Welcome And Big Auction Energy

Jeppe Curth 0:00

Hi and welcome to the Collector's Edge for Nordic Art Partners. In today's episode, we're going to talk about Teresa Solar Abboud, an artist with a strong institutional momentum and a market in the making. With me in the studio is, as always, our art expert Nicholas Robinson, and I'm your host, Jeppe Curth. Let's get started.

Speaker 0:21

It is with Alex Rotta at 400 million. Selling here at Christie's $400 million is the bid, and the piece is sold.

Nicholas Robinson 0:44

And how do you get started while avoiding buying the wrong things? That's exactly what this podcast is about. This is The Collector's Edge from Nordic Art Partners, a podcast for those of you interested in the mechanics of the art industry, want advice about putting money into art, or simply want to buy something for your walls to beautify your surroundings. Whatever your objectives, it is possible to put money into art wisely, to be considered, thoughtful, and well informed in your choices and actions. Welcome to the Art of Collecting with an eye for curated beauty and practical value. Hi Nick. Good morning, Jeppe. Good morning, how are you doing? Very well.

Jeppe Curth 1:38

Yeah, well, we can see the summer coming, I guess.

Nicholas Robinson 1:41

Well, it's been cold for long enough, so I think we're all ready.

Why Teresa Sola Matters Now

Jeppe Curth 1:43

Yeah, true. So today we are going a bit out of our usual scope, I would say. We normally focus on more established, historical, important artists where we also see clear opportunities. But today we're looking at Teresa Solar, a young, very talented with a very strong institutional momentum. Besides, we love her works. Why are we talking about her today?

Nicholas Robinson 2:07

Well, I think that as you alluded to, this being a little different to our normal podcast practice, we we often speak of artists that we think have a certain sort of longevity, historic pedigree, but yet are somehow underrated by the art community, by the market, some combination of those factors. And and of course, implicit in that investigation is the notion that there's opportunity in in getting into these artists' work. But of course, being in the art world, travelling around the world all the time, looking, learning, occasionally we see things, and of course it's when I say occasionally, it's difficult to see things that genuinely feel new and unique, and it's difficult to come across things that one feels like one genuinely hasn't seen before, or some kind of version of whatever before. But in in in Theresa's case, I I suppose it was initially a bit of a slow burn, but more looking, more learning, engagement with the gallery, with the artist herself. You know, certain ty certain interests become a passion project and become something that develop their own momentum. And I and I guess you could say that our interest in Teresa's work comes into that category. Somebody who has an extraordinary talent for making remarkable things.

Background And Artistic Identity

Jeppe Curth 3:36

Let's go back. She's not that old, but let's go back still and talk about beginning into the art world. Sure. And also to understand where and how she became the artist we know today.

Nicholas Robinson 3:47

Yeah, certainly. I mean, she's she is relatively young. She was born in 1985 in Madrid. And I guess uh w we we sort of speak about emerging artists and we speak about mid-career artists. She's you know, she's either the most sort of highly developed emerging artist that I've seen, or or maybe you could say she's the youngest mid-career artist given the accomplishments that she has under her belt at this relatively young age. So that's a a bit about her status, if you will. But but yes, born in 1985 in Madrid, she's a Spanish native, Teresa Sola Abud is her name, a Spanish father and an Egyptian mother. Body of work spans drawing and video and sculpture, but she is known primarily for her sculptural work. And this is this encompasses sculptural works that evoke the body, that evoke sort of complex, arcane histories of humankind and its interaction with the earth, about the earth, and also a very specific kind of materiality. And we can get into this more, but I think for her and for the way she speaks of her work and communicates about her work and her her multicultural upbringing and this sort of dual identity is is very important to her work.

Jeppe Curth 5:13

Okay, let's go over and talk about her works.

Meaning And The Power Of Duality

Nicholas Robinson 5:16

What do they look like? Well, she's known really for two main kinds of sculptural work, and I'm going to focus really on those two bodies of work because most of her production and her practice, her exhibition involves these. I mean, sometimes there's a lot of sort of studies, uh, maquettes and preparatory drawings that are part of uh installations, but these are really just to sort of serve to illustrate the kind of process of becoming that the sort of fully formed sculptural works embody. So this there's a sort of a smaller scale ceramic work which can fit on a tabletop or a plinth, 50, 40, 60 centimetres sort of in in size, in the round, more or less. And these works are made from clay, and they have a very rough, earthy surface on one side, really just raw clay that's been sort of worked, pushed, pulled, so very raw on the one side. And then on the other side, so you can imagine these this is a sort of a sheet of clay with with this with these two surfaces, a top and a bottom, or a front and a back, whichever you want to say, depending on how they're oriented. And then on the the the other side is a very smooth painted surface, and it has a almost sort of a perfect finish, most often rendered in a in a somewhat bright colour, a lime green, a bright yellow, an orange, a red. And so, and so that's a certain duality in in these pieces, and these pieces often are also created in two parts, and these two sheets of clay bent and folded, or intertwined and joined in some way, or perhaps folded against or around each other. And so this is how she she sort of articulates this material and how she creates this particular duality of surface within one piece. So these are the smaller sculptural works that she makes, and then she is known for a very for a body of very large works, which she has called the Tunnel Boring Machines. Now, this is a series of works that she's been creating for a number of years now, and they're somewhat large in scale, and each of these works is composed of two elements, which I suppose is one of the reasons why she likes to call them hybrid figures, and we'll we'll we'll come onto that more in a moment. But these these works consist of these two elements. The first element is a sort of a clay form that has these two sort of apertures in it, and emerging from these apertures these somewhat long appendages. And the the clay elements that house these uh appendages, she calls them elbows. And these are worked from raw clay, fired, and they're very rough and very very close to their sort of natural state. I mean they they're literally just just fired clay, really, that are pinched and pulled and shaped. And then and then emerging from these openings, these long shaped, curved, sometimes with a a blade sort of sharper edge, sometimes with a sort of articulation like a a knuckle. Very strange. They're abstract, but we're not clear what they are. They they she's she's called them fragments of bodies, I think, which is a good way to to create this sort of catch-all way of describing them. But but they but they're they're abstract, but they they certainly have very clear biomorphic connotations, like a wing or a limb. But because she calls them tunnel boring machines, they also have this industrial connotation, like a a propeller or some such thing. So so part of their presence is is is ambiguous. And the way she makes these, they're they're they're quite large, they can be two, three meters uh tall across, they're they're they're substantial. And she she has a sort of armature that she places the shaped limb around, which is made from styrofoam or something lightweight like this. I'm not sure if it is exactly that, but it's akin to that. And then on on top of this very lightweight material that is on this firm metal armature, she then coats it with a sort of a plaster or a resin, and this is then very meticulously sort of sanded into form, smoothed down repeatedly to create this very sort of perfect, perfect machine-like finish, and then it is painted with a a car spraying machine, so it has a a very pristine, very meticulous finish. And these limbs, as we can come to call them, are most often painted in extremely bright and vibrant colours, very bright yellow, orange, blue, pink, and and often there's a a sort of a slight gradation of the colour to show modelling of this form. So they might darken as they as they come to an edge or a point, and this gives them a certain volume to the modelling to the body. And these colours are very much the colours that we would expect to find in industrial installations, in warning signs, in factories, colours that exist precisely to facilitate high visibility in sort of difficult or challenging conditions, or or that can be seen very clearly in the dark for safety reasons. Maybe a little more in the case of the pink, there's a there's even a natural tendency for us to understand a sort of implied fleshiness. But the the the net result of this combination of elements is to create this really otherworldly sort of alien form. It's organic and yet also it's weirdly reminiscent of soft tissue. And their finish simultaneously speaks of manufacturing and a and high grade, finely calibrated, sort of machined moving parts. But because they come from this clay elbow, they also they also come from the earth. They come from this subsoil, they they emerge as if they're something deep and old and private primeval, transitioning into this large-scale, mighty, imposing, powerful being, I guess you might say. You know, these uh implied histories of of of of things coming from the earth, evolutionary history, things emerging, becoming. But you know, there's always this duality, and I think that you know, when you speak of meaning, uh uh a key theme of all of her works is duality. And I guess in the case of the tunnel boring machines, this duality is evoked primarily by this relationship between the organic and the industrial. And you know, human history is is full of narratives of initiating processes that either come from the soil or occur within the soil, mining, excavating, minerals for manufacturing, and then of course this process transitions or transforms into highly finished industrial manufacturing, chemical, medical, pharmaceutical, things that end up having a very, you know, a clinical feel to them, like the surfaces of these limbs. So so the duality that is is organic and synthetic, it's interior and exterior, and then it's it's a sort of systemic structural support, and then organisms that are somehow supported by that. But inherent in this duality also comes a kind of a tension, and and the tension comes from the contrasting nature of these textures and surfaces, the tension comes from the sense of something emerging, being active or dynamic with power in ways that are unclear or ambiguous to us, and therefore have the potential to overwhelm us or be threatening to us. So that's a very interesting experience one has in the presence of her sculptures, and essentially this this tension of becoming, of transformation. So the the the the emerging, of course, is an is an agent of transformation. The implied movement of these limbs, these appendages, these propellers isn't also an agent of this transformation, in that they're they're spinning, swirling, in order to either perform their function or to process and complete their journey of becoming, of turning into whatever their final self is or or will be. So I I think this really sort of encapsulates if if you say what does it mean, that to me this is what the work means, and and if you you see what she has to say about it, or what various critical texts would have to say about it, they would also in all likelihood explore these same ideas. And how they fit together. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Institutional Momentum And Key Shows

Jeppe Curth 15:44

Do you see her as a part of a new generation of sculptures? Thinking about the body and all these materials?

Nicholas Robinson 15:50

Well, clearly there's there's a strong sense in contemporary sculpture of identity. Identity related to the body, identity related to human versus industrial or organic versus industrial, body in relation to sort of gender and identity. So, yes, of course, that's a very prevalent and also very prescient theme given that she's been working on this for many years. So, yes, her work is very much off the time, and I think the the relevance of this is is clearly substantiated by the enormous institutional support that she's enjoyed for such a young artist.

Jeppe Curth 16:44

So let's talk a little bit about her market. What changed in her career over the last few years?

Galleries And How Supply Is Managed

Nicholas Robinson 16:50

Well, well, nothing's changed. It's developed and grown and evolved. That's also maybe a bit of way of putting it. Yeah, but it's you know, it's a serious practice supported by a serious gallery, now galleries, and and really sort of disseminated into the world just as much by you know significant curatorial support from certain key figures and and and a lot of institutions. I mean, we can sort of recap some of these key CV milestones. I mean, she's she's started showing at CA2M, which is a contemporary art museum in Madrid that houses the collection of the Madrid Civic Authority and of the ARCO Foundation. So she's in their permanent and public collection. She was invited to participate in the Liverpool Biennial in 2021 with a public sculpture or series of public sculptures. She was included in the 59th Biennale di Venezia, the one called The Milk of Dreams from 2022. She was in a significant exhibition that explores these ideas of form that you asked about a moment ago, called When Forms Come Alive. That was curated by Ralph Rugoff, the Haywood Gallery, in 2023. She had an incredible solo installation at Art Basel Unlimited 2024. Also in 2024, she was the recipient of a commission, public commission, to make a work for the Highline in New York. And this was a work called The Birth of Islands, which was a very large-scale outdoor tunnel boring machine. She's had solo exhibitions at the Fondasiano Sandretto Re Rebadengo in Turin, the Kunsthalle in Lisbon, the Musee d'Art Contemporanee in Barcelona. She also has a public sculpture outside the front entrance of the Haywood Gallery in London. This is an interesting work, actually. It's called Mother Tongue, and this is a very key example of the hybridity that we've spoken about in her work, this duality. She has an Egyptian mother, as we've said, and she speaks Arabic, but she cannot read or write it. And this is also a circumstance that she's described as a factor shaping her artistic exploration of communication, of translation. And this sculpture, Mother Tongue, shows two intertwined forms, these two very sort of sinuous, fleshy forms, showing this kind of intermingling in a very literal way. She has a current solo exhibition at the Kunstverein in Hanover, and this is called Self-Portrait as a Pregnant Woman. And she has also used the ideas and themes around pregnancy as a key way of exploring her ideas about emerging and transformation. These works, these sculptural works in this show, or some of them, show a biomorphic form that is sort of opening in order to facilitate birth. It has these sort of like ribs implying the way that a ribcage of a woman expands as a baby gestates and grows and then sort of opens in order to allow the baby to be to be born. So this is you know another key institutional exhibition that she has currently. Her work is in many uh significant public collections, foundations, namely, sort of chief among them, the T Sen Bona Misa in Madrid, Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid. She's also in the Fundacion Jumex in Mexico. So she's she's she's had uh a very wide uh numerous museum group exhibitions that she's been invited to take part in. So she's she's she's very much on the radar. I mean the the major museum groups routinely visit her studio. And what did that tell you about? Well it it says that that she's she's a she's a a really notable contemporary voice in in sculpture. The themes that she seeks to depict are are highly relevant ones for the you know the concerns of contemporary art and how contemporary art is somehow embodying these ideas of our time, and and and the physical way she manifests these ideas is has a certain uniqueness, a certain originality, a certain clarity of vision, and a certain kind of you know real sharpened, distilled monumentality that is is is eye-catching and striking. I mean, when I first saw her works a as an example, you know, I've seen many things over many, many years and have been you know studying art since my teenage years. So for me, working in this field is very vocational and very powerful. Fashion-driven, and I've been lucky enough to turn it into, you know, my my business, my my my livelihood. But for me, you know, when one has seen so many things, it's very it's very easy, and this again, just speaking only for myself, it's very easy to become just readily seduced by things that are beautiful and pretty, things that have a high technical proficiency and just look great. You know, everyone is very disparaging often about installation works where they find it very impenetrable or hard to understand, and they make very sort of pithy throwaway comments like, what does this mean? I could do this, my kid could do this, whatever. You know, Theresa's work has a very, very high degree of process and finish attached to it, but it's also beautiful, but not in a conventional way. It's beautiful in a very sort of unsettling way, in a very like otherworldly way. And so when I first saw the work, you know, I was sort of and I and I use this word a little bit advisedly, I was a little bit repelled by it. Not because I found it abhorrent to look at or sort of disgusting, but because I found it very challenging and confusing, and I just didn't know what these things were or what was going on. And as I've gotten older, I've learned to appreciate things that elicit that kind of response in me. Things that I maybe am not immediately seduced by, yet I go away and think about and somehow become preoccupied with. I find that to be interesting. You know, they obviously are challenging me. They're obviously on my mind in a way that it's difficult to shake. Well, why is that the case? And I think that kind of tension, which is one of the things that her work definitely evokes, is an interesting thing not just to describe in works, but I think, you know, the process of looking and the process of understanding that that's one of the interesting tensions in sort of apprehending or appreciating these kinds of works. She's mainly a primary market artist right now. Who is representing Teresa? Yeah, I mean, she is a you know, she I don't know how many exhibitions she's had. I would say that her exhibition career spans around a decade, realistically. And I don't know how many solo exhibitions she's had. Certainly she's had I would say ten solo exhibitions, but her get her main gallery now, or has been for a number of years, is is is Trevisio 4 in Madrid. This is a really great gallery that we respect enormously. And they have been the main driving force with developing and supporting Teresa's practice. And latterly, as of the last 12 months or so, she's had a relationship with uh Lehman Morpin in New York, Seoul, and also actually in London. I don't know if they have a permanent exhibition space in London, but this it's a pretty major gallery with a with a very high pedigree, and so they in the more recent past have also taken on the representation of Teresa and her continued progress.

Jeppe Curth 25:14

So only having two galleries representing you, what does this mean for the artist market?

Prices And What To Buy

Where To Look And Closing Thoughts

Nicholas Robinson 25:19

Well, it it means that the it means that the the context for the works being exhibited is closely controlled and monitored and facilitated. It means that the I mean, the works that she makes are very labor-intensive. She's not making huge volumes of work. So it also means that the supply of work is carefully funneled to important institutions, to important private collections, foundations. So this of course helps to develop and grow a market. But in in the case of Trevisio, the the support for her work has meant things like you know committing to do art bars are unlimited. You know, this is an expensive venue to showcase work. You know, there's not there's not a big money-making gambit in doing this for the gallery. I mean, the cost of of having that space in order to show this work in this venue is enormous. Now, the works they're not cheap, and we'll come to that in a minute, but I'm thinking that this is really just a gesture of support to show the importance of the work and to bring it to you know the most concentrated, discerning public, which of course is the Art Basel audience in June. So this is an example of what a gallery can do in the case of the Mother Tongue Commission. Now, the Haywood Gallery will provide some funds to produce that work, but this comes out of the public purse in the UK, and I I don't think would be sufficient to cover the entirety of the work. So the gallery, they use their relationships with private collectors, with foundations, and they bring private money to support the production of the work, the shipping and installation of the work, the you know, the reception for the artist when all the various sort of collectors and dignitaries gather to have a dinner to celebrate the inauguration of the work. You know, this is this is like you know, the gallery is adept at bringing sponsorship, which is is of course a thing that can help to support the production and display of the work. And what about her prices? Well, her prices are very reasonable. Smaller tabletop sculptures, the two-surface, the two-surface clay and smooth painted works, the sort of folded, rolled, very earthy works with this very high finish surface on one side, these are 25,000 euros. And you know, this for me is very reasonably priced. You know, if you were to find a painter of a similar stature with the same kind of institutional support, you know, you'd probably be looking at 50, maybe you'd have something slightly physically bigger, but you'd be looking at 50 or 60,000 euros or dollars for that artist's painting. I mean, they're not huge, but they have a lot of presence. There's a lot of work in them, a lot of skill in them. They're incredibly beautiful and compelling objects. So that's those works. That's that's what they're priced at. The larger tunnel boring machines, which maybe start at uh 1 meter 50 or thereabouts in terms of the scale, and this could be a vertical dimension, it could be a sort of in-the-round dimension. They start at around 70,000 euros, and they go up to, I think, anywhere approaching 200,000 euros. This would be for pretty much the biggest thing that that she makes. These are tremendously labor-intensive, taking several months to produce. She's maybe able in her studio to work on three or maybe four simultaneously with another two in development. So this is you know, this is the kind of production and the kind of numbers attached to her her prices. We look ahead. Where do you see Teresa in five years? Well, I see Teresa as a very key artist with an incredibly powerful visual vocabulary that represents a really clear voice. And you know, when you have that constellation of factors, you have a really good artist who has the capacity to become an important artist. And if we think about artists, we think about women artists who have investigated similar themes of form and the body and materiality, you know, we can look back through a lineage and just uh come up with a couple of examples, we can see Linda Benglis coming to prominence at the very end of the 1960s through the 1970s. She's an iconic and legendary figure. We can look at the work of Carol Bove, who has an exhibition opening or or just about to open at the Guggenheim in New York. She's a very major sculptor, represented by David Zwerner. I mean I and I see Teresa's work absolutely comfortably fitting in to this kind of lineage. And of course, when you start invoking those kinds of artists with that kind of status, then the implication is that we believe Teresa has everything in her locker to continue to develop towards a similar level.

Jeppe Curth 30:45

So if Collector wants to look more into Teresa Sula and they don't want to call us, write us, where where should they look?

Nicholas Robinson 30:54

Well, I think that there's really a very limited way to go about acquiring her work. You contact Trevisia Quattro or you contact Lehman Morpin. I would say Trevisia is the obvious place for people in Europe, Lehman, obvious place for people in Asia and in the Americas, or not the Americas, in North America, I should say, because Trevisia also has a presence in Mexico. So of course they have a collector community in Central and South America as well because of that.

Jeppe Curth 31:25

So and what kind of work should I look for?

Nicholas Robinson 31:27

Well, I think that you know uh there's there's there's not that much to choose from. I mean, you can get probably a nice study of one of her sculptures, and these drawings are beautiful, they're really they're quite they're quite quick, they're quite, you know, they're quite immediate way of understanding ideas about form, the way she develops and evolves form. To me, these these drawings, these works on paper, they are for me, they're sort of maquettes or exploratory drawings that are about sculpture. So they're probably very accessible. But if I were to get a work, I would to I would get one of the the tabletop sculptures. Now I we keep calling them that, and that's actually lazy. It's just a that's just a a way that we use to describe their sort of scale and how they can be accommodated or viewed or displayed. But but these works also have the the series of works has a name, just like the tunnel boring machines, and it's it's remiss of us not to communicate that. So I'm gonna try and say what it is. I need to look it up, bear with me. Here it is. It's it's called Estadio Sexual Indiferenciado. Now, forgive the rather butchered pronunciation, but this means, I'm gonna run it in the translator, Estadio Sexual Indifferenciado means undifferentiated sexual stage. Okay, so this that's interesting. That also then is about emerging, becoming, and a sort of duality. If it's undifferentiated, it's not this, it's not that. Okay, very much in keeping with the themes that we have already described.

Jeppe Curth 33:15

Good.

Nicholas Robinson 33:17

Thank you, Nick.

Jeppe Curth 33:18

So I think we're gonna we are in the end of this uh episode. Anything missing?

Nicholas Robinson 33:24

I don't think so. I mean, you know, it's interesting for us to speak about an artist primarily, just as a primarily it's very interesting for us to speak of an artist who is only a primary market artist and it's not about, you know, it's not about you know being a a shrewd repository of money or investment, or this is you know, this is a a great artist who has caught our eye, who we're sort of enamored with her work, her charisma, her compelling way of speaking about and presenting her work. It's about our relationship with the gallery, it's about our enjoyment of passion for and support for the work. And we have been in the studio a couple of times, we've bought works from her. Yeah, we we have, and it's and it's just it's just something that you know one of those things where you feel, you know, you're in this world, you're doing this job, and it's one of the things that you you know you get excited about and feel lucky when you come across and you know have this dynamic as part of as part of your your working life. Yes, but we also still believe in her her works. Of course. Yeah. Otherwise, it's not a su a subject that's worthy of discussing in this way, that's worthy of recommending to people, that's worthy of taking collectors to the studio, that's worthy of acquiring work, of course. You know, uh we are you know we are we have a full sort of buy-in to her work in all of the ways that that means. Thank you, Nick.

Jeppe Curth 34:52

That was it for this episode of the Collector's Edge. If you are looking for expert insights, want to make informed decisions, and would like advice from independent advisors, send us an email or maybe just call us. You can find all the info on our website, nordicardpartners.com. Thank you for listening, and we hope to have you back for another episode. Bye.