In the uncertain climate, galleries focus on new artists

The recent news of the closure of Gallleriapiù (with three Ls), a research gallery in Bologna directed for ten years by Veronica Veronesi and characterised by cultured and interesting proposals, caused a stir. On the same days in Berlin, the gallery Stella A announced the end of its activities after 25 years and 112 exhibitions. "We have become too old for this work," commented founders Dorle Döpping and Michael Behn. "We are getting slower and slower, while the art system is getting faster and faster; in the long run it cannot work."

And they are not the only galleries showing signs of distress in an uncertain economic and political climate. According to an Artsy survey of 716 galleries from 68 countries, in 2023 almost half of the operators introduced measures to cut costs and increase profitability, reducing expenditure on administration, exhibitions, marketing, staff, online presence and even physical space. For the same reason, discounts offered to collectors were rarer.

To meet buyer demand, galleries have continued to renew their programmes, as already noted on these pages at the beginning of the year. Increasingly frequent is the collaboration between two or three galleries in the representation of an artist, as Artsy also notes, even between research galleries and mega-galleries, which are often accused of cannibalising the work done by smaller operators on emerging artists. The report shows that the stronger and longer the collaboration between artist and gallery (more than five years), the higher the sales of works by that artist.

Also according to Artsy, galleries are betting heavily on ultra-contemporary artists to sustain their business, following a widespread trend in recent years that has seen the prestige - and prices - of very young artists rise rapidly.

And yet, looking at the gallery announcements of the past few months, we observe that numerous summers have joined the various stables: that of the Portuguese Juliao Sarmento at Pedro Cera, Robert Indiana and the Japanese Jiro Takamatsu at Pace, John Giorno at Kurimanzutto, the British sculptor Lynn Chadwick at Perrotin. Young galleries are also looking not only at their peers, but also at artists who have passed away, such as the Viennese Sophie Tappeiner who announced this week that she is representing Anna Zemánková, a self-taught artist who died in 1986 and is now exhibiting at the Biennale with her surreal herbarium, embroidered at night in the 1960s (prices € 3,500-50,000).