There’s something not quite right about commercial galleries. They are a kind of schizophrenic space. On the one hand they explicitly present things with an intellectual and immaterial value, while on the other hand it is clear that one could eventually make a purchase; the experience has a price tag attached. They represent two different realities or systems: the discourse and the market. Looking and buying are kept apart.
Looking at the back rooms – the other side of the art machine – Rob Hamelijnck became obsessed by the understatement of the facades, the messy, cluttered desks in the small galleries and the cold professionalism of the major players’ offices, and, above all, the uniformity of the design.
Front Desk / Back Office brings together a selection of photographs he took during the past five years -mostly without permission- of the front desks and back rooms of galleries in Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Hamburg, São Paulo and Zurich.
Two essays, by French architect Thibaut de Ruyter and Dutch sociologist and journalist Olav Velthuis, underline the observations of the “separation between the Sacred and the Profane”.
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