COURTESY GALERIE PATRICK SEGUIN
In October 2015, Paris’s Galerie Patrick Seguin will open a second location, in London, a rep for the gallery told ARTnews. At about 700 square feet (or 65 square meters), the new London space will be smaller than the gallery’s 3,229 square-foot, or 300 square-meter, space in Paris’s Bastille area.
Galerie Patrick Seguin has been known in France for its design-oriented exhibitions since 1989. The gallery most notably shows work by Le Corbusier and Jean Prouvé, and, for the opening of its London space, the gallery will show two demountable structures by Prouvé—his 1956 Temporary School of Villejuif and his 1944 6×6 Demountable House. (Several demountable Prouvé works like these were recently shown in New York in “Chamberlain | Prouvé,” a show that compared work by Prouvé and John Chamberlain, at Gagosian Gallery. The show was a collaboration between Gagosian Gallery and Galerie Patrick Seguin.) In the future, the London space, like the gallery’s Paris mainstay, will alternate design and architecture exhibitions with shows of work by contemporary artists.
In an email, gallery director Patrick Seguin told ARTnews that he set up a second location because he wants his gallery to be a part of London’s vibrant art scene. “London is an extremely appealing city to us as gallerists because of the number of collectors who are based in the city or spend time there,” Seguin wrote. “For that matter, Artprice recognized that the British art market represents itself 75 percent of the European market. Since the beginning a large percentage of our collectors are contemporary art collectors as well.”
“In contrast with our Paris gallery, an amazing industrial building with a 10-meter-high ceiling [designed] by Jean Nouvel, and just 5 minutes from the Marais, but a little out of the way, our London gallery is right in the heart of Mayfair giving our shows high visibility,” Seguin continued, citing the London gallery’s proximity to the famed hotel Claridge’s. “I’m looking forward to reinforcing the bicultural nature of our gallery and embracing the British gallery scene.”