There was some excitement when Perrotin opened the doors of its modest gallery space in DIFC back in November 2022. A couple of other big name galleries were already here, but Custot and Leila Heller had set up in Alserkal Avenue – less expensive rent-wise, but not as good in terms of footfall from the moneyed. But now it looks as though Perrotin Dubai is no more; instead the gallery will be reincarnated as Bastok Lessel Dubai, with operations continuing more or less seamlessly.
That’s because the collaboration between the eponymous Emmanuel Perrotin and art dealers Tom-David Bastok and Dylan Lessel has been dissolved “by mutual agreement”. We understand Bastok and Lessel have bought Perrotin’s shares in Perrotin Dubai, which opened in DIFC in November 2022, and in the large Perrotin Second Marché space the three had opened in Paris the year before. The Avenue Matignon gallery will also be operated under the name Bastok Lessel.
A statement from Bastok and Lessel said they were proud of the exhibitions that have been organised over the last two years: “we are delighted to bring these magnificent addresses under our banner”.
This separation comes after Perrotin sold a 60 percent stake in his business last summer to Colony Investment Management, an independent European Investment manager specialising in private equity and real estate. The joint statement declared: “This pioneering alliance between an investment company and an art gallery will combine Perrotin’s passion for supporting both established and emerging artists with complementary corporate infrastructure and support to facilitate Perrotin’s long term growth plans and vision.”
The focus in the Perrotin-Bastok-Lessel relationship has always been on the secondary market, as the Paris name suggests. Effectively they operated as an alternative to auction houses by buying and consigning works and providing clients with advisory services; the Paris location in particular deals almost exclusively in blue-chip work by artists such as Alexander Calder, Yves Klein, Alberto Giacometti, René Magritte and Yayoi Kusama. A forthcoming exhibition in Paris is devoted to Haring, Warhol and Basquiat.
Perrotin Dubai supplemented its secondary market activity with occasional programming of contemporary art, for instance with shows by Takashi Murakami and Jason Boyd Kinsella (both on the gallery’s roster) at nearby ICD Brookfield Place. It looks like this policy will be continued.
When the three dealers came together in 2020 Perrotin was quoted as saying “we share experience, a network, energy, and values to make a secondary venture a success”. Bastok had founded My Art Invest, one of the first platforms to offer co-ownership of art; and he also represented the estate of one of the leading figures of post-war French abstraction, Georges Mathieu; Lessel has had a slightly more conventional career, serving as director of Galerie Kamel Mennour in Paris until 2018. Bastok and Lessel teamed up in 2019 to manage artists’ estates, among others that of Georges Mathieu.
Bastok Lessel has also taken over Perrotin’s spot at Art Dubai, exhibiting Mathieu alongside Jeremy Demester, Bernar Venet, Gerard Schneider, Alain Jacquet, and Chung Young Hwan (the only non-French name on that list).
The present announcement does not change any of Perrotin’s plans for the original gallery’s development and expansion, said a spokesperson; “we wish to concentrate on all our upcoming projects, such as the inauguration of Perrotin Los Angeles at the end of the month”. Perrotin will maintain its gallery locations in New York, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul and Tokyo; we believe he also retains his original Paris location in the Marais.
Perrotin has enjoyed uninterrupted growth since its foundation by Emmanuel Perrotin in 1990, and the gallerist ranks no.23 on the current ArtReview’s Power 100 list. The gallery represents or collaborates with around 100 living artists and their estates, and in recent times has expanded into prints, books, and derivatives – as well as the secondary art business. It remains to be seen whether Perrotin will retain that interest, or whether the separation and sale of shares implies his exit from the secondary market.
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