Art Galleries and Building a Legacy for Artists

Running a business can already be a daunting task. But when one is running art galleries, the pressure increases; it’s not just about selling art, but about curating the culture of our society. The responsibility of preservation and ensuring the future of Filipino art can rest on their hands, especially the longer the gallery exists.

BluPrint interviewed three major galleries in our country—Artinformal, MO_Space, and Silverlens—to get a better understanding of what it takes to maintain the relevance of not just an artist, but an institution, and how it shapes the fabric of Filipino culture today.

Archiving for the Past and the Future

A big important thing that has emerged over the decades of modern art is the idea of archiving and preservation. With many artforms, from film and music, to paintings and sculptures, being lost in time due to inadequate preservation methods, or improper documentation that keeps it from being found, archiving an artist’s work has become an important thing to worry about within the gallery. 

And in the age of social media, it has become more imperative to showcase an artist’s bevy of works to ensure that the legacy they build not only has strong foundations, but endures onward to the future. 

“To cut through the noise, the gallery should be more like a cultural storyteller grounding its digital presence in authenticity and depth that newer, fast-moving platforms often lack,” Tina Fernandez, founder of Artinformal Gallery, said. 

New Archiving Practices

Established art galleries are taking this seriously. MO_Space, for example, has a website with a digital archive of exhibitions running back years. It has the exhibition notes, photographs of the art, and even images of the exhibit to better place the viewer in how it must have looked like or felt to see it in its original exhibition period. 

“We have a dedicated archive to keep these shows in the past accessible digitally to anyone who wants to see them,” Mawen Ong, gallery director of MO_Space, said. “A lot of amazing shows have happened everywhere; for us, it’s important to know the past works in order to understand the context of the present.”

Rachel Rillo, the co-director of Silverlens Gallery, said that the pandemic instigated Silverlens to push for more documentation of the artist and their works as a way of bolstering the legacies of these artists. They expanded their documentation team, and work in-house to create these “long-form documentaries” on the artist and their latest exhibitions.

“I think that’s the most important part of my job: to document everything they do and talk to them, produce videos with this where we’re talking to them and really helping the rest of the world or the audience or at least our audience understand their vision and where they come from,” she explained. 

Experiencing the Art in Person

And yet, even in the age of social media, even with all the archiving and documentation happening within the gallery, both Rillo and Ong believe that it’s important for audiences to experience art first-hand. Social media, videos, and write-ups are there to enhance the exhibitions themselves and encourage people to visit the art galleries. 

“I really hope that our presence in the digital world will make viewers come and see the work in real life, and we value the people that do,” Ong said.

“The phone will never be able to convey the dynamic range of colors and depths of what the eye can capture. True art appreciation starts by being there in person. You perceive the work, the elements, color, the words. You leave the gallery feeling a range of emotions.”

Places for Artistic Ambition

Rillo agrees with the sentiment, and notes that the building that houses Silverlens in Manila was designed by architect Anna Sy in 2017 to ensure “that the space is large enough and strong enough to hold the artwork.”

“Not necessarily bigger artwork, but a bigger space for the art to breathe,” Rillo elaborates. “I think it’s very important. We live in a city that’s very dense, so it’s also harder to find larger spaces for artwork to breathe in but that’s something that we really pushed for.”

Silverlens previously was housed in a former piano factory; its current home is a refurbished food commissary, and its high ceilings and wide exhibition space gives any artist the kind of expanse that drives the imagination wild. For Rillo, this was a necessary component for the gallery. 

“We reused the space in the idea of really making the experience of looking at art become experiential,” she explained. “The actual spatial scale of the self to the artwork is very important to me.”

In the Interest of Business

Unlike newer art galleries, the ones that have been running for decades have a well-oiled system in place to ensure that production continues onward in a seamless fashion. Tina Fernandez, for example, has used Artinformal’s decade-plus of existence to nurture not just artists, but the trust of different collectors who respect her expertise in the artwork. 

She is methodical in how she ensures that an artist’s work is sustainable: new artists are positioned and priced based on the market, their artworks and presentation refined without removing their vision. 

Mid-career artists have a more strategic approach: broaden their collector base, ensure stable pricing of their art, put it in fairs and residencies around the world, and ensure a balance of supply and demand. Late-career artists are mostly just shoring up their legacy and ensuring that their art continues to sell for years to come. 

It’s a true tightrope to sustain, but she’s been able to do so in the past decade or so. Her knowledge of art and willingness to invest in risky artists and artforms, paired with her ability to build trust in artists and collectors, combines to give her the authority and success to ensure the survival of Artinformal. 

New Markets, New Horizons

Silverlens has a different approach to their business side. While their Manila side continues to be stable, they opened a second gallery in New York City in 2022 to shore up their business further. Rillo said that it has been tricky to adapt to the new environment—to be one of the emerging art galleries again after a decade of being established in the Philippines. 

“New York is tough because it’s New York, so we have to fight there like everyone else for attention,” she shared. “Here, it’s a bit easier, the gallery is big, our program is strong, [and] I have a full staff of twenty. So things are happening and our artists here have a lot of support. But New York is a different creature so we really have to take care of that end.”

They have found a lot of success there, despite the struggle to establish themselves again. Artworks from Filipino artists have been sold to museums, curators, and other local institutions. Rillo believes that the steady growth of their success foresees a Western market that’s ready for Filipino stories and artists to take their place on the mantle.

“I think that’s the biggest thing that I didn’t foresee, is this bridge that we’ve connected,” she said. “We have placed a few of our artists in large institutions in the US, because we’re there. And it’s really weird because they’ve been talking to us for a very long time, we’ve met them from years of art fairs, but as soon as we landed in New York, it signaled them that we were ready to be part of that world.”

Keeping Philippine Culture Alive

With all these market forces surrounding the art world, and all the negative political and economic news happening abroad, a little pessimism would be understandable. Yet, all three creatives have a deep belief that the Philippines will not just survive, but thrive even more in the future. Our greatest selling point in the world is our unique culture and how it both stands out and blends in with the conversations happening around the world. 

“The greatest opportunity lies in leveraging Filipino cultural identity to position its artists as indispensable voices in global contemporary discourse,” Fernandez shared. “The Philippines has something that can’t be manufactured quickly. We have a distinct cultural narrative shaped by history, diaspora, hybridity, and resilience.”

“In terms of opportunity—our local artists are extremely intelligent, talented, and resourceful,” Ong said. “They can work with limited resources, use the simplest and available materials, yet still be able to create work that is nothing short of brilliant.”

“There’s so many good artists and so many people to appreciate [who] sometimes don’t evolve past the Philippines. That’s a good problem to have, I would say,” Rillo asserted. “I find, just in art history, across borders, when times are tough, there’s good art.”

Photos by Ed Simon.

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