Pin Gallery Jin Xiuhua: cooperating with artists in the long term direction Artist gallery fast-track design

Established in April 2011, Pin Gallery has quickly attracted the attention of many people inside and outside the industry in a short period of time. From the location of the gallery - the central square of 798 main street, to the gallery area - a magnificent space of 2300 square meters, to the cooperative artists - Fang Lijun, Yang Maoyuan, Shen Shaomin, Chen Wenling, Jiang Zhi, Wang Yinyin, Xiaoyu, Shu Qun and other big-name artists, all of them are big moves and big strokes. And it all comes from a young gallery owner, Jin Xiuhua.

Jin Xuhua was originally the director of Alario Gallery, and after leaving Alario at the end of 2010, she began to prepare for the establishment of Pin Gallery. Since the opening of the gallery, it has been built into a landmark gallery in 798 in just over a year. The financial background is one of the reasons, and the other reason is that Kim has a wealth of experience in working with famous artists from home and abroad. When she was a curator at Arario, she hosted Fang Lijun's solo exhibitions in Beijing and elsewhere. After the establishment of Pin Gallery, she continued to lead the team in organizing heavyweight promotions, exhibitions, and publications for Fang Lijun and other artists. From the economic crisis of 2008 to the present, the popularity and market prices of these established artists have remained relatively stable, confirming not only the value of the artists' works themselves, but also the value of the Pin Gallery team.

Selecting mature artists

So far, in general, Pin Gallery tends to work with mature artists. From the market level, the works of mature artists have gone through the baptism of the art market for many years, and the value of their works can already be basically recognized, and the prices of their works are more stable; from the level of cooperation, the mature artists are also more mature in mind, and they can be free from the influence of external exhibitions and market conditions, and control the quality of their works better. "I have worked with many different artists over the years, and if an artist doesn't have the ability to adjust his own mindset, it can easily affect his creations, such as not being able to finish a work on schedule on the eve of a solo exhibition. Society can tolerate the artist's changeable character and dispensable control, but it is difficult for the gallery to cooperate with such an artist. Therefore we are willing to cooperate with artists who are mentally more stable and mature." Kim Soo-hwa said.

As a mature artist, in addition to knowing how to control their mentality, they also need to have better professional ethics and know how to trust the gallery that represents them, allowing the gallery to help them guide and control the market for their works. This avoids the artist's personal trading behavior affecting the overall market price of that artist's work. "I attach great importance to the character of the artist, I think the artist's character to a certain extent determines the character of his paintings. This character is not the good or bad of a single piece of work, but the artist's ability to control the work at a certain level for a long time. This is especially important in contemporary art. Because an artist's personality will have a direct impact on the work." Kim Soo-hwa said.

Sometimes the maturity of an artist's mind is not absolutely related to age. Pin Gallery also works with some young artists from Korea and Japan. These artists, though young, already have good control over their works and have full trust in Pin Gallery, even leaving the pricing of their works entirely to the gallery side, while they themselves concentrate on their own creations. Perhaps this also has something to do with the fact that the art market in Japan and South Korea is more mature than in China.

Trust does not come from a contract

The cooperation between galleries and artists is naturally based on full trust. What's interesting about the art market is that it's not like other types of business partnerships, where all sorts of detailed terms and conditions are written into a contract in order to build trust between two parties. The trust between the gallery and the artist is often not brought about by the contract. Jin Xiuhua is one of the gallery people who do not attach much importance to signing contracts with artists: "When a gallery cooperates with an artist, such as signing a five-year contract, it is difficult to list the number of exhibitions and the number of works sold in the five years of cooperation. So I'm not really in favor of signing contracts with artists. Where there's a question about the gallery's work, our artists will bring it up, and then we'll negotiate to finalize the matter with a text that addresses the matter."

Examples of such non-contracts are found throughout the history of the art market. A good benchmark is the American gallery magnate Leo Castelli. Castelli Gallery, which has represented top artists such as Pollock and Andy Warhol, has never signed a contract with any of the artists, but has maintained a lifelong relationship with them. In Jin Xiuhua's opinion, the relationship between galleries and artists is very similar to a marriage: "Two people in a love or marriage relationship must make continuous efforts to each other in order to make the relationship last longer. The relationship between a gallery and an artist is the same, a contract can give each other a sense of belonging, but if the artist relaxes and does not work hard because of this, or the gallery no longer works hard to help the artist to do exhibitions and promotions, it will not work. Both sides have to maintain the original intention of the beginning of the cooperation, in order to let the cooperation continue for a long time."

In fact, the longer the cooperation with the artist, the more the gallery has to do for the artist. On the surface, usually the artist in the studio to create, every once in a while to focus on the exhibition, but in fact the exhibition is just the artist and the gallery for a period of time to show the results of cooperation. From the usual number of the artist's works into the library, to the artist and other galleries, institutions of cooperation and signing, to the artist's documentation of the organization and publication of art exhibitions, the preparation, promotion, implementation, and then to the choice of collectors in the art transaction, as well as tracking the works have been sold the subsequent flow, etc., are galleries have to control and master. "The gallery, as an operator of art, plays the role of a connecting link between the artist and the society, we provide a window for the artist to present his works, and at the same time, we have to deal with the relationship between the society and the artist, which we have to connect fluidly and try to be fair in all aspects." Kim Soo Hwa said. The more the gallery does for the artist, the more the artist bonds with the gallery and trusts it.

Cooperation in the long-term direction

In order to realize long-term cooperation with artists, and also in order to let the represented artists have a long-term development in the art market, Pin Gallery also does some things that are not directly related to the transaction from time to time. In the past year, Pin Gallery has not only cooperated with art museums all over the country and even abroad for exhibitions, but also expanded its vision from the contemporary art scene to a wider range of public **** vision. Following Fang Lijun's solo exhibition with the Today Art Museum in August 2010, Pin Gallery has taken Fang Lijun, as a case study in Chinese contemporary art, to colleges and universities across the country in "Fang Lijun Documenta: Into the Universities," which has traveled to more than a dozen colleges and universities across the country.

"This kind of project takes a lot of time and effort for a gallery, but it's very meaningful to me. Outside of central cities like Beijing and Shanghai, people don't have as much access to contemporary art exhibitions. Many people have a certain misunderstanding about contemporary art. Due to China's specific historical environment, there seems to be a disconnect between contemporary art and traditional Chinese art. However, contemporary art did not just appear out of nowhere for no reason. Through the example of Fang Lijun, a very representative artist in this era, we would like to tell people what contemporary art is. From the case of Fang Lijun, we can see that the growth and creation of the artist is vivid and touching, which is easier for people to accept than a didactic art history. In this way, we let people know that contemporary art is not as difficult to approach and understand as people think, and that the contradictions and struggles experienced by the artist as an individual can be made known in the exhibition." This is how Jin Xuhua introduces the project. The project has been carried out with great support from local governments and colleges and universities, so it has been running relatively smoothly, and at the end of August, they continued to bring the project to Xinjiang, Ningxia, Qinghai and other places.

The choice to exhibit in colleges and universities is also the result of careful consideration by the Pin Gallery team: "College students are a very attractive group of people who have a certain knowledge base and their own opinions, and the market that can be formed in the future will be very large. I hope that our approach will play a role in popularizing contemporary art in China, and I also hope that other galleries and art museums will join us in doing this." Indeed, this unique and innovative approach to exhibitions is not only beneficial to the development of the long-term market for Pin Gallery, which represents Fang Lijun, but also of great significance to the expansion of the entire Chinese art industry and market. It is this kind of long-term planning for the development of artists and galleries that has made Pin Gallery present an aura from the very beginning that is hard to reach for ordinary new galleries. I believe that this is the reason why many artists who also have a long-term plan for their personal art development are willing to cooperate with Pin Gallery.