The Art Angle Podcast: How Hollywood Finally Fell for the Art Market

Welcome to the Art Angle, a podcast from Artnet News that
delves into the places where the art world meets the real world,
bringing each week’s biggest story down to earth. Join host Andrew
Goldstein every week for an in-depth look at what matters most in
museums, the art market, and much more with input from our own
writers and editors as well as artists, curators, and other top
experts in the field.

The Oscars may be over, but Hollywood is about to be overrun
with a different kind of A-lister this week when the art world
descends on Tinseltown for the second edition of Frieze Los Angeles.

Despite the glut of disposable income earned from media moguls
and tech startups, it has long proven difficult for East Coast
dealers to make inroads with prospective clients on the country’s opposite flank. In this
context, the success of Frieze’s southern California debut last
year was a pleasant surprise.

One gallery that has had no problem endearing itself to a
diverse audience in Los Angeles from the start is Various Small
Fires. Co-founded in 2012 by Esther Kim Varet and her husband
Joseph Varet, VSF, as it’s commonly known, occupies a highly
coveted spot along a gallery-rich stretch of Highland Avenue in
Hollywood. Its Johnston Marklee-designed Art Deco-style building
boasts a 3,000-square-foot main gallery connected to two adjacent
project spaces, a roofless back patio that acts as an oasis in the
midst of the bustling city, and the rare eco-friendly pedigree of
running on 100 percent solar energy.

Though the roster is small, VSF’s 12 artists hold an outsize
claim on the LA art scene—and beyond—with strong institutional
presences and a near-constant waiting list for new work. One key to
this impressive reach? The gallery’s forward-looking decision
to embrace Kim Varet’s Korean heritage and open a second permanent
space in Seoul in early 2019, allowing VSF to connect with young
collectors on both sides of the Pacific.

On this week’s episode, Andrew Goldstein speaks to Esther Kim
Varet from her office in California about what makes VSF an outlier
in the often-staid, anachronistic world of art galleries, how
dealers can win their artists institutional sustainability in an
increasingly market-oriented field, and why photorealist painter
Calida Rawles is poised to lead a renaissance of the
underappreciated genre.

Listen below and subscribe to the Art Angle on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, or wherever you get your podcasts. (Or
catch up on past
episodes here on Artnet News.)

Listen to Other Episodes:

The Art Angle Podcast: How Jeffrey Epstein Made the
Art World His Hunting Ground

The Art Angle Podcast: How the Art World Fell Under
the Spell of the Occult

The Art Angle Podcast: Nicolas Party on Why Being
an Art Star Is Like Being in Love

The Art Angle Podcast: What Do the Protests in Hong
Kong Mean for Art?

The Art Angle Podcast: Four Predictions on How the
Art World Will Transform Itself in 2020

The Art Angle Podcast: The Radical, Viral Artworks
That Defined the 2010s

The Art Angle Podcast: How
an Artist’s $120,000 Banana Ate the World

The Art Angle Podcast: New
Yorker Art Scribe Calvin Tomkins on What Makes Great Artists
Tick

The Art Angle Podcast: Is the Art World Causing a
Climate Catastrophe?

The Art Angle Podcast: Art Basel Rules the Art
Market. Is That a Good Thing for Art?

The post The Art Angle Podcast: How Hollywood Finally Fell
for the Art Market appeared first on artnet News.