New York Art Expo 2008 - A visit to a great artist Manuela Valenti and the unfortunate encounter with the worse ebay copycat.

We went to the New York ArtExpo 2008 to check on one of our favorite artist’s, Manuela Valenti who we knew was debuting at the ArtExpo and who so kindly gave us tickets for both the trade and the buyers show. If you haven’t seeing this lady’s work please stop by her website, you are going to be amazed at the work she does, and this is one artist we so recommend you to check out because is well worth it. Not only she’s extremely talented she’s what a true artist is about.

We had the opportunity to see some of the paintings we so much admire on her website in person and I have to tell you WOW!! They are amazing!!! The colors, the flow, the energy and the power are unbelievable. You get lost in her paintings and never get tired of seeing them. We spent about an hour on her booth, checking and analyzing each one of her works and each one of them is a moment, a story. When she claims her works are energetic, powerful, that you will get lost in them and a mixture of emotions is embedded in each one trust me when I tell you that’s the whole truth. They exude a wonderful energy, they are uplifting and as one of the critics who approached her booth said ‘it looks like the work of Pollock with a lot of passion and expression’. We spent a lot of time on her booth which was the #211. She’s not only gorgeous but elegant and so sweet!! After about an hour of talking to her, looking the works closely and of course buying some good art from her (we know in 6 months to a year the price will be much more than what we paid for!) we decided to go for a walk and check what else the ArtExpo had to offer, that’s when we almost fell down!

Osnat Tzadok the BIGEST and WORST copycat ebay seller we have being battling against on ebay who has quite a few artists wanting to give her and her husband a big punch in their faces in the best possible legal way for not only the copies but the fraud, irregularities and cheating they get away with on eBay was showing 5 pieces. We were astonished when we saw those paintings and her in there! And we thought the ArtExpo was for ORIGINAL artists ONLY not for leaches…. Anyways we thought she was with a gallery that didn’t do its research before accepting her fast-painted-without-soul-copies but hey she was with art-exchange.com the ONLY place that could possibly accept those cheap reproductions and derivative works that infringe EVERYONE ELSE’s copyrights, plus she paid art-exchange.com to be there, it wasn’t like they were dying to have her either, they just wanted her money.

Anyways, we are there, in front of the paintings and we are seeing the works of so many artists in just two walls. As we get close what we really see as collectors is cheap, fast mass produced, paintings where the only valuable thing is the canvas where they are painted, ‘cause even the paint used seems cheap, very watery like. We were expecting prices around the same seen on eBay $400-$500 the most, instead she priced the paintings for much more than anyone in its right mind would pay for her work. $7500 for a watery-fast-badly done-mass produced painting that can be bought on ebay for $400 or even less, are you out of your mind?

We arrived the first day, right when Manuela was selling her 4 first pieces and we said good bye to her the last day when everyone was packing. We had the chance to go back to art-exchanges.com booth to check what they sold and none of the paintings that were on Osnat’s section sold, of course we were not surprised when we read today she mentioned she sold one painting. In our opinion and many of our gallery owner’s friends opinions Osnat’s works are no different than the works of a Chinese copycat mass-producer who sells for lower prices, where there is “0” investment value, where there is nothing new since she paints the same painting up to the point of saturating the market or make you gag, which ever you prefer, and whose imagination is completely inexistent since she likes to feed on other artist’s creations. In simple words, buying her works is buying the copies of works from many other artists, completely unethical and a very large law suit about to happen. There is nothing ‘original’ about an Osnat’s work and certainly all the artists who are suffering her blatant infringements should get together for a class action lawsuit since ebay would do nothing to stop this blatant fraudulent seller and we know about this since we have not only warned many of the artists she has had problems with since she started on eBay but we have also reported her time and time again directly to the President of eBay. If you are looking to buy art as an investment this is the last place you should look for art, so do your homework and don’t think that having a painting on a tv if that was ever true, makes an artist more valuable, totally to the contrary in the real art world.

If you are reading up to here you might be wondering why we say Osnat is a copycat, well, keep reading. Since the day Osnat started on eBay the only common thing up to now is that she LOVES to rip off other successful artists who have created a very well known name on their own with their reputation, beautiful paintings and very well earned money. The painting that appears on the corridor of Osnat’s own home which is shown on the so famous cbc interview they did on her is a derivative copy of one of the works created by The Raw Artist, artist whom we also happen to collect in our gallery and who sells for thousands of dollars such as Manuela’s. Then the puffy trees she painted to the point of saturating the market which she claimed made it as the cover of a book (which ended up being just an e-thesis visited by a few people a month) were copies of another ebay seller (ebay ID: marems).

We want to clear here a point, Osnat doesn’t copy anyone, she’s very exclusive when she blatantly infringes the copyright of other artists, she chases the most successful artists, and when they fight back she resorts on humiliating them in public so they would look bad if she can’t get to them in private that is. She likes to spend hours on the artist’s websites downloading paintings and we have this information from two other artists as well who requested not to be disclosed since they are pursuing legally the copyright infringements.

Now here it gets confusing, because we really don’t know who’s copying who?! Is Osnat copying Nizamas or is the other way around?... we would never know!!... what amazes us in the end is how is this couple able to sleep at night or look their kids on their faces every day? But what really bother us to no end is how she gets to claim copyrights of works that have not being originally created by her without being prosecuted for it. I guess time will tell.

The other artist this ‘lady’ has being leaving off as we said before is Manuela Valenti. Osnat has ripped off her splash series (which we happen to collect and sell in our gallery) completely to the point of insanity. While on the ArtExpo we got our hands at one of Osnat’s brochures which show one of the paintings from Manuela’s splash series that are Manuela’s exact works. We have to say impartially as we have bought one of Osnat’s pieces on this particular series she copied from Manuela, that Osnat’s is again cheap, badly done, like done in a rush for the money, so when we saw one of the paintings we so fell in love in Manuela’s booth at the Expo we definitely saw the HUGE difference and we understood why Osnat copies would never compare to this other REAL artist no matter how much she tries to fake the artistic talent she so pretends to portray. Manuela’s work is richer, vibrant with plenty of energy and very, but VERY well executed. Osnat’s on the other hand is cheap, done in no more than 5 minutes, just for the money… well…. You get what you pay for and in our opinion you get a lot less for the $400-$500 you pay for. For that amount you can purchase a limited edition prints from Manuela, The Raw Artist or any other prestigious artist with REAL not FAKE investment value, since Manuela’s abstract works do sell for thousands of dollar already in galleries and whom not only sold well at the Expo, but who counts with prestigious exhibitions in her resume that can be backed up.

You would say as a reader of this article that Osnat’s works have appeared on tv and I would tell you BIG DEAL! Do you know what they do with the paintings on the tv sets? Tv sets buy the cheap and larger they can if they can’t make them themselves. In terms of investment value those tv appearances count 0, nothing, nada, zilch towards investment value. She still sells on ebay for the same bottom prices she started selling for the day she started on ebay, and no respectable, high end gallery would ever accept her works. If you want to really be a collector, learn what makes an artist, and you will learn that Osnat and sellers like her are far, far away from being a real investment, despite of what they claim on their websites assuming they are not lying, and we know not all is completely accurate to put it this way.

For what we have seen, listened to and investigating on eBay and this past few years, we have learned a good deal about who the honest one is and who’s not the honest one. Osnat in particular along with many other artists who sell on ebay and who are also powersellers, would do WHATEVER it takes to make a sale, and we mean ANYTHING, including lying, deceiving, committing fraud, earning prices and awards while cheating, stealing from other artists, copying and creating derivative works of the best sellers works from other artists and who knows what else, harassing and even threaten if necessary.

We recently discovered Osnat websites is subscribed to the BBB, and in our opinion she should have never being accepted, especially after knowing these past few months how she earned her so acclaimed “entrepreneurial of the year award” given by eBay Canada in 2007. For almost a year Osnat and her husband have being cheating eBay’s system to the point of monopolizing each category with only their paintings staying on top places of the search and category queue for the entire duration of the listings. She even created a second ID to being able to cheat the system while avoiding punishment regardless of her breaking 3 policies on eBay alone them being search engine manipulation, circumventing fees and opening a second account to avoid suspension and to our surprise and despite our complaints directly to the President of eBay she is allowed to sell on eBay and goes completely unpunished. Without cheating the system Osnat wouldn’t have being able to accomplished the amount of sales she got in 2007 which made her ‘earn’ the award. In other words she achieved the award cheating. For almost a year Osnat and her husband ruined thousands of honest sellers on the art category and sent to bankruptcy quite a few while committing these illegalities. The Better Business Bureau should review more carefully who they accept as one of their members, because clearly these people would do anything for money and have no absolute good business practices at all, and don’t think we are talking about honest competition we are talking about DISHONEST competition to the point of fraud. For years we have witnessed and recorded shill bidding happening on many auctions done by this seller, her or her husband leaving feedback for a painting they happen to win with their own ID’s to create the false pretence of selling a lot, leaving feedback for themselves and relisting the painting later on. This is completely dishonest with their entire customer’s base that believe in their lies and have no idea this is going on. We have reported to eBay all we have found, but since her husband works for eBay as a developer we believe she is being allowed the unallowable. Her husband’s website as eBay’s developer is www.baytogo.com and as far as we know, someone working for eBay should not sell as well on eBay. Nonetheless we will report this as well to the Better Business Bureau.

As a proof of the shill bidding, we found this comment on her second ID os*box and we quote:
“Amazing Oznat, .thank you for the beautiful painting! Very nice working with you
Buyer: vyork01 ( 5 )
Dec-20-07 14:24
• Reply by os*box (Dec-20-07 15:03):
You have purchased another painting of mine. This painting is still in auction
60" ORIGINAL PAINTINGS MODERN ABSTRACT ART by OSNAT (#180188327895)”

And you can read the comment here http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=os*box&ftab=AllFeedback

If you don’t know how eBay works, you will think this is ok. For us we know this is not ok and this is one of the signals that we look for on unscrupulous sellers just like this one. The fact that she replies to the comment is the clue and the proof this listing was won by one of their own ID’s. As a buyer on eBay you can only leave feedback for an auction you won. Never for an auction is still active. Clearly they made a mistake and tried to repair the mistake by leaving a comment. These kinds of actions happen so frequently that is overwhelming and infuriating to see that eBay despite countless reports has done nothing. Apparently money prevails above honesty and decency.

As for Osnat in this review which happened by mistake since we so disturbingly found your paintings on the Expo, we are putting you on our black list. Our only hope is that you one day realize that your clock is ticking and sooner or latter the alarm will go off and that would be the time to pay all your due bills to society and to all the honest artists you have being ripping off. We hope you and your husband soon realize cheating, lying, deceiving, copying and committing fraud eventually would get you in serious trouble. Osnat’s eBay ID’s are os*box and os-box if you care to see for how cheap prices her works sell for clearly showing no possible investment value. If you paid more than that we would advice you to request a refund. As for the galleries that represent her works, we have found the only ones that carry her works are the websites created by her husband, but we haven’t found any commercial gallery of honest name having her works so far in the US or Europe although she likes to claim otherwise. We also found a disturbing situation with the Federation of Canadian Artists as we emailed the President of the federation requesting information and we were told the artist was not a member of the federation. The same week she joined the federation after years of claiming being a member without being a member.

Manuela, we want to congratulate you for all your sales during the ArtExpo, all the gallery representations that your hard honest work had earned you and we wish you the best of the best with your new galleries, collectors and much, much success in your art career. Don’t worry about Osnat, her paintings we have seen them in person are that, CHEAP and can’t even compare to your work and people sees that, the real collector sees that and doesn’t buy on ebay for investment art. She will always be in your shadows and the shadows of every artist she attempts to copy, you are the original you are the true artist. Your work is incredible all the way to the top and because of it, it is being recognized for its well merited value. Hang in there darling, you are a joy, a beautiful woman and your beautiful soul shows on each and every painting you create. It was a great honor meeting you and your husband at the Expo along with hearing all the amazing reviews you’ve had in just 5 days! All the best your way!

If you are interested in purchasing some original works and limited edition prints sold ONLY through the Studio of Manuela Valenti, please visit her new online gallery/store at www.manuelavalenti.com/store. To visit her portfolio please check out her website at www.manuelavalenti.com

What we are all about...

Well after a long, long, pause since we started this blog, a new facelift was surely needed! Tons of bad and really bad things happening in the art category of the largest auction house (or should we say the largest fraud protecting house) that sure need to be opened to the public since eBay has done nothing to clean the art market. We felt from the beginning we needed to warn collectors and first time buyers about where to shop for art and where NOT to shop for art online and on the big auction house, so this new blog is being refaced just to accomplish that. A warning though, we will be honest, brut and bring the whole truth to the table, whether the con artist or real artist likes it or not. We are not liable for voicing our opinions and for bringing to the light our good or bad findings. We have the right to warn people when we find a seller or two who prefers to go the illegal way. See this blog as an art buyer’s alert guide, since we bring the good and the bad. The intention of this blog will remain pure in terms of the information and opinions given in it. If you don’t like what you read, then close the browser, because we feel the need to clean the so damaged online art market and once and for all start weeding out the crap, the fraud, the liars and the copycats. The only place for this people to paint should be the walls on their homes or jail cells, and should not be allowed to sell anywhere in this world, but since the world is made of protectors of the fraud, the copies, the liars and the crap I guess we will keep seeing them everywhere no matter how much we fight. A painter who copies the works and creations of the original artist’s is no different than a thief making cheap designers hand bags… both belong in jail…