Inventory: Who needs it?

Have been thinking about inventory–you know, gorgeous racks and racks full of works by brand-name artists; the stuff in back rooms of galleries. Inventory lets you know that there’s more than meets the eye in a gallery exhibition. It lets you know there’s at least some kind of relationship with the artist going on.

My BlackBerry snap of Pace Prints

Consignment. Outright representation. Whatever. It feels reassuring to go into that clean, well-stocked area behind the shows at, say, venerable Pace Prints (above), and check out the nicely labeled names in their (framed for ease of hanging!) print racks.

Meanwhile, on the walls of PaceWildenstein, on the floor just below the above racks full of Jim Dine and other prints, there was a super installation of Sol LeWitt wall drawings a month or so ago.

A rare commercial gallery's show of in-situ works by the late Sol LeWitt

Takes months to install works like these LeWitts. Art students and other people who actually have graphic skill need to get on ladders and limn and make stippled textures and otherwise toil on site in order to realize a conceptual piece. (Yes, the textures were, in a word, amazing.)

What about other in-situ concept art, though, that doesn’t have an auction price tag like LeWitt’s?No less meaningful. And yet…

Killian Rüthemann wall piece, in exhibit "Mass Critique," Switzerland

Worth less than LeWitt. No “storage” issues–or even possibilities. You feel the in-the-moment love of artist and product. (To be fair, as you do in a LeWitt.) And yet: what’s it worth. ? I’m guessing that people who buy art ask themselves this question all the time.

that non-gallery you've heard so much about

Well, I don’t. I feel pretty confident, in this Internet Age, that the way we put a value on art is gonna shift. I don’t have tons of inventory in a back room at the above gallery where I just curated a show. But I do have valuable artist relationships forged; creative projects; and the same sorts of commitments that the best dealers of old had: a handshake. That, at least, hasn’t changed.

(Pix of Rüthemann taken from what’s becoming my fave running log of fineartimagery, HyperallergicLabs. Hyperallergic, in turn, got it from super-cool todayandtomorrow blog, full of great Euro-centric art news, et al.)