Stephanie Syjuco’s savvy collaborative project Shadowshop was discussed in detail. Shadow Shop is on view as part of The More Things Change, as a jumping-off point to examine the ways artists attempt to re-structure market conditions to accommodate, support, or help further the social reach of the aesthetic and critical capacities of their work. Great work Stephanie!

Thank you to the presenter’s contextualizing Shadowshop, writer & curator, Christian L. Frock, Shadowshop artist Amanda Hughen, and SFMOMA education and public programs, Megan Brian. The internal workings of this project were discussed, upside & downsides. I compliment your efforts in working with emerging artists. Those artists with professional ambition & vision for their place in the art world, will grow through this venture.

I especially loved Christian Frock’s entrepreneurial push in the art world. Making your own rules for your art practice in terms of production, consumption and dissemination takes forethought and planning. Thinking outside the box in the art world creates new ventures.

The public response has been to engage in these emerging artists wares and respond by buying emerging artists work. The profit of Shadow shop thus far is approx. $86,000. The question in the air was, will the SFMOMA continue to support the emerging artists in their community, via an ongoing Shadow Shop. The art market is changing & entrepreneurial artists will grow their audience in collaboration with each art business opportunity.

The Shadow shop concept, of an artist producing smaller wares, so to speak, to grow their collector audience into the global art market, galleries and institutions is historical. Reinvention, innovation & creative problem solving & thinking are tantamount in an art practice. It’s high time for the artist as entrepreneur, breaking rules & growing the art world in new directions. Each generation shifts with new materials, techniques, technologies, yet maintaining, keeping it fresh & rethinking ones approach to bring their work to new levels of refinement, new audiences, new dialogue. Art & culture is in action in these moments,
evolving through an artists “production, consumption, and dissemination of their work.

Mastering economy and autonomy takes long term vision & strategy. I look forward to further dialogue & opportunities that may come from Shop Talk.

Thank you kindly,

kellyannart.com

Holland Cotter’s piece in the NY Times remains as much of a touchstone today as when it was published in 2009. Given our media cycle and general attention span, that’s notable. Still, even though I liked what he wrote, Cotter’s critique was informed by the sort of ideological naivete that too often undermines actors in the art world. As I wrote in response to his editorial,

“Some admirable artists and dealers experienced great success in the boom market of the late nineties and oughties. Perhaps they wouldn’t have flourished without the opportunities afforded them by the fattened industry? Artists have always had an uneasy relationship with commodity, and there’s little sense in championing lean times over relative abundance. We’re now living through an socio-economic upheaval that is quite nearly global. Such rapid and widespread change should, as Cotter expects, force a significant number of artists to conscientiously reexamine their ideals. But let’s not delude ourselves. The opportunity for reflection and mindful action wasn’t precluded by the excesses and superficialities of boom time. Although some artists, dealers, curators, critics and hangers-on acted improperly because the environment encouraged bad behavior, most did so because they wanted to. So even as I cheer Cotter’s call for us to ‘[imagine] the unknown and the unknowable,’ to raise up ‘new ways of thinking and writing about art,’ and to see artists blazing unexpected paths, I remind myself that the burden of proof falls foremost on the individual.”

But my position is a little changed since 2009, too. Perhaps a group of ambitious, thoughtful artists can, in a group, make some positive change to the market and to the scene? After all, a group is comprised of individuals.