I am writing to my fellow artists to warn them about the very questionable working methods of this particular gallery.
Here is my story. It all started when I was selected to be part of the exhibition called “My Best Swiss Art” hosted by this gallery. I was thrilled and paid the required amount to help finance the vernissage and brought all my work to the venue before the deadline.
The first indicator that something was off was when I brought my art: the owner was very arrogant and told me that my ideas about how to expose my work were, I quote, “lousy”. Fine, I thought at the time, I am new to this gallery business and I wanted it to work out, but my gut was screaming: “This is not how or who you want to be working with!”. I also didn’t want to come across as a diva, so I let it slide and let the owner expose my work his way.
Second warning sign: no publicity was made for the event on social media which, in our days, is unacceptable. Especially if the venue makes the artist pay an entry fee.
On the day of the vernissage, I sold 3 illustrations which seemed great! Except that once the exhibit was over, the whole thing became a nightmare.
Months after the event, the owners still had my art in their gallery and refused to send my prints to the buyers, even after the buyers had agreed to get the art shipped and paid extra for the shipping. They kept asking me when they would get the prints they paid for. I asked the owners the same question on several occasions by email and phone but after a while, they stopped responding to me.
Finally, I had to show up unannounced at the gallery to pick my art up and ship it to the buyers myself, at my own expense, as I didn’t find it fair to ask the buyers to pay twice, especially after they had been waiting for over SIX MONTHS.
One of the pieces I couldn’t even ship because they had no idea to whom they had sold it! Which is both unbelievable and extremely unprofessional in my eyes.
I really debated on whether to post this or not because I believe that people can make mistakes and that everyone deserves a second chance.
But when I confronted the owner on my last visit at the gallery for his lack of professionalism and asked when I would get paid for the art that I sold at the event, his answer was a shrug of the shoulders and a:” You will have to call some other day.”
Well let me tell you, that solution doesn’t work so well when your calls and emails are being avoided.
To this day, I have not received any money regarding the sales of the work I exposed in this gallery.
I usually don’t write bad reviews, but it is important to me that other people do not end up in the same situation. Therefore I would simply suggest that you avoid buying art at this gallery because the artists don’t receive their cut. And if you are an artist, I would strongly advise against working with this gallery.
