Westender article, June 14

From today's Westender (Vancouver)

Artists seek out vanished gallery director

By Mary Frances Hill
Jun 14 2007

Gallery O exhibitors claim loss of work and payment

Enter the name of Toronto-based artist Hans Engel and the name "Gallery O" into Google's search engine, and up pops a link to a tidy page with Engel's photo above thumbnail samples of his oil paintings. It's an ordinary page on a typical art-gallery website, designed for the perusal of collectors and the public alike.

But for Engel, who has shown his work at Vancouver's now-defunct Gallery O at the Center for Contemporary Art, and other galleries run by Sergio Patrich, it's a bitter reminder of his long struggle for compensation. And that struggle is still going on.

Patrich, who ran Gallery O (at 2060 Pine Street in Kitsilano) with his son, closed the space abruptly after a sudden eviction in April, after about a year and a half in business. Engel claims Patrich took with him $22,000 worth of Engel's paintings, and still owes him $4,000 worth of unpaid commissions.

Today, Engel has another web presence. With Brian Nation, Gallery O's former web designer, who brought Patrich to court last year to collect for work on the business's original website, he's created a cleverly titled blog, GalleryOwe.blogspot.com, which includes testimonials from various artists about their dealings with the gallery.

Response has been swift. Engel communicates daily by email to more than a dozen artists in Vancouver, Toronto and Europe who claim to be waiting for overdue compensation from Patrich. "I've spoken to many artists and no one has received even a phone call from Patrich [about unpaid commissions and unreturned artwork]," says Engel, whose contract with Patrich specified the gallery director and artist would split the proceeds from sales of Engel's art 50-50.

When Nation took Patrich to small-claims court, he won, although Nation says he has received none of the $600 he was due. Soon after they met in small-claims court, Patrich sued Nation for taking down the gallery website, citing lost business, Nation says. The court dismissed Patrich's suit.

North Vancouver artist Brittani Faulkes also brought Patrich to court, in September 2005, claiming he owed her $6,481 for paintings he told her had been misplaced. She won, but despite many attempts to contact him, she collected nothing. "My lawyer did a search and could find no visible assets for Sergio Patrich," Faulkes wrote on the GalleryOwe blog. "The new gallery was listed in the name of his son, Jordan Patrich, and his house was listed in his wife's name. All bank accounts were in names of family members, but none in Sergio's."

The Patrich name " including those of his 21-year-old son, Jordan, and his mother, Leah " has been linked to both Havilah Holdings and, more recently, Tiferet Holdings. Artists claim Gallery O was registered under the name of Jordan Patrich. Jordan's own MySpace page contains an introduction in which he claims to own two galleries. In an entry dated May 13, almost a month after his father closed Gallery O, he wrote that the galleries were closed: "It was fun while it lasted, but just a bit too much for me to handle."

David"Haughton, a doctor specializing in pediatric medicine who sidelines as an artist, says he had arranged with Patrich to display his artwork in a Gallery O exhibit called Kindertotentanz, which was due to launch 10 days after Patrich moved out of the space. But the artist and director had a prior history: Haughton claims he had an outstanding conflict with Patrich about payment of approximately $20,000 in commissions from sales of work displayed at the now-defunct Simon Patrich Gallery, which Sergio had run on South Granville until it closed about two years ago (Simon is Sergio's late father). But Haughton was so taken with Gallery O's open, elegant 10,000 square-foot space, he agreed to a new show there.

"I wanted to show in his new space," Haughton says. "I was willing to rationalize away what he owed me. I got him to sign the contract, and I kept asking, "Is business okay?" He said it was fine. Then, 10 days before I was supposed to open, he moved out in the middle of the night."

To Haughton's credit, he didn't let Patrich's eviction stop him from holding his exhibit. He negotiated with the landlord to use the space for a month, renamed it Gallery X Temporary, mounted Kindertotentanz, and sold 40 per cent of his displayed work. "It was a positive thing for me in the end, but it was stressful," he says.

For Faulkes, the stress of losing her work and going through with the lawsuit was particularly burdensome, she says. "I was unable to paint, questioned my choice of career, and was mad at the world."

The website for Gallery O, housed in what the Patriches named the Art Center, includes the Vancouver Gallery of Photography. The site, still accessible on the web (ArtCenter.ca), advertises the galleries' exhibits for March and April, and "upcoming shows" by Haughton and Vancouver painter Thomas Anfield. Anfield was scheduled to mount his show, Sprung, at the end of May. "I'm pretty pissed off that I lost my show," he says. "I was left high and dry, and that was a drag."

Still, Anfield says his experience on the commercial side of the art business has taught him to be assertive " a lesson that paid off in his dealings with Patrich over a previous show."I went to him last year and said, "I want to have a show with you, but I don't want any bullshit," Anfield recalls. Other than the sudden loss of the late-May show, he says he was treated in a fair, professional manner. "[Sergio] phoned me [to report] every sale, and... he paid in full, two days before he closed up."

Facing business and financial conflicts, artists often find themselves feeling helpless, according to Mira Sundara Rajan, a UBC law professor and Canada Research Chair in Intellectual Property Law who specializes in art and the law. "If [a businessman] doesn't have enough to pay anyone, he would have to declare bankruptcy," she says. "If [a] signature is on a contract, [that person] is liable... and it could be a situation for a class action."

Sergio Patrich insists that his landlord's order to close Gallery O was sudden and unexpected. He had already sent out thousands of dollars worth of invitations to Haughton's exhibit, he says, when he received the eviction notice, which cited four months" rent in arrears. This was doubly unfortunate, he says, because after a time of financial constraints, it looked like the business was entering a period of recovery. "Someone told me that to run a gallery you have to be very rich or stupid," he says. "It's not like youre sticking money in your pockets. I haven't taken a salary out of there for years."

Patrich admits he still owes some artists. including Engel, some compensation, and that he plans to deal with each case individually while he searches for a new gallery space and sorts out his finances.

"I'm not saying we're the perfect saints, but it's not because we're trying to screw anybody," says Patrich, who adds that he and his family hosted many community events in the Art Center space, at great expense. "We were trying to build something. Maybe our dream was too big."

Engel says some artists have considered launching a class-action suit, although their distance from each other, and lack of time and organization, has been frustrating, he says. "[The situation] really does need someone to spearhead a class-action suit. I haven't seen anyone with the energy or the money, but I keep the collective-information mill churning amongst us."

That gesture, at least, goes a long way toward helping artists in Faulkes's position, as she wrote on GalleryOwe.

"It's been energizing to realize how many of us are out there who are linked by Patrich's... activities and that we are strong in numbers and unity."

(Copyright (c) 2007 Black Press Group Ltd.)