To be fair, this profile of Javier Peres seems to be part of some other sort of journalistic package in the New York Observer called Men of New York. Nonetheless, the lengthy piece seems designed to embarrass Peres with large swaths of the writer’s recordings–made over the course of an evening–run as quotes. Take a look:
“I remember from the first [Art Basel] Miami to the most recent Miami, it’s all these people who are just like tapping their wines and having a fucking grand old time,” he said. “Just taking up my fucking time and not buying a fucking thing. And I’m super-fucking claustrophobic. I hate having people around me—if I’m not fucking you, I don’t want you around me.”
Enlightening. The story charts Peres’s success with Terence Koh, Dash Snow and Dan Colen using the age-old strategy of buying everything in sight.
In the past five years, Mr. Peres estimates he has purchased between 300 to 400 works for his personal collection. He has no idea what it all might be worth. Mr. Koh—whose entire first show Mr. Peres bought for $11,000 in 2002—was his first artist to break through.
“One piece from that collection sold at Phillips for I think $55,000,” said Mr. Peres. “And I sold privately two other pieces from that show for a quarter-million,” he said, opening his eyes wide.
In the process, Peres has created a community of artists:
That tight-knit group of hard-living, experimental artists reside within a 10-block radius in the Lower East Side, which Mr. Peres refers to as the “New, New School.” In the words of Mr. Colen, who has a show at the Gagosian Gallery in London later this month, “It’s a really nice community. And we wouldn’t even exist without [Javier].”
The Gallery Matador (New York Observer)
