Emmanuel Perrotin may have ditched his Dubai gallery, but now he is opening one in London instead—inside the five-star Claridge’s hotel in Mayfair.
The 350 sq m gallery will be located on Brook Mews in what is now Claridge’s Art Space, currently home to a rotating exhibition programme, and next to the Claridge’s Art Space café. The gallery will open in early 2025 following a full refurbishment.
The announcement on Monday night stated that Perrotin was “seeking a director with a minimum of ten years’ experience in a London gallery to complete the team currently being assembled.”
A stalwart of the Parisian and international contemporary art scene, Perrotin opened his first gallery in Paris in 1990. He now also has galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo and Shanghai, but has never before opened a space in the UK capital.
“It’s important to have a gallery in the British capital,” Perrotin says in the statement. “We have a long-standing relationship with the UK art scene and collectors. I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to set up the gallery in the right conditions.”
He continues: “This space was inaugurated in 2021 with a Damien Hirst exhibition organised by Claridge’s. As it happens, I organised Damien Hirst’s first two commercial exhibitions in 1990 (with a group show) and in 1991 (with a solo show) in my first Parisian space. At the exhibition opening in 1991, Frieze magazine launched its first issue, and Damien’s work was featured on the cover. It was an exceptional moment in my career. I look forward to coming full circle!”
A gallery spokesperson tells The Art Newspaper: "We made the most of the approaching Frieze London to announce our new Perrotin venue. Perrotin has been participating in Frieze London since 2004 and developed strong connections with institutions, museums and art world since then. It’s a good timing to strengthen relationships on the ground." They add: "Our programming and the inaugural show will be announced on due time."
This spring, the gallery announced its representation of the estate of the Modern British sculptor Lynn Chadwick, a departure from the gallery’s usual US- European-Asian-focused contemporary exhibition programme. The gallery will show Chadwick’s works at Frieze London next week—a fair at which the gallery has exhibited for the past 20 years—telling of the gallery’s increased interest in the British art scene.
The news on the forthcoming London space, meanwhile, comes a fortnight after Perrotin and 17 of its artists announced they have donated 23 works of art, worth a total of €6m, to Paris’s Pompidou museum.
Back in February, Emmanuel Perrotin also announced he was ending “by mutual agreement” his partnership with fellow art dealers Tom-David Bastok and Dylan Lessel, with whom he opened a secondary market gallery in Paris in 2021. Bastok and Lessel also bought Perrotin’s shares in Perrotin Dubai, another secondary market gallery, which only opened in November 2022.
Perrotin’s proposed merger with Colony Investment Management (Colony IM)—due to complete last year—remains unconfirmed. The deal, in which the French real estate, credit and private equity business was to take a 60% stake of the gallery, was designed to fuel growth and expansion into "new geographies". A gallery spokesperson told The Art Newspaper last month that it would “communicate in due time” the status of the deal.
