Design Work Life: Cataloging Inspiration Daily

It’s great to see so many peo­ple try­ing to get con­tem­po­rary art in the hands of the pub­lic in a more afford­able way. We’ve seen this with 20×200, Tiny Showcase, and oth­ers. And now, Circuit Gallery has arrived onto the scene. Here’s how their site works:

Circuit Gallery rep­re­sents an impor­tant new way of buy­ing and sell­ing con­tem­po­rary art. Our mis­sion and model are sim­ple. We want to make inter­est­ing, sig­nif­i­cant, qual­ity, con­tem­po­rary art more acces­si­ble by mak­ing it more afford­able ($30, $60, $120). We are able to do this by sell­ing the work in rel­a­tively large edi­tions (our edi­tions are gen­er­ally lim­ited to 500). In essence we have inverted the con­ven­tional and more exclu­sive art world for­mula of high prices for small edi­tions or unique objects (need­less to say pro­hib­i­tive for most).

By offer­ing works in larger edi­tions we are able to effec­tively keep the cost of the work low, while simul­ta­ne­ously being a viable and attrac­tive option for seri­ous con­tem­po­rary artists. Circuit Gallery is fun­da­men­tally artist-centered and is con­ceived as a com­ple­ment to con­ven­tional gallery (or dealer) rep­re­sen­ta­tion; an alter­na­tive means to cir­cu­late great work to a wider audience.

At first glance it looks like Circuit Gallery has quite a lot to offer, but these pho­tographs by Alejandro Cartagena par­tic­u­larly caught my eye.