“It’s curious how going at different speeds makes you notice different things,” says Pilar Corrias as she pushes her bicycle alongside me through Regent’s Park past the muddle of tarpaulin, cranes and forklifts, a fluorescent-yellow blur of contractors working in performance art-like tandem to erect the Frieze Masters tent. “I see the world in one type of way when I’m walking or going for a run in the park; on a bike, you also notice a lot of details.” The London gallerist is taking me on her commute (normally used for taking calls) from northwest London to Mayfair, where she will be opening a new flagship space coinciding with Frieze London art fair.
Occupying some 5,000 sq ft over two storeys, the gallery designed by Cowie Montgomery Architects, will feature voluminous ground-level exhibition spaces with ceilings almost 17 ft high, with a further gallery space downstairs as well as a library, private viewing room and offices. “I needed a space that had the right volumes and high ceilings, as well as access for bringing in all kinds of artworks,” she explains of the four-year search for the location. “That was really hard; I didn’t think that it was going to be so difficult. But I wanted [the space] to be really impactful—that was important. The programme, the gallery and the artists especially needed that—they’re capable of taking on bigger spaces.”
There’s a deliberate and artful symmetry in the next chapter for Pilar Corrias—the new location shares a ‘birthday’ with her first gallery in Fitzrovia which it now replaces, a Rem Koolhaas-designed space on 54 Eastcastle Street that will have opened 15 years ago to the day. Meanwhile, her second space, established in July 2021, is situated in an 18th-century townhouse just a few hundred metres from the Conduit Street gallery: “It’s two bookends of the same street,” she says. Vital, too, was reinforcing her presence in London, with Corrias adding, “I want to do something extremely well in one place and be known for that.”
To wit, it’s an all-female affair for Frieze Week: the inaugural exhibition at Conduit Street is a survey of new paintings and works on paper, ‘Tripping Over My Joy’ (10th October—16th December), by Los Angeles-based artist Christina Quarles. “I’ve been working with Christina since the start of her stellar career,” says Corrias. “It felt natural to open the space with an artist that is such an integral part of the gallery’s programme and ethos.” At Savile Row, Shanghai-based artist Cui Jie debuts a bold series of new Thermal Landscape paintings that morph modernist glass buildings with anthropomorphised animal ceramics, while German painter Sophie von Hellermann will bring the fun of Dreamland Margate to Frieze London with a solo fair booth inspired by the iconic seaside amusement park. Works by Sabine Moritz and Tschabalala Self will feature in an online viewing room.
Corrias is also palpably enthused about returning to Paris+ par Art Basel later this month with a dual presentation of Rirkrit Tiravanija and Vivien Zhang. She deftly navigates the lunchtime throng of Oxford Circus while pulling up renderings of the pair’s collaborative booth on the phone fixed to her bicycle’s handlebars. “I knew when I asked them to meet they would really get along,” she says of her creative matchmaking. “Both their work deals with ideas of the social and boundaries. The idea of belonging or not belonging, of inclusion.”
This notion of inclusion is at the heart of Pilar Corrias—two-thirds of the 35 artists she represents are women. Her father was a diplomat and prior to London, Corrias called places including Tokyo, Rome, Luanda, Lisbon and New York ‘home’. “I had this childhood where I was constantly transported through realities, from country to country, culture and culture. You have to adapt because you’re not a tourist—you’re actually living there. You become very open-minded,” she says. “When I look back on the gallery’s programme, I’m not surprised it reflects my personal global background. All of the artists I represent are political in one way or another. And you really have to stand behind what they believe in.”
As we reach the corner of Savile Row and Conduit Street, Corrias wheels her bicycle through hoarding and into the new gallery space—“impactful”, as she had mused, it certainly is. Beneath a mélange of construction tools and plastic sheeting—echoing the earlier hubbub in Regent’s Park— the bones of the main exhibition space shine through, its lofty walls painted a joyful shade of lilac ahead of the installation of Quarles’ paintings. Further inside, Corrias points out the ceiling where a site-specific chandelier by Philippe Parreno will hang (another note of symmetry, the French artist inaugurated the original Eastcastle Street gallery in 2008 with a single work: a cast aluminium Christmas tree). “I’m finally realising a dream—it’s been a long time coming,” says Corrias of the new space. “I knew that I had to do something, and then go onto next thing. It’s important to always be curious and interested in the world around you, and to never remain complacent.”
‘Tripping Over My Joy’ runs until 16th December at Pilar Corrias, 51 Conduit Street. pilarcorrias.com
‘Thermal Landscapes’ runs until 4th November at Pilar Corrias, 2 Savile Row. pilarcorrias.com
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