From tiny to global, gallery collaborations offer new possibilities in a challenging moment

Condo. Okey Dokey. Various Others. Ruberta. Friends of Friends.

All over the world, the last several years have seen the rise of a host of initiatives like these, by which galleries collaborate with each other, whether in their own cities, or across oceans. These projects allow dealers to explore new markets, find new buyers, and, in some cases, even explore entirely new business models.

Before March 2020, these projects already served a purpose. But in the pandemic era, they are even more urgently needed, as ways to keep businesses alive and to bridge the isolation that millions are experiencing. Smaller is often the name of the game, whether you’re bringing one city’s art galleries together under one roof over the course of a week, like Interconti, in Vienna, or inviting galleries from around the world to occupy a New York gallery space successively over the course of a year in a timeshare model, like Vacation. But one of them spans half the globe: South South Veza has created a network of galleries across the entire Global South, from Guatemala City to Kolkata.

Michael Werner Gallery (New York City and London) recently lent its support to Tramps, a side project of the gallery’s own Parinaz Mogadassi. She has organized shows internationally as an independent curator under that name for several years, and Tramps currently operates out of a number of small spaces in a retail mall in Chinatown.

‘It’s her ideas, and Michael Werner Gallery participates sometimes. She does many shows I’m not involved with,’ says gallery partner Gordon VeneKlasen, indicating the organic nature of their cooperation. Tramps benefits from the more established gallery’s support in several ways, he says. Gallery artists sometimes go on display, while at other times, ‘It’s a testing ground to show artists not represented by the gallery.’

And it’s a very affordable one. The rent on these spaces, just below the rumbling Manhattan Bridge, is low, and they’re typically left locked, with no staff, so they could be described as large vitrines. But some shows are more elaborate.’ A show by artist Kai Althoff, in 2018-19, was organized with Gladstone Gallery, who represents the artist in New York; Michael Werner represents him in London.

Before they grew into the larger companies they are today, art fairs began as collaborations among galleries. Going back to those roots, in a way, is Interconti, which billed itself as a boutique fair and brought together thirteen galleries at the Hotel InterContinental in Vienna, Austria, from 28 January to 7 February 2021.

‘Our starting point was that we would set up the physical fair no matter whether public health restrictions would allow us to receive five hundred or zero visitors at a time,’ says Henrikke Nielsen, of Vienna gallery Croy Nielsen. ‘And we were going to launch a website that would contain footage from the physical fair. That was the core idea: a physical project that we would put into the digital realm.’ 

The website hosted an appealing video tour of the ballroom where the fair resided; the viewer could open detailed views of artworks and watch videos of interviews with the artists, as well as writers and collectors who described the historical and current art scene in Vienna, from the Secession movement of the early 20^th Century to the lively local art school scene.

In the end the fair happened under lockdown. But from Nielsen’s perspective, the online presentation had a strong appeal. ‘It worked out well because the hotel is a spectacular location with a very special atmosphere, so different from a traditional art fair—like a casino out of a 1980s James Bond film,’ she says.

Emanuel Layr, who has galleries in Vienna and Rome, worked with Nielsen and Sophie Tappeiner, a third Vienna-based gallery, to create the fair. ‘It was exciting to conduct an experiment to show sculpture in a fair and find a way to communicate it through filming it in the space,’ he said. ‘This gave a kind of interaction with the work and the feeling that it really existed.’

‘This model was affordable due to the low cost of participation,’ Layr adds, ‘and while there were certainly sales, perhaps the best part was about sending a signal to the world about what’s going on Vienna.’

The gallery and auction platform South SouthVeza (a Zulu word to describe a happening), meanwhile, was organized to send a far more urgent message, says Liza Essers, owner of South Africa’s Goodman Gallery (Johannesburg, Cape Town, and London). She spearheaded this collaboration of some 56 galleries from throughout the Global South, and the message is that this region of the world has much to offer, but also that its art scenes are in real peril.

In the COVID era, she says, many small arts nonprofits there throughout the Global South are closing down, which is a major blow to a vital part of the art ecosystem. In the absence of the major museums and schools common in other parts of the world, they provide exhibitions and residencies and other opportunities to young artists.

Galleries are suffering too in an era when art fairs have gone virtual. ‘At least seventy percent of Goodman Gallery’s revenue came from art fairs,’ Essers says, and while virtual fairs’ Online Viewing Rooms (OVRs) have been key, she points out that ‘getting collectors to engage in OVRs has not been easy.’ So, she said, the conversations among her and the other dealers and other art-world gurus who helped organize the event was, ‘How do we innovate the OVR model? How do we create an event?’ Part of the answer was to do something galleries never do: stage an auction.

Essers spearheaded South SouthVeza, which launched last month, in collaboration with galleries from cities as far-flung as Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, and Kampala. It ran from February 23 through March 7, and consisted of a live auction, an online auction, and OVRs along with other features. The live and online auctions didn’t have the sell-through rates you might see at a major New York or London sale, with just half and one-quarter of works selling, respectively. But they were very successful on their own terms. The revenue went to the artists and the galleries, rather than the auction houses and secondary market sellers, as is normally the case, and South South shares all bidder information with the gallery.

What’s more, part of the proceeds from the auction went to several nonprofit organizations, and will keep them alive for a year, Essers notes proudly, pointing to a future when the essential link between commercial galleries and non-profit organizations may be even more crucial.

‘We have to keep them alive,’ Essers says. 

Top image: Installation view of Raphaela Simon's exhibition at Tramps, 2018. Courtesy of TRAMPS, New York City and Michael Werner Gallery, New York City and London.