13 Dec 2023/8 min/Rebecca Rose
MLow X Rebecca Rose
Collage artist Rebecca Rose explains how to bring traditional galleries into web3, and why the career still runs on open calls, residencies and showing up.
This is the full Google Meet recording behind an eight minute published clip, recorded October 19, 2023 and released that December. Rebecca Rose describes her work as a 20 year exploration of collage, from sculptural collage cast in molten metal and worn on the body to the 3D video collages she mints now, and says the goal is always the same: the viewer should feel thrust into the storyline as one of its characters.
The heart of the conversation is her institutional strategy. She entered web3 in early 2021, in the Clubhouse second wave, but deliberately kept one foot in the traditional gallery world when the fashionable line was that galleries were dead. Her argument: galleries at every tier already transact digitally, so adoption is a vocabulary and workflow problem, not an ideological one. Call the work time based media art or contemporary new media instead of NFT, talk to gallerists about a new revenue stream rather than pitching them, and the middle tier galleries, who she predicts will be last, can come along.
The back half is career mechanics: why she declined an early auction offer, how a Whitney showing she discovered three years late taught her that museums are a facet and not a finish line, what a Joan Mitchell Foundation residency did for her output, and the advice that gives MLow chills, keep submitting to open calls. He remembers his own Coney Island photo landing in the New York Times through an open call ten years earlier, and credits Patrick Amadon's 404 Catalog open call for his first NFT sale.
What this episode teaches
- Rename the thing to move it
Rose argues institutions will adopt digital work faster if artists drop the term NFT, which draws pushback she calls somewhat deserved, and use the vocabulary galleries already have: time based media art or contemporary new media.
- Keep one foot in each world
Against the 2021 narrative that galleries were dead, she bet the long term future is an and, not an either or: traditional representation and web3 together. She now spends time onboarding gallerists herself.
- Galleries already transact digitally
From Pace and Gagosian down through regional tiers, most galleries already sell through websites and email. The leap to blockchain sales is smaller than it looks, and she frames it to gallerists as another revenue stream that keeps their lights on.
- Do not go to auction prematurely
She turned down a smaller auction house because the timing was wrong. Going to a big auction house before the work and career are ready can be detrimental; the association is not worth mistiming the trajectory.
- Open calls compound
Submit constantly, absorb the rejections, and build exhibition history. The same curators jury multiple calls, so repeated submissions put your work in front of the eyes that later invite you to shows without applying.
- Residencies mark maturation points
Focused time away from home, as at the Joan Mitchell Foundation, removes every distraction and produces a prolific turning point in a body of work. Foundation run residencies are often free to attend.
- Show up in person, whatever it costs
She flew across the country for three hour gallery openings, slept in airports and ate ramen to be present, because meeting people face to face and hearing how the work lands is what informs the practice.
- A museum show is a facet, not a finish line
She has shown in about eight museums, including the Whitney, and insists none of it is an end in itself: you made it into a museum, so what comes next matters more than the milestone.
The conversation, topic by topic
What she wants collectors to feel
Rose opens with her blurb: a 20 year exploration of collage culminating in the current work. She wants viewers thrust into the story as one of its characters, challenged emotionally or intellectually, and lastingly arrested, a pull she traces to Disneyland and film.
Entering web3 in the second wave
She came in during early 2021, navigating what she calls the murky unknown waters through Clubhouse rooms. NFTs had crossed her radar a year earlier without sticking. She kept one foot in the traditional gallery world even when the narrative said galleries were obsolete.
How galleries will come over
The gallery world is tiered. Big names like Pace, Gagosian and Hauser and Wirth are already entering, popular Instagram driven galleries will follow, and the middle tier will be last. MLow points to Saatchi Gallery's first drop on Foundation as a sign of the shift, and both agree artist outreach will carry the load.
The vocabulary problem
Rose argues for meeting galleries halfway with terminology: time based media art, contemporary new media, not NFT. The term draws pushback, somewhat undeservedly and somewhat deservedly in her view, and fine art should not be lumped in with the scams that soured it.
Her non pitch to gallerists
She only approaches galleries where a relationship exists, and refuses to make it salesy: it is a conversation about what is coming and about preparing another revenue stream that keeps a gallery in business. Some galleries she knows already hold wallets and art on chain.
Auction houses, primary and secondary
Auction houses already have a huge role in web3, but she flags an open question: Sotheby's and Christie's normally run secondary markets, so how primary works they sold perform on secondary is genuinely new. One of her early 2000s works went to auction without her knowledge, and she declined a later offer from a smaller house because she was not ready.
The Whitney show she found three years late
A digital representation of one of her wearable sculptures showed at the Whitney in 2017 through an open call. The acceptance notification never reached her, and she only discovered it in 2020 while closing old accounts during Covid. She has shown in about eight museums, including the Andy Warhol Museum, the North Dakota Museum of Art, the Orlando Museum of Art and one in Hamburg.
Residencies as turning points
She has done residencies in California, Arizona, at Oxbow and at the Joan Mitchell Foundation in New Orleans. Competitive applications demand letters and gripping proposals, but the payoff is undistracted, 24 hour immersion; at Joan Mitchell two quick collage studies grew into a whole project and she sometimes slept in the studio.
Charades of Youth on SuperRare
Her recent mint was inspired by Janis Ian's 1970s song At Seventeen and her own awkward school years. Four dollhouse framed scenes show alienation by appearance, class, capability and social standing, built from images of plastic toys; when the character enacts her vengeance, everything turns real. Her favorite detail: the lunch tray flip, where the girl who once brought lunch from home is the one buying it. The animation entered the collection of a collector who also stewards Goodbye Sleepyhead and Big Iron.
Platform choice as a security decision
Rose experiments with Transient Labs contracts and loves their versatility, but keeps her footprint tight and contained, connecting her wallet to only a few marketplaces out of deliberate paranoia about security.
MLow's own projects
MLow describes minting a collection of 1/1s on Foundation of his 2015 to 2016 work to immortalize it on chain, and a curated collaboration with Max Osiris and other artists on Patrick Amadon's Doppelganger contract, where the array shows each of the twelve artists' contributions to the piece.
Disney by day, studio by night
While working nine to five at Disney she ran her studio from five in the evening until two in the morning, hand casting sculptural collage in molten metal at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit in her garage, babysitting 24 hour kiln cycles on weekends, setting 20 alarms for half hour bursts of sleep, and going a decade without a television.
Advice: submit to open calls
Her advice to new artists is to keep submitting through rejection, building resilience, exhibition history and curatorial recognition. MLow recalls his Coney Island photo printed in the New York Times through an open call roughly ten years earlier, and says the 404 Catalog open call produced his first NFT sale, with the collector coming back for more.
In their words
“I really want people to walk away from my work feeling like they were thrusted into the storyline and are one of the characters there.”
Rebecca Rose“In the long term future you're going to have one foot in each, and it's not going to be either or.”
Rebecca Rose“If I went to a big auction house prematurely, before I'm ready and before my work is ready, that could be detrimental.”
Rebecca Rose“I guarantee you your limits are well beyond what you think they can be.”
Rebecca Rose“Open calls definitely work, and I definitely need to do more of them.”
MLowCite this conversation
Rebecca Rose in conversation with MLow, "MLow X Rebecca Rose," The MLow Show, 13 Dec 2023. https://show.mlow.xyz/e/2023-12-13-mlow-x-rebecca-rose.html. Quoted from a machine transcript.
Quotations come from machine transcripts. Check wording against the audio before republishing.