Editor’s Note: This story is part of Newsmakers, a series where we interview the movers and shakers who are making change in the art world.
In 2023, Nicolas Nahab joined blue-chip Brazilian gallery Mendes Wood DM as a director, helping set up its Parisian outpost in the Place des Vosges. In 2020, Samy Ghiyati was hired by David Zwirner in Paris to help the mega-gallery gain its footing in the French capital. Both men had serious French art world credentials. Nahab had a decade of experience at Marian Goodman Gallery and Yvon Lambert, where he held senior positions. Ghiyati had previously worked for Kamel Mennour, one of Paris’s top home-grown galleries.
This month, however, Nahab and Ghiyati are striking out on their own to launch NG, an independent art advisory and exhibitions company. In the new company, Ghiyati will focus mostly on the advising side of things, while Nahab on curating. The aim is to organize experimental exhibitions created alongside artists that will surprise collectors and the public alike, via organizing exhibitions in non-traditional venues, hosting social gatherings, and more.
They see NG as both a complement to the current gallery system, but, in being freed from having their own gallery program, a chance to focus their energies on artists and collectors in ways that are proving extremely difficult within today’s high-speed, ever-expanding gallery circuit.
For their inaugural show, NG is mounting a solo of new work by New York–based Moroccan artist Meriem Bennani, in a yet-to-be revealed venue in the Moroccan port city Essaouira. The show will be Bennani’s first in her native country and is designed with the regional community strongly in mind. The free event, which NG is funding, will open in December 2025.
Nahab and Ghiyati spoke with ARTnews over Zoom to discuss their experiences navigating the gallery industry and why they set out to pursue a different approach in NG.
This interview has been edited and condensed for concision and clarity.
ARTnews: Why did you both leave your high-profile galleries?
Samy Ghiyati: It’s a childhood dream in a way. Since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to create my own company. But I did not want to do it alone. I like working with a team.
Nicolas Nahab: On my side, I feel I’ve basically done as much as I could in galleries. When I was coming up in the art world here [in Paris during the early 2000s], it was quite a confined, limited space, so it was difficult to get in. It was a different world. When I joined Marian Goodman, I discovered much more about the trade. Marian is such a precise person, and she always valued institutional exhibitions and relations above all. I learned a lot from her. But I wondered what more can I do? And then I decided that it would be very exciting for me to help set up a company [Mendes Wood DM in Paris]. Now that it’s set up, I feel like I’ve done as much as I could in the gallery world. I cherish every memory about it. But at one point, you start thinking independently from the structure. And that’s where this idea or this need for NG came from.
And what was the catalyst to start NG?
Nahab: An opportunity made us kick-start this whole partnership. Specifically, a conversation with a French collector who wanted to focus more on art and collecting—to go more in depth—sparked our own conversations together. That led to thinking about what NG could be, beyond working with one collection.
Ghiyati: Art advising is a business that is not very present in Europe, so there was also an opportunity there. We’ve had collectors whowere asking more and more to expand to other geographies, other periods of art. We’ve had people looking for Middle Eastern, or South American art, or I had people start collecting 19th-century painting, Old Masters, design, decorative arts. There was this idea of having a more transversal, holistic view of collecting. But at the same time, we like doing shows.
Nahab: As for exhibitions, working with artists has always been at the center of my activities over the years, and I didn’t want to let go of that. Through conversations with artists, there is real appetite for exhibition-making, not just in commercial galleries, but also in regions that don’t have as many institutional venues. Also, artists from different diasporas want to explore their identity, and go back to their roots. This has translated into the first exhibition we’re doing with Meriem Bennani. It’s a custom-made show, in that we looked for the space that corresponds to the conversations that we had with the artist. And it has a very strong bond with the local community. The show is the result of a conversation, rather than the other way around, and that’s something we want to keep doing.
Will NG’s exhibitions be selling ones?
Ghiyati: Not all of the works—there will be some components for sale. In Meriem’s case, we’re showing video art, so it’s not a very commercial show.
How do you fund something like this, if it’s not very commercial?
Ghiyati: That’s also one aspect of producing exhibitions in Morocco, where it’s less expensive. We can afford to do this. Producing the same exhibition in Paris would probably be five times the cost. I think it’s going to be a tool to engage our collectors and provide a program. We see this first exhibition as more of an investment. And we’ll also do exhibitions of paintings, but this first case is very specific.
Can you elaborate on how artists want to show outside traditional hubs?
Nahab: Artists love experimenting, changing context, and being inspired. But I think also on the collectors’ side, for them to travel to Morocco, it is exciting because not only do they get to see art, they also get to experience the city. They’re by the beach. There’s great food. It’s a whole package experience.
Ghiyati: I think we are deepening the experiential aspect that we’ve been seeing in this industry over the last 10 years. But we did that very naturally. For Meriem’s show it’s going to be very focused on the local community, and that’s how the artworks were chosen. The show will be up for long enough to bring people over from the countryside, and to have a deep, local engagement, with context for people who are not used to these types of events.
Over the years, what do you feel has changed about working in galleries?
Nahab: It’s more the world that surrounds us that has changed, and then the galleries adapted. But when I first started, it wasn’t as global. Markets were much more local. There were less fairs, and less institutions globally. And then the big difference for everyone, is communication. Information goes quickly, and it enables you to broaden your perspective and horizons geographically. Also, time spent with people has shortened because of just the sheer amount of people that you’re in touch with, which is also very exciting. But we have less time, so the conversations are getting shorter.
Ghiyati: There are more and more collectors, that’s for sure.
Nahab: They reach out by email or Instagram, and they’re eager to acquire works from all over the world. It has changed the whole perspective on how people buy. How you source information is also different, because now we can source information online. So you come into conversation with people that are mostly knowledgeable about what they’re looking at. And people are traveling a lot for art, so the number of exhibitions they see has multiplied, and their perspective on art has broadened.
Ghiyati: But it’s also harder to go that in-depth into an artist’s practice. At a fair you might have five minutes to talk to each collector, and you repeat yourself all day.
Nahab: In the past, we’d sit down and delve into the practices of an artist and what people’s interests were. With COVID, there was a return to people seeing more shows, wanting to spend more time, because they were lacking this one-on-one experience.
Is NG one way to have more in-depth conversations and work on projects on your own terms, that you couldn’t necessarily do before?
Nahab: Yes. But also, keep in mind that we come from the gallery world. This is where our careers started. This is where our friendships, and relationships to artists started. So we want to be complementary to a certain extent, to whatever galleries do.
Ghiyati: In our case, it was also an idea of doing maybe a little bit less but doing it better.
Can you elaborate on how this project differs from what you were doing before in galleries?
Ghiyati: On the advising side, I’ve always had a core group of collectors whom I’ve worked with for probably 12 years. So we’re going to keep working with some of them. There has been this idea of opening a lot of gallery outposts in many cities, but at some point, if your biggest artists want to do a show in, let’s say, Morocco, a gallery isn’t necessarily going to open another space there. So that’s where we come in.
Nahab: NG offers more flexibility in terms of what we are showing and the locations where we’re going to be active. Because the structure of a gallery is more rigid. So it’s difficult to look elsewhere or involve other people.
How can galleries do better, in terms of this lack of focus and time?
Ghiyati: It was maybe lacking for us, but I wouldn’t say that in general. Some galleries are doing extraordinary works, building careers for artists. We touched on the fact that there are more and more collectors. That means that you need to provide more and more works, exhibitions, content, experiences, and for that, there’s no solution. You need to provide. So we wanted to work with less people, do less projects, but go in depth. I think that’s our own experience.
Take previews as an example. There’s almost a preview a day going out sometimes, between the fairs, gallery exhibitions. Many of my colleagues just send everything to everyone, and then you end up with collectors complaining that they receive too many. But if you don’t send it all, they complain that they have not received this information. So I don’t have a solution. It’s true that, there’s a lot of material out there, but that’s also what people are asking the galleries to provide. It’s a complicated balance to find.
Nahab: Also, the activity level of galleries has heightened. They have to do more exhibitions. There has been a huge trend of participating in fairs, and this work shouldn’t be underestimated. It takes a lot of work to organize a fair. It is still possible to focus, but it is more difficult.
Collectors respond very well to a personal message. But you find less time to do this type of very tailor-made work. At Yvon Lambert, we had maybe 10 to 20 collectors that we could really cater to in a very precise way through our conversations. But now it’s more complicated to do that. There’s a lack of time.
Do you feel artists are also receiving less focused attention from galleries as a result?
Nahab: I think that expectations from the artist side have also shifted, and that now they expect more services from a gallery. And if you expect more services, then I think sometimes there’s a little bit of frustration that comes from that. At the end of the day, a gallery is there to not only promote but mostly sell your work, and an artist might want a book, a museum show, and so on. It feels like more of a contract today than it has ever had been.
As opposed to a friendship?
Nahab: Yes, a lot of galleries were born from basically being in the same circle of friends, sometimes around an art school. Everyone knew each other. I mean, you saw that in New York in the ’60s, for example. And then the galleries would represent one friend, and it led to another friend, and so on. It was much more related to personal relationships.
You described earlier a kind of endless growth cycle for galleries, and needing to keep up with the art world. Is NG one solution?
Ghiyati: That was definitely a conversation we had. It’s not like we’re inventing a new model that will replace the galleries. I don’t believe in that narrative.
Nahab: Also, I feel that more than ever, it’s possible to leave the cookie-cutter model, blueprint of what it is to be active on the market. People are very open-minded, they want experiences, and they don’t want to be exclusive. They want to travel around the world, to discover.
Are you also thinking about the new generation of young collectors?
Ghiyati: Totally. It’s very important for us to be working with collectors of our generation. We’ve all read a lot about this idea that young collectors are interested in buying everything from sneakers, art, watches, jewelry, etc., and that’s something we’ve seen as well. But, again, we want to bring focus to that area. Because in my opinion [these varied offerings] get a little too spread out. We want to create visible links between these different things, in the context of exhibitions as well. For Meriem, for instance, for the opening party we will curate a music lineup with local and international people, which will be a public event, and which is connected to the show. We asked Meriem what she wanted to do after the opening — a small or a big dinner? And she said, “You know what I’d like? A live concert.” And we said OK.
Nahab: We’re injecting a bit more meaning because we’re catering to the artist’s taste, but also to Morocco, a young country where people want to have a free concert, with international DJs. We don’t do many shows, so we have the luxury of doing something that makes sense for the community and the artists and even for us. The social aspect is very much part of the art market. People talk about how grueling all these events are, so you want to have something that’s a bit different, and part of the experience, where visitors will not just remember the show. They will remember engaging with the community, the events, dancing.
Gallery dinners have become a bit too routine.
Ghiyati: I can’t agree more. I’m going say it: I think these gallery dinners are very, long, slow, and you always see the same people, and unfortunately, there’s no solution, because a lot of artists want a serious gallery dinner, and you need to invite a lot of people.
Nahab: We also want to host events regularly, where we mix people from different creative fields, because I feel like that’s where you get excitement. And it branches out ideas.
Ghiyati: We are looking, as we speak, for an office in Paris, a private place where we can have these social gatherings, but be more creative with more meaning. It is a business idea in a way, because these social gatherings are key to anything the galleries do. That’s part of our identity as well. We like to host.
Do you see this emphasis on hosting as harking back to an earlier era?
Nahab: [About a decade ago,] I remember when Yvon Lambert took me to [designer Azzedine] Alaïa’s kitchen, and he would have this open table, and everyone could bring anyone, and he would just cook, and everyone was welcome. It was a mix of anyone that was creative in Paris, but also students. You didn’t need to be important, but it creates an exciting exchange of ideas. I’d love to re-create that.
To your earlier question, I think that younger generations don’t perceive culture in the same way. It’s flattened out, so a pop song has as much importance as a painting, which has as much importance as a movie or a viral video. You can put it all together. There’s less high and low culture. And contemporary art was part of high culture [in the past], but I think the way younger generations perceive and consume it is different, or the need to acquire or to possess is different.
Does that mean there’s generally less interest from younger generations to acquire art?
Nahab: Young people from collector families do continue a kind of tradition, and also get their friends excited about it, but I might be wrong here, but they don’t have the same voracity for it. They love going to an opening and acquiring a work because they just bought a new house, but they don’t necessarily make a lifestyle out of it. For a lot of collectors of the generations that I used to work with, the art world was a life for them. They would go to every museum, gallery, fair opening. I see it less with the younger generation. Collecting is part of a certain social class, and that has not disappeared. If somebody has seen their grandparents or parents collecting, they probably are going to do the same.
