Look At Me continues to talk about young heroes who achieve something on their own. Today in rubric « Personal experience » gallery coordinator « Room » Yulia Yusma tells how she got involved in the gallery business. How many problems the rent creates for the gallery, how to make an exhibition of a young artist and come up with a project within the framework of the biennale - all this will be discussed in an interview with Julia for Look At Me.
Julia Yusma, photographer and coordinator of the gallery "Room"
What is your relationship with art? How did you get into the gallery?
I'm actually a photographer, but now I don't do much photography. A year and a half ago, I moved to Moscow from St. Petersburg and was looking for an interesting job, while Alexei Tregubov, a theater designer working at the School of Modern Play, was looking for an assistant. We met on time, and that's how I became an assistant theater designer. When I arrived, it turned out that by that moment Alexey had just turned the former theater foyer into a gallery space - he painted the walls, bought good lighting, so I quickly turned into an assistant gallery owner. In St. Petersburg, I worked with Nadya Sheremetova at the Photodepartment - I helped to make exhibitions, seminars, portfolio reviews. There, by the way, I attended a course by Lisa Fetisova on gallery business - this is a great success, because there is nowhere to get at least some education as a gallery owner or curator in Russia.
Now contemporary art is like photography five years ago, when there was a boom and everyone took up cameras
In general, the profession of a gallery owner is unpredictable. Emmanuel Perrotin, for example, worked in various galleries without special education, then decided to open his own, he had only twenty thousand euros for the whole thing. He exhibited young and interesting authors with little popularity, acquired connections and built relationships so that he was soon able to exhibit Damien Hirst. Or Kamel Mennur, who flew to Tokyo with no money at all to Nobuyoshi Araki, then already a star, but who did not yet have a representative in Europe, and laid out such a red carpet in front of him that he provided him with his works and they have been cooperating for ten years. These are all stories about the fact that it is very important to be brave and be able to communicate, and with everyone. inspiring that someone does everything like this from scratch and with their own hands, when you risk for yourself and are not ashamed of your mistakes.
Now contemporary art is like photography five years ago, when there was a boom and everyone took up cameras. There is an active movement in this area, and there are a lot of such people around me - my husband is studying multimedia at Rodchenko, my friends are somehow connected with exhibition activities. I am not an art critic, not a critic or a journalist, and I am not trying to pretend that I am well versed in contemporary art - there are curators for this. My task is to understand the environment itself and be able to work with it. Think about what kind of people to connect with each other and what conditions to offer them so that they can work cool and do something interesting.
Any exhibition is at least twenty-five thousand rubles, several days of searching for the right paper in printing houses and mountains of nerves
I don’t know how it happens in large galleries, but in the “Room” there is no one to shift the responsibility to - you yourself are responsible for everything, and you should always be prepared for the fact that your original idea in the process of implementation will turn into something else. Of course, working in a gallery is very interesting, but if you are going to go somewhere where you plan to communicate with artists all the time, go to vernissages and do only pleasant and easy things, you should think twice. You have to deal with a bunch of banal technical work. When a viewer enters an ordinary hall with white walls, on which pictures are hung in a neat passe-partout, he does not know that any exhibition costs at least twenty-five thousand rubles, several days of searching for the right paper in printing houses and mountains of nerves.
Preparation of Maxim Khem's exhibition
How did the gallery itself appear and how is it arranged from the inside?
The gallery was opened by Alexey. When I arrived, we had a name, walls and lights. I found a designer who made us a corporate identity, started social networks. Strictly speaking, both of us had almost no experience in this area, but there was a huge sincere desire to do this business. Our main feature is, of course, our position at the theatre. I don't know any more such examples either in Moscow or anywhere else. When we had an exhibition “Chaos Theory” by French media artists Electronic Shadow as part of the Biennale and Peter Weibel stopped by, who, as I understand it, usually has about three to four minutes for galleries like ours, he liked it. By the way, when you do a special Biennale project, no one, of course, warns you that Weibel will come to see it. I got a call from his assistant fifteen minutes before the visit with the question "Where to park?". At that moment I was not at the theater at all and woke up from this call - that is, it is understandable, it was a panic. But they managed to turn on the installation, he looked, and in the end everything turned out perfectly. Then half of the theater mastered the technique of turning it on - and there it was necessary to start a smoke machine, a wind blower, a computer, a projector in a certain sequence.
The assistant curator of the Weibel Biennale called me 15 minutes before the visit with the question “Where to park?”
Thanks to the theater, we have resources - the premises and workers are theatrical, which makes life much easier. We are spared the main problem of small galleries that have to survive in constant battles with rent. Another point is our audience, it is mainly theatrical spectators. We have a fairly large traffic, fifty to a hundred people per evening, because the “Room” is the place where all the spectators go during the intermission, not counting those who come specially to the gallery during the day when there are no performances. In many ways, this is why we try to do projects that do not require deep special education or multi-stage explanation. We strive to ensure that a person, having got into the “Room”, sees some such works, exhibited in such a way that this in itself impresses and inspires him.
Where does the money come from to run the gallery?
Of course, we buy all the materials ourselves, and we also pay for printing or production, if necessary, ourselves - the theater does not sponsor the gallery. Sales occur, but so far very rarely, at first it was literally money from Alexei's pocket. In general, in Russia it is somehow not customary to discuss how much it costs, and to name prices, and also to brag about sales (although they are, in general, an indicator of the success of gallery owners), while in Europe this is all considered normal. We are not focused on sales now, in the sense that this is not our main vector - although we, of course, need them, because we need a budget for an exhibition - for any, no matter how simple it may look. Why can we exist like this? Because we are still theatrical workers on a salary. The gallery is our initiative in addition to the main positions and our addition to the theater. Everything that we do, we must coordinate, and the duties of all the people working here do not include gallery affairs - so we try to do everything on our own to the maximum.
Chaos Theory was a success in this regard - we met the wonderful Ekaterina Iragi (Iragi gallery), who works both in France and in Russia, and she offered to cooperate with us. She found artists and a sponsor: here we are very lucky, because sponsorship is still a dark forest for us.
Exposition of the exhibition "Chaos Theory"
How long does it take to come up with and implement an exhibition?
First we find an artist, then we contact him and start negotiations, as soon as something emerges, we meet. We select a curator, introduce the artist, coordinate the details together and finalize (and sometimes build from scratch), in fact, the exhibition project. Then the production stage begins - ordering a print, passe-partout, hanging, objects. Again, it helps with the objects that we live in a theater. In the fake shop they cooked an iron structure for the Chaos Theory installation, on which a heavy projector was held. It’s hard for me, to be honest, to imagine something that they couldn’t build in our workshop. Alexey, for example, for the play "The Bear" came up with ice furniture that was supposed to melt during the performance, and when a consultation was required, the production department called the museum of ice sculptures, where they were told that what they had already done, in fact, impossible, so they are unlikely to be able to help. Then one of these ice sculptures - a melting Viennese chair - was exhibited at the MMOMA. Which brings us to the point that Alexey is a theater artist, but he does something else for himself, and there are many such artists. We are now planning to do an exhibition of another theatrical artist, who honestly tells us: I have material, but I don’t know how to combine it all, to make a project out of it. And this is where we get involved.
If an artist tells us that he would like to bring an elephant, we bring him this elephant if possible.
We strive to remain such a loyal platform - we don't want to be one of those galleries that asks for an installation to be encrusted with Swarovski crystals in order to sell it more expensively. We don’t get into the soul of the work, we work with it very carefully and respect the artist - well, our conscience remains clear. If the artist tells us that he would like to bring an elephant, we bring him this elephant if possible. Now, for example, we have made an exhibition of works by Alexei himself - these are large canvases with gray backgrounds, and we have also repainted the walls in gray. I may have to repaint them some other color soon, and then quickly go back to white for the next exposure, and I don't even know how many layers of white paint I'll have to put on afterwards.
How did you promote the gallery and make it famous?
We went the standard way - we began to raise all our personal contacts and contact journalists and critics. After we announced ourselves a little, made three or four events, people somehow began to find us themselves. All this is still happening through social networks - at first we did not even feel the need to make a website, and now we are doing it because it has become necessary.
Usually you post an event everywhere, call people you are interested in and invite them to the opening, go to auctions, vernissages, exhibitions, meet people, and they will find out about you. I don't know exactly where the artists came to us from, but now we receive quite a lot of letters with proposals. We used to start working on the next exhibition around the time we opened the current one, now we have a plan for three or four exhibitions in advance. The first responses were perceived as a victory, now it is not so surprising. There are offers from buyers - there are not many of them, but they are, and all this, of course, is mainly acquaintances.
Expositions of exhibitions in the gallery "Room"
Can a gallery be a successful venture? And does it matter at all in the case of a gallery?
Success is a very relative phenomenon. Public and internal success for the gallery are completely different things, it's one thing - when the whole of Moscow goes to your openings, another - who works with you. In this regard, Weibel's praise is the best assessment, because the project with the Iragi Gallery is for us something on a higher level, and we want not to lower the bar. Not in the sense of bringing only eminent artists, but to make good projects for which one would not be ashamed. For us, success is probably not a generally accepted definition: under standard conditions, a gallery is already successful when it continues to exist for a long time, because it is really difficult. For us, success is a response, we can afford to immediately pay attention to this, because we are not dependent on rent.
Once I almost agreed on the delivery of a bath from Yoshkar-Ola
Which of the exhibitions you have created is especially dear to you?
The first one was the exhibition MAMA PAPA DADA by a young collage artist Maxim Khem. He came up with the idea of placing a bathtub in the center of the hall, in which there was a telephone receiver with a well-read text with a musical backing that he himself wrote, voluminous boxes on the walls where one had to look to see the work, a wooden staircase continuing the paper collage. We built it all, and until the last moment he did not believe that everything was true and it would be as he planned. And it was exactly what we wanted - interesting, lively. Then I came across the fact that an artist who has never exhibited brings you a mountain of really interesting material, and you have to choose something from this. Here the last word was for Alexei, who has much more experience, he removed the excess with a firm hand. As a result, half of what we prepared for hanging ended up on the walls, because we had to be torn between the desire to show everything cool and the task of making a meaningful, integral exhibition project.
This, of course, was all fun: for example, I almost agreed on the delivery of a bath from Yoshkar-Ola, because the ad on the Internet was not signed. The fitters hated me for a while, because six men ended up dragging this bath around the theater, where there were solid stairs and curtains, and it was cast iron and weighed a hundred kilos. Also, the music that sounded from this tube played from my iPod - and then there was a children's performance in the theater, and the iPod disappeared. It was not a pity - in my opinion, this is a worthy disappearance.
Interview - Nailya Golman
Visit nearby galleries and see which ones show works similar to yours in style. As a rule, exhibition organizers adhere to a certain genre - take advantage of this. Pay attention to which works were preferred by the expert commission of the gallery. Think about your style, genre and direction. Ask yourself: “Will they like my work?”
Show advantageous differences between your works from the works of other artists. This will require some ingenuity: for all the similarity of styles, your works should compare favorably with the works of competing artists. Do not forget that the organizers of exhibitions, first of all, are business people and will not take risks.
Attend the opening of the exhibition (usually held every Thursday evening) to network with the art business. Showcase your passion and skill. Show interest and arouse their interest in your work.
Apply for the award. This will give you the opportunity to showcase your creativity in front of the experts in the art world, and even if you lose, you will still make a name for yourself.
Protect yourself from attempts that are doomed to failure in advance - avoid participating in paid exhibitions and competitions. Most often, this is simply a fundraiser for an art community or art gallery. Such actions, as a rule, do not contribute to professional and creative development. On the contrary, a mark of participation in such an event can ruin your resume. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. One of them is where you live. In most cases, avoid them. Avoid art salons that require payment for your participation in the show or the organization of an individual exhibition. No self-respecting gallery would do this.
Send an e-mail request to the art salon or gallery where you would like to exhibit. Try to provide as many samples of your work, sketches as possible, as well as information about your work, give a link to a personal website or blog, describe your creative concept. Many exhibition organizers prefer to collect information about the artist before presenting his work to the general public.
Create an online gallery. You can place the works of local artists, as well as masters who work in the same style as you, in it.
Become a member of a collective exhibition. As a rule, participation in such an exhibition requires only a membership fee, samples of your work and your creative resume. In addition, collective exhibitions do not oblige you to unilateral cooperation and do not take a commission from the sale of your work. Participation in it will give you strength and confidence in achieving your goal.
Gallery contract. So, you are lucky enough to work with a gallery or an art salon. An important condition for cooperation is a contract. Usually galleries take commissions from the value of the sold works, as they are your representatives, not buyers. Make sure that the amount of commission charged is clearly stated in the contract, usually it is 20%-50%. Despite this, it is beneficial for the gallery to inflate the cost of paintings, since their income directly depends on this. Carefully study the contract, one of the prerequisites may be the sale and demonstration of your work exclusively in this gallery.
I just don’t understand these doubts, they are mostly groundless, at the expense of anatomy and the base, okay, I would draw crooked abstract drawings, and they would say to me: “you don’t know anatomy”. But here in my works I don’t see that everything is both a base and anatomy, albeit exaggerated in some moments, but not rejecting, and say that I don’t know anything, that I have the same drawings, the wrong color and in general. You see, because I just don't draw storylines, but images, it's stupid to judge just because of this. Apparently they think that they can sit here and so easily judge my work, although they themselves are probably not those highest masters whom they set as an example in order to learn from these old masters. I would understand if they said that my work is repulsive, strange, in atmosphere and color. Yes, I can still accept this, but it’s not like the color, base, anatomy or something else is poorly developed here.
Yes, it’s your technique, your technique, you didn’t have a base, yes, you learned to do something, but you didn’t have the basics of drawing, you ignore it, continue to draw, convincing yourself of some kind of your own uniqueness.
Well, in my works there can be no knowledge of anatomy, etc. haha Another thing is their stylization. My color, my style, and yes, I'm not saying that I have a unique style. Where did you come up with this, why do you think that you can think and speak for me? And the fact that I have my own unique style, other people have already said for a long time, I didn’t say it and I’m not going to say it: “look at me, I have a unique style” ahah, but they told me this. There is no need to dissemble, I have never exalted my work, I only defend them if there is a reason for it from insults, and if there is tactful criticism, and not just "you know nothing", then I thank this person. Therefore, it would be better for you to keep quiet if you do not know the person to whom you are writing all this.
Thank you! It is not just developing, every time I bring something new to the subsequent work, I experiment. I don’t have that plot that is in these avant-garde works, so what. I have a slightly different view, but my works are not of the same type, they are different, even if they are similar in color, but this is an illusion, because the color is still different in each work, whatever one may say, even if not dramatically, but this is not necessary when you work in your own stylization, this is when you draw for someone, for an order, that's another question. I paint not with plots like the rest, but with images, moments, frames. And many masters did this, and you can’t judge for it. Some paint with plots, others like that, others are generally squares. Yes, I work in my own way, and let them say what they want. Yet in my works there is more sincerity, I put more soul than there is in all excellent and not always traced avant-garde works. The main thing, in addition to technology, is also the soul. And here, in all the galleries, you almost never see it, and I have a soul in my work, but they value only mainly technique.
But it seems to me that those gentlemen who wrote to me and who support the opinion that I can’t do anything, are unlikely to be able to repeat at least one, even my last, work. Recreate from my head those images that I have, which not everyone will come up with. Thank you for your attention to my work!
In his youth, the unknown son of Armenian emigrants Larry Gagosian did not even think about the world of art and earned money wherever he could - he parked cars, etc., until one day he started selling posters. Later, he switched to painting, began to promote the paintings of contemporary artists, and one day it was thanks to him that the world recognized Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons. After that, Larry Gagosian became fabulously rich and for a long time led the ratings of the most influential figures in the field of fine arts. The story of the American dream, right?
Myths and reality.
In fact, things are somewhat different in the art world, especially when it comes to the Russian art market. The modern conditions in which painting exists in our country require remarkable patience from the gallery owner, serious material investments and painstaking work to form their audience. Now, even in Moscow, gallery sales cannot be called a good way to earn capital: this is still very far away. In our gallery, in most cases, it is more of an image character, it is an opportunity to express yourself by creating curatorial projects that are now fashionable and providing support to talented artists.
In modern Russia there are many gallery owners whose professionalism and devotion to art inspire genuine respect. These are, for example, Elena Selina (gallery XL), Alexander Sharov (gallery "11.12"), Marat Gelman. However, no one has yet earned a multi-million dollar capital from the sales of Russian art. For a long time we were isolated from world art processes, and the representatives of the middle class in our country have not yet formed the habit of investing in art. Therefore, we can say that the art market is just being formed in our country.
Three steps to success.
What questions should be decided first of all if you firmly decided to link your future with art objects and become a gallery owner? Of course, the main thing that you cannot do without is a passionate attitude towards art and confidence in your own artistic taste and intuition. The second is special knowledge that can be obtained both independently and with the support of art market professionals. You can enter a specialized university in our country or abroad. For example, in Moscow, the RMA Business School offers an educational program called Art Management and Gallery Business. Classes are held on the territory of the Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art, the course consists of lectures and master classes, and the most influential people in the art world teach here: Olga Sviblova, Vasily Tsereteli, Marina Loshak, Joseph Backshtein and others.
Retraining programs for gallery owners are offered by universities such as Moscow State University, Russian State University for the Humanities, Higher School of Economics, and St. Petersburg State University. Curators are also trained at the Free Workshops at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, as well as at the Baza Institute by Anatoly Osmolovsky. From foreign specialized educational institutions, London's Sotheby's Institute of Art can be recommended, where professionals in the field of art are trained in programs of various durations, from summer courses to master's programs.
In addition, of course, it is necessary to visit exhibitions, communicate with artists, gallery owners and collectors. This is the only way to understand what is happening on the art scene and determine the directions that will become closest to you. But if you are no longer new to the art community, it's time to take concrete action.
Step one.
Determine the circle of artists you will represent on the market. All galleries can be conditionally divided into two types: current and traditional. The former reflect the latest trends in art, reveal the current and new, the latter represent long-known types of art. And if the former tend to shock the public with new original ideas and expensive projects, the latter, on the contrary, are conservative and, as a rule, organize sales exhibitions.
The projects of the former are interesting because they are dynamic and sharply reflect the social processes taking place in society; such galleries have their own fans. However, there is another part of the audience, those who will go to a traditional gallery for a painting for their collection, because they are close to art that has been tested by time and is not subject to market fluctuations.
So, for example, the works of the well-known duet Vinogradov - Dubossarsky (see photo below), on the verge of social and pop art, with provocative plots, on large canvases, represent galleries of the first type, relevant. And let's say, the works of the well-known Natalia Nesterova, laureate of the State Prize, Honored Artist of the Russian Federation, with images of biblical stories, everyday scenes, with still lifes - galleries of the second type.
Current galleries address their projects to a politicized public, as well as to those who are interested in the protest movement or ideas that open up new horizons in the mind. There are those among the audience who just want to surprise their wealthy friends.
If you have decided on a direction, have found your niche, try to enlist the support of at least five to ten artists who will work with your gallery. At the opening stage, two or three already well-known authors should be involved - in this way, initial interest in the gallery can be aroused. And in order to enter the market effectively, try to make your first project interesting and extraordinary.
Step two.
Choose a location for the gallery. In Western countries, there are certain areas where it is customary to open them: in New York, London and Paris there are entire neighborhoods in which art institutions have launched their activities. We are just developing gallery zones, but we already have the Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art, so it would be preferable to exhibit contemporary art there. Other galleries can be located outside the clusters, but preferably in the city center, because you need to take into account the state of traffic and respect the time of visitors.
An apartment-home format is also possible, and there are many such galleries. Its advantage is that you do not need to spend money on renting a room, which becomes the most burdensome expense item. Therefore, some galleries do not have a permanent address, but use new spaces each time. This format is interesting in that it expands the curator's opportunities to present the next exhibition project in a new, suitable environment for him. This way you can offer the concept of art moving beyond the usual walls of galleries and museums, as many new galleries do today.
Step three.
Project launch and subsequent marketing activities. Preparatory work before the opening will take a lot of time, but you can’t do without it. The development of a corporate identity and the launch of a website are simply necessary: otherwise, how will a potential buyer identify you? Naming, creating a logo, preparing and printing catalogs, booklets and invitation cards, writing announcements and releases - these are just a small part of advertising activities. Be prepared for the fact that you have to decorate the gallery space and carry out hanging.
You also need to come up with some branded "chip" that distinguishes you from competitors. For example, for the 73rd Street gallery, a special lamppost was made with a sign "Gallery here" and a logo, which is installed every time during the vernissage. This is done so that guests can easily find the entrance to the exhibition, since the gallery always carries out its projects at different venues in Moscow. Next, determine the circle of invitees to the opening of your gallery, whether it will be closed or available to everyone.
Inform guests about the date and time of the opening, think about the treat and program, write a press release. By the way, get ready for the fact that you will have to constantly monitor everything that happens on the art market, attend many events and communicate with people a lot, participate in the biennale of young art and international art fairs, that is, be in constant search and movement.
So, you opened up and a certain number of people became aware of your gallery. Among them, perhaps, there are your future customers. Now it is important to support their interest with new projects, to discover for them the names of young and promising artists, that is, to turn visitors into buyers, and possibly into real collectors. Whether your gallery will become an attractive place for investors and connoisseurs of art, for journalists and artists, now depends only on your professionalism, ability to communicate with people and, to a large extent, on luck. Good luck!
About the author: Elena Komarenko is a collector, art dealer, founder and manager of the 73rd Street gallery. Provides assistance in the formation of collections of contemporary art. The 73rd Street Gallery was founded in 2011 and presents well-known names of contemporary Russian art (since the 1960s), as well as talented emerging artists, including foreign ones.
