Andrew Barsch - Journalist

How are modern companies managing to go one step beyond interior design and sport stylish new artworks by hot contemporary artists? Esfera del Arte does it for them of course.

When InMadrid editor Delaina Haslam e-mailed me about the prospect of writing this column on a corporate art-rental company, I shrugged and thought, “Well, writing fluff is sometimes better than not writing at all.” Not that this magazine has ever published
anything other than top-notch, highbrow, cutting-edge journalism with just the right socio-political twist to keep it fresh and entertaining, but there can be a first time for everything.

After meeting general manager Hans R Hoetink, at the Esfera del Arte office in the Fernando VI gallery district, I must admit that I was glad to have taken the assignment. And I have been humbled by my arrogance in thinking that the words “multinational corporation” and “contemporary art” were an oxymoron when used together, and in scoffing at the prospect of banks and telecom corporations funding the arts.

Hans greeted me in perfect English at the door, looking very Dutch and not a day over 25. This 38-year-old founding partner and general manager is more than just a carpetbagger banking on the fact that corporate Spain is clumsily trying to look hip. After a handshake from Hans and a crotch-sniff from an equally friendly French bulldog named Stella, I was taken inside the office, offered a drink, which I regrettably declined (I was planning on a quick escape) and I began the interview with some background questions.

It started to look as if Mr Hoetink actually knew a thing or two about contemporary art. After graduating with an art history degree from Leiden University in Holland, Hans came to Madrid where he’s worked for Sotheby’s, the Fundación Thyssen-Bornemisza and then in Galería Marlborough, which seems to be the make-it-or-break-it gallery for up-and-coming contemporary artists on the Madrid scene.

Yet he left all that to start up the recently relocated Esfera del Arte, the brains behind all that peculiarly well placed art in places such as Ericsson, Deutsche Telekom and ING Real Estate, to name a few. Even good taste can be outsourced these days. When I asked him about leaving Marlborough he quipped, “A place like that is only fun if you can run it yourself.”

Not a businessman by trade, Hans found two other partners, a banker and an economist (clever move) and in 1994 they formed the only art-rental facility in Spain. “Art rental was already well developed in Holland at the time,” he says, and timing seems to be what it’s all about. Apart from a company’s obvious need to impress clients with a well decorated office, the standard of work environment for office workers has changed too. There’s now a need for a more inviting work space in which to put in your eight, nine, up to 20-hour shifts, which are becoming the norm these days for urban multinationals. “This argument wouldn’t have gone down 20 years ago, but nowadays people don’t want to sit in a shitty, neon-lit, windowless, smoke-filled room.”

When skimming through Hans’ list of clients, I stopped at Deseo, SA, Pedro Almodóvar’s production company to ask about the filmmaker’s preferences in contemporary art. “It’s a stylist who gives everything that Almodóvar-esque melodramatic kitsch quality these days,” Hans tells me. Supposedly Almodóvar now has better things to do than create his own sense of style.

Then Hans took me to see what he has to offer his clients — all aesthetically interesting and intriguing, yet more than just decoration. “I thought that, rather than saying we merely ‘decorate’ offices, it was more sofisticated to say that the works were there to be enjoyed visually,” he says. When deciding which artists to work with, Hans admits to “a struggle not to compromise quality over accessibility to companies,” who probably wouldn’t take too kindly to much of the sexually or politically charged works so commonly seen in contemporary art. “We must find a balance between quality and keeping it not too complicated.”

He says that he likes dealing with both the art and the corporate worlds, especially when he’s able to bring them together. He organises Esfera Art luncheons for artists and clients, and studio visits to get clients interested. “Executives have this idea that artists are these spacey, off-thewall, bohemian types, but the truth is just the opposite. Most take their work very seriously.” And what do these stiffs in suits know about contemporary art? “You do get the typical cigar-in-hand business executive whose idea of art is a still life or a hunting scene.” But Hans seems to have a way with
people and a way to “keep it simple and clear. That’s what contemporary art does.”