Meet our Guest with David Gryn
For this story of Meet the Guest, Guest Work Agency Director and Founder Alana Kushnir interviewed David Gryn, Director of Daata. Daata commissions original, digital artworks by established and emerging artists. Through three avenues—Daata Editions, Daata Streaming and Daata TV— it offers hundreds of original, digital works by an ever-growing portfolio of contemporary artists.
David, you’re a seasoned sound and video curator – or as we tend to call it in the art industry these days – time-based curator. What attracts you to these media formats, as opposed to say, painting and sculpture?
To be honest, my favourite artworks are by Vermeer, Goya, Fantin-Latour, Velasquez, Ryman, Guston - these are all painters and my wife, Jane Bustin, who shows with Fox Jensen, Sydney and Fox Jensen McRory in Auckland. I was trained as a painter and my wife is an object-based artist. My interest in digital, new mediums, is that it is still fairly new and often uncharted territory and that I generally support art that is yet to be made. My passion is more in the empowerment of artists, mediums, audiences and even the support structures to the art world, including the market place - and in this vein digital art mediums and its practitioners need as much support as possible. High volumes of art are being made by artists digitally, just not being shown and sold in the market place easily.
Among your many roles, you are also a regular curator of the Film sector at Art Basel Miami Beach. Can you tell me about how you go about selecting film works for an art fair context? Are you considerations different from those that you might have when curating a series of films for museums, for example? And in your experience, do visitors buy these film works?
I started a project to show artists film and video in the context of a cinema, The Prince Charles Cinema, in London’s Leicester Square, this quickly took off with leading galleries, institutes, artists wanting to show in this context. Projects with Christian Marclay, Mark Wallinger, Natalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, William Eggleston, Tate, Hauser & Wirth, White Cube, Goldsmiths and so on. From this period of screening events approaches by leading art fairs to bring moving image projects to them, encouraging galleries to bring mediums that they traditionally resist bringing to art fairs, starting with Armory Show and Independent NY, then leading to 8 years as Curator of Film and then adding Sound with Art Basel at Miami Beach adorning the outside screening wall of the New World Symphony.
I was asked to work alongside Art Basel to help encourage galleries to submit artworks that they hitherto might have not brought to an art fair - due to the onerous costs of participation, and the uncertainty of revenue from bringing digital media. It wasn't in the mindset of the galleries, even if on their roster they have plenty of great digitally-based artists. I have also worked on Video projects with Art Cologne, EXPO CHICAGO, Art Rio, LOOP Art Fair, Chart Art Fair, Moscow Art Night, Art Night London, Spring 1883 in Sydney and more.
I saw my role as supporting galleries to submit works that they wanted to show, as I always think of the gallery as the main arbiter and curator of their represented artists’ work. I would then select from these submissions and make daily programmes of groups of artworks, making connections with works and also ensuring that the works would be enticing to audiences. Time-based mediums can put audiences off, if their reaction isn't considered at all in the process. I see my role over the years, as opening the doors to potential collectors and allowing them to connect with the artwork and subsequently the artists galleries.
Portrait of David Gryn, courtesy of David Gryn.
You began daata in 2015. In this time of the COVID-19 crisis, 2015 feels like a very, very long time ago. Can you tell us more about why you started daata and how your ambitions for the project have evolved since then?
Daata was launched in essence to encourage artists working with digital mediums and the art market for works made in this way. Daata generally commissions artists and that is our backbone, as supporting artists is paramount for any art-related business. And in doing this, we have the trust, engagement and support of most of the artists, and their communities, we have worked with.
What I find particularly fascinating with daata is that it has a strong entrepreneurial bent to it, a quality which I find the art industry tends to play catch-up with. Do you agree and if so, why do you think that is the case?
The art industry/market may work with wacky and innovative artists and artworks, but it is a fairly conservative ‘industry’ and pretty risk-averse, as it is a rather risky business in the first place.
It’s great to see that you have commissioned artists from Australia, New Zealand, China, and Singapore as well - where our Guest Club network is based. Can you tell us a little more about some of these artists and how you came to commission them to curate new work for daata?
Daata has collaborated with Cement Fondu, a young curatorial, a non-profit art space in Sydney, and we worked together with them to commission a few artists and collaborate for Spring 1883 in Sydney last year. We have worked in collaboration with Photofairs Shanghai and commissioned artist Lu Yang and we have just collaborated with NADA Art Fair in Miami and we commissioned NZ artists Jess Johnson and Simon Ward to make a new work for Daata. Our interest is to collaborate with artists, venues, art entities globally, as a digital platform we are not restricted to place.
I’m looking forward to speaking to you about collecting digital art in more depth at our upcoming online Guest Club event on 16 May. For those who will be joining us and are interested in brushing up on their digital art knowledge beforehand, where would you suggest they start?
Start obviously with http://daata.art, look at the upcoming Frieze Art Fair’s website replacing Frieze New York and many art galleries are now setting up their own online viewing rooms - so explore and search the internet for these, there are now many. Ever since we launched, I have been hoping for many similar platforms to ours, as competition creates a real market place. Bizarrely the global lockdown for COVID 19 crisis, may have just help to create that competitive market place we have hoped for, although we would have rather it came into being for any other reason.
David Gryn will be joining us for our upcoming online Guest Club event on Saturday 16th May at 8 pm AEST. The Guest Club is a network of emerging collectors and art supporters. Are you interested in joining our online event? RSVP here.
Keren Cytter, Animal series (image still). Courtesy of daata.