NARANJO 141 / ASHLEY NOYES & BRYCE SMITH
Ashley and Bryce have been passionate about emerging artists for as long as I’ve known them. When I first met them out front of Sothebys on York and 72nd in 2019, it wasn’t the most recent Marden, Rothko, or De Kooning auction prices that they were talking about— they wanted to know if I was free to go gallery hopping in LES, Tribeca, Williamsburg, and if I was available that weekend to go upstate to check out The School and Magazino.
Few Saturday mornings have passed since then without me waking up to a text from one or both of them asking if I’ll be ready before the weekenders overrun the latest thing they want to show me. Their first visit to Mexico City in 2020 prompted a constant stream of messages exclaiming how inspired they were by the thriving creative atmosphere. When they told me they were leaving their secure art-world positions to go all-in on a residency and gallery program in Santa Maria la Ribera, I wasn’t the least bit surprised. - Ben Adams-Keane
febraury 2024, mexico city
text — BEN ADAMS-KEANE
interview — DEVON BERMAN
photography — WILHELMINA MER
@naranjo141
naranjo141.com
interview — DEVON BERMAN
photography — WILHELMINA MER
@naranjo141
naranjo141.com
ASHLEY NOYES — We worked in the contemporary art department together at Sotheby's in New York. Bryce and I both come from similar professional backgrounds in the secondary market and blue chip spheres of the art world. On the side, we were very passionate about emerging art, emerging galleries and younger artists. So we came up with the idea by turning this personal interest into a professional capacity.
DB — Why in Mexico City?
AN — The first reason being that we want to support emerging artists, so the residency needed to be in a location that would most benefit our artists. For us, Mexico City made sense. There's a lot of history and culture here. There’s a strong collaborative spirit present in Mexico City which is an important part of the project.
BRYCE SMITH — We’ve certainly found that here. And, I think every artist could take inspiration from the city. There are so many reasons.
DB —How did you choose the space and location?
BS — We wanted to have a space that fosters collaboration and community, which is why the gallery and residency are in the same space.
AN — The owner of the house is also an artist living and working in Mexico City. I think because he's an artist, there’s this natural and considered separation of the studio space, residence and gallery spaces. It's really perfect.
DB —What's in the name?
AN — The name is the address of the space. The idea is that the name represents the story of the beginning. A lot of gallery names are taken from the names of the gallerist. Our decision to use the address instead of our names was to designate it as an artists space, for them to live and work, and to show their work. The address represents the origin of the project, so even if we move elsewhere or expand, the name will stay.
AN — We always look at the story they’re telling. We find that really important in what contemporary artists are making today. This idea of relatability, how one person's story can translate to a universal motif for other people to connect with.
BS — We've been seeing a lot of that with our artists how the personal translates to the universal. For us, that's been our theme this year.
DB — was looking at a joint show you had and was wondering if you host multiple artists at a time.
BS — It's not an official part of the program to have cohorts, but looking towards the second year that's something we’ll be instituting.That show was with Lily Alice Baker and Bayo Alvaro. That happened spontaneously. We had scheduled Lily for June, then we saw Bayo’s workand were amazed. As we got to know him and more about his work, we saw a connection between his and Lily’s themes.
AN — It wasn’t planned like that. We saw a really natural fit and dynamic dialogue between their work. Not only did the show work out but they also became great friends.
DB — Have there been any other moments that have surprised you or that stand out from the past year?
BS — What I’ve gained the most from the project is the off-hours time we spend with our artists, when we're not working, or not supposed to be talking about work. And then we see some detail or reference to something we experienced together during that time together reflected in their work.
BS — Lily Alice Baker incorporated scenes from Mexico City in her paintings, specifically referencing the park and Alameda in Santa Maria and Barbazul Salsa Club. Taylor Lee was influenced by the pre-Hispanic figures at the Anthropology museum: figures with feet and the figures of fertile women played a central role in the new body of work she made for her show
DB — Because it’s just the two of you, you must spend a lot of time with your residents.
BS — Each artist wants to see and do different things in the city. So we get a new experience in Mexico city with each artist, and that brings us a new viewpoint and perspective on the city, as well as to the project. Plus, our objectives will most likely change with each artist that comes through, so the project is fluid in that sense. They have influenced us in certain ways, and will continue to. It's much different than a corporate-run gallery.
DB —You guys were friends first, so what's it like being business partners?
AN — It's not totally different. We spent a lot of time together when we worked at Sotheby’s
BS — At Sotheby’s there's not much differentiation between your personal life and your professional life.
AN — Yeah, the art world in that regard is not categorical in terms of, you go to work, then have your personal life. It's very much intertwined in all aspects of the industry.
DB —Why’s that?
AN — There's a personal and subjective element to the creative industries that transcends the transactional nature of most other industries. People want to meet people on a deeper level than just at work itself. For example, looking back to downtown New York in the eighties, or at Paris’s avant-garde era, there's always been a sense of community in the art world, and it’s the community who defines the moment. There’s a very social aspect to the art world that begins at the basic level of having conversations surrounding the history of art, opinions, ideas and thoughts about art, artists, institutions, curators, galleries.
BS — Between the two of us, we've always been talking about artists we love, openings we want to attend, what artists we’d like to collect personally. Now, professionally, we call those conversations ‘brainstorming.’
BS — The pace is less rushed here. People generally take the time to get to know you, to spend time with you, to just chat. You can really tell when you have a meeting with New Yorkers versus meetings here. Meetings in New York take twenty minutes. You get right to the point. Whereas in Mexico it's like, “how are you, what's going on, let's talk about life.” That gives a lot of space for things to percolate, compared to when it’s straight business.
AN — Even the hours of openings. In Mexico, openings can be six to seven hours, whereas in New York it's 2 hours flat.
BS — So when you go to an opening in New York, you're rushing through them. Here you can take your time.
DB — It sounds like in Mexico, what’s privileged is the community and culture around the business, which is more aligned with what you had envisioned for your career shift.
AN —We can see Mexico’s art scene growing before our eyes, and we’ve only been here a year. We've noticed such a collaborative spirit among gallerists and in the art scene here. Friends and acquaintances from New York will come to the gallery and say, “we were just at Galeria Mascota, they recommended you.” It's amazing that a gallery will recommend other galleries here. It's not as competitive as it is in New York. There's a lot of excitement in that sense, with lots of new people, new galleries, everyones collaborating, helping each other.
DB — Do you have plans to bring the gallery back to New York?
BS — If we can find a way in the future to do it right , and keep this ethos and type of community that we want - we’d think about it. Maybe one day.
DB — Okay so, we’ve been playing ‘in and out’ a lot at Beso. Going into 2024, what's in and what's out?
BS — Funk is in. That's a grungy dance club here. Standing around not dancing is out. Good manners are in!
AN — Home cooking is in. Ultra modern, sleek, steel restaurants are out. Cozy restaurants are in. Exchanging numbers over instagrams is in.
DB — What about art?
BS — Abstraction is in.
AN — Ceramics are in.
BS — Flipping is out. It's not officially out yet, but it should be.
AN — Flipping is a term in the art world when buyers at galleries sell the work of young, sought-after artists on the secondary market. At the primary level the prices are most accessible, and when there’s high demand, the price on the secondary market can exceed those prices tenfold at auction.
BS — If you can’t get the artist on the primary market, the way to do it is on the secondary. It’s inaccessible unless you're on the board of a museum, or you have a great collection that the gallery wants to place the work in. It’s nice to have equal opportunity - if you have millions of dollars, I guess, but that's why it ends up happening.
AN — It can stunt an artist’s career very quickly. When an artist is young in age and career, they haven’t experimented or explored themselves with their work as an artist further along in their career. So the work or specific series sold at auction sets the benchmark for what’s expected of them, and in that sense determines what they’re able to produce.
BS — It doesn’t lead to long-standing growth. We’ve seen it happen to so many artists.
AN — The secondary market is very different from the primary. For these buyers, I don’t think they are thinking about artists’ career, development and long-term growth. The emerging artists don’t receive the proceeds on the secondary market, and their galleries don’t have the control to protect them. The only one ‘winning’ here are the sellers and the auction houses. Not everyone sees it that way, but we do.
DB — Okay, art flipping is out. Can you say some words on your approach at Naranjo?
BS — What we’re trying to do here is look at collectors who have potential. I remember when I was trying to buy my first piece, it was so hard because I wasn’t able to show background on my collecting habits. We want to sell to our generation and clients who will keep the work and who will grow with the work. In the past, people were buying work of their generation/genre , and those collecting habits are what creates the voice of a generation.
AN — The big, better-known collections are always cohesive in terms of narrative. They tell a story of, for example, the eighties New York downtown scene. In that time there was such an authenticity, where people were authentically collecting, artists were authentically producing, galleries were authentically placing work. You can see that energy in those collections forty years later. There weren't the big auction results back then, there wasn't this greedy mindset of art only as an investment. Those collections now characterize that era and present moment.
AN — We have an artist called Christopher Paul Jordan, this is his first show and project out of Yale which is exciting. He was formerly a muralist, so his process comes from an idea that came from conserving murals in Tacoma, Washington, his hometown. He learned the process of pulling and peeling them off of walls. His work has to do with the stories he has to tell about his religious upbringing, about loss, also loss of memories -
BS — And then making new memories. He wasn’t planning on making the collection he did when he came down here. He came here and remembered a missionary trip he made with his dad’s pastor to Mexico when he was younger, so he was engaging with those memories at a very different moment in his life. We asked to see his reference images. And he said, you know, I want to write over this period.
AN —With his process of peeling, some of the surface comes off, and the other stays. So you have these two almost identical surfaces that contain similar stories. For Chris, memory is like that, and sense of self is like that. He grew up queer in a very religious family. His work is about renegotiating these memories and old mindset with his new self. It's gratifying to be able to give an artist the space and time to work through all of that at the residence.
DB — What are you most looking forward to this year?
AN — Well.[laughs]
BS — Zona Maco [laughs]
AN — It's the big art week in Mexico City. It’s such an exciting time down here.