Everything changes, in art as in life. It is still early to predict what the main changes derived from covid-19 will be and in what sense they will operate, but we can already see how the health crisis has accelerated other processes that were already brewing.
In the context of contemporary art galleries, these changes led us to the polarization between a few powerful international franchises and a constellation of small establishments focused on emerging or local artists, all of them on a constant pilgrimage from fair to fair, well that's where the operations were really closed. In contrast, sales within permanent spaces were a marginal part of the business. In parallel to this, online billing has not stopped growing, although it has not yet reached such a significant proportion: according to the market report commissioned by the Art Basel fair to the expert Clare McAndrew, in 2019 internet art sales accounted for 9% of the total. However, it remains to be seen how much this proportion rises in 2020, with the physical spaces closed and, above all, with most of the fair agenda canceled or on hold.
Back in the material world, the headquarters of the Hauser & Wirth gallery in Menorca is one of the most stimulating art and architecture projects that have recently been undertaken in our country. Since the news of its opening was announced almost a year ago, the expectation has not stopped growing, and with good reason. For years becoming one of those great franchises that we were talking about before, Hauser & Wirth already had spaces in Zurich, London, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Somerset (England) and the ski resorts of Gstaad and Saint Moritz , in Switzerland. Among those represented are artists such as Jenny Holzer, Paul McCarthy or Louise Bourgeois. In addition, in our country he has collaborated in the reopening of Chillida Leku, the art center dedicated to the work of the sculptor Eduardo Chillida, whose legacy he also represents.
Opening in virtual reality
This same summer, the new center was scheduled to open, located in an eighteenth-century military hospital on King's Island, in the port of Mahón. But those responsible for the gallery confirm that the dates they now manage take us until the spring of 2021. However, at the end of this month - the exact date has not yet been closed - we will be able to enjoy an advance by work and grace of virtual reality.
HWVR ( Hauser & Wirth Virtual Reality ) is a project developed through ArtLab, the research and innovation program created by the gallery to explore the intersections between art and technology. It is a computer tool that will allow the gallery exhibitions to be developed and viewed in a 3D digital environment. And for its presentation to the public, a virtual exhibition has been chosen precisely in the Menorcan space, which is still under construction outside of digital screens. It is planned to keep the exhibition online until the end of 2020.
Argentine architect Luis Laplace is the author of the reform that is adapting the hospital to the needs of an art center. As a regular contributor to Hauser & Wirth, he has already taken it upon himself to update Chillida Leku, and has now worked alongside the HWVR developer team. In a phone conversation from his studio in Paris, he tells us what will look like what we will be able to see in a couple of weeks: "As an architect, I am used to working with 3D tools that allow me to obtain a very realistic but static image, but this is not This is the case now. Here the image is almost a video game, dynamic, which will allow the public to tour the space, see how the pieces are integrated into it, contemplate them from further or closer, surround them, etc. There is expectation to see the result, also from us. "
Iwan Wirth, one of the gallery's owners along with his wife Manuela Wirth and her mother, the collector Ursula Hauser, expresses her confidence in this result. "Hauser & Wirth has a deep-rooted belief in innovation, that is part of our DNA," he explains. "And we see this new tool as a game changer for our artists and the industry."
Online art: the new normal?
Beyond the impact of his project, Wirth considers that the activity of the galleries is facing imminent changes that the new times have been in charge of activating: "This crisis differs from all the others in that we cannot physically meet, so It has revealed the need for better tools to connect remotely. The web, social networks, virtual reality and teleconferencing will help us reinvent ourselves and reconfigure ourselves. We have verified this ourselves with the success of our online exhibitions : that of the artist George Condo sold it completely in a matter of minutes, and we hope the same will happen with the next one, by Rashid Johnson. " 10% of the profits from these exposures will be donated to the covid-19 Response Fund of the World Health Organization.
Although it is the most mediatic, Hauser & Wirth is not the only art gallery that these days has developed online projects . Given the impossibility of exhibiting and selling on site or at fairs - not to mention the global contraction of the market in the face of economic uncertainty - the survival of these businesses is strongly compromised. So there was no other choice than to sharpen your wits and adapt the activity to the new situation.
Along these lines, Carlier Gebauer (with offices in Berlin and Madrid) has created The Breakfast Club , an initiative in which every Sunday there is the collaboration of a different curator or critic to set up a virtual exhibition with artists from the gallery . So far, Italian Domenico de Chirico, Belgian Louis-Philippe Van Eeckhoutte and whoever writes these lines have intervened as guests.
Victoria Solano , director of the gallery's Spanish headquarters, issues her own predictions: "Digital channels, which were possibly underused, will be used more to discover artists, and surely many online activities that have emerged these days will continue after the confinement However, I believe that when making sales, the direct and personal relationship will continue to prevail, it will return to the local and one-to-one relationship between gallery owner and artist. "
In our country, another of the pioneers was the Madrid gallery Sabrina Amrani, which launched its Online Viewing Rooms program , which broadcast the video Geometry Popular , by the Cuban artist Dagoberto Rodríguez through its website . The programming has continued with new virtual samples by Joël Andrianomearisoa and Mónica de Miranda and yesterday it was launched with a collective.
Galleries such as Espacio Valverde have also developed online initiatives with their own personality, which invites the public to make works following the instructions of their artists; The Ryder, with the program #TheRYDERatHOME; or Álvaro Alcázar, Mi Casa , for whom he even edits a catalog in pdf format.
Although perhaps the most peculiar is No place Like Home , the exhibition just opened by the Valencian gallery Espai Tactel. Its owners, Ismaël Chappaz and Juanma Menero, live in the back room of the gallery itself, which has allowed them to display a group show of several of their artists in the usual physical space. The public, of course, only accesses it through the images disseminated on the website.
This time the idea is to resume normal activity when the concept of normal itself has been redefined. In the words of Chappaz and Menero: "The exhibition is not a mere artifact for covering online content , but rather a resumption of our activity within the framework of this new normality." So, under this model, the virtual is a simple medium for the diffusion of a material reality, as it was before the crisis.
In this sense, the diagnosis made by Iwan Wirth is fulfilled: "I have always believed that art and life are inseparable. In any case, artists and other creative people have always been used to inspire themselves in difficult times."