#237 22 february 2016
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- Have you kept your bordeaux clientele
Exhibition View "Franck Eon, Abstraction faite d'une conception plutôt magique de la situation." Photo Rebecca Fanuele Courtesy of Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico
t he Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Atlan- tico recently moved to Paris after earning its stripes in Bordeaux. This was the oppor- tunity for Art Media Agency to ask Thomas Bernard about the prospects opened up by such a change and to hear his lucid, critical views on the art market. you recently moved your bordeaux gallery to paris. can you tell us what motivated this de- cision? The move took place in two stages. We arrived in Paris in 2013 as a branch of our Bordeaux gallery. The idea was to arrive gently in Paris, to take the time to test, observe, take stock of this change and this new city. I don’t like rushing into things, going too fast, and above all imposing myself. We needed to take our time. In 2015, we acquired this new space and we closed the Bor- deaux gallery for good. why did you close the bordeaux gallery? We’ve come to a more functional venue. The gallery has four spaces: one for exhibitions, one for offices, a showroom, and a storage space. It’s also a warmer, more convivial, larger, more comfortable place. Our initial experience revealed a few things. First – and perhaps it’s surprising for me to say so –, everything’s less expensive in Paris! I’m talking about the gallery’s structural costs. The professionals are very specialised – for example accountants or framers who work only with galle- ries – and this allows them to offer more attractive prices.
Above all, the professionals here have skills that are specifically adapted to our needs. Secondly, inviting people to Paris is more prac- tical, especially when they come from over- seas. If you bring over an Australian artist to Bordeaux, it’s very likely that he doesn’t even know where Bordeaux is… Finally, there are structures that allow us to exist. Bordeaux, like other cities outside of Paris, isn’t big enough for the market to have its own identity. The way in which the market is constructed depends on institutions taking things in control. In Bor- deaux, culture is in the hands of the municipa- lity. In Paris, we – the gallerists – are numerous enough to hold weight in the face of these ins- titutional structures. Exhibition View "Franck Eon, Abstraction faite d'une conception plutôt magique de la situation." Photo Rebecca Fanuele Courtesy of Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico interview • tHomas bernard We could have kept our Bordeaux space as a la- boratory, a more alternative place. But for now, the priority is to develop our activity on the spot. There’s still so much work to do!
The Bordeaux clientele has never been very si- gnificant — but faithful. It’s the long experience of a gallery that’s important. You know, it’s not often that people push open the door of a gallery by chance… Clients always know where they’re going, and this implies the establishment of mutual trust. It’s a matter of winning loyalty, accompanying certain buyers in their first choices, training new collectors. This is what we’ve done since 2003 in Bordeaux, where we initiated new collectors who now see with ex- perienced eyes. The art market is a centrifuge system; it’s the edges that construct the core. And in this core, we find gallerists such as Taddeus Ropac or Al- mine Rech. Some of our clients are continuing to follow us to Paris. Here, we’ve gained in speed what we’ve lost in comfort. In Bordeaux, galleries are in the shadows; we can take risks and if we fail, it’s no big deal. We can adopt an experimen- tal approach. In Paris, it’s different. in bordeaux everyone knew your gallery. in paris, competition is fiercer. In Bordeaux, people would come about once a year. You had to be ready that day! The risk in Paris is not the same as in Bordeaux. That said, in our profession, you need to always be ready to welcome clients. To do so, you need to be avai- lable, to be generous. The gallery’s site should enable this. When we sell a work to the FIAC, what do we represent? The packaging, and that’s about it! Exhibition View "Franck Eon, Abstraction faite d'une conception plutôt magique de la situation." Photo Rebecca Fanuele Courtesy of Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico
237 • 22 february 2016
what makes galleries different from mu- seums or fairs? In my opinion, the gallery is the place that has the most potential in the art world. It’s here that we can manipulate works, think about them with our hands – this is something that I understood when I was an artist’s assistant. The gallery re- mains a central place. We’ve reached the end of a consumption system and at the same time, a certain idea of luxury. I’m not going to sing the praises of slowness but things are gradually being relocated, recontextualised. I’ve done a good deal of thinking thanks to the book by Yves Michaud, Le Nouveau luxe: expé- riences, arrogance, authenticité. He questions experience. And the gallery is the place of an ultimate experience. When we ask Axel Dumas from Hermès what luxury is, his answer is, I find, extraordinary: luxury is what can be fixed... Today, the market has been divided up, so it’s necessary to keep looking for new clients and ensure a high visibility coefficient for artists. When I see the photograph by Ai Weiwei on which he reproduces the position of the Sy- rian child Aylan on the beach, I’m not afraid of saying that I find that disgusting. This stems from intellectual misery. And yet, this artist has been constructed by a system capable of absor- bing and creating that. As for fairs, I think that they’ve created an aesthe- tic of sparkle. A fair is a very concentrated unit of space-time. As a result, it keeps out a huge share of the field of art. Driven by the desire to be the world’s most beautiful fair, Art Basel can become deformed. Sure, it’s a magnificent fair, but I do not know what I can think about Unli- mited section with its 300-metre-long hangars. It’s up to us to make things change in an institu- tional system where public money is short. But as soon as we call on private sponsorship, auto- matically the law of the strongest applies. Today in Versailles (and this is only an example), you need to get people in through the door, howe- ver you do it. We’ve gone from a best-efforts obligation to obligatory results.
The issue of proximity is far more complex than one might think. Paris and London are two cities that are geographically very close, but in rea- lity they are very different. As a result, they are further away from one another might appear. London not only has another language, another currency and another culture, but above all it has another art market and history of art.
The question of place is crucial – or in the pro- cess of rebecoming crucial. Exhibition View "Franck Eon, Abstraction faite d'une conception plutôt magique de la situation." Photo Rebecca Fanuele Courtesy of Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico interview • tHomas bernard Internet platforms will never take the same place or play the same role as physical galleries. The gallerist’s role is to take care of the cura- torship of his own gallery. This is why fairs are so different: the spaces there follow norms, they’re all identical. Generally, the riskier and more in- novative a gallery’s offer, the more original the stand’s furnishings. This is a sign of the times. The issue is to bring domesticity back to this type of place. This is possible through more intimate sta- ging, based on the model of curiosity cabinets for example. what are your future plans? I’m giving myself about three years to really get settled in Paris. We’re young here, but not new. Next, the issue will be to find an exit path so that we’re not exclusively Parisian. I’d like to look at London, with the possibility of setting up connec- tions over there. I’m confident, I can rely on a great team and on the special relationships that we have with our artists. We still have a lot of room for improve- ment, but we don’t want to rush ahead. We’re ad- vancing one step at a time, calmly. People have a good opinion of our work. Our exhibitions have followers, including students. Our Parisian clien- tele will build up over time. Thomas Bernard © Florent Larronde - Same O
237 • 22 february 2016
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