How Do We Find New Artists?

Valentine H.Hyman
Jul 8
6 min read

EDITORIAL VOL 19 NNC GALLERY LONDON VISUAL MAGAZINE AND CATALOGUE

In a world where everyone produces images, the real curatorial task is to recognize a practice.

May 2025.

Never before has it been so easy to produce images, artworks, projects, visual content. Never before has it been so difficult to understand where art truly begins.

The contemporary art world has expanded to a point where it can no longer be read through the old maps alone. There are artists coming from academies, universities, photography schools, international master’s programmes. There are self-taught artists, outsider artists, digital artists, photographers, performers, artists working with artificial intelligence, archives, the body, memory, matter, error, trauma, technology. There are artists living in the great centres of the art market, and artists working far away from the official geographies of visibility.

So the question is no longer: where are the artists?

The question is: how do we recognize them?

According to The Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2025, global art market sales reached an estimated $57.5 billion in 2024, a 12% decrease compared to the previous year. Yet, during the same period, the number of transactions grew by 3%. This tells us something important: the top end of the market is slowing down, while beneath the surface there is still movement, energy, collecting, exchange, experimentation and access at different levels of the system.

We are not facing a desert.

We are facing overproduction.

The problem of our time is not the absence of creativity. It is the excess of visibility without orientation. Everything appears, everything flows, everything is published, shared, promoted, sold, archived and forgotten. Images travel faster than our ability to read them. Artists are often asked to communicate themselves before their work has had the time to mature. Digital presence has become almost compulsory, but digital presence does not necessarily mean artistic quality.

UNESCO has repeatedly underlined that the digital environment creates new opportunities for cultural and creative industries, but also new fragilities: unequal access, platform concentration, unsustainable remuneration models for creators, and systems that do not always favour the discoverability of diverse content.

This is one of the deepest contradictions of the contemporary art system.

On one hand, the digital world promises democratization. Anyone can show their work. Anyone can open a profile, build an archive, reach — at least theoretically — an international audience. On the other hand, this apparent openness creates new forms of invisibility. Being online is not the same as being seen. Being seen is not the same as being understood. Being understood is not the same as being recognized.

If everything can be called art, then the real problem is no longer producing images.

The real problem is recognizing a practice.

This is the threshold on which NNC Gallery was born, and on which it continues to work.

NNC Gallery was not created to add more noise to the noise. It was created to open a window: a window onto authentic artistic research, onto true emerging artists and serious mid-career artists who are building — or have already built — a solid language, even when that language has not yet been fully recognized by the official system.

Emerging does not mean beginner.

Mid-career does not mean arrived.

There are emerging artists with a powerful vision, even if they do not yet have an institutional curriculum. There are mid-career artists who have worked for years, often in silence, outside the great commercial mechanisms, developing complex, coherent and necessary practices. There are artists who have not had access to the right channels, the right galleries, the right people, but who possess a rare quality: the ability to transform experience into form, thought into image, pain into language, time into work.

So the question is not simply how to find new artists.

The question is how to build criteria of reading.

In a system increasingly dominated by market visibility, networking, fairs, social media and speed, the risk is to confuse value with exposure, quality with price, research with communication, the artist with their positioning. But art cannot be reduced to a sales strategy. The market is necessary: artists must be able to live from their work, to sell, to grow, to be supported. But when the market becomes the only criterion of value, art loses an essential part of its function.

Art is not only merchandise.

Art is an interpretation of the world.

It is a form of knowledge. It is a way of making visible what does not yet have a language. It is a question addressed to the present. It is a wound that becomes structure. It is an image that does not merely decorate, but forces us to look differently.

This is why curatorial work is more necessary than ever.

To curate does not mean simply to select what we like. It does not mean to build an elegant showcase. It does not mean to accumulate names, images, biographies and links. To curate means to take responsibility for a reading. It means asking: what is this artist searching for? What world does this work open? What necessity sustains it? What language is being built? What relationship does it have with its own time? What remains after the first visual impact?

For almost nine years, NNC Gallery has continued to study this question.

How do we recognize a real artist?

There is no perfect formula. A curriculum is not enough. Technique is not enough. A beautiful photograph is not enough. A powerful image is not enough. A well-written project is not enough. Social media presence is not enough. A fair, a sale, a number of followers, a price, a contact, a recommendation: all these elements may have a role, but none of them, alone, guarantees the existence of an artistic practice.

An artist is recognized through the deep coherence between image, thought and necessity.

We recognize an artist when the work does not seem produced only to be consumed, but to open a space. We recognize an artist when the work continues to question us after we have seen it. We recognize an artist when the images do not merely seek approval, but construct a position. We recognize an artist when they do not simply imitate the language of the moment, but find their own rhythm — even fragile, even imperfect, even out of fashion.

In an age where everything can be published immediately, the true difference is depth.

In an age where everything can become content, the true difference is meaning.

In an age where everything can look like art, the true difference is necessity.

NNC Gallery exists for this reason: to act as a curatorial filter between the indistinct mass of contemporary visual production and those practices that deserve attention, listening, interpretation and possibility.

We do not claim to possess an absolute truth. Art, when it is alive, always escapes final definitions. But we believe that places of attention are necessary. Places that do not merely show, but read. Places that do not use artists as content, but accompany them as cultural presences. Places that can help collectors orient themselves not only in front of what is already recognized, but also in front of what is emerging now.

Collectors, too, need new instruments of orientation. Artsy’s Art Market Trends 2025 reported that only 17% of collectors surveyed believe the art market serves them “very well”, while many point to the need for more transparency, clearer pricing and better information.

This means that artists are not the only ones who need mediation. Audiences, new buyers, independent collectors and people who want to approach art without being crushed by the closed language of the system also need knowledge, trust and interpretation.

NNC Gallery Visual Magazine is born inside this awareness.

It is not only a magazine to be looked at. It is a map, an entrance, a visual archive connected to interviews, editorials, special guests, artist of the month features, advice for artists and advice for collectors. It is a structure designed to make artists more visible, but also more readable. Because visibility without interpretation is fragile. An image without context risks being consumed and forgotten.

We want to slow down the gaze.

We want to restore meaning to the act of seeing.

We want to build a space where art is not only what is sold, but what is understood, discussed, supported, protected and relaunched.

Perhaps the true revolution of art today does not consist in declaring that everything is art.

Perhaps the true revolution consists in recognizing that, precisely because everything can be produced, published and promoted, we need new criteria, new readings, new responsibilities.

Art does not need to be freed from the market.

It needs to be freed from its reduction to the market alone.

Art must return to being research, language, vision, risk, knowledge. It must belong also to those who were not born inside the system, to those who do not possess the right connections, to those who work at the margins, to those who come from other countries, other classes, other histories, other paths. It must be discovered not only when it has already been consecrated, but when it is still alive, vulnerable, necessary.