As the art trade continues to splinter in search of new models, two established dealers are striking out together to form a multi-pronged art business.
The Paris-based NG, which comprises a traditional advisory with a roving exhibition programme, as well as collection and foundation management services, has been founded by Samy Ghiyati and Nicolas Nahab, both of whom previously worked as senior directors of major commercial galleries. Nahab was most recently the head of Mendes Wood DM’s Paris gallery, which he helped establish in 2022; he previously worked at Marian Goodman and Yvon Lambert. From 2020, Ghiyati was a director at David Zwirner's Paris gallery, following a five-year stint at Kamel Mennour.
“I felt like I had achieved everything I wanted to in a commercial gallery,” Nahab says of his motivations to establish his own company. “At a point you begin thinking independently from the structure, and want to find a model that best corresponds to you.”
Ghiyati similarly wished to extend beyond the confines of a fixed gallery programme and identity. “Many of my existing clients were expressing a desire to begin collecting art from other regions, such as the Middle East and Latin America, as well as non-fine art categories, such as 1980s design. I was excited to begin building more transversal collections.”
The pair’s working relationship initially formed during their collaboration on a fundraiser, A drawing for Morocco, which they launched in response to devastating earthquakes on 8 September 2023 in Morocco, where Ghiyati is from. “It is hard in this industry to find people with whom you feel you can speak freely,” Ghiyati says. “Nicolas is one of those people.”
However, establishing a business requires not just trust, but funding too, and the pair’s confidence to strike out on their own was ultimately spurred by a conversation with a French collector who recently sold his business and wanted to focus more on art. “Neither of us come from family money,” Nahab adds, “so we needed our first client to get things off the ground.”
That initial push will see NG open its first public project in December, a selling exhibition of videos by Meriem Bennani that opens in Essaouira, a coastal town in Morocco. It is the artist’s first show in her native country, and will include a public programme focused on the local community, with live music and food.
One clear aim of such an event is to engage collectors at a time when their attention is spread thin. As Nahab says, there is presently “an overwhelming amount of information” about art. He believes advisors are crucial to "helping you navigate through" it. “It is increasingly hard to draw an overall notion of what the market is right now,” he continues.
Destination art experiences are one way to cut through the noise—and can be effective at drawing a crowd. As Ghiyati notes, “I have found that it is sometimes easier to get a client to come to a show 1,000 miles away from their house, than 10 minutes down the road.”
Client services will form a backbone for NG. While exercising discretion as to what this exactly entails, the pair say this will include the strategic management of foundations—two of which are now signed to NG—by helping them look beyond just collecting art and "developing and organising their vision".
For now the business remains “open-ended”, Nahab says. “In the future, we will probably have selling shows of paintings, but it could involve non-commercial ventures too. Let's see."
