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Big Canvas
The Economic Times 27 June 2014
Moinak Mitra
Art District XIII, in Delhi's Lado Sarai, may jostle for space with other galleries, but is different in its attitude. While number '13' challenges the conventional unlucky paradigm, the front road leads into canvases adorning the walls.
"Art must be accessible to you," says Kapil Chopra, president of the Oberoi Group and mentor, Art District XIII.
Chopra made sure the access to the gallery was seamless as ever, with the asphalt and bitumen compound imported from Shell so that the road outside actually led in.
The gallery opened its doors in April and Chopra has been hankering to bring in a new breed of collectors. Four years ago, Chopra was in Sydney and saw a Paul Davies exhibit ion at the Olsen Irwin Gallery.
He wrote about Davies in his blog and a relationship built up. So he called upon Davies for the first ever exhibition — Built in Translation II.
Chopra was bitten by the art bug almost a decade ago as general manager of Trident in Gurgaon, which hosted an art event featuring heavyweights such as Manu Parekh and Jogen Chowdhury.
Eventually, he evolved into a buyer and a voracious reader on art. In the art boom of 2007-08, he became an authority of sorts. On his blog indianartreview, he educated people on what art to buy.
"Gal leries were not pricing correctly and artists got greedy because it was built on speculation and the art market collapsed," he observes.
In September 2010, Chopra started his first venture in art, bestcollegeart.com. Today, it's India's largest selling art gallery with 7,00,000 page views a year, selling on average about 350-400 artworks annually.
All the earnings from bestcollegeart. com were reaped back into the endeavour. In 2011, he tied up with Glenf iddich to usher in 'Emerging Artist of the Year Award', where winning artists would go to the Glenfiddich Residency in Scotland.
In 2012, he started The Wall, India's leading art webzine with 13,000 subscribers today. Art District XIII was a culmination of Chopra's passion of art as he strove to balance the gallerist, the artist and the collector so that no one got shortchanged.
Whatever profits Chopra's art ventures generate go into the holding company, Insignia Art Collect, which pays salaries to about eight employees.
Chopra doesn't take a salary. He wants to keep it that way because in his professional avatar, Chopra runs 25 hotels of the Oberoi Group. "I may either open (a gallery) in Dubai or in Geneva as they are free ports with zero duties, so art can be shipped around freely," he says.
Chopra has struck the right chord. Big guns are actually queuing up to buy works from his gallery. Three of Paul Davies's works have already been sold to Gulpreet Kohli (MD, ChrysCapital), Anoop Prakash (MD, Harley-Davidson India) and Amrit Kiran Singh (VP, Brown Forman Spirits aka Jack Daniel's). More is in the offing, and Chopra isn't complaining.