Artist Tomás Saraceno chuckles as he remembers his first buyer in the early 2000s: fellow artist Thomas Bayrle, at the time his professor at the Städelschule art school in Frankfurt. The Berlin-based Argentine artist has since established a vast, visionary multimedia practice. Sitting at his workspace on the top floor of an East Berlin factory building, he thinks about the many collector relationships he has enjoyed, but can ‘count the ones close to me on my fingers,’ he says, holding his hands up.
His research-based practices produce collectible works ranging from large installations and sculptures to drawings, editions, photographs, two-dimensional works made of spider webs, and even whimsical one-offs like a deck of spider-based oracle cards. Beyond these, however, are also collaborations with institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, architectural structures, experiments with spiders and their webs, and sweeping institutional shows. He also founded and runs the nonprofit Aerocene Foundation and has launched multiple philanthropic activities, some of which have received financial support from invested individuals.
Which brings us to patronage. Ongoing support to an artist often involves a collector commissioning works for domestic spaces, as it always has: ‘I’m working on a sculptural commission for a dear friend and important collector – a friendship that also took about 10 years to evolve,’ says Pendleton. But patronage today is just as often about contributing to the production costs of ambitious institutional projects – and frequently the only way for a major museum exhibition to come together. Saraceno’s 2018 Palais de Tokyo show ‘On Air’, which filled the Paris institution, involved the support of ‘about 20 collectors,’ he says, ‘and in return they received a work from the show, or a special piece.’