The case of Gavin Brown: United in crisis

The case is considered by many gallery owners as the writing on the wall in the pandemic: Who is communicating this with you about the prospects and uncertainties of their industry, is widely encountered on the closure of New York gallery Gavin Brown’s enterprise, who has escaped recently, under the wing of the Gladstone Gallery. In the Wake of the switch to ten artists will be the address, including Ed Atkins, Kerstin Brätsch, and Arthur Jafa, Joan Jonas, Mark Leckey, Frances Stark, and Rirkrit Tiravanija; others remain, however, on the outside and have to look for new care. Thus, the growing market power of Barbara Gladstone, while Gavin Brown, a trader sweeps after 26 years, the sailing, the Company had done as a career forge forth.

Sometimes, the galleries in Berlin by Jörg Johnen and Esther Schipper, which were merged a few years ago, as a similar example. This Deal arose but, as far as is known, not a life-threatening crisis one of the two partners, and the comparison is good only to the extent that also in this case, some of the artists on the track remained, and to new agents had to look around.

or Die

In Germany, there are plenty of advanced galleries that have discovered artists since its inception, and supported over the years and decades with you are grown and for some time with the Mantra “Grow or Die” face. You may not groan under exorbitant rents, such as the colleagues to Gavin Brown in New York, but also ask yourself, what are the consequences for the term of a globalized market, the few potent galleries with immense financial power to divide among themselves, for you personally. Not to mention the small galleries, the basis of which work can only work on the principle of self-exploitation and for which there is a painful normality is that artist that you have recognized and persistent in the scene, go immediately to the larger, most prestigious galleries.

Recently, Johann König has made rare enough that a gallerist pays so forthright in his heart – in the “world” of his frustration: “The German art trade will die.” The chorus in the choir of the dealer voices a legitimate complaint about the last few years, increased VAT on art, especially with the so-called margin taxation, a model is on the table that could alleviate this burden considerably. It reduces the competitive ability and threatening a country as rich to be designated cultural landscape in the art trade. The lament is also an ever more pervasive bureaucracy, and the righteous to be connected, in turn, with costs.

for those galleries that don’t do per se with Superstars and record prices, attention, form the Foundation of an agile art scene, whose impulses even the public institutions are dependent. This applies all the more if the sign of the Covid-19 Virus factors of Glamour, the jet set and social Event in the Background, and the concrete placement on site is asked again, stronger.

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