How Will the Venice Biennale Impact Alma Allen’s Market?

Controversy surrounding artists continues Alma Allen Since he was announced as the U.S. representative at this year’s Venice Biennale, which opens next week to art professionals and media. The conversation tended to highlight the compromised selection process under President Trump, with much of the scrutiny focused on the fact that the museum did not commission the pavilion as is common. Instead, the commissioner this time was a newly created agency called American Art Conservancy headed by Jenny Parido, Until 2024, he ran a boutique pet food lifestyle store in Tampa, Florida, and entered Trump’s orbit through pet charity events at Mar-a-Lago. After the news was announced, Allen’s gallery, Olney Gleeson and Mendez WoodDM He was dropped, but an equally high-profile newcomer, Perrotin, picked him up.

The question now is, what impact will the Biennale and all its attendant drama have on Allen’s market?

“I love Alma,” Beth Rudin DeWoody, said one long-time supporter. “I collect his work, but I’m not at all happy about his controversy. I think art should transcend all that… [Venice] It’s a great opportunity for him. Unfortunately his gallery abandoned him. “

Perhaps lost in all this is the fact that Allen has some long-time collectors, including De Woody. The first people to buy his work were designers, jewelers, artists and all-around creative people who supported his efforts in the early 1990s, when he was selling small sculptures from ironing boards on street corners in downtown New York. (He had just been hit by a bus, was broke, and needed $20 for food.) Over time, his fan base grew. By 2014, Allen’s collectors included Hard Rock Café co-founder Peter Morton, artist Jack Pearson, and Mark Fletcher, Art advisor to some of the world’s top collectors. Meanwhile, DeWoody has been art news The Top 200 Collectors list has been around for decades and is known for buying works by emerging artists who later go on to become hugely successful.

These collectors encountered the work not in a gallery but in Allen’s own space, Often buy direct from him. After he joined Bloom and Poe In 2015, this collector base further deepened and expanded. Lynda Benglis, Amalia Dayan, Ann Reynolds, Edward Nigel, Yusaku Maezawa, Wolfgang Joop, Alice Tisch, Ken Griffin and Ryan Murphy, according to two sources familiar with Allen’s career. All obtained his works. Allen himself has said that his collectors include Beyoncé, Katy Perry, Issey Miyake, Todd Oldham and Julio Espada.

So far, only smaller works by Allen have appeared at auction, mostly selling within the estimated range of $4,000 to $12,000. (Allen, who is also a furniture designer, sells sculptures that double as tables and stools for between $35,000 and $65,000, though some commissions have gone as high as $125,000.) The announcement in November that he would be a Biennale artist didn’t exactly create a buzz, but there have been more works than usual this season, including a rotating sculpture made of black marble that Allen made in 2016, which was presented at Phillips in March. Sold for $12,900 at the Modern & Contemporary Auction. The estimate is between $7,000 and $10,000.

Allen’s primary market prices currently range from $25,000 to $300,000, with pedestal-sized works between $35,000 and $50,000, human-sized indoor works between $65,000 and $100,000, and large outdoor sculptures starting around $150,000; his first solo exhibition with Perrotin will be on October 10 Held in Paris during Art Basel in Paris and during the last month of the Biennale. A Perrotin representative told me that the gallery expected the Biennale to be a boost to Allen’s career, “bringing[ing] Additional opportunities from institutional and private collections. “

And there seems to be room for growth. “A lot of people seem unfamiliar with Alma’s work,” a source who has known Alma and his community of collectors for years told me. “Those people don’t understand contemporary art at all.”

As for Allen, he told me a few weeks ago at Harry’s Bar in Venice that he deliberately doesn’t give his works explanatory titles. (The title of each piece is Not yet named.) He would rather the audience form their own opinions without being influenced by prescribed meanings. Still, he wonders whether the ambiguity of the work, the lack of contextual titles and the fact that he generally avoids explaining his art or giving interviews work against him.

“I do find that I probably made a mistake in never engaging in that part of the job,” Allen said, “because the job was something that was easy to do, and that was open. It allowed other people to define what my job was.”