Antwerp gallery owner reflects on 25 years with Luc Tuymans
An exhibition at Zeno X in Antwerp celebrates a quarter-century of partnership with one of Flanders’ most renowned painters
The X factor
I’m walking between two dozen paintings by Luc Tuymans, half of them new, half of them old. Among the latter is my favourite of his, “Der Diagnostische Blick IV”.
The exhibition Scramble: 25 Years of Collaboration celebrates a long-running partnership between Tuymans and Zeno X Gallery. The former is Flanders’ most famous contemporary painter, the latter the region’s number one commercial art gallery. The collaboration started in 1990 – technically 26 years ago – but both parties were too busy to celebrate last year.
Gallery owner Frank Demaegd, who opened Zeno X in 1981, had already bought a work by Tuymans before the artist asked him to represent him. “Despite my interest in painting – I even painted for a short while – I was collaborating with people working in different mediums,” he says. “During the 1980s, showing paintings was almost ‘not done’.”
Return on investment
Then in 1987, Flemish painter Raoul De Keyzer asked Demaegd to represent him. From then, Demaegd embraced painting again. Though he still works with photographers (Dirk Braeckman), sculptors (Mark Manders) and artists who combine almost every possible medium (Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven), his artist roster is mainly painters, including renowned Flemish painter Michaël Borremans, the Amsterdam-based Marlene Dumas and German artist Johannes Kahrs.
“As a former painter, I know very well what it means to create a painting,” Demaegd says. “I think this makes me a slightly better judge of paintings. But deciding to collaborate with an artist is a question of feeling, too. I’m looking for artists who are unique. Take Dumas, Tuymans and Borremans: three very different painters, but they have an unmatched authenticity. Some years ago, Flanders suddenly had a series of Tuymans-like painters. I wasn’t interested in them. I only want the real deal.”
I like to spot a talent, help it bloom – or manage it, if you want – and see how it evolves
It’s a delicate exercise for gallerists to find a balance between their artists. “I’ve heard in the past from some artists that I was too busy with Tuymans and didn’t do enough for them,” says Demaegd. “But it’s important to have a few artists that are doing very well financially. It gives me the leeway to invest in others who are less successful. Big galleries are doing this less and less.”
He illustrates this with an example. “A stand at Art Basel costs me €150,000. That investment won’t be paid back by artists whose works are sold for €5,000. In fact, every work sold for less than €20,000 means a loss for me. Not for the artist, because they get their share. But I can only do this because we have people like Tuymans, Borremans or Dumas.”
Contemporary artists tend to understand this, he stresses, but “all this clearly means that starting a new gallery is a hell of a job”.
Demaegd, who trained as an architect, says that when he was young, he didn’t focus on this financial side. “Passion for art, intuition, even some naivety made me start Zeno X,” he says. “In those first years, my wife and I both still had jobs outside the gallery.”
Here today, gone tomorrow
Even with 35 years of experience as a gallerist, he finds life isn’t without its pitfalls. “The worst that can happen to a gallerist is working for 10 or 15 years with an artist, investing loads of time and money in them, then seeing them leave one day for one of those huge galleries.
“That’s why I’m glad I’m in Antwerp and not in London or New York, where you have to compete with the likes of Gagosian Gallery and Hauser & Wirth, which have 150 to 200 employees. Those galleries are only interested in an artist whose works sell for more than $50,000 or $100,000.”
But he doesn’t blame them for it. “Due to their financial means, they really can make a difference for the artist. That’s the way of the art world nowadays.”
He doesn’t mind not being in the same position. “I like to spot a talent, help it bloom – or manage it, if you want – and see how it evolves. Recently at the MoMa in New York I saw ‘Still Life’ by Tuymans, a work based on a Cézanne that I’ve shown here, hanging between four paintings by Cézanne and four by Picasso. Well, I can tell you, I felt elated when I saw it. That’s why I do this job. It gives me infinitely more pleasure than the money I earned from selling it.”
Scramble, until 22 October, Zeno X Gallery, Godtsstraat 15, Antwerp
Photo: Luc Tuymans, “The Priest”, courtesy Zeno X Gallery Antwerp, photo Peter Cox
