Building a design-experience division from ground up is a smart move for those interested in creating large-scale experiential art installations. This report highlights the actions of Pace Gallery and their new line of business PaceX, created to facilitate art-and-tech commissions world-wide.
Pace Gallery is a leading contemporary gallery showcasing the most significant artists and estates of the 20th and 21st centuries, with 10 locations worldwide. Since 1960, Pace has built a legacy of productive relationships with many well-established artists. Their mission is to support the world’s most influential and innovative artists, sharing their visionary work around the world. Now, with an eye towards facilitating art-and-tech commissions, PaceX will support artists interested in “creating experiences, not objects”, says Marc Glimcher, president and CEO of Pace Gallery. The gallery will support experiential media artists as they bid and work on art-and-tech commissions around the world while they connect these artists with a broader consumer market.
Christy MacLear, former vice chairman of Sotheby’s Art Agency, Partners advisory firm and onetime director of the Rauschenberg Foundation, will lead the start-up PaceX as CEO. Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst, formerly president of Pace London, is cofounder and chief creative officer. Kathleen Forde will be the initiative’s curator of experiential art.
PaceX will represent a community of artists who create transformative experiences with the potential to change how people see the world, how they relate to it, and the impact they can have on it. When asked in an interview published by ArtNews, MacLear shared the types of projects PaceX will guide. “Bold ones. Projects which match the issues like climate change or social justice that drive artists to new tools and canvases, such as cities or immersive spaces,” she responded. “It appeals to the start-up risk-taker in me,” said MacLear. “I’m excited about this role because it is where artists are pioneering the future.”
According to Glimcher, technological initiatives in art are “baked into the DNA of the gallery,” as they are at the forefront of experiential, time-based and perceptual contemporary art installations that connect an audience in a larger shared community experience. For example, Future\Pace was launched in 2016 by Glimcher, Future\City founder Mark Davy, and Pace Gallery’s Dent-Brocklehurst. Future\Pace offered an innovative approach to commissioning art in the public realm.
Future\Pace drew on the expansive and important histories of Future\City and the Pace gallery, combining Future\City’s expertise in cultural placemaking and commissioned large-scale multidisciplinary artworks with Pace’s extensive global network of contemporary artists, galleries and resources. For Future\Pace, team members coordinated the creation of imaginative, site-specific contemporary artwork embedded into infrastructure, architecture and urban landscapes. Art commissions were managed from inception to completion in collaboration with architects, designers, landscape architects, engineers, community representatives, technologists and scientists.
Christy Maclear of PaceX will be the closing speaker at the 2020 CODAsummit: The Intersection of Art, Technology and Place. Hosted by the McNichols Civic Center in Denver, CO on September 30 - October 2, CODAworx staff has lined up an all-star cast of internationally known artists, major commissioners, industry members, and technology companies to cover theoretical and practical information. A pre-conference seminar offers Art and the Experience Economy: A Practical Seminar for Creating Experiences that Attract and Inspire. Other presentations pertinent to experiential and participative art installations include Commissioning at the Intersection of Art + Technology, Art & the Built Environment: Top Five Legal Issues for Art Commissioners, and New Venues for Digital Artists: Video Walls and Urban Screens.
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