There is tension at the heart of the commercial art world. On the one hand, a gallerist will persuade you that art is an investment, and that the work that costs just more than you are comfortable paying will be more loved and valued with each passing year. And on the other hand, gallerists and collectors alike are addicted to novelty. Missing out on the next big thing can provoke adult tantrums.
Hauser & Wirth deals in works by legacy names like Louise Bourgeois and Philip Guston, as well as a starry menu of living artists. This season, its Somerset branch is embracing the new with Present Tense, a survey of emerging-ish artists working in the UK. None of the 23 artists in the show is represented by Hauser & Wirth – all have instead been plucked from the rosters of younger galleries. I imagine for these independent galleries the experience has a swimming-with-sharks quality: an exciting opportunity from which they hope to emerge with all of their artists still attached.
