Artist Mark Kostabi Sells Art in Sardinia Resort

June 25, 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Innsbruck artist Mark Kostabi was a special guest at “Settimana dell’Arte” (“Week of Art”), where in addition to offering free hotel rooms, meals and vacation activities, Renzo Spagnoli hosts art shows, lectures by visiting art critics (i.e., Vittorio Sgarbi and Luca Beatrice, who have both curated the Italian Pavilion in the Venice Biennale) and art auctions. Renzo Spagnoli is a renowned Italian art dealer who created the “resort system” of selling art. He owns six galleries in vacation resorts throughout Italy and patrons who buy art from these galleries receives an invitation to one of his all-expenses-paid one-week resort vacation – their choice of skiing in the winter or at a gorgeous beach in the summer.

Art patrons were treated to “moments of privilege” with Mark Kostabi during the ‘Week of Art” event. As an example, four of Kostabi’s paintings were displayed on easels on a “tv set” and Veronica De Blasi (art salesperson) interviewed him for a one-hour “talk show” with 200 qualified art collectors in the studio audience.

Another “moment of privilege” was scheduled for clients at an outdoor amphitheater on a glorious moonlit evening. The show began with a video projected on two large screens on either side of the stage. Galleria Spagnoli produced the video for a similar art event a year ago in Tunisia.

The video featured Mark Kostabi, giving a tour of his grand Rome apartment and mentioning key tabloid points of Kostabi’s career, such as album covers designed for Guns n’ Roses, being featured in 60 solo shows in New York, having collections in major museums and directing ‘Kostabi World’ – a New York studio known for housing Kostabi’s painting assistants and his tv show. The video also featured Kostabi playing his concert grand Hamburg Steinway as many art dealers like to brag that Kostabi is also a critically acclaimed composer. As Kostabi notes, “It’s all part of the ‘Renaissance Man’ marketing angle.

After the video ended, music from Kostabi’s newest CD, The Spectre of Modernism, could be heard filling the amphitheater. There was even a light show being projected on to the stage with a fog machine adding to the mystique and a life-size white cut-out of a Kostabi signature angel slowly being raised toward the sky. Wish this could happen in the NYC art gallery shows!

To read more about this exciting event in Italy, please view the full article, “SELLING ART IN HARD TIMES” written by Mark Kostabi in Artnet Magazine:

Mark Kostabi Sells Art in Sardinia Resort