PRIVATE INDEX
WORST ADVICE — Kenny Schachter
Project Info
- 💚 Artist: Kenny Schachter
- 💛 Photo Courtesies: Alex Berns Gallery/ Alex Berns Gallery/ Nagel Draxler Gallery
- 💜 Interviewer: Christine Hauptmann
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Worst Advice is a new KUBAPARIS interview series looking at the most questionable and persistent advice circulating in the art world. Artists are constantly told how to work, how to present themselves, and how to build a career. Some of this advice is helpful, much of it is not. The series asks artists, curators, and insiders to revisit what they were told early on, and what still gets repeated today.
We launch with artist, writer and curator Kenny Schachter.
He reflects on how the system has changed since the 1990s, when access to galleries was slower and built through proximity, research, and community. Today, social media and online platforms have opened new routes for visibility and sales, while also introducing new pressures around branding, consistency, and self-marketing.
In this conversation, Schachter questions these expectations and what they do to artistic practice. He also offers a pragmatic view shaped by decades of experience across the art world, from teaching and writing to dealing and curating, including advice on independence, clarity, and managing expectations in a difficult market.
As part of Worst Advice, this interview sets the tone for a series that explores not only the advice artists receive, but what it reveals about the system behind it.
CH What was it like for an artist starting out when you began showing your works and curating in the 1990s?
KS When I first began doing art school studio critiques more than 3 decades ago, I would describe the process for artists to insinuate themselves into gallery programs: research spaces with a similar sensibilities; meet the gallery artists; introduce yourself to the owners (without shoving your works under their noses at openings); and, ingratiate yourself into the community of affiliated artists. Without being too annoying.
CH What has changed over the course of your art career as an artist and teacher?
KS This method was applicable for the first few decades of my career until…it wasn’t. I caught myself 5 or so years ago describing a process where the preceding strategy no longer held sway. With the advent of social media and a migration of commercial retail trade online leaving an abundance of empty storefronts—the scene was set for more practical and effective do-it-yourself paths forward to communicate with prospective audiences and sell works via Instagram and pop-ups. Sadly, the short lived blockchain phenomenon to convey art directly to buyers via NFTs was squashed by greed and crime as quickly as it arose. Pathetic, yes, but so goes human nature.
CH Artists are told to think like entrepreneurs: build a brand, develop a recognizable style, grow an audience, stay consistent. Do you believe some of these expectations are actually corrosive to genuine artistic practice?
KS Thinking like an entrepreneur is healthy and necessary—to an extent. But, the notion of building “brands” via the cultivation of recognizable styles, growing audiences by consistent output is so utterly boring and unappealing to me, I find it hard to muster comment upon the phenomenon. If that’s what you’re after, I’m not the person to ask. I advise my students to take a part-time job that leaves bandwidth and financial breadth to think and make the stuff one wants and needs to create. Otherwise, sell widgets.
CH After decades of working as an artist, curator, writer, teacher, dealer, and critic, what's the single most valuable lesson you've learned that every young artist should hear before trying to build a career?
KS Don’t trust anyone! Codify consignments and transactions in signed writings. And be clear: galleries are under such a state of financial pressure, they are in no positions to undertake the representation of emerging artists and build markets from scratch. And why should they? Now—most assuredly—is not the time to force feed such a timeworn concept of chasing the holy grail of gallery representation; but, rather, an ideal moment to conjure new ways forward, without reliance on others, if and when possible. Don’t get me wrong: should an organic opportunity spring up to showcase your art with a likeminded gallerist, by all means seize it, just be clear-headed what a difficult and rocky road lies ahead. And, over years of experience, I’ve learned to keep my expectations in check (i.e., less than zero). Don’t forget, there are no quick fixes, art is a slow burning process, as it well should be. And last but not least - very important: Don’t necessarily listen to anything I have to say or like. Always listen to yourself.
