Suzie Lafrenière came from Mauricie with her husband to collect five paintings stored at the HangArt gallery in Old Montreal. It took three short trips on Wednesday afternoon between the premises on rue Saint-Paul and the couple’s car to load the medium figurative formats, signed Ferdiny. The self-taught painter accepted the contract with the gallery just before Christmas. News of the company’s bankruptcy arrived three weeks later, at the beginning of January.
“I was the last artist to arrive at HangArt and I was the first to leave,” summarized the lady, met in front of the door of the establishment around noon, the time set for the start of recovery. She ultimately lost $1,000 in the sad artistic-commercial adventure. “Three weeks of hell are over. At least I have my paintings back. »
Other colleagues did the same during the day. The recovery process is expected to continue intermittently in the coming days, and perhaps even into February. The business venture was based on a consignment business model, unusual in the industry. The artists represented generally paid a flat rate per work left on deposit.
The gallery closed its doors to the public on 1er January after months of non-payment of rent. The owner, however, would have agreed to give the keys to the new lock to the gallery to allow it to liquidate its stock.
Branches in Vancouver and Toronto have suffered the same lethal fate since the beginning of the decade. In Montreal, HangArt has changed addresses three times since 2019 before ending up on rue Saint-Paul. The man who welcomed the artists who came to collect their works on Wednesday flatly refused to speak to the reporter and the photographer of the Duty.
Carmen Colbert came from Saint-Élie-de-Caxton to collect her five works. She was also accompanied by her husband. “We have nothing to say against gallery owners,” declared M.me Colbert. We wanted to re-sign a one-year contract in December and the owners asked us to wait until January. Finally, we learned of the closure. »
The HangArt gallery represents around 140 visual artists, mainly painters, who left around 1,400 works on deposit. Some creators outside Quebec have deposits in Montreal. Kyla Yager of Toronto told Duty this week that she had deposited five paintings in a Toronto gallery in January 2023. The branch closed the following month and her works are now in Montreal, like other lots moved from a branch in the country to a other depending on the closures of the premises.
Vanessa Vaillant had to cover no less than 25 creations on rue Saint-Paul, including some for colleagues in France. Like the other artists who came to collect their treasures, she signed documents attesting to their recovery in good condition.
“I’m very anxious,” she said in a telephone interview. I’m losing $5,000 on this. I’m relieved to have my work back, of course, but I’ve learned my lesson: I will never again do business with a gallery that demands payment to exhibit my work. »
Hervé Garcia and Julie Plouffe have developed this commercial gallery model which requires between $25 and $30 per month per work, depending on the duration of the contract. With a thousand projects in stock, the premises on Saint-Paul Street alone generated between $25,000 and $30,000 in gross revenue.
In this formula, the profits generated by a sale would be shared unequally: 70% to the artist and 30% to the gallery (plus additional costs, including $10 for packaging). Creators under contract with HangArt complain of not having received the amount from certain sales. The international and national standard in the commercial gallery sector divides the proceeds of the sale equally (50-50), but in this case, artists do not pay to be exhibited.