DIALOGUES FOR A NEW MILLENNIUM: PABLO DE LA BARRA

Booth Blow de la Barra, Nada 07, Miami.

A Conversation with Paco Barragán

Based in London, Mexican artist, curator and dealer Pablo de la Barra is a person who likes to reinvent himself and engage with artistic production and the public in innovative ways. His modus operandi is a good example of the changes the art world and the art market have been going through in most recent years. De la Barra´s diverse and rich experience as an artist, but above all as a curator and a dealer, working with both commercial and alternative spaces, makes this conversation exciting and non-conventional, especially now that many platforms like art fairs and galleries are being severely called into question and need to re-frame themselves.

Paco Barragán - I remember that the first time I met you, you were exhibiting your work in a group show at Annet Gelink in Amsterdam in January 2004. One year later in June 2005 you started Blow de la Barra Gallery with Isabella and Detmar Blow. How was this move from artist to dealer?

Pablo de la Barra -The exhibition you refer to was a Retrospective of 24/7 at Anette Gelnik Gallery curated by Roos Gortzak. 24/7 was an artists/curators’ collective formed with Beatriz López and Sebastián Ramírez. 24/7 was a guerilla-style operation which exhibited art in non-conventional spaces using a minimum budget and which exhibited the work of artists who were passing through London and who at the time were unknown. When I was invited to form part of Blow de la Barra, I was invited to do so as a curator, and that was the main role I performed at the gallery. So I always saw myself as more of a curator and less of a dealer. However, I quickly learned that it wasn’t possible to separate the business part from the “artistic” one…

P.B. -Blow de la Barra very quickly became known for its program. If we consider the former a more gallery-like situation, 24/7 Projects was a low-budget platform for Latin American artists. What triggered your interest in a commercial platform?

P.d.l.B. -24/7 and Blow de la Barra were two different platforms existing at different times. 24/7 had an exhibition program from Summer 2002 to January 2005, while Blow de la Barra’s first exhibition was in June 2005 and the last one in June 2008. Funnily enough, the first exhibition of both platforms happened with Stefan Bruggemann. When doing Blow de la Barra, I was interested in investigating the possibilities of the white cube, and with playing with the conventions of what you are supposed to do in a commercial gallery. I was interested in using the commercial gallery and the art fair booth, as spaces where one could develop discourses and not only products. I guess I also tried to inject some of the spontaneity developed with 24/7 within the commercial world.

QUESTIONING THE TRADITIONAL MODEL OF THE WHITE CUBE

P.B. -I suppose that your background as an artist has encouraged you to find new ways of engaging with art beyond the traditional boundaries of the gallery. Traditionally the gallery has been centered on its exhibition space and long opening hours. What is your experience in this sense and how do you envision a possible change for future galleries, especially now that the economy is not booming?

P.d.l.B. -Before showing my own work within exhibition formats, which I did from the mid 1990s to the early 2000s, I was trained as an architect! I’ve also done my own magazine and at the moment I’m obsessed with blogging. So I guess this jumping between disciplines has been part of my practice, which is not limited to a space or format. I have always been interested in artists or people who jump between disciplines. In Mexico, Olivier Debroise was a great influence. He was an art historian, and also a curator, and a film maker and a novelist. Dominique Gonzalez Foerster has also been a great influence. She does installations, and also films, architecture and even Balenciaga shops! When I started doing the gallery I knew nothing about the commercial aspects of the art world, and I was interested in exploring them. For some curators there seems to be an unbridgeable gap between the aesthetic and the commercial aspects. I’m interested in artists who dealt with the commercial format as part of their work: Duchamp selling Brancusi in order to survive; Dan Graham’s John Daniel Gallery; Meyer Vaisman’s International with Monument Gallery or the involvement of intelligent curators within commercial galleries, like Guy Brett with Signals (which he also did with artist David Medalla); Charles Esche in The Modern Institute and Adam Szymczyk within Foksal, and Michy Marxuach with MM Proyects. You also have the case of artists being the backers of their galleries, like the case of Gabriel Orozco with Kurimanzutto in Mexico and Ernetso Neto with Gentil Carioca in Rio de Janeiro. I’m also interested in gallerists who stopped being gallerists like the case of Seth Sieglaub or Gregorio Magnani, (funnily enough both developed an interest in Oriental carpets!) or Emi Fontana with West of Rome. There are also curators who work for collectors or who influence the market value of an artist by exhibiting him/her. So relationships in the art world are not that innocent, and go beyond a good-bad dichotomy.

So going back to your question. Yes, I think that the traditional concept of the white cube gallery needs to be continuously questioned. In my own experience, after three years of curating a commercial space, the format tends to become boring. You fall into the risk of starting to repeat yourself and having your artists repeat themselves. It also becomes a huge ball of snow that continues growing; the expenses become huge, which means you have to sell more! On the other hand there is something admirable about gallerists. It is their commitment to work with an artist for a longer time period. You know, many curators do an exhibition with an artist and then they move on to the next one. I guess the question is not only about exhibition formats, but also about how to sustain intelligent curating and artistic practices.

At the moment I’m involved with a new project, the COOPERATIVA INTERNACIONAL TROPICAL, a group of freely associated artists which can exist as a space or not, which can appear and disappear, do projects in different locations and spaces, exist on the Internet and do fairs or not. I guess this cuts down on costs, and more importantly avoids falling into the trap of having to fill a space with objects and an exhibition program. In the future, I see INTERNACIONAL TROPICAL evolving into something else, maybe like a moving kunsthalle…

P.B. -You participated with Blow de la Barra at different art fairs like NADA in Miami, ZOO in London, ARCO Madrid, FIAC Paris, MACO Mexico, CIRCA Puerto Rico, ARTATHINA in Athens and LA OTRA in Bogota. Are art fairs profitable in your opinion or more of a tool for representing artists internationally?

P.d.l.B. -I guess what I found interesting about art fairs was the possibility of fast curating, the idea of rapidly assembling in a temporary space a series of tensions or ideas existing in artists’ works. Art fairs are also professional trade fairs, so part of the excitement that comes from them is the possibility for the rapid exchange and meeting of different professionals. But art fairs are also exhausting, and many times you see so much bad art together in one booth. Plus, it’s also difficult to get a sense of the work of an artist from a booth presentation. Then you have all of this “art fair art” made only to be sold in art fairs, which is not always the best or the most interesting. It’s also not best for the art works, which are shipped from one place to another, from one fair to another, many being damaged in the process. Then again, if there’s something I admire in gallerists, it is their capacity to survive during a week in the horrible atmosphere of most fairs - within badly built walls, with bad illumination and horrible artificial climates which are too cold or too hot, with the stress of achieving a sale - and then still have the capacity to party!

P.B. -If the 90s was the “the age of the biennial,” this decade could be framed as “the art fair age,” which kicked off with the advent of Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB) in 2002. You visited Miami many times and Miami has become an example of this “art fair madness.” Due to the economic situation, many galleries are severely downsizing their participation in art fairs. Up till now many art fairs just acted as real estate agents hiring space to galleries but hardly adding value.

P.d.l.B. -I think the art fair needs to reinvent itself. With Miami Basel, Samuel Keller was instrumental and admirable in reinventing the art fair as a place where money and glamour would meet art. It was also a historic moment of escapism in a country involved in a war and living in a bubble economy and a reality built on negation. Art life presented itself as one form of escapism, as a way to negate what was really happening. The Bush model busted, and around the same time Keller left the boat, aware that the champagne bubbles would not continue fizzing for much longer…

ART FAIR STRATEGIES AND LOCAL MARKETS

P.B. -Many galleries lack a clear strategy on a mid-term basis. Let me explain myself: If you want to participate in NADA or VOLTA, maybe you shouldn’t participate in Scope or Preview. What do you consider a dealer should take into consideration when he or she selects an art fair?

P.d.l.B -I don’t want to sound pretentious, but I think there are different kinds of fairs for different kinds of tastes, budgets and collectors. If you want your artists to work with intelligent curators and be part of intelligent museum collections, then you should better think about which art fairs you would like to participate in, but then again maybe you should rethink with which artists you are engaging. But we must also not fool ourselves. Not all artists in art collections or showing in Art Basel are good, even if they have a market value. We should also be aware that some art fairs are controlled by snobbish directors or gallery groups who play a kind of game of exclusion in which you are, or you are not part of their group.

P.B. -China has not really kicked off, and Dubai hasn’t either. Having said that, what do you consider the most appropriate markets/art fairs from a strategic point of view for galleries right now?

P.d.l.B -The immediate one would be to work on your local market, work with collectors of your region, and save in transport costs. I believe times of crisis are also times of reflection. It’s important to use this time to think, and to create strategies to be developed in the near future, to create exhibitions that respond accordingly, which are more intelligent exhibitions and less junk exhibitions. It is not about filling space, framing works, and producing without thinking.

P.B. -Art fairs have become important curatorial platforms in recent years and some projects, like “Frieze Art Projects” or “Art Unlimited,” have the budget and the will to compete with museum exhibitions. You yourself have been very active as a curator within art fairs. Is this trend a desirable one in your opinion or are we just mixing concepts which should be kept separate?

P.d.l.B. -It is interesting that - in the context of London, where most non-commercial galleries act as franchises of commercial ones, repeating the program shown by the commercial galleries - during its first three years of existence, Frieze Art Projects, curated by Polly Staple, had one of the most interesting exhibition programs in London, and that this would happen within the context of the exhibition fair, while being intelligent enough to question the format of the art fair! Art Unlimited provides for a similar but different situation. Here the projects are less about institutional critique of the art fair, and more about escaping the constraint of the collage of works that are shown within the booth. Yes, it would be interesting to see more solo artist presentations and more art projects within the art fairs, but this is sometimes not the most economically profitable. The question again is how to sustain these practices, and who should pay the bill.

P.B. -Do you think the trend towards smaller “curated” art fairs will persist? Is that maybe an option for young galleries, as these curated sections are normally cheaper and conceptually more interesting?

P.d.l.B.- This trend exists. Peripheric art fairs do act as kind of “boutique” fairs where fewer galleries present the opportunity for collectors and the public to better engage with the proposals presented and with more quality time. Again, in economic terms, this is sometimes not the best, as the local markets are also smaller and sometimes not enough to support the market, and you don’t get all the international collectors.

P.B. -Besides art fairs, are there new ways of making the gallery and its artists known to the public?

P.d.l.B -I believe in the Internet as a powerful tool. For me, having a blog (http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.com) has become an important instrument to showcase and give continuity to a series of artists and proposals which I consider to be important. It also gives visibility to other everyday aspects of the art world.

P.B. -The fact is that many galleries are complaining because visitors are going less and less to art galleries and sales are going down as well. Does this mean that the dealer’s “field work” and ways of selling art is changing?

P.d.l.B -I guess so!

P.B. -One of your next curatorial projects is the CIRCA LABS during the art fair CIRCA Puerto Rico? What can be expected?

P.d.l.B. -At the moment of writing this, we are still finalizing negotiations for what could happen there. Puerto Rico is a very interesting context with very interesting artistic practices coming from there, from Allora and Calzadilla, to Bubu Negrón, Chemi Rosado and Carolina Caycedo, and including those Puerto Rican artists that live in New York, like Enoc Pérez, Jose Lerma and Ignacio Lang, among others. However, it also lives under a “cultural embargo,” which is part of the result of being a commonwealth of the United States, where they have the benefit of the dollar and the US passport, but also receive some of the worst of American culture.
So going back to CIRCA LABS, I was invited by Celina Nogueras to collaborate with the fair, which I believe is an opportunity to do something exciting on the island. In its third edition, the LABS existed as a container situation where art projects were shown. This year, Celina would like to invite interesting international galleries to participate in the containers, while also being interested in exhibiting affordable art. The question again is how to sell affordable art while paying the expenses of the fair, which include participation fees, air transport to get there, transport of the art works and expenses there. I would like to think of the LABS as a laboratory to explore possible cultural scenarios in Puerto Rico, as a kind of village fair/market/open museum, where galleries could take over the containers and have them become rooms of a kunsthalle in Puerto Rico, which is needed there but doesn’t exist - a kind of public area where different local artists or organizations could take over the space, and have tables or market stalls where they could exhibit or sell their proposals. There would also be a space with hammocks, a space for concerts, a bulletin board for proposals and maybe some screening place. I guess the LABS could provide an opportunity to envision other possibilities for cultural life in Puerto Rico and for a different scenario of how the market and culture could coexist.

P.B. -It was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for your time.