Yajnavalka Inc. has been contacting artists online, and it seems like the majority of the emails are being sent through artistsspace.org (one of many online portfolio websites for artists). To date, I have been able to confirm that they are a real business entity, but not much beyond that. I have not been able to confirm their claims with any certainty, and advise artists outside of Texas to proceed with caution when dealing with them.
There is also a discussion on Yajnavalka Inc. at WetCanvas: http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=394251
BogusArtFair.info's findings on Yajnavalka Inc.:
The contact information provided at http://www.yajnavalka.com/contact.asp matches their entry in the online Yellow Pages for Huston.
Claim 1 from their website:
"Ted Astor is participating in the Group Show titled, 'Strange Cities: the Unique and the Unusual in the Urban Landscape' organized by Reflect-arts, Inc. between October 19 - October 30, 2006 at Gallery 27+, Chelsea, New York, NY."
Reflect-arts is not listed in the online Yellow Pages for New York, NY and neither is Gallery 27+
Reflect-arts has worked with Micro Museum in the past, and Micro Museum has a press release involving Reflect-arts (http://www.micromuseum.com/Jan06/CircusSurrealPR.html)
Claim 2 from their website:
"Prasenjit Laha will be participating in the group exhibition “In Transition” at Independent Museum of Contemporary Art in collaboration with the Lanitis Foundation from 4 – 14 October, 2006, Limassol, Cyprus."
The Lanitis Foundation website does not mention this event, although it does not seem to advertise past events in general.
I could not find much information regarding the Independent Museum of Contemporary Art. A search for the museum lead primarily to the Wikipedia entry for Helene Black, a co-founder of the museum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helene_Black) and a handful of artists' CVs referencing shows at the museum. The museum is not listed as a main menu entry for the governmental website for Limassol (http://www.limassolmunicipal.com.cy/index_en.html), although this could be a result of the museum being "independent". It should be noted that Wikipedia is a website which provides user-contributed content, and although high-profile topics are heavily policed, others may not be.
The event is cross-listed under the Member News section of Art & Science Collaborations, Inc. (ASCI). Art & Science Collaborations is not listed in the online Yellow Pages for New York, but seems legit.
Claim 3 from their website:
"National Geography has chosen Lawrence Abrahamsen’s “Tibet Meditation” in the program ‘Fantastic Food Fantasy’ as the back drop for the interview with Ms. Leslie Norris to be broadcasted on television in November 2006."
I am assuming they meant "National Geogrpahic", not "National Geography". National Geographic's website did not return results for either "Fantastic Food Fantasy" nor "Leslie Norris".
A Google search for "Leslie Norris" resulted in pages for the poet/author Mr. George Leslie Norris.
Claim 4 from their website:
Coverage by Art Business News magazine.
Because my local libraries do not carry ABN, I was not able to verify this by simply searching the printed magazine.
The online listing of articles from ABN's September 2006 issue does not include direct reference to either Yajnavalka Inc or the article "Top ten publishers". A search for "Yajnavalka" also did not return any results. However, I also searched for "Applejack", which was an article in ABN's September 2006 issue, but it only returned results from their January 2007 issue.
The article is cross-referenced in LookSmart's findarticles.com, but assigns the copyrights of the article to Pfingsten Publishing, LLC and Gale Group. Art Business News is a part of Summit Business Media, LLC, which has acquired Pfingsten Publishing, LLC.
I have contacted ABN with a request to confirm the article's existence, but have not received a response from them.
Yajnavalka Inc.'s website domain is hosted by http://www.melbourneit.com, which seems to be odd. MelbourneIT is based out of Australia and does not even provide competitive prices in domain name registration ($35/yr, compared to approx $9/yr with Godaddy.com). The website is hosted and designed by http://www.tevadesign.com/, which has no offline contact information. They, in turn, have their domain name registered with Godaddy, and their website is hosted on their own servers. Teva Design's own website hasn't been updated in a while, because it lists Yajnavalka Inc. as an upcoming project.
Yajnavalka Inc. is also not a member of the Houson Art Dealers Association (http://www.hada.net/).
