Carlos Fentanes

<a I was thinking that art galleries were funded by the sale of works of art, that artist and promotion were an important part of that sale. A healthy business in which everybody wins: The artist because his work is known by the public, the collector because they have a wide variety of product to choose and invest and the gallery which earn a commission to do this. But there is also another way of doing business at an art gallery: The Realtor Art Gallery.

The main business of the Realtor Art Gallery is the rent of space, that’s why I called realtor: The gross of the income came from the artist and not from the art collectors, that’s interesting, because then, the quality of the artwork and the response of the public are not so important, the main thing is that the artist had the money to pay the rent.

For the realtor art gallery promoting and selling are secondary; that doesn’t mean that they are not interested on that, but they’re busy trying to get a tenant instead of promoting and getting art collectors. Where is the spectator? If there is no spectator: there is no work of art and then, there is no art gallery. An artwork only can be an artwork when there’s a spectator in front of it. Roy Ascott said: “Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences.”.This experience cannot be done in these galleries. They’re lack of public. Do you know anybody that had rented a space to exhibit his work? Ask him about his experience.

Now with the internet you can find this kid of business in a virtual way: There are virtual realtor art galleries on the internet: they sell you the opportunity to exhibit your work on the internet: Take the case of see.me that assure you that your work will be exhibited at New York or Paris, but in small letters: “virtually”, they are not exhibit you original work but a jpeg in an electronic display, something similar to the spaces that the people buy at Times Square or at the basket ball games. In see.me you can exhibit for free but in order to access to prizes, exhibitions… you must have something like a VIP membership. What does that mean? Easy, if you have money your work deserves to be in their gallery, in other words: No money, no picture. So, it is not about the quality of your work but how much you have.

There is other kind of business on the internet such as Saatchi online, in which artists don’t have to pay in order to promote their work and contests are for free, and you have to prove your quality in front of a judge panel in order to win, with no money in the middle.

I don’t want to say if one model is better that the other. Each of them is focus in different public, but we have to study what is best for us and for the public.