In the second part of the series, I spoke with Matt Kennedy Director of the prestigious La Luz De Jesus Gallery, and the new endeavor of Gallery 30 South. Matt has some wonderful insights into the role the gallery plays in working with artists from concept to presentation, as well as the psychology of dealing with a multitude of issues that cross his path along the way. If you are looking to show work, if you have ever wondered how work is chosen, or if you simply want to know how galleries choose the work and concepts they show, I think you will find Matt’s thoughts quite enlightening.
“I've been doing this long enough that I think I have a good idea of how far we can push the envelope, and certainly on occasion the crowd hasn't followed us as far out as we had hoped, but the requirements that we have at La Luz de Jesus Gallery of the work being both figurative and narrative allows for a wide range of styles and genres and we've earned a reputation for breaking new ground that our clientele seems to enjoy. My involvement with each artist varies greatly from show to show. Sometimes I'll give assignments, like with Sean Stepanoff I requested that he apply his comic, illustrated style to the Ghanaian barbershop sign but as a means of showcasing local and current pop culture in a semi-scathing way. That has become what he's known for now. With Sean Berke, it's much more of a series of studio visits to select from multiple works-in-progress to help him decide which pieces to finish first as a looming deadline limits the number of oil paintings that can be finished in the allotted time.
Other times my interaction is limited to seeing someone's work and asking them to deliver a certain number of pieces, or keeping to certain size and pricing requirements. With a few artists, I'll recommend a musical playlist or film or book or lecture if it seems to fit with their theme. But it's important to know that some artists have a very specific process, and sometimes that process doesn't lend itself to collaboration. Sometimes that's a good thing, but since this is a commercial gallery and not a museum the goal is to sell the art, not just showcase it. At La Luz de Jesus we don't show much high-concept art because it hasn't performed well with our clientele. For me high concept needs to also be high craft, or it's just not interesting to me.
If I'm concerned about my ability to sell an artists' work I'll get a good sense of what their boundaries are with a conversation, and if it doesn't seem like a good fit, I'm not going to extend an invitation to feature them. There are many artists whose work I can easily sell, but with whom I have no interest in working. Neil Gaiman once said in a commencement speech that as a creative freelancer, if you are a pleasure to be around, always deliver on time, and have talent that you will always find employment, and he confesses that any two of those things is generally good enough. As I get older, I want to deal with unpleasant and punctuality challenged people less and less. Reliability is far and away the most important quality in this business, and second chances are rare.
The psychology involved with artists as it pertains to a gallery director's relationship with an artist is not only going to be unique to each gallery but unique in each individual case. I don't have a set-in-stone process that can be applied to everyone. If there was a sort of blanket method that could be utilized, I think we'd all be using it but that sounds a bit bland. I don't think that body language, speech or any other scientific criteria is going to tell me more than I can learn from a conversation with an artist about their work and their expectations. I know quickly whether I want I want to work with someone. It's easy to figure out if someone is going to be hard to work with, and so if I identify that up front, and I still choose to work with them I have measured out the reward to be greater than the expense of mental energy. That reward need not be financial, it could be a spiritual reward, it could just be an exhibition I want to see realized.
Motivation is an interesting concept because sometimes one doesn't realize what motivates them. They may think it's money, but it may be respect. They may think it's acclaim, and realize that it's personal growth. Often it involves a mixture of peer and consumer validation. I encourage every artist to dig deep inside their own psyche and figure out what their motivation is. The sooner they know, the happier they'll be because they'll be able to focus on that goal and not aimlessly strive in many different directions. As a director, I'll ask an artist what they want from an exhibition and whatever their answer I usually phrase it back to them as a question, and if they change their answer I know that they have a bit of soul searching, and I am probably better off delaying or declining an exhibition. If my goal isn't their goal, I can't succeed for them. That is a guaranteed set up for failure.
Criticism must be solicited and it has to be constructive for it to succeed. If I get the sense that an artist can't take criticism, I probably don't want to work with them. To a lesser degree, an inability to take direction can be a handicap, but if an artist is following my every direction, why is it their name on the wall and not mine? I want to work with artists who have a clear vision, so that my job is to help find the right patron for that vision and to let them know if there are slight adjustments that make that easier to do. Sometimes the work is perfect but the audience hasn't caught on yet. In some respect, what we strive for is to be as in tune with the zeitgeist as possible because that's financially lucrative, but that also runs the risk of being too much of the moment in which it was created. If an artist is mindful of legacy and still able to sell work, they can buy themselves a degree of freedom and stability that would otherwise be elusive.
As a gallery director, I sometimes serve as a placebo confidant, priest, rabbi, or therapist and I have absolutely had to talk artists off the proverbial ledge in the wee hours of the morning. I think that a lot of people would be surprised at how many actual life or death situations have hinged on the actions of a curator. And unfortunately, there are probably a lot of curators who don't realize it, either. I don't think that honesty must be brutal, and taste is so subjective that the notion of absolutes can change by address. I am generally careful to stress that I am only concerned with whether an art work fits the space I curate and the program I have planned. That's not to say that something that doesn't work here won't work elsewhere, but it's up to the artist to find that at another place. Quite often artists submit without reading submission guidelines or reply to courteous rejections with defensiveness or outright rudeness, which is self-destructive. Not everybody is talented, but not all successful artists are particularly talented, so I choose to address only whether a piece works for me.
In a sense, emerging artists can be easier to work with because they haven't developed many bad habits yet, but I prefer to work with art school kids because they've faced years of criticism and developed a thick skin. A lot of self-taught artists have only the feedback of family and friends, which is the least honest type of feedback and can lead to very bad decisions and misconceptions about the demand for the work. A few successes can turn a pleasant, punctual and talented artist into a lazy, unreliable jerk, but at a certain point the shortcomings edge into the work and the market notices and people either get back down to earth or fizzle out. That's less common with institutionally educated artists. The biggest problem is when an artist confuses ego with integrity, because at the end of the day a gallery has final say over what hits their walls, and if the artist and gallery don't have good communication neither will be happy. I try to be clear about what is expected and address my expectations right up front, and I encourage artists to do the same. That's worked out well for me thus far. In certain circles, I have a reputation for being able to work well with "difficult" people, but I certainly don't go looking for difficult people to represent. Still, the track records speak for themselves, and La Luz de Jesus Gallery has launched literally thousands of careers.
My new endeavor, Gallery 30 South, is run concurrently with La Luz de Jesus and it's more of a personal space for my wife and I, where we get to be much more experimental. We've shown abstract expressionists, installation art, video and performance–all the things that wouldn't work at La Luz de Jesus. I've been reaching out to mid and late career artists to generate a new context for their work, frequently pairing them with emerging artists in a kind of curated conversation. Many of my friends are better known for something aside from their visual art, and Gallery 30 South gives me a venue to present that work in the right environment as the new creative hub in Pasadena, which has an incredibly rich art history. I'll be showcasing Torben Ulrich in November, a multidisciplinary artist whose history can be traced back to the CoBrA happenings in the late 1940s–which he attended and where he sometimes performed in an improvisational jazz ensemble. It's unfathomable to me that at 88 years old he's remained such a well kept secret, and showcasing such important overlooked work is the realization of a dream for me. Isn't that every gallerist's dream?