Pros and Cons: the Market According to Young Artists
Taking part in a young artists’ biennale is an opportunity to be invited to other exhibitions or to benefit from residencies. It is also an opportunity to get a foothold in the market, because although galleries are partial to young artists, very few of them benefit from representation. Of the 36 artists in the first edition of Après l’école, biennale artpress des jeunes artistes, Saint-Étienne 2020, only three were working with a gallery. Since then, more of them have found representation. Yet is representation a goal? What do these young artists expect from a gallery? How do they see the market? Are they developing alternative or competing models? Which ideal economy do they imagine for themselves nowadays? These are the questions we put to seven participants in the first edition of Après l’école, chosen for the diversity of their practices and backgrounds. The responses were mixed, to the extent that the art worlds, to use Howard S. Becker’s phrase, have never been more worthy of their plural form.
ARTIST WISHING TO REMAIN ANONYMOUS a violent system
I am represented by a gallery in New York, which is a gateway to a city where I am not known, but not in Paris, where I turned down proposals. For me, collaboration between artists is key. The main role of a gallery should be to bring a community of artists together around a venue and a sensibility. I get the impression that the support of a gallery has become secondary because artists are now autonomous. We are all overqualified, capable of carrying out the mediation and promotion of our own work better than others could. Social networks offer great visibility, and even enable us to sell, without compromising. The institutionalised functioning of the galleries and the market seems outdated to me. It’s a violent system, especially since all the intermediaries depend on us, the artists, who continue to be last in line. My finances are precarious but I do not live badly. I’ve always had a day job so that my work can remain a place of desire and experimentation. I want to be able to carry out peripheral projects, for example with music or writing, which rarely find their place in the French market, conducive to smoother, more repetitive practices, which does not allow for real sideways shifts.
RUDY DUMAS combining opposites
I have not yet had the opportunity to have a gallery. I used to work with the support of institutions or residencies. My practice, which included very physical performances, meant that I was moving constantly. But my body started to get tired. Income and stability came into play and having a gallery became a goal. So I recently moved to Paris, to a studio, to work on my network and to get noticed. A gallery is an intermediary and an acknowledgement of the value of your work on the market. Gallery support can be imperative. In 2021, during the Appel du Large festival in Deauville, the outdoor sculpture I presented was vandalised, which was not covered by the organisers’ insurance. Another artist who found themselves in the same situation, but who was represented by a gallery, won their case. I didn’t. In parallel, I sell images of my sculptures and performances in the form of NFTs on a platform that keeps 50%: a kind of digital gallery owner. In keeping with the essence of my practice, NFTs are also a new form in opposition to the system: accessible to all, unlike a certain art market which I cannot fully subscribe to. In the continuity of my drawings, I also practice tattooing, another source of income. It is therefore a search for balance between a gallery that would respect my practice and the underground and institutional environments, by creating bridges between the two.
MY-LAN HOANG-THUY a story of encounters
Being represented was not a goal, but it is necessary in order to practice in good conditions. It’s hard to be an artist, so having the support of a gallery is preferable. I have been represented by the Galerie Mitterrand since early 2022. I had not taken any steps in this direction because artist/gallery relationships work like love stories.You get the impression that it is artists who need gallery owners and not the other way around, but galleries have no reason to exist without artists. Gallery owners are desirable, but the opposite is also true. It’s a story of encounters. The role of a gallery in this story is to allow the artist to say what they want to say in the best possible conditions. It is a mark of esteem for someone’s work to choose to accompany them over the long term, so you have to know how to be grateful as an artist. In this regard, I believe in fidelity. I am faithful to my gallery, and I know that it is too. For both the artist and the gallery owner, this means being attentive, patient and forgiving. Sébastien Carvalho, the gallery director, told me that an artist’s career represented at least 40 years, that there were ups and downs and that this was normal. What I understood was that if the day comes when things aren’t going so well for me, the gallery will still be there. So, given the human and financial investment it implies for a gallery, being represented is a significant sign of recognition.
CHARLES LE HYARIC out of step
I have been working with the Galerie Papillon since 2015. I was still studying at the BeauxArts at the time. The journalist and collector Maya Sachweh spotted me during a jury to exhibit at the Crous gallery and introduced my work to the gallery. I recognise myself in the Galerie Papillon. All artists have a relationship to matter, a way of being. Claudine and Marion have never asked me to restrict myself to what “worked.” In 2016, I had carte blanche to present Regulus, a large tracing-paper cave, which gave me confidence and opened up opportunities. I feel out of step with the times. The art market has become an industry. I’m not on social media. My daily practice, over the long term, is at odds with the idea of making a career prior to making a work, as the market dictates. The gallery is a gateway that anchors me in the art world. Alone in the studio, you can easily start to doubt yourself. As for financial balance, it is difficult to find. I also give classes, like most artists to supplement the earnings from the gallery. For my installations, I work with institutions: another way to make my works exist, to make new contacts.There should be more public money to pay for creation, but paradoxically, instability itself can be the driving force.The question of an artist’s ideal economy is eminently political: our position in society still needs to be reconsidered, through arts education, amongst other things.
ANAÏS MARION another model
I never sought to be represented by a gallery. It may be different elsewhere, but in my school, in Poitiers, the market did not exist. Students focused on creation, and there was very little talk about employability. Since then, I’ve always lived in cities without galleries. I currently live in Creuse and I don’t come to Paris often enough to have a good knowledge of this ecosystem. My work, often in the form of large sets, may be difficult to sell, but in truth, this is not a concern. For two years, I have been making a living from my work, having sold only one piece at the Musée national de la marine, the result of a long collaboration. I have few expenses, I carry out projects with partners, and do creative or arts and cultural education residencies that allow me to create collaborative or participatory works. So I have developed a practice and an economy which are independent of sales, which are based on other networks, including institutional ones. I sometimes feel that I am doing a different job to that of an artist who, as part of a commercial ecosystem like the one in
Paris, perhaps sees the activity and purpose of creation quite differently. We don’t have the same models. I work in another contemporary art environment, which is more associative. I joined a photographers’ collective and I am about to launch an association to host artists in residence.
FLORE SAUNOIS project-based approach
I have mainly worked in an institutional environment, but now I would like to bolster my career by means of gallery representation. Galleries are bridges between artists, their works, and the people likely to be interested in them. It seems to me that they allow us to maintain a fairer position with regard to our work as artists. I practice performance in particular. The very way of selling performances implies conceptual choices that necessarily become part of the work. For my part, I market them according to their nature, such as Combien de km/h: an in situ performance reading transposed into a sound piece which was sold to the Fonds communal d’art contemporain de Marseille. This transposition of pieces or motifs in and according to a given medium is important for me, as a condition for the appearance of a work. In parallel with the institutional environment, since I am not very comfortable with selfpromotion or communication, I tend to lean towards workshops, fine arts school juries, paid post-graduate courses and residencies. There are also collectors you can meet during studio open days or through taking part in fairs, such as Art-o-rama or APA (A Performance Affair). I would like to be able to count on a fixed income as opposed to irregular earnings—nothing for months, then half of my annual income in a few weeks—and the lack of visibility with regard to my long-term schedule, which is a result of my projectbased approach.This would allow me to look to the future, to continue or undertake longterm work.
LOUISE VENDEL a catalyst
I have recently begun to be represented by a duo of young agents who accompany me in the production of exhibitions, and give me access to production residencies. Sometimes I sell without an intermediary, as a result of exhibitions, as was the case in the first edition of Après l’école. Social networks, for their part, allow me to show the evolution of my work and my present and future exhibitions. They also provoke encounters. I would like to be represented by a gallery because I see it as a catalyst: besides the possibility of exhibiting, it means no longer being alone but being followed by an external perspective that helps you to get out of your comfort zone, to develop your aims during exhibitions, to structure your work in a broader context. More concretely, I would expect the gallery to share its know-how and its network without imposing them, as proposals. It is a relationship of trust in which the gallery owner and the artist work together. Being represented by a gallery can be a sign of recognition, I think, as much as a solo exhibition in an art centre. But representation is not an end in itself. My production is meticulous and time-consuming, so I would rather not be subjected to the urgency of selling and keep my freedom to experiment.
Translation: Juliet Powys