ARTISTS THAT TRAUMATIZE ART GALLERISTS
We are currently witnessing the rise of a certain kind of artist who, over the next few years, is likely to become the nightmare of many gallerists. And yet, these artists are not lacking in talent. Quite the opposite. Sales are there too. They sell well, sometimes extremely well. So what exactly is wrong with these supposed golden geese?
Let me tell you about the cultural and generational clash currently reshaping the art market and knocking quite a few gallerists off their chairs. If I had to draw up their profile, I would say they are often under 35, rarely followed the traditional fine arts school route, have worked across several different fields, and began making a living from their art relatively early. But above all, their defining characteristic is this:
they started selling BEFORE they started exhibiting. That may be the single most important thing about them, because it means they completely separate the act of selling from the act of exhibiting.
The proof is simple: they were already selling before they ever had a show. They built their careers outside the traditional contemporary art ecosystem, without galleries, without institutions, although, admittedly, they often work with an agent. For them, the gallery is no longer the mandatory gateway, the door you have to walk through before anything else becomes possible. It is one option among many. Useful under certain conditions. Negotiable on their terms.
“If I bring the client to the gallery, I’m happy for them to take 15% commission on the work.”
I heard this sentence recently, and it perfectly sums up the shift currently taking place.
In the traditional model, the gallery brings the client, the network and the legitimacy, and in return takes a commission that is generally around 50%.
In this new balance of power, the artist arrives with their own collector network, an already established community, and the ability to generate demand without an intermediary. And they are not prepared to pay the same price for a service they have, in reality, only half received.
I gave them a name: direct-to-collector artists.
The problem for galleries is that they desperately need these artists right now. The more conversations I have, the clearer it becomes just how brutal 2025 was for the gallery sector. People do not exactly shout it from the rooftops, because the last thing anyone wants is to frighten the market and trigger everyone into selling their collections at the same time, which would make things even worse. But the reality is that galleries suffered. Even major ones. And today, they badly need these revenue-generating artists, whose relatively young buyer base offers a very convenient answer to one of the gallery system’s biggest problems: an ageing collector base and the failure to renew it.
But what exactly can galleries offer these new artists? An exhibition? They already sell without one. And when they do decide to exhibit, they are often heavily involved in producing the show themselves, and can frequently get it funded by brands eager to associate themselves with their work. What these artists have understood, often intuitively, without necessarily articulating it this way, is that an exhibition is not the cause of commercial success. At best, it is an accelerator. A positioning tool. A marker of legitimacy within certain circles. A way to reach audiences or institutions that Instagram alone may not provide access to.
They see exhibitions as one additional tool in the development of a career, never as the essential condition for selling. That distinction may sound minor. It is not. It represents a quiet revolution in the way an entire generation is thinking about its relationship with the art market.
The second problem for galleries is that their business model collapses without that 50% commission. But direct-to-collector artists and many of the new collectors buying from them, are not particularly concerned about that. For a long time, the art world operated through a largely unquestioned relationship of dependency, in which the artist needed the gallery in order to exist, both commercially and symbolically. That relationship was built over decades. It created careers, collections and institutions. But it also created imbalances, relationships in which the balance of power structurally leaned in the same direction.
What direct-to-collector artists are now doing, not necessarily because they are trying to “disrupt” anything, but simply because they were born into a world where direct distribution tools have always existed, is rebalancing that relationship. Sometimes clumsily. Sometimes with a degree of innocence that makes seasoned art professionals smile. But with an internal logic that is much harder to dismiss.
The real question galleries will have to ask themselves seriously over the coming years is not how to convince these artists to enter a model that was never designed for them. It is: how can the model evolve so that the gallery’s value proposition becomes real, visible and compelling enough for the collaboration to make sense on both sides? Because these artists do not need to be saved. They need partners. Having moved myself from being a gallerist to running an artist agency, I would bet heavily on this: the next era will belong to direct-to-collector artists and agencies.
Dear direct-to-collector artists, nice to meet you.
You made my former life as a gallerist a nightmare.
You are the sunshine of my new life as an artist agent.
Don’t change a thing.
You’re perfect.
My name is Annelise Stern.
I am an artist agent, curator, author and speaker specialising in the contemporary art market and impact-driven projects, particularly those involving new technologies.
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