The San Francisco Chronicle goes inside West Coast director of Matthew Marks Gallery Sabrina Buell’s loft:
But the extra space in San Francisco has given Buell a unique opportunity to give the place a sense of herself. Pointing to the 12-foot-tall exposed brick walls of her loft, she says: “Great art walls!”
Buell is often on the road – visiting artists, attending museum shows and art biennales. Matthew Marks has a large number of West Coast clients, so Buell will either accompany them to the gallery’s headquarters in New York or have pieces flown out West for clients to inspect.
“Before the loft, I’d never really ‘done’ a place before,” Buell said. “All of my furniture is a complete mix from different points in my life.”
Because of the loft’s large walls, Buell initially believed she would display her clients’ work in her home. She discovered that the reality of having lots of people in her living space wasn’t as appealing as the idea.
In fact, the walls’ size allows for a colorful clutch of graffitied surfboards by local
Credit: Eric Luse/SFC
artist Barry McGee. These were purchased by her boyfriend, industrial designer Yves Béhar, who later realized his home didn’t have high enough ceilings to properly display the large-scale piece. Now Buell, and her art walls, serve as lucky surrogates to this “borrowed” coup from Béhar.
Buell’s uncluttered entry hall is more akin to gallery space – populated with photographic masterworks by such varied artists as Weegee, Clara Sipprell and Robert Adams, the 2009 Hasselblad Photography Award winner.
To the right of the entry hall is a stepped-up mezzanine for guests; Buell’s small office sits below the opposite wall. Near the foot of this mezzanine is a dining room table, itself a work of art.
In place of interior walls, Buell uses her art collection to casually define the spaces in the large main room.
The dining area is “separated” from the corner living room by a tall pedestal, upon which sits Ken Price’s ceramic “Slope” sculpture and one of the loft’s original timber beams, which is framed by Bruno Rainaldi’s soaring Sapien bookshelves, teeming with colorful art tomes and catalogs.
