I’ve talked a lot about the particularities of what a good application should look like and how to find galleries that resonate with your work, and now I want to get really tactical and try to make a roadmap of things to consider, when searching for representation.

After you’ve got a nice CV, portfolio of works and preferably a good looking website, it’ all still just bureaucratic paperweight if you don’t get to use all of these tools in action. So, let’s suppose I have everything and am looking at local spaces (and some, that are further away). What now?

Cold calling is one option; I could send out everything I have to pretty much every gallery and agent in my vicinity. And, unless I already have a few contacts, this is one way to get started and to try getting lucky and winning 10 min with whoever’s in charge of new talent.

But, unless a gallery is either in dire need of new talent and times have been tough or I get really lucky, chances of me getting far with this approach are quite small. The problem is, going cold means that I have no contacts and as such anyone who gets my email or follow-up call will know too.

For artists, a nice network is imperative and putting the cards on the table the second their phone rings is more akin to gambling than a tactical approach, so I wouldn’t recommend it — unless it is part of your strategy:

You could search for galleries that haven’t been doing that well and play your luck, though keep in mind, if they weren’t doing great before, the best thing that could happen to you is getting stuck with a non-compete contract that will make it impossible for you to sell anything, unless it’s via them (and they aren’t selling jack).

Needless to say, a cold approach has never worked for me, but I’m not saying it won’t work for you; the main issue I have with it is that all factors that could allow anyone to get signed via such an approach make it incredibly unlikely to get to any upside after the deal is done and tend to only create the impression of success, rather than actually working.

It’s not hard to see how others who don’t have any representation might look at someone who got signed with respect, maybe a bit of admiration and surely some envy, but a transition from a bad gallery to a good one isn’t that easy and it surely can block your professional development for years if you get a nasty contract.

It’s like buying Instagram followers; it doesn’t work, eventually everyone knows it and because of algorithm changes, your past comes back to haunt you and suddenly you profile isn’t working at all and you might even need to start from scratch.

In my opinion, having cold contacts is great for one particular thing though: Knowing where to start creating some positive friction and heating them up. In tomorrow’s blog, I want to focus on several way to kindle your way into the in-crowd.