With All Art Fairs Postponed, One New York Dealer Decided to Erect a Fair Booth Inside Her Gallery to Lure Buyers—and, So Far, It’s Working!
Galleries often spend months
preparing for an art fair. So what happens when they are all called
off? For one crafty art business, the answer is clear: bring the
art-fair booth to the gallery—even if nobody can visit.
The contemporary art gallery the
Hole was scheduled to participate in both the Dallas Art Fair and
Art Brussels this month, both of which have been postponed. So the
staff erected a full-scale fair booth in its home on the Bowery
instead.
The booth—which, by typical art
fair standards, would be considered an XL—features all the works
the gallery had planned to lug to Dallas, including new pieces by
Adam Parker Smith, Eric Yahnker, and Koichi Sato.
The gallery has even assigned
itself a booth number: H69. (Nice.)
But the project is more than a
wry, gimmicky take on the virtual art fair model. It’s also a
statement.
“It’s obviously an absurd
inversion to install an art fair booth in your permanent gallery
space,” The Hole’s co-director Raymond Bulman tells Artnet
News. Prevailing
wisdom, of course, says art-fair booths are a far inferior way to
view art than in a gallery. “But when we thought about it, we
realized that image would succinctly characterize the circumstance
that galleries and artists find themselves in now, trying to
present new artworks in a compelling way.”
An installation view of the Hole’s booth
for the Dallas Art Fair and Art Brussels. Courtesy of The Hole.
Bulman and the Hole’s founder,
Kathy Grayson, built the booth using a small team who worked in
incremental shifts, so as to maintain social distance. The images
of the ad-hoc booth are being sent to clients and have
been uploaded to the Dallas Art
Fair website, which is hosting a virtual fair through
April 23. (The IRL
version, originally due to open this week, has been rescheduled to
early October 2020.)
Bulman says the Hole doesn’t
expect to lose too many sales in the switch to digital. The gallery
has several artists on its roster for whom demand considerably
outstretches supply. “I’ve joked that, with certain artists, we
could have the same results holding an art fair in my childhood
basement,” he says.
By day two of the online Dallas fair, the Hole had sold many
works from its virtual-but-also-real booth, including two
wood-panel works by Robert Moreland for between $5,000 and
$10,000; a resin sculpture by Adam Parker Smith priced at $30,000;
a drawing by Joakim Ojanen for $7,500; two drawings
by Aurel Schmidt for $5,000 each; a painting by Morgan
Blair for $15,000; a painting by Jonathan Chapline for
$12,000; and three works on paper by Koichi Sato for $5,000
each.
“Less than sales, the more
tangible impact of not attending the fairs in person is that we
don’t connect with different people in different cities,” Bulman
says. “Usually at an art fair, a portion of our sales will be to
known quantities, and our efforts will be put more toward placing
the works in the best possible hands. But there are other times
when you get surprised by an unexpected sale or new client—that’s
really the pure value of a fair.”
If you, too, are feeling nostalgic for a time when you could
network inside a white-walled booth, just log onto the Hole’s
Dallas Art Fair page, put on
some real pants, and imagine you are there.
See more images of the booth below.
An installation view of the Hole’s booth
for the Dallas Art Fair and Art Brussels. Courtesy of The Hole.
Eric Yahnker, Rosé (2020).
Courtesy of The Hole.
Adam Parker Smith, Sabine Pool Floats
(Orange, Green, Blue) (2020). Courtesy of The Hole.
Aurel Schmidt, Cookie (2020).
Courtesy of The Hole.
An installation view of the Hole’s booth
for the Dallas Art Fair and Art Brussels. Courtesy of The Hole.
Koichi Sato, Part? (2020).
Courtesy of The Hole.
Eric Shaw, Untitled (2020).
Courtesy of The Hole.
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