- Venue
- Phillips de Pury
- Location
I could get quite addicted to commercial galleries. Is that so wrong? It may be the secondary art market, and quite outside the realm of contemporary art practice as it is hewn, but as a way of seeing swathes of artworks, beautifully presented and in pristine condition, ready to sell, they remain a valuable art resource.
Phillips de Pury is a vast white space that any artist would love to get their hands on. Recent work mixes with genuine classics. It’s not always easy to see photographs from Henri Cartier-Bresson or Edward Weston, as galleries tend to limit what they have on show, and rotate their collection within one area. Genuine prints fill in so much more detail than reproductions or printed images, and you can see at a glance why Weston was a superior photographer even besides his innovations in speed photography.
Photography seems to age differently to other art, but back to contemporary concerns. Putting framed photos on the walls, whether or not for selling, creates an uncurated, uncontextualised exhibition, full of juxtapositions and happy accidents. Personally I love to see old and new together, and find it a fruitful context in which to place new art, as it picks out and recreates ideas.
It also gives an insight into how the art world works. Just the other week in Graves Gallery in Sheffield I saw the Sam Taylor-Wood piece Self Portrait Suspended VII, 2004. Here is a print for sale, edition no 5 of 7, estimate price £10,000 to £15,000. It’s a whole other way of indexing art, rather than through ideas or art values.
Looking at the photographs in this way allows the images primacy. Without the text or presentation of the artist or curator, the eye can pick out preferences, detail, quality. If art fairs are places where people go to look at art and the art market, commercial galleries exhibiting works they are about to auction allow more space in between the pieces and a less frenetic atmosphere to ponder them before collectors take them out of public view.
Showing alongside Joseph Sudek, Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newtonand Linda McCartney are newer artists Desiree Dolron, Florian Maier-Aichen, Jorma Puranen, Robert Polidaori, Sam Taylor Wood and Sebastião Salgado Salgado, amongst many others.
