We have the pleasure to open the doors of H2O, one of the most popular galleries from Barcelona city, where the exhibitions are by contemporary international artists, and speak with Joaquim Ruiz Millet, the director and the head of gallery and one of the co-participants of this project. Would you like to get in?
How you define your gallery?
Like a litmus paper.
which is the moment that you like most about your job
When the sensitive proposal gathers a strong poetical content.
Do you detect changes in the profile of the current buyer compared to a few years ago??
Basically the current buyer is still somebody who accumulates money and decides on what he spends it, in this case on a privileged and prestigious market of great added value.
What do you look closely at when choosing an artist?
At their capacity of becoming a world of their own.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to open a gallery today?
Persistence and resistance while the adventure lasts.
Which is for you the future of art galleries?
To bind together to what is moving and defend what escapes from the trend.
In your opinion, how has the Internet in general influenced the direction of the art world?
Before there was a gallery and the Internet was outside, it was an extension. Now the Internet is the Network and the gallery is the extension.
And, why are so many gallerists wary of adapting to e-Commerce and solid online promotion?
Music and text, for instance, got to transform the idea of ownership of a thing, a vinyl or a book, into a download, the usufruct of its energy.
Do you think in the future art dealers will conduct most of their business online rather than in brick & mortar spaces?
Dealers will be progressively substituted by structures where interaction between authors and people will be more fluent.
What advice do you have for artists who haven’t find yet a gallery representation– should they sit back, create, and wait for that day to come… or should they focus on self-marketing their art work?
I am interested in the first, but short-term the second works better. The market’s tempo is quick and volatile.
Is there anything negative that you can think of in regards to artists selling art on their own– anything that can be hurtful later down the road if picked up by a gallery? What do artists need to keep in mind when selling solo?
If an artist has no other commitments than those he has with himself, then no. The price of any item is only a market issue. What needs to be considered is that the final purchase value of the artwork must be unique, regardless the many and diverse agents who participate in its commercialization and the territorial context where it takes place.
