**SHARA HUGHES (B. 1981)**
***It's Not My Jungle I'm Just Living In It***
Image courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd. 2021

Emerging Art, also referred to as Ultra-Contemporary, is defined as work made by artists who were born after 1974. This market’s growth in overall auction sales has outpaced every other division of the market. According to an Artnet.com analysis, in the first nine months of 2021, auction sales of Ultra-Contemporary art were up 75% from 2020 and 145% from 2019. [i]

The change is fueled by several different factors including pandemic-related excess cash, a growing number of Millennial and Gen-Z collectors who are interested in collecting work from their own generations, and, for the purpose of this article, what we will call financial speculators, who aspire to buy works by young artists at relatively low prices and sell them into a constantly rising market.

History has shown that the rapid rise in an artist’s market is rarely sustainable. Sarah Douglas, ArtNews Magazine’s editor-in-chief, conducted a study in which she tracked the period between 2013 and 2015 that saw the prices of many young painters in their 20s and 30s skyrocket in the secondary market and then followed their steep drop in prices in 2016 when the hype surrounding their work wore off.[ii] She explained the growth was driven by buyers who saw the work of emerging artists as a financial investment rather than by collectors interested in supporting the artist’s long-term success.

Auction houses have also played an integral role in developing this trend. In 2005, Christie’s inaugurated their First Open sales. Staggered between their major fall and spring sales, they typically featured lower-priced works by well-known artists. Over time, they increasingly began to include younger artists whose work was in demand. With untested markets, these works were listed with typically modest estimates that often went three and four times past their high estimate. Phillips followed a similar path, introducing their New Now sales in 2015, which were designed to offer emerging artists alongside blue-chip names, and Sotheby’s followed suit in November 2021 with the introduction of The Now evening auction, which it describes as the most coveted, cutting edge works on the market. In their sale on March 2, 2022, 10 of the 22 lots were by emerging artists whose works were made between 2018 and 2021.[iii]

The pandemic accentuated interest in the Emerging Art market. As both serious collectors and financial speculators had extra time on their hands, they spent hours looking at work online and following who was collecting what on Instagram. Their purchases were welcome at the beginning of the pandemic when galleries were starving for sales, but a large number of works created in 2018, 2019, and 2020 are finding their way to the auction block.

**MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)**
***Yellow Brick Road***
Image courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd. 2021

This poses an interesting challenge for galleries who want to ensure that an artist has built a strong foundation before the work enters the secondary market. Historically, there is a progression to an artist’s development. An artist first participates in a gallery exhibition, then may have an article written about their work, and perhaps they are included in a biennial or two. The artist then has another show at the gallery, with an occasional exhibition in a non-profit space with a small catalog. Following this, the artist is ready to have a third gallery show and perhaps now has enough work to warrant a museum show with a catalog. All the while, the gallery slowly inches the cost of the artist’s work up, selling to important collectors and institutions that they can point to as supporting the artist along with the cadre of curators and critics who have gathered along the way. In other words, the artist has a strong foundation on which their primary market is based. And, because the artist has had time to create a substantial body of work, there is enough inventory that prices achieved at auction usually lag behind gallery prices.

The Emerging Art market often turns this relationship on its head. When a young artist becomes a “darling” of the art market, there is usually not enough supply to meet the demand. The gallery remains focused on developing the artist’s career, so they prioritize important collectors who have proven not to resell work and institutions that they believe will add distinction to the artist’s reputation. These collectors and institutions are unwilling and often unable to pay excessively high prices so the gallery will strive to keep the retail cost affordable.

That leaves a number of lesser-known collectors and financial speculators fighting for the few works that show up at auction, pushing those prices far beyond what one would sell for in the gallery. In the London Evening sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips held last October, the art market analysis firm Art Tactic found that 9 of the 10 top-performing artworks, meaning those that surged past their estimate ranges by the largest amounts, were by artists younger than 45.[iv]

Matthew Wong was amongst this group. The artist, who was born in 1984, studied photography at the City University of Hong Kong but began painting landscapes in 2014. He had his first exhibition at Karma Gallery in New York in 2018 but died the following year at the age of thirty-five. Due to the scarcity of available work and the number of interested collectors, his prices in the past two years have soared. Wong’s Yellow Brick Road, 2018, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong on December 1, 2021, for $3,728,469 (including buyer’s premium). What is important to note, however, is that at approximately the same time his primary gallery, Karma, sold Wong’s Distance, 2006, for $475,000[v] at Art Basel Miami.

This wide discrepancy echoes throughout the Emerging Art market. At Frieze London in October 2021, Pace Gallery sold The breastfeeding talk (Cambria and Loie), 2021, a painting by Loie Hollowell for $175,000[vi], while her Portrait of a Woman with Green Hair, 2015, sold October 9, 2021, at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong for $1,032,874 (including buyer’s premium). Similarly, the painter Shara Hughes’s work, It’s Not My Jungle, I’m Just Living in It, 2017, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong on December 1, 2021, for $1,264,214 (including buyer’s premium). Days later at Art Basel Miami, her dealer David Kordansky exhibited Deep Strong Roots, 2020, which was sold to a museum for a mere $215,000. Works by other artists—Amoako Boafo, Jadé Fadojutimi, Nicholas Party, Avery Singer, Amy Sherald, and Flora Yukhnovich to name just a few—follow a similar pattern.

As tastes change and financial speculators turn their attention elsewhere, the markets for these emerging artists will stabilize, with some obvious winners and losers. Until then, collectors, art advisors, and appraisers need to stay abreast of valuations in this volatile market. Those who buy and sell also need to be cognizant of market players and the increased reputational risks their actions might take.

About the Author

Rebecca Dimling Cochran is the Director of Cochran Arts, an art advisory and appraisal firm based in Atlanta. She holds a Master’s Degree in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, London, and is an Accredited Member of the Appraisers Association of America. Visit her website at http://www.cochranarts.com.