For the travel guru Erina Pindar, art, life, and work flow in intertwined streams.
Take a choice example from a few years ago. On a helicopter ride over Lake Empakaai in Tanzania, Pindar found herself listening to Max Richter’s On the Nature of Daylight. It might have been the setting, or simply the unassuming yet defiant melodies, but it had the entrepreneur “obsessed” with the British composer.
It was apt, then, that back in her home city of New York, she came across a series of paintings named after the composition by Eberhard Ross at Amelie, Maison d’Art gallery in SoHo. She immediately “fell in love” with the German abstract painter’s interpretation of her reactions to the same music.
The paintings immediately recalled the “lake’s insane jade green color and the sky which was absolutely bright orange.” Today, two works from the series sit in the corner of her bedroom in her Tribeca apartment. “Those paintings feel like meditation to me,” Pindar told Artsy. “They are what I wake up to every day.”
As the COO and managing partner of the luxury travel agency Smartflyer, Pindar knows a thing or two about how special experiences can permeate the everyday. That’s part of the reason why, just under two years ago, she embarked on a personal journey of collecting art.
Her collection’s smaller-scale works, such as a circular blue-hued polished plaster and resin painting from Letitia Quesenberry’s “BLSH” series, or a 2002 Robert Kipniss copper plate painting, Still life w/ chair & standing lamp, grace the walls of her Tribeca apartment. But the majority of the works in her collection are on display at SmartFlyer’s Chelsea headquarters. “I finally have a space that I can fill with all the art I bookmark in my head,” she quipped.
Pindar, who spent the first 15 years of her life in Jakarta, did not grow up surrounded by art. “An interest was always there, but I never had the chance to formalize it,” she recalled. Still, she developed a keen knack for how the right pieces can transform a space.
At her office, for example, the guests at talks that the company hosts on-site often express their intrigue and the art provides ample conversation starters. The biggest talk of the penthouse office? “Definitely the Chris Soal sculpture!” she answered. Pindar first encountered the South African artist’s compositions of bamboo and birch toothpicks amassed in voluptuous configurations during a walkthrough at Cape Town’s tastemaking gallery WHATIFTHEWORLD. Tricky to the eye, Soal’s sought-after compositions in the disposable material convey an inviting softness at a distance yet reveal their spiky content upon closer inspection. “Chris was there in person and told us about his fascinating process,” said Pindar. “Anyone coming into the office asks about what the material is—we never get bored of talking about it.”
At the core of Pindar’s collection is a deepening engagement with the South African art scene, which began on an art-focused trip that she organized with her art dealer friend Montague Hermann. The trip intended to “bring collectors to where artists are from instead of the other way around, where African artists come to where collectors are,” Pindar recalled.
Planning the trip had already exposed Pindar to many new artists, but it wasn’t until she embarked on the journey that the spark to start collecting art was first ignited. The trip helped her see the familiar aspects of contemporary art through a broader lens. Conversations with collectors about their thinking processes on the trip made her realize she already had a similar urge inside. “I’ve always made sure to bring a piece back home from any trip to anchor the experience,” she said, and collecting emerged as a “natural extension” of this habit.
The commitment seemed to pay off: In a short span of time, she has already amassed a suite of mixed-media works that succinctly reflects her love for the South African art scene while radiating an absorbing energy. She is fascinated by the nation’s burgeoning art community for reasons that are not different from how she operates in her professional life. “I have always invested in companies that are in their early stages,” she explained. “I just am drawn to potential.” This is particularly pertinent in Cape Town, which continues to serve as a source for Pindar’s passion to grow her collection as well as a reminder for more curiosity. “There is so much creativity in Cape Town that I haven’t even scratched the surface,” she noted.
Ever since that formative trip, Pindar has become addicted to buying art. Through annual trips to Cape Town’s own art fair Investec, formal commitments with top institutions, and a pure dedication to learn the ropes, she has tapped into every opportunity to broaden her understanding of a sector that felt foreign a few years ago. From The Great Migration (2022), an oozing aquatic painting by the emerging Sudanese artist Miska Mohmmed, to an arresting portrait by the Brooklyn-based Nigerian photographer Zina Saro-Wiwa, titled Eats Scotch Egg with Fanta (2022), Pindar’s collection reflects a very personal art education, in which travel and curiosity play core roles.
Last year, Pindar became a founding member of the 10x10 initiative run by Zeitz MOCAA, the influential Cape Town contemporary art institution. The initiative brings together ten American friends of the Cape Town museum for fundraising. Pindar, who is also a member of MoMA’s Contemporary Arts Council, considers these involved institutional roles her own “masterclass” on art collecting. Through bicontinental philanthropic involvements with two institutions, she has the opportunity to connect with curators, artists, and other collectors. “I am, in a way, exposed to the proper art education that I didn’t have the chance to receive in my 20s,” she said.
If there’s an aesthetic theme to Pindar’s collection, it is a loose focus on artists that utilize traditional mediums through introspective means. She finds herself settling on works that somehow reflect their artists’ personal inner journeys or fascinations because they happen to be Pindar’s, too. Ross’s Richter-inspired paintings are a good example, as well as Mongezi Ncaphayi’s nocturnal painting, Lets Say We Did I (2023). Pindar displays the moody print with dense colorations at her office. The abstracted bird’s eye view of a land intrigues the avid traveler for whom a one-night work trip to Europe is not an uncommon feat. “Mongezi is also heavily influenced by music, especially jazz,” added Pindar about the artist whom she eyed for a year before acquiring one of his works.
Despite her incredibly fast-paced life, Pindar takes her time before purchasing an artwork. Upon discovering an artist, she’ll go out of her way to “see more and more” and “learn everything” about their practice, often through her institutional patronage roles and friends in the sector.
This approach was first realized a few years ago when she encountered a William Kentridge triptych at a friend’s house. She later stumbled upon another work by the famed South African artist at a Zeitz MOCAA fundraising auction but resisted raising her paddle. “I didn’t know enough about him yet,” she recalled.
Luckily, she didn’t have to wait too long for what became the very first artwork of her collection: a “baby Kentridge.” The work—from the artist’s “Rubrics” series of striking phrases overlaid on found book pages—is a screenprint that reads “AGAINST ARGUMENT (BUT NOT THIS ONE)” in bold red all caps.
Pindar cherishes the work, which is still displayed proudly in her apartment, for giving her the courage and “push” to continue collecting art.
While she admits to sometimes finding aspects of the art world “opaque,” Pindar gradually realized that most people she encountered there were in reality friendly and more than willing to talk. “I eventually learned you can simply enter a gallery and look at art or start a conversation with the staff,” she said. Today, she considers it an “oxymoron” that the sector looks so “intimidating” from the outside while through the same network, she met some of the “kindest people” some of whom have become her friends.
Her collection’s most recent addition, for example, is a subtle nod to this honed search. A duo of large black and brown vessels, separately titled Lotus I (red) and Tuti Lotus (black) (both 2025), by the Brooklyn-based Sudanese ceramic artist Dina Nur Satti have recently been added to her office’s premises. “Dina’s esoteric interest in the divine and the spiritual is in contrast—or tension if you will—with her earthy material, which is very grounded,” she explained.
While her professional and personal affinity for travel continues to take Pindar around the world, discovering art is now a constant, no matter where she finds herself. Pindar often visits destinations where art may be waiting around the corner, whether in the most unexpected part of Tanzania or on a Cape Town gallery tour. “You can travel as far as you can, but you always want to come back home,” she said. “We created our office like a home, just like my own place, with art that I have picked up near or far and have brought back home.”
from Artsy News https://ift.tt/uHNbAXR
No comments:
Post a Comment