{"id":1065,"date":"2021-07-14T08:16:04","date_gmt":"2021-07-14T00:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/?p=1065"},"modified":"2021-07-13T10:19:28","modified_gmt":"2021-07-13T02:19:28","slug":"dealer-friedrich-petzel-expands-in-chelsea-we-dont-need-to-have-a-global-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/dealer-friedrich-petzel-expands-in-chelsea-we-dont-need-to-have-a-global-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"Dealer Friedrich Petzel Expands in Chelsea: \u2018We Don\u2019t Need to Have a Global Empire\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the art world was in lockdown, dealer\u00a0Friedrich Petzel<\/a>\u00a0was thinking big. In a few years\u2019 time, he will move his New York gallery to a new building a few blocks north of his current location on 18th Street. He\u2019ll more than double his current square footage, adding over 22,000 square feet, and add room a bookstore (unlike the relatively small one at 18th Street) and a rooftop sculpture garden. He\u2019ll also have three floors at a location that formerly served as the home of SIR recording studios. Right now, many\u00a0Chelsea galleries<\/a>\u00a0are relocating to Tribeca. But Petzel is sticking with the neighborhood.<\/em><\/p>\n

Petzel has been in business in New York for almost 30 years, first in SoHo, then in Chelsea. He has a second space uptown, on 64th Street, and he runs a Berlin gallery, Capitain Petzel, in collaboration with dealer Gisela Capitain. Last week, Petzel spoke with\u00a0<\/em>ARTnews\u00a0about his upcoming move. In the following\u00a0<\/em>interview, he discusses the importance of flexible space, his vision for his gallery, and his post-pandemic doubling-down on showing real art in the real world.<\/em><\/p>\n

ARTnews:<\/strong>\u00a0When did you start thinking about expanding? When did you realize you needed to move up to a to a bigger space?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Friedrich Petzel:<\/strong>\u00a0We started talking about this expansion two or three years ago. I\u2019d become known as a painting gallery, a lot of painters show with me. But I had a vision to open it up to various different fields and as we added artists to the to the program, like Samson Young, a younger artist whose work has performative elements and musical elements. I thought: We need different types of exhibition spaces that allow for two or three different types of viewing experiences. In the end, we weren\u2019t able to do that on 18th street.<\/p>\n

Secondly, there is my bookstore. Everybody at the gallery makes fun of me for it, but I really would like to have my bookstore back. The bookstore on 18th Street was always an afterthought. It was a loading dock that was retrofitted. At the end of the day, this is a service. It\u2019s important for the public to have a bookstore. It\u2019s important to have a different experience of what my artists are able to do, via books and other publications. And what\u2019s around? There\u2019s 192 Books. And Hauser & Wirth\u2019s bookstore\u2014they aren\u2019t going to show my artists! So I\u2019ll do it myself.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thirdly, we have quite a few collectors interested in outdoor sculpture. I didn\u2019t get the permits to exhibit on my 18th Street rooftop. On 25th Street, we are not going to plunk down 20 sculptures on the rooftop, but we\u2019ll do four or five well-conceived [ones], and then I can bring my collectors up.<\/p>\n

How do you think galleries like yours are changing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Galleries these days are becoming like institutions, with things like outdoor sculpture gardens. In the old days, galleries didn\u2019t do that. We show performances. We have bookstores, we publish. We have a lecture series, which we want to do more thoroughly in the new space.<\/p>\n

You chose to double down on Chelsea at a time when lots of galleries have migrated from there to Tribeca. What made you want to stay? Does it all really come down to the kind of space and amount of space you can get, and maybe location is secondary?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s all about finding the space. As long as the conditions provided for my artists to do the best they can, I didn\u2019t care what New York neighborhood the space was in. There was nothing on the market that compared to this. If I were a younger gallery, I would probably be a little less concerned and more experimental but at a certain level. But who cares about neighborhoods? It\u2019s about art.<\/p>\n

Fifteen<\/b>\u00a0years is a relatively long lease for Chelsea, I\u2019d think.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019d wanted to buy a building, or have a lease of 20 years or longer. We ended up at 15. I needed a long-term commitment because we plan shows two or three years in advance.<\/p>\n

What was it like, thinking about this expansion during all of the uncertainty brought on by the pandemic?<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the end of the day, the pandemic can\u2019t stop me, and it can\u2019t stop my artists from doing what they do best. In some respects, the pandemic made us really restructure the gallery. We didn\u2019t fire people, we hired more people to restructure the way we operate with a new finance department and marketing department. The pandemic gave me more time to think about how to move forward. When you are running from one fair to another, and then to a museum opening, you don\u2019t have time to really think. This time allowed me to step back and think about what I\u2019m going to do for the next 15, 20 years.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an interesting time to expand because it seems to me it\u2019s happening at the same time that some people are saying, \u201cWe can do some stuff in the virtual space and maybe we don\u2019t need to have these big spaces.\u201d It seems like you\u2019re making a bold move in favor of having a lot of space.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For 15\u201318 months now, we\u2019ve been working virtually, and it works, to some extent. It\u2019s definitely something that has kept us rolling. But I also learned from those 18 months that I\u2019m a showman. I like to exhibit artworks in the real world. I wouldn\u2019t necessarily recommend this type of expansion if my gallery were elsewhere than New York. I think New York is still the place to exhibit art for most of the international audience, whether they\u2019re from L.A., but also Asia or Europe<\/a>. People come to New York twice or three times a year, maybe a little bit less often than they used to in the past, but the auctions and all this kind of stuff. So think about it. I mean, do I need that type of space in the outskirts of Paris? Probably not. But in New York, you want to show up in the real world.<\/p>\n

For my gallery, we don\u2019t need to have a global empire of 14 or 15 spaces. We want to have three good galleries, great artists, and a certain sense of substance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source\uff1ahttps:\/\/www.artnews.com\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While the art world was in lockdown, dealer\u00a0Friedrich Petzel\u00a0was thinking big. In a few years\u2019 time, he will move his New York gallery to a new building a few blocks north of his current location on 18th Street. He\u2019ll more than double his current square footage, adding over 22,000 square feet, and add room a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13,7,4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artist","8":"category-auction","9":"category-events","10":"category-gallery","11":"category-latest-news"},"yoast_head":"\nDealer Friedrich Petzel Expands in Chelsea: \u2018We Don\u2019t Need to Have a Global Empire\u2019 - Investable Art Auctioneer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"While the art world was in lockdown, dealer\u00a0Friedrich Petzel\u00a0was thinking big. 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