When did we become afraid to ask what the artist actually created? By Alejandro E. Trimper Several years ago, I was at a pop-up exhibition called SPRING/BREAK Art Show in New York City when something rather wonderful happened. Someone had left a pair of eyeglasses on the floor beneath a narrow, empty section of wall. No wall tag, nothing that would indicate they were part of the exhibition, but they were also positioned convincingly enough that people began to gather around them. And then the analysis started. People discussed the placement of the glasses, their relationship to the empty wall, the color, the symbolism of vision, what the artist might have been saying about perception and absence, perhaps even our inability to see what is directly in front of us. Very quickly, it became the focus of everyone in the room. There was only one problem. It wasn’t art. By accident, someone had been sitting there and forgotten their glasses. Eventually, the owner came back and quic...
How galleries let third-party platforms become the room, the register, and sometimes the client, and why it is time to take the relationship back By Alejandro E. Trimper A friend recently asked what I meant when I said galleries had sold their souls to third-party platforms. Fair question. “Sold our souls” is the sort of phrase that sounds excellent over dinner and slightly unhinged the next morning. It conjures candles, contracts written in blood, and perhaps a junior associate from a private equity firm waiting in the hall. What I meant was much less theatrical and much more expensive. We, the gallery world as a collective, did not merely give away the client relationship. We paid for the privilege of having it taken from us. It didn’t happen all at once. We surrendered it one useful convenience at a time: inventory, images, descriptions, prices, inquiries, negotiations, payments, and every last bit of buyer data. Eventually, galleries were paying monthly fees and commissions to supp...