, with galleries and museums having to close, some permanently, and 61% of art festivals and events being canceled worldwide in 2020, according to the UBS Global Art Market Report, published this month.
To keep track of the machinations and pitfalls of the art world economy I’ve enjoyed reading Kobels Kunstwoche, a regular column published by art insurance broker Zilkens Fine Art. At the beginning of the pandemic, writer Stefan Kobel noted with a dry schadenfreude how big players in the global art market were having their income stream disrupted. As 2020 dragged on and became 2021, however, the column started to read more like a casualty report from the front of an ongoing war of attrition.
From practical necessity, mixed with reflection on healthier times, Asian artists and curators have mobilized the recent past to help with this. The exhibition “Decades 2000_2020,” at the Kana Kawanishi Photography gallery through March 27, is a group show of 10 photographers in which the work they made in 2000 is juxtaposed with images created in 2020. In the original magazine version of the project, devised by photographic artist Ai Iwane, each series is accompanied with candid commentary by the different photographers, providing a window into the background of the work, and also their emotional and mental reactions to living through lockdowns.