ODETTA Digital Inaugural Exhibition: Sea Change | Organized and Curated by Ellen Hackl Fagan | Hosted by SHIM Art Network on Artsy
Sea Change Curator’s Notes
Ellen Hackl Fagan, Director
ODETTA Digital
As I finished the 2019 year at ODETTA, having moved the gallery twice due to real estate’s rising costs in New York, I was more aware than ever that I would need to create a new model for ODETTA. I have always experienced joy putting works of art together, orchestrating them, much like composing a painting of my own. This joy was being overshadowed by not seeing a robust collector base developing, in spite of the high quality of the artworks I represented.
Since opening the doors I have seen sweeping changes with more galleries moving online every year. Collectors could now contact artists directly through platforms from art fairs to Instagram. The expertise and esteem for a good art dealer was now bypassed by the rising level of choices available for collectors and artists to get together independently.
I was already strongly considering the next step for the gallery when I was approached by Peter Hopkins of SHIM Art Network.
Recently we became a society that could no longer view exhibitions in person. Overnight the demand for a digital alternative has become our new normal.
The SHIM Art Network offers ODETTA a platform where the gallery can engage its artists within a global registry. The artists’ work will be discoverable in the social ecosystem that includes online marketplaces, social media, and eventually physical spaces. It is understood that the partnership engages both artist and dealer as equals, with sales of works still being managed by the gallery, but at a commission rate that directly benefits the artist.
It is becoming clearer that the need for a signature physical gallery space, that remains at one address to establish the gallery brand, may be a vestige from the past. Minus the constraints of space with a twelve month calendar of exhibitions in a single location, ODETTA Digital aims to increase connectivity for a larger number of artists.
This gives ODETTA and ODETTA Digital the chance to expand the genres of work to include photography and representational art.
This is the sea change in gallery practice that I am referring to in the title for this inaugural exhibition. No one single location, no single calendar, and support from participating artists. I anticipate a robust exchange of talent across the SHIM Art Network platform, and the larger art world, as our artists and dealers begin to collaborate as true partners.
SHIM Art Network is an art exhibition company that fills the gaps in the art world, providing exhibition opportunities to artists, curators, galleries, universities, and other organizations and affiliations with exhibition space for their projects on- and off-line.