Cunning After Caution at London Art Fair
LONDON — Business is booming in at least one remote corner of the Frieze Art Fair here.
As Stephanie Syjuco, a San Francisco artist, talked to collectors on Wednesday, she busily wrote out invoices and swiped credit cards, all the while keeping an eye on a group of young artists who were diligently working at nearby tables. One of them, Claudia Djanbbari, was molding self-hardening clay into a coffee-table-size version of a South Korean artist’s version of a Jeff Koons’s “Balloon Dog” sculpture. “I’m making a copy of a copy,” Ms. Djanbbari said.
The buyer, Mimi Brown, a collector who is based in Hong Kong, happily paid $243 for the miniature third-generation knockoff. The second generation, a commentary on the Koons work by the Korean artist Gimhongsok, was fashioned out of trash bags and cast in resin. It is prominently displayed at the Kukje Gallery stand, priced at $50,000. One of Mr. Koons’s original “Balloon Dog” sculptures sold for around $20 million two years ago.
“I love having conversation pieces,” Ms. Brown said, adding that her purchase seemed only appropriate, “coming from Hong Kong, the land of fakes.”