About this Event
Four gallerists discuss how their international collaboration started, its importance during the pandemic, the effect it has had on their work and how it led to the global initiative "Galleries Curate: RHE."
About the speakers
Sadie Coles (Sadie Coles HQ, London) opened her London-based gallery in April 1997. The gallery focuses on presenting the work of established and emerging international artists. The inaugural exhibition by American painter John Currin took place in parallel to an off-site exhibition by British artist Sarah Lucas. This coupling established the international dimension of the gallery’s exhibition programme, as well as its programme of site-specific projects which have presented artists’ work in locations around London and abroad. The gallery’s current spaces at 62 Kingly Street and 1 Davies Street opened in 2013 and 2015 respectively. In recent years, the gallery has added artists Darren Bader, Alvaro Barrington, Alex Da Corte, Kati Heck, Yu Ji, Lawrence Lek, Klara Liden, Helen Marten, Borna Sammak, Katja Seib, Martine Syms, and Jordan Wolfson to the roster. This is in addition to the continued representation of artists such as Sarah Lucas, Matthew Barney, Urs Fischer, John Currin, Ugo Rondinone, Elizabeth Peyton, Rudolf Stingel, and others. Each year the gallery participates in various international fairs, as well as participating in CONDO – a large-scale experimental and collaborative exchange between international galleries – with temporary exhibitions in both New York and Shanghai; hosting peer galleries annually. The gallery regularly publishes books on its artists.
José Kuri (kurimanzutto, Mexico City, New York) is founder and owner, with his wife Mónica Manzutto, of kurimanzutto gallery established in Mexico City in 1999 and in New York in 2018. Born from an idea originally proposed by Gabriel Orozco and carried out by a group of artists, the aim of this coming together was to enable collaborations and support the work of a new generation of Mexican artists both locally and internationally. José and Mónica imagined a gallery that could exist nomadically, adapting its form to the spaces needed by specific projects. Arising from the lack of galleries dedicated to contemporary art in Mexico, as well as the lack of institutional support for the up-and-coming generation of young Mexican artists, kurimanzutto filled a much-needed role. Nine years after the first opening, in 2008, kurimanzutto inaugurated its current gallery space in the San Miguel Chapultepec neighbourhood of Mexico City. In May 2018 kurimanzutto opened a project space in New York that represents an extension of kurimanzutto in Mexico City while affirming the mission to create new situations that will internationally transmit the gallery’s spirit.
Jochen Meyer (Meyer Riegger, Berlin) is an art historian, curator and gallerist based in Berlin. He studied art history and literature at the University in Karlsruhe. In 1997, Jochen Meyer and Thomas Riegger opened their gallery with AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, an exhibition showing pieces from the Marzona Collection. Conceived in reference to a certain era, the exhibition was at the same time a benchmark for the gallery program, in which the gallery has tried to use the political and aesthetic potential of these positions from the sixties as a link to the present. The gallery focuses on conceptual positions that emphasize the emancipatory potential of art as well as underlining the transcendent capacity of their existence, while always remaining aware that art, as a product of human labor, also reflects society's condition of dependency. The juxtaposition of international artists from different generations in solo and curated group shows puts these interests into practice. Since 2008, the gallery has also had a second space in Berlin.
Mary Sabbatino (Galerie Lelong & Co., New York) is Vice President and Partner at Galerie Lelong. Sabbatino was appointed director of the New York location of Galerie Lelong & Co. in 1991 and became a gallery partner in 2007. She introduced now-canonical artists to the gallery, concentrating on women and artists from then-underrecognized regions such as Latin America, Asia, and Africa. She served on the boards of ArtTable and the Executive Board of the Art Dealers Association of America, during which she initiated and co-authored the ADAA’s first code of ethics. Sabbatino served on the Selection Committee for Art Basel Miami Beach (2013-2020), the Joint Committee Art Basel and is a founding member of the Council for the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York. In 2020, she was one of the initiators of collaboration formed during the lockdowns of the pandemic between international art galleries which has developed into GalleriesCurate.com, and is a founding collaborator of South-South.art, an aggregate platform of collectors, artists, curators and art dealers to support art and culture in the Global South.
About the moderator
Clément Delépine is an independent curator and critic and the current Co-Director of the art fair Paris Internationale. Between 2010 and 2015, Delépine worked at Swiss Institute in New York. Interested in providing new perspectives for celebrated works and established artists as well as encouraging the recognition of young artists in institutional contexts, he curated several exhibitions ranging from the first monographic exhibition of Niele Toroni in an American institution in 25 years to the first institutional shows of young artists Dora Budor, Julien Ceccaldi, and Thomas Julier. In 2016, he moved to Paris to co-direct the art fair Paris Internationale. Founded in 2015 as a disruptive alternative to traditional art fair models, Paris Internationale is dedicated to promoting the work of young galleries and the emerging artists they represent. In 2021, Delépine was offered to coordinate Galleries Curate: RHE, a collaborative initiative helmed by 21 international galleries, presenting exhibitions themed around water taking place concurrently in the exhibition spaces of the participating galleries as well as a digital platform.
