Appetite (art gallery)

In 2008 and 2009 APPETITE had a branch in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where it organized exhibitions and events. It had appearances in New York art fairs, like Pinta Art Show, where The New York Times pointed: “For once, a fair looks like an art exhibition, not a job-lot display. And when a booth is crowded, the pieces can be blamed, as is the case at Appetite, a gallery with branches in Buenos Aires and Brooklyn that shows young artists working in an accumulative mode.” [2]

APPETITE was the first argentinian gallery to be accepted at Frieze Art Fair, where it was one of the stands that received more attention from the press and public, and generated controversies by their approach to the global economic crisis as subject for the stand.[3] While The New York Times pointed: "With first-time exhibitors from China, Turkey, India and Argentina (from Buenos Aires, Appetite, where the work of about 10 artists is displayed in a kind of continuous trash heap), Frieze still managed to provide a random snapshot of an increasingly global and youthful art world in transition.[4][5]

APPETITE was invited to participate in the fair Art Vilnius 09,[6] that year Vilnius was named European Capital of Culture, and this was one of the main events organized. The APPETITE stand was nominated for best stand. While being in that city, Daniela Luna also made a performance at the Vilnius Graphic Art Center and a video screening from argentinian artists.

In April 2008 it was part of the group of galleries presented to the fair MiArt by the name of FOCUS BUENOS AIRES . Local newspaper La Nacion announced: (From Spanish) "With consortium format and cooperative spirit, a group of Buenos Aires galleries with the support of the minister of culture, Hernan Lombardi, and the curatorship of Adriana Forconi and Florencia Braga Menéndez, celebrated the opening of MiArt edition 13th." [7] APPETITE participance at this fair was pointed by New York Times as well: "Appetite gallery will get additional exposure in Milan when the contemporary art fair, MiArt 2008, spotlights emerging Buenos Aires artists in April. Adriana Forconi, a jet-settling consultant to the art fair, was in town recently to scout for worthy galleries, and was struck by what she calls the city’s “frenetic and blissfully chaotic” pace." [8]

In March of 2011 Daniela Luna opened an APPETITE space in Beijing, China, at 798 Art Zone, and later in November moved to Caochangdi, the two main art zones of that city, where she organized and curated exhibitions and performance projects by artists from different nationalities. She also worked between Beijing and Hong Kong on research and writing about Chinese art. Part of this research can be seen as a four pages spread published by Argentinian magazine DMag.[9]

It’s an underground party that started in 2008, in a secret warehouse that guests could access with a password, and it mixed underground Djs and bands, with site specific art interventions and performance. As described at Time Out, "Arty meets party at Daniela Luna's WarClub. Surrounded by cutting edge wall art, intellectuals and club kids, artists and collectors, the young and the old make up an eclectic smiling crowd. WarClub is the brainchild of enfant terrible art gallerist Daniela Luna. It has taken place, up until now, in this raw, industrial, multi-room space whose only modifications, in the punk spirit Luna most prizes, are an accumulation of graffiti, murals and installations." [10]

Concept store and exhibition space for erotic art and objects that functioned in the area of San Telmo since 2006. Many media celebrated this initiative, Les Inrockuptibles published an issue completely about sex, and Tanto Deseo was the cover story and was spread all over the magazine. (From Spanish) "Without any doubt, one of the present oasis is Tanto Deseo, an erotic-artistic branch from APPETITE gallery, mothership of young art commanded by Daniela Luna. Tanto Deseo is an experimental essay, where pulsions are expressed under different topics.” [11] It also won the "Revelation Award" at the fair Puro Diseño in 2008. A cultural site talks about it: "Appetite and Tanto Deseo, two galleries with young spirit, that intent to give a space of creation without the market's demands interfering, born from a personal necessity mixed with the feeling that things like these were missing in this city. Participants and winners of the Revelation Award at the fair 'Puro Diseño' some days ago.[12]