Venice Beach to Seoul: Esther Kim Varet on the Expansion of Various Small Fires

In 2012, Esther Kim Varet set up Various Small Fires alongside her husband, Joseph Varet. Originally opened as a project space while Kim Varet was completing her PhD at Columbia, the gallery has since expanded from its original hub in Venice Beach to Dallas and Seoul. In this interview, Kim Varet shares her approach to running the gallery, and how she perceives South Korea's position within the global art market.

The first thing I wanted to ask you about is the name of your gallery, which comes from the title of a book by Ed Ruscha. Could you tell me a bit about the gallery's guiding philosophy, and how the name feeds into this?

It's funny because the name originated when VSF was more of a project space. It was at the same time as I was working on my PhD dissertation at Columbia, which was focused on the Californian avant-garde in the 1970s and 70s. My headspace at the time influenced the choice of the name.

VSF was established in Venice Beach, which was such a historical hotbed of activity, and years later, we ended up representing Billy Al Bengston, who had led that pack. We opened in Seoul with a two-person show of Ed Ruscha and Billy Al Bengston in Seoul in 2019, and continue to work with artists of that generation.

Opening the project space in Venice Beach was integral to building the gallery's programming. We're also taking on a couple of artists very soon, including Don Bachardy. He's doing a solo show with us next spring.

Understanding from a contemporary perspective how all of those things fit into an evolving international conversation about what art looks like outside of the stronghold of New York and the Eurocentric model has continued to be our guiding philosophy.

Rosalind Krauss was my primary advisor for the PhD. Every year, she chooses one, maybe two PhD candidates to come into the programme to basically be her understudy. Obviously, I was moulded within a certain ideological model, but also, being Asian American and not from New York City, I was trying to figure out how to expand that model for another generation and be a part of that expansion, whether or not it was within the academic field of art history.

I understand you came up with this manual detailing your approach to running a gallery, which could be replicated across different regions. Could you tell me a little bit about how that approach shifts between the different cities?

Surprisingly, it doesn't shift that much. Creating the logic of a franchise means creating a certain standard that can be duplicated over and over again very easily by different operators in a city or in a new location. The best example of that is McDonald's, right? Whatever McDonald's you go to, you always know it's a McDonald's.

I don't see why that can't be applicable to other business models or philosophies—you just have to be very detailed, down to formatting press releases and emails, like the kind of Helvetica font that we use. We have operational timelines for every show. You can duplicate it and you can scale it. And with something like Zoom—we have very systematised team meetings across four time zones.

Many project spaces resist against that kind of model, because they often embrace the smaller, more localised scale, but what's interesting is that you're doing it in a different way.

You can get stuck in a lot of bureaucracy at corporations, and it can be very heavy. I would much rather feel lighter, I guess, and part of being nimble is having tentacles in multiple locations or time zones.

What changes have you witnessed in Seoul's art scene since opening the gallery there?

There were collectors there with very deep pockets before, but their access to information was limited. And now, any person can enter the game. And Korea is very trend-driven—if one person is dying their hair blue, literally half the country has their hair blue.

My parents lived there half the year and I kind of grew up going there, and I realised very early on that I should open a space there. We built the gallery in 2014, and opened it in 2015, so that's when it really started. I would've opened the space in Seoul in 2017 had I not gotten pregnant with my second kid right around that time.

The reason some artists such as Ugo Rondinone are very popular in South Korea is because they were shown by galleries who established there first. So I knew that if we could get in early enough, then we could help shift that. As it grew, we could help control the artists who were entering into the cycle, and that's exactly what happened.

How do you think South Korea's positioning within the global art market will progress?

I think there's infinite potential there. I mean, you look at art schools such as Goldsmiths and Rhode Island School of Design, and almost half the students are Korean. It's part of the philosophy of aspiration; of getting to the next place.

It's not a coincidence that I'm in the art world—once my parents came to the States and got comfortable enough, they were like, 'What's the next phase for future generations? Oh, she has to go into the arts.'

That mentality is now very common. It's not like in America where it stops at collecting cars, watches, or purses, it's something else. There are other countries that will follow that trajectory too.

Because Korea has such a big ripple effect on other parts of Asia, I think there's going to be a shift within our generation. There are pockets of wealth and pockets of future growth, and the art world will develop along with that.

We're very interested in Singapore and Southeast Asia right now, so we're doing Art SG in January 2023. We have a lot of Malaysian clients, so we're looking in that direction as well. Another reason why I opened in Texas was because there's been a lot of wealth moving there, because of tax breaks in personal income tax, so I feel like that was another anticipation of positioning ourselves there.

And in terms of the programme, are you looking at any young Korean artists at the moment?

We have a number of young Korean artists that are doing very well, including Mark Yang, Wendy Park, and Lily Wong. Wendy Park incorporates everyday items such as Shin Ramyun and Tiger Balm in her paintings—I think it's cool that objects like these are now mainstream culture. —[O]