Art for rent

Photo: Jilbert Ebrahimi/Unsplash

For most of us, works of art created by known artists are usually an unobtainable luxury. Unless you rent them from Gallery SLOART. Doing just that can bring you joy and impress your friends.

»The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art,« are the words of the Pulitzer Prize winner, Junot Diaz. It feels good to be able to breathe life into your home space without any special effort. Artwork unfolds time, opening the path to the author, and when you follow their brush strokes, you can discover how much effort and skill the art took to make.

Renting a work of art from Gallery SLOART for three months, which could be used to decorate your home or office, costs 80 euros.

An art piece can be intellectually stimulating, can challenge backwards thinking, or even cause substantial discomfort. But this doesn’t mean that its provocations can only be confronted in galleries; it can be equally effective in your home. If you can afford it.

We can probably safely assume that the works of Banksy, Damien Hirst, or Ai Weiwei would significantly overburden your bank account, even though you wouldn’t mind owning them. There is also little chance of being able to see them any reasonable time soon in any Slovenian galleries, and there is even less chance of being able to buy them here.

Staš Kleindienst, Miracle Mountain. Photo: Gallery SLOART

But there are other options, and other works of art. The website of SLOART gallery and auction house offers paintings by Slovenian artists, to rent. Through the website, you can rent works by artists such as Sašo Vrabič, Staš Kleindienst, Mladen Stropnik, Arjan Pregl, and others.

Those who wish to display a painting in their living room and impress their friends can contact the gallery directly. Their subscription economy model works as follows: after a consultation with the gallery experts, a customer can rent a painting for three months for 80 euros, or they can choose to keep it for a year, in which case they will pay 99 euros every three months. In the latter case, they can also swap their artwork every three months, and the transport each time is included in the annual fee.

By renting works by young artists you can indirectly improve their status and working conditions.

For now, it is possible to rent up to two pieces by the same author at the same time, but their total value cannot exceed 5000 euros. And if you fall in love with a painting, you can buy it.

In SLOART's experience, most customers who rent the paintings are companies organising special events, or those who want to liven up the empty and boring walls in their office spaces. Their clients order the art for festive anniversaries, they’re rented as scenery in filming or for cultural events, and passionate art fans can use them to improve their parties and present themselves as curators in their own homes.

Sašo Vrabič, Fallen. Photo: Gallery SLOART

Even art connoisseurs sometimes need advice, and this goes double for anyone still discovering what they like, or who does not know exactly what they want. If, after their consultation with the gallery expert and selection of their artwork, the customer realises that the painting does not have the desired effect, they can return it, or replace it with another.

If they rent a piece by a young artist, they indirectly help improve their status, creating better working conditions for the artists who have only just started their artistic journey, while at the same time try to influence the Slovenian art market to make it more comparable to the European one.

Photo: Steve Johnson/Unsplash

Gallery SLOART is therefore aiming to link museums and other public institutions closer to art-selling galleries. It wishes to strengthen their connections with other European galleries, where Slovenian artists could show their work, and is considering ways to attract new collectors, carry out successful artwork auctions, and bring Slovenian art closer to the wider public.

Even though efforts to become more competitive and create better conditions for art creations are an urgent matter, art itself has the power to stop time; it stays at home, it does not go anywhere, it is calm, and yet it brings life into our homes between four walls without considerable effort.