Living with Art - an interview with collector Pasquale Guarracino

Living with Art - an interview with collector Pasquale Guarracino

02 March, 2012
by: Tom Jeffreys

Tom Jeffreys visits the amazing home of contemporary art collector Pasquale Guarracino.

Suspended above a hi-fi, just behind a sofa, in a living room in Lewisham is not exactly the place you'd expect to see the work of contemporary artist Karla Black. With a critically acclaimed installation at the Venice Biennale behind her, as well as a shortlist nomination for last year's Turner Prize and a solo show on right now at Stuart Shave, Black is one of the fastest rising stars in the contemporary art world. So what's her work – in this case, a delicately configured plastic bag entitled What To Ask Of Others – doing here, in this Lewisham living room? Well, it was bought back in 2009 by Pasquale Guarracino and is just the most recognisable piece in a collection, started over a decade ago, that now comprises some 120 pieces of contemporary art.

In forming what is known as the Kabin Contemporary Art Collection, Pasquale has acquired works by a veritable who's who of the current generation of contemporary artists. The focus is predominantly on painting, but the collection also spans photography, sculpture, installation and video, and includes works by the likes of Anne Hardy, Clunie Reid, Michael Landy, Armen Eloyen, Sam Jackson, Alex Ball, Rana Begum and Callum Innes.

What is perhaps most immediately interesting however is the way it is all displayed. Almost the entire collection, aside from a few pieces in storage and the odd work out on loan, is housed within Pasquale's basement flat in Lewisham. A head-high black phallic totem by Alexander Hoda greets you as soon as you enter, and the living room is half-filled with an enormous black installation piece by Tomas Downes. A disturbing little portrait by Emma Puntis perches on a window-sill, and an elaborately precarious sculpture by Thomas Needham stands by the bed. Meanwhile, through in the kitchen, affixed to the fridge, is a drawing by Pasquale's eight year-old niece. 



Visiting, therefore, really is a unique experience – quite unlike that of being in a museum or gallery – and it takes a while for the sheer intensity to subside and the individual works to gradually make themselves known. This is now my third visit, and there's still so much to see. Even for the man who lives with these works, there's always something new to discover. “I'm still trying to understand a lot of the work,” says Pasquale, “and I'm not sure you necessarily ever completely do.”

This ongoing sense of discovery seems to lie at the heart of Pasquale's passion for art. “That's what's so great about, say, the National Gallery,” he says. “You can stand and look, and go back again, and the Turners are always there on the same wall, ten years on. That hasn't changed – it's you who's changed. Maybe that's one of the joys of collecting – you don't get that if you go to see a show for ten minutes or half an hour. Then it's gone, but you're haunted by the echoes of it.”



There's clearly something almost compulsive about Pasquale's relationship with art. “I don't stand and look at any of this unless people are here to visit,” he says, “but I think about it all the time.” In 2009 he moved from Reading to Lewisham, to a flat that was specifically chosen to be able to house his collection, and while the builders were in, he was practically driven mad from art deprivation. “As soon as they'd finished,” he laughs, “I just said, 'put some screws in the walls, because I need to hang a painting... now!'”

Unsurprisingly Pasquale describes his personal taste as “heartfelt”, saying of the collection as a whole: “This is as honest as it gets, this is me.” That sense of passion and integrity is something that you can feel from the works themselves. By and large, the art on show steers clear of postmodern tricksiness or elaborate conceptual conceits. Works by the likes of Lucy Moore, Michael Bauer, Ryan Mosley and Ross Taylor pack an immediate emotional punch, but are also complex, lingering pieces fascinated as much by the materiality of paint as its effects.



These artists – and Moore and Mosley in particular – seem almost like friends, and Pasquale clearly follows the careers of his artists very closely indeed, taking pleasure in the threads that connect different works and different lives. He points to the current issue of Garageland, that features an interview with Mosley, talks effusively about Karla Black's current solo show, and continues to stay in touch with several artists whose work he owns.

This personally involved approach differs radically from most of the big-shot art collectors like Charles Saatchi or Anita Zabludowicz, for whom collecting has become its own business. For a start, Pasquale is not married to a millionaire arms dealer – he works on the production side of design for a range of blue chip clients – and, as we've seen, he lives every day with this, very personal, collection. But like such famous figures, Pasquale is becoming conscious of the significance of what he's acquired over the years – as an archive of a period of time, and also as a unique and inspiring experience for visitors. Art exists to be viewed, and “these artists need to be seen,” he says. Which is why he's keen for art lovers to get in touch and come and see the collection.

I urge you to make the journey to Lewisham – it's not so far, and, while the works may not be to everybody's taste, the overall environment really is incredible for the effect it has. Karla Black, for example, has always left me cold, but her work begins to make sense here in this strange, unique context, where it engages not only with the other works but also with the collection's domestic setting. “Ultimately art is about conversations,” says Pasquale, meaning, I think, conversations both between people and between the works themselves. “And,” he concludes, “you can't have conversations on your own.”

Book an appointment to visit Pasquale Guarracino's collection.

www.kabin.org.uk

All photographs by Alex Chappel.

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Tom Jeffreys