“You really have to buy work that you connect with.”
The culture of collecting can really be anything. It doesn’t necessarily have to be blue-chip artwork. Someone can equally collect vintage sports programs, magazines, etc. Is there a particular thing you collect outside of art that speaks to you?
I have another bad habit and that’s design. Since I’m redoing my house right now, I’m obsessed with design. I look at design in the same way I look at art. I want things that are based off history or tell a story. A lot of the furniture that I’ve connected with happens to be French Mid-Century Modern. It goes so well with art, because they are art pieces on their own. Like art, I have an addiction of sourcing and finding new designers.
Green River Project, they are a contemporary design firm making beautiful work. It’s a fun journey going into these design studios and meeting the designers, if they’re still around, and seeing what their inspiration is — or going to auction houses and design warehouses and sorting through things, reading and find things that connect and tell a story, but also work off of what I’m building in terms of art collecting. They all need to work together to tell a story.
What is your advice for an aspiring collector, who say, is looking to get into the field but is intimidated by the exorbitant prices of some of these artworks?
It’s really hard to figure out where to start. Buying your first piece is the biggest struggle for most people. It’s like, ‘where do I start? What should be my first piece?’ Once you start buying things, it becomes an easier process, and along the way you can create a vision of what you really connect with. I think you have to buy work that you connect with that obviously is affordable to your price range. At the end of the day, the art market is something that comes and goes — there’s ups-and-downs. You can’t really buy based off that. Sure you can, but you really have to buy work that you connect with and means something to you, you want to live with, is beautiful or challenging to you.
A lot of the art world is based off influence and what other people tell you to buy — it’s great to work with someone you share a vision with. But it’s finding work that you connect with, especially in the process of doing that, anyone who wants to start collecting, you have to see everything. Go to every show, if there is an artist you like on Instagram, ask to go to their studio — I do it all the time — eventually they’ll say yes. You have to go to institutions and museums too.
I studied art history at NYU and you have to understand what came before and what the inspirations are. Is it a mere extension of something that came before? It’s understanding the greater world of it and I’m not saying to go all the way back to the cave paintings, but go look at works from the 20th Century. Artists of the generation before the artists working now and how they inspire this generation. To be able to talk about your work in that kind of context is important.
Just experiencing art with your eyes or collecting through books.
There are so many different ways you can collect. Exactly, there are artists that I love that I can’t buy their art, so I buy their books. I don’t really buy prints and multiples, but you can definitely do that and it’s a way to begin creating a vision or living with something that inspires you.
All photos by Shawn Ghassemitari for HypeArt.