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Art Market

9 Works Under $3,000 to Collect at IFPDA

Scott Indrisek
Oct 26, 2017 10:56PM

On view through October 29 at the Javits Center in New York, the IFPDA Fine Art Print fair returns to satisfy all tastes (and budgets). There are high-end items on offer from the likes of Pablo Picasso, Stanley Whitney, Carmen Herrera, and Louise Bourgeois—but also plenty to explore for those without a spare $30,000 to spend. Here, we take a deep dive into the more accessible—but still covetable—end of the IFPDA bounty.


Mai-Thu Perret, Untitled I & II, 2015

$400, edition of 20 • Available at Paupers Press, Booth 520

Mai-Thu Perret, Untitled I & II, 2015. Courtesy of Paupers Press.

Mai-Thu Perret, Untitled I & II, 2015. Courtesy of Paupers Press.

In her larger practice, Perret works wonders with ceramics, paints Rorschach patterns on lengths of carpet, and brings families of mannequins into gallery and museum spaces. These etchings reflect some of her abstract iconography, and have a vaguely cosmic, hippy-era vibe.


Paul Wunderlich, Bubblegum, 1967

$1,200, edition of 75 • Available at Redfern Gallery Ltd., Booth 401

Paul Wunderlich, Bubblegum, 1967. Courtesy of The Redfern Gallery Ltd.

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The late German artist Wunderlich mingled the grotesque and the erotic throughout his career; this lithograph is a relatively staid example of his vision, but loaded nonetheless. Two nearly identical women tug at opposite ends of a stretchy length of bubblegum, which droops into a decidedly testicular bulge.


Jonathan Lasker, Virtuous Repetition, 2017

$2,400, edition of 22 • Available at Galerie Sabine Knust, Booth 220

Jonathan Lasker, Virtuous Repitition, 2017. Courtesy of Galerie Sabine Knust.

A high-quality lithographic process allows these prints to retain the intimate quality of the painter’s original materials. Three scribbly purple blocks rest atop the paper, looming over similar scrawls of red and green. Per usual, Lasker makes what could read as child’s play into something virtuosic.


Virginia Overton, “Untitled” series, 2017

$1,500, edition of 12 + 3AP • Available at Niels Borch Jensen Gallery and Editions, Booth 201

Virginia Overton, Untitled, 2017. Courtesy of Niels Borch Jensen Gallery and Editions.

The American artist made this suite of prints during a 2017 visit to Copenhagen, incorporating various bits of detritus and materials that she sourced from the city’s streets. Some have a rough, Xeroxed quality, while others are stark and graphic. Overton hasn’t dabbled too deeply in printmaking before—though a gallery representative noted that she’d previously made some inventive works that involved printing with her own hair. The examples here suggest it’s a fruitful medium for an artist more commonly associated with monumental found-object installations.


Etel Adnan, Le Poids du Monde III and IV, 2016

$2,300, edition of 35 • Available at Goya Contemporary/Goya-Girl Press, Booth 303

Etel Adnan
Le poids du monde IV, 2016
Galerie Lelong & Co.
Etel Adnan
Le Poids du Monde III, 2016
Goya Contemporary/Goya-Girl Press

The Lebanese-American nonagenarian Adnan is still going strong, and continues to receive overdue acclaim for her pioneering efforts in painting, textiles, bookmaking, and other media. Like much of her pared-down work, these two etchings envision a highly simplified color landscape that is both plausible and unbelievable: In Le Poids du Monde IV, two tiny mountain peaks cower beneath an oversized, jet-black sun that threatens to swallow the composition whole.


David Huffman, Rainbow, 2017

$2,500, edition of 25 • Available at Paulson Fontaine Press, Booth 222

Incorporating aquatint and airbrush techniques, Huffman used basketball hoop netting to generate a tangled compositional web in this print. The lush, colorful work has a deep blue ground and a gradient pattern that shifts through pinks and greens. Bonus fun fact via gallery co-owner Pam Paulson: Huffman’s mother was an activist in California who evidently once sewed banners and occasionally handled graphic design for the Black Panthers.


José Pedro Croft, “Sin título” series, 2013

$1,200, edition of 24 • Available at Galería La Caja Negra Ediciones, Booth 103

Jose Pedro Croft, Untitled, 2013. Courtesy of Galería La Caja Negra Ediciones.

Jose Pedro Croft, Untitled, 2013. Courtesy of Galería La Caja Negra Ediciones.

Chiefly known as a sculptor, this Portuguese artist presents a series of abstract prints that combine aquatint, mezzotint, and drypoint techniques. Croft’s sculptural work in glass and metal envisions geometric forms that are often skewed or smashed. Taken together, these works recall a multi-perspective look at a sort of boxy architectural element. The clean angles and geometries are offset by a printing process that retains scuffs, scratches, and other marks of character.


Kay Rosen, OBFUSCATE, 2008

$850, edition of 50 • Available at Krakow Witkin Gallery, Booth 213

Kay Rosen, OBFUSCATE, 2008. Courtesy of Krakow Witkin Gallery.

Rosen wields typography as a playful weapon. Here, she dissects a simple word—meaning “render obscure, unclear, or unintelligible”—and breaks it into pieces, thereby rendering it…obscure, unclear, or unintelligible. With a blood-red background and a letter print process that incorporates the grain from a board of wood, it has the graphic impact of the bygone Colby Poster Printing Company.


Analia Saban, Fingerprint, 2016

$1,200, edition of 38 monoprints • Available at Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl, Booth 604  

Analia Saban, Fingerprint, 2016. Courtesy of Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl.

Working between sculpture, photography, and other media, Saban has proven herself a witty conceptualist. Here we get the same large, dark rectangle in each piece, but with a twist that renders each of the 38 variants a little different: the artist’s own thumb, pressed into the ink in order to deposit a single fingerprint on the print’s border. As a gallery representative explained, it falls neatly into a larger lineage of artists who incorporated fingerprints into their work as a sort of subtle authorial flourish, from Albrecht Dürer to Chuck Close.


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Scott Indrisek